Dave is Director of Theology for A Rocha International, where he works to embed creation care into international Christian organizations, theological institutions, and mission movements. His past roles with A Rocha include being an International Trustee and the co-founder of A Rocha UK (with his wife Anne). He has a PhD from Cambridge University on biblical theology and biodiversity conservation, and has contributed to many books and articles, including Planetwise, available in six languages. Born and raised in India, Dave has a love for Indian food, Indian culture and Indian Christianity. Dave is also a qualified bird-ringer and loves birding, islands, running and mountains.
Forty years ago there was a huge debate amongst evangelical Christians. Is the gospel simply about ‘spiritual’ matters or does it include care for the poor and oppressed? That debate was won by the power of scripture. Today there’s renewed debate. Is the Gospel – God’s good news – only for people, or is it good news for all creation?
A friend emailed me this week: “The Great Commission is clearly about making disciples, and not about ecology or creation care. It’s alright that churches get involved in taking care of the planet, but evangelism and discipleship come first. So, it’s not that we don’t save seals, but we do so after we’ve saved souls.” This email touched a nerve.
Louis Armstrong sang it; millions of us have hummed along: ‘What a wonderful world’. Sure, God made it good – Genesis tells us so repeatedly and finishes up by God declaring it all ‘very good’. However, if creation was created very good, what’s happened since? What about predation, disease, cruelty, viruses, volcanoes, disability, earthquakes?
In The Matrix, Agent Smith says, “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague.” The idea of humans as a virus species is becoming increasingly widespread. No part of the planet is left untouched as we swarm over it, multiplying, polluting, consuming, destroying. Yet most Christians react in horror at the idea. Surely we are ‘made in the image of God’?
When I Google ‘Do material things matter to God?’ I find over 20,000,000 results. Some sites warn of the dangers material things pose to our relationship with God; others claim to give the secret of material prosperity. It seems Christians are mightily confused about whether the stuff we think we own, the world of nature, even our own bodies, are deep-down good or not.
When I was a child growing up in India, there was a song we often sang at school: “This land is your land, this land is my land, / From the Himalayas down to Cape Comorin, / From Bombay city to old Calcutta, / This land was made for you and me.” Connection to place is important and good. Yet there’s a big difference between belonging to a place, and the place belonging to us.
