140 Dominion

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Dominion”, originally shared on August 16, 2021. It was the 140^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What do you think of when you hear the word dominion? To dominate? To exercise power?

   Some of we nerd-types might immediately think of The Dominion, an interstellar superpower in the Gamma Quadrant that dominated the planets they conquered under the guise of “bringing order” to the universe in Star Trek. No?

   What if dominion wasn’t about bending others to our will, but about acting as caretakers in accord with the nature of God? Today, we’ll find out.

   We   visited the California Botanical Garden in Claremont the other day. We’ve been going there as members since our son was in a backpack. He’s 36 now.

   It’s a beautiful place. It’s kept pretty natural. It specializes the preservation of native Southern California plants and habitats, including forests.

   We went there to reflect on climate change.

   A report by 234 scientists released last week by a UN task force called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the world’s average temperature has gone up 2 degrees since the Industrial Revolution of the 19^th Century.

   The evidence for human caused, or at least human correctable, climate change has been piling up for some time, and it‘s getting to the point where we can’t treat its reversal as a pastime. Recycling, using reusable products, even driving an electric car are not going to be enough.

   We see its consequences happening right now in rising sea levels causing concern among island nations, an increase in the numbers and intensity of major weather events including flooding in some areas and drought in others, and the shift from a limited fire season in California to a year ‘round one.

   In the Bible’s story of Creation, the last thing that God does is to create human beings. Human beings have been described as the crown of Creation for a couple of reasons.

   First, it’s that last thing God creates before he rests on the seventh day. It’s like the cherry on the top.

   Second, God gives human beings “dominion” over all living things. Dominion means “rule” as a king or queen rules, a king or a queen who wears of crown.

   In Genesis 1:26 we read:

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

   That same sentiment is seen in Psalm 8:6-8:

⁶ You have given them [i.e. human beings] dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under their feet,
⁷ all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
⁸ the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

   What does dominion mean? It means rule. Who is the ruler of all things? God.

   When God gives human beings dominion over all living things, he is giving us responsibility to have dominion as God has dominion.

   One of the nicknames for the State of Virginia is the Old Dominion. Why? Probably because it was the oldest of the American colonies to be under the dominion of the kings and queens of England during America’s Colonial Period.

   How did that work out? Well, we had a revolution to get rid of that dominion because of unjust management.

   We have been given dominion over all living things by God. I suppose it could be said that the earth is now in revolt against human beings for the poor stewardship of the natural world we are demonstrating.

   Efforts to return to a benevolent rule of the earth by humankind sound to some like a progressive plot to kill our energy independence and the production of goods that maintain our economy, the envy of the world, but not to me.

   I’d like to now say something as an old person that old people like to say, and that is “When I was growing up…”  When I was growing up, there were no Environmentalists and there were no Climate Change Warriors. In those days, people who were concerned for our environmental future and that of future generations were called “Conservationists” and they were mostly conservatives.

   Attacking, and that’s what it’s going to take, attacking climate change is not a partisan issue, and I think it’s important that we hold anyone or any political party accountable that tries to make it so for their own personal gain.

   And I think that Christians are uniquely positioned to be that bridge, to help unify our approach, by applying the idea of “dominion”.

   Dominion has never meant ravaging the natural world for our gain, though some have coopted the Bible’s language for their own benefit.

   Follow the money trail, look at the outcome of the despoilers, behold the greed of those who would not manage but exploit the natural world and ask if you think that’s what the Bible advocates.

   Whatever else “Let us make humankind in our image” means (in Genesis 1:26), it means that we have been created for a living relationship with the one true living God. We live in response to that relationship, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

   We live under God’s dominion. As the Palmist says in Psalms 24:1-2:

¹ The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
    the world, and those who live in it;
² for he has founded it on the seas,
    and established it on the rivers.

   We are middle managers under God’s dominion. We are stewards and caretakers. We are responsible for the way we treat the natural world that God created.

   In the both/and worldview of the Bible, in the second creation story, in Genesis 2 we read that God formed man “from the dust of the ground” (verse 7) and in verse 15 we see:

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

   Have you ever been a farmer, or worked on a farm? Have you ever had family members who worked on a farm?

   It’s hard to be a farmer. It’s a challenging way of life calling for a wide variety of skill sets. It was the primary way of life for most people for most of human history. But now, Agribusiness and their factory farms and feed lots, have pushed most sustainable production small farms out. Soil is losing its fertility. I think it was when I was on Internship in Iowa that I read the story of a farmer who had won 3 million dollars in the state lottery. A reporter asked the farmer what he was going to do with the money. He said, “Well, my wife and I figure that if we manage the money carefully, and watch every penny, we can keep farming for another 5 years.

   I remember visiting family members on their farms when I was growing up in Wisconsin. I remember hearing the stories of older family members and friends of life on their farms. Sally and James and I had an outdoor family lunch on the family farm in Norway when we visited in 2004. Those connections with the land are disappearing.

   I remember coming home in a bus from Bible camp one summer when I was a teenager. It was hot and all the windows were down. We drove past a field where the farmer had spread pig manure on the soil to make if more fertile. The smell, on a hot summer’s day, was overwhelming. Everyone hurried to push their windows up, except one big farm kid. He opened his window as far as it would go, filled his lungs through his nose, and said, “Ahh. I’m home!”

   Today, farming, the most basic enterprise in what it means to be human sets people apart from humanity. And yet, we are still all caretakers of the beautiful and productive world God has placed in our hands. Our values and our votes matter.

   The way we live needs to change; it’s not sustainable. Our lifestyles need to reflect what we believe, even while we still live the abundant life that Jesus came to give.

   God has dominion over us, and we have been given dominion over all living things, which includes all things that they need to thrive for continuing generations.

   How has God exercised that dominion? As a careless tyrant? As an exploiter? As a destroyer?

   No.

   God has given us life and the freedom to say “no” to God so that our “yes” would mean something. We ruin things again and again. We are faithless. We seek equality or superiority to God. And yet God continues to Create, to be steadfast, and to be long-suffering of our indifference, and will continue until Christ’s return and the Day of Judgement.

   God entered into our fallen world to redeem it at the cross. It is our only ultimate hope. But in the meantime, we have been given a responsibility to care for and preserve all living things and the natural resources they require until the Day of Judgement.

   God has given us stewardship over Creation and it is suffering. God has told us that the value of strength is in serving the weak, the value of voice is to be the voice of the voiceless, the value of power is to lift the powerless, and God has shown us that, to God, the value of divinity is in emptying God’s self and pouring out God’s life for the sake of the world.

   This is what it means to care for God’s world, the world that God Created, to reflect the love of God in which we live for the sake of the world and its future generations. For sake of all that God has created.

   We see in God what “dominion” means. We see it on the cross.

   Let us live that love in the care of God’s Creation. Let us exercise our God-given dominion as a reflection of the living relationship we have received from the one true living God.