Nature is usually considered as beautiful, harmonious and joyous. It is seen as a critical factor for the beginning of new life and the continuity of existing life. Even though many of us appreciate nature’s beauty and its contents, we are not always considerate of the negative impacts we have on the earth. Perhaps our ethics is consciously thought out and we are merely acting upon our own self-interest toward everything. As Leopold stated,
“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life and dullness” (Leopold 1981).
Environmental ethics is about being philosophically responsible for our intervention with wild species and ecosystems. This is about valuing the Earth and its contents with morals and respect. With minimal danger and increased advancement, many humans are living in an over-sufficient lifestyle, which directly harms the ecosystems and their biodiversity. We are harming natural habitats and polluting the environment with chemical toxins. Though we take cautious protocols to ensure our safety, we are not doing the same for wild species. But why would we need to be responsible for other species, when other species will not return the same favor for us?
From a Christian perspective, humans are put on Earth to be caretakers of the creation. God not only connect with us through the Bible but also through nature—“a world fashioned and loved and renewed by God” (Calvin 2001). The natural world holds a value because it serves human interests. The land and all the creatures in it are valuable for their usefulness to humans (Calvin 2001). Nonetheless, human interest is not what the natural world values. Keep in mind, natural world can still exist with human interference; God created the natural world before he created humans. Therefore, it should be best to wisely use the given natural resources for humans’ vital needs only. Yet, we are overpopulated and over-consumed, and over-produced for more than a decade; furthermore, we are not doing anything to stop this overt lifestyle or culture we are currently living. As humans gain powers to rebuild and modify the world through technology and scientific advancement, we degrade our creation (Rolston 2000). Recently, with politics and economic profit, we have been leaning toward both philosophical and theological anthropocentrism.
Anthropocentrism has affected how we interact with nature and our ethics toward it. “While Scripture is infallible, our readings of it most certainly are not” (Bouma-Prediger 2010). We may interpret the Bible differently, but the value of the creation is the foundation of Christianity. I do believe that humans do have a higher status than non-humans in the ecosystem. However, humans have an important responsibility of taking care of the non-human contents within the natural world—God’s creation. Without a doubt, non-human things have their own intrinsic values as well.
Because of man-caused environmental crises such as biodiversity loss, overconsumption, and climate change, Warners et al. proposed a faith-based creation-care paradigm, which contained a concept of reconciliation (2014). To summarize this five-step paradigm, we, as Christians, need to accept our mistakes, work on solutions and preventions to redeem ourselves, and nourish the new man-nature relationship (Warners et al. 2014). With reconciliation ecology, humans and nature can co-exist, just as God has planned.
Land ethic envisions the wisdom of Bible and an ethic for the entire creation—the world as a whole. When we are practicing reconciliation ecology, we are not only restoring personal relationship with God and communal relationship with each other but also mutually flourishing a relationship with our ecosystems. In other words, we are fulfilling our duties as Christians. Thus, persuading other Christians to believe that caring for the earth is an important aspect of “authentic Christian discipleship” (Calvin 2001).
“The gospel is surely more than caring for the earth, but just as surely it involves nothing less” (Calvin 2001).