Nature and Creation

Richard H. Hiers is professor of religion emeritus and affiliate professor of law emeritus at the University of Florida. He has authored a dozen books and numerous articles in religion journals and law journals, on biblical theology and ethics, and on law, ethics, and social policy. His most recent books are Women's Rights and the Bible: Implications for Christian Ethics and Social Policy and A Nation of Immigrants: Sojourners in Biblical Israel's Tradition and Law.

People have lived on Earth since before recorded history, depending on nature to provide for, and clean up after them. But Nature cannot do it all anymore. Too many people, too much trash, and too much toxic waste. People have long lived in interdependence with other living things. Yet humans now degrade and destroy the global environment that nurtures all species--including human beings.Human activities contaminate earth, air, and sea, causing thousands of species to go extinct. Rising global heat produces vicious cycles of catastrophic drought, fires, horrific storms, floods, famines, and massive migrations by desperate climate refugees. We don't hear much anymore about man's ""conquest of nature."" Nature--God's creation--now clearly has the last word.Contrast the theocentric faith and ethics embedded in the Old and New Testaments. Here the good world that God created, and continues to create, was made to be shared with all other living things. All alike are made from the earth and destined to return to it. Humans were meant to till the soil, appreciate, enjoy, and care for life around them, and trust their Creator for what is yet to be.