I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that

							Christian concern for the environment is not a modern concept.
Leaders, teachers, theologians and other committed Christians have
written about it over the centuries. A few examples are given below.

I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that wherever you
go, the least plant may bring you the clear remembrance of the Creator.
…One blade of grass or one speck of dust is enough to occupy your entire
mind in beholding the art with which it has been made. … The earth is the
Lord's and the fullness thereof. O God, enlarge within us the sense of
fellowship with all living things, even our brothers, the animals, to whom
Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. …We remember
with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man
with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone
up to thee in song, has been a groan of pain. May we realize that they live,
not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee and that they love the
sweetness of life.”

— St. Basil the Great (329-379)



“The world has been created for everyone's use, but you few rich are trying
to keep it for yourselves. For not merely the possession of the earth, but the
very sky, the air, and the sea are claimed for the use of the rich few. …The
earth belongs to all, not just to the rich.”

— St. Ambrose of Milan (339-397)



“Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great
book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below
you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with
ink. Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you
ask for a louder voice than that?”

— St. Augustine (354-430)
“The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. … I do not worship
matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who
willed to take His abode in matter, who worked out my salvation through
matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation!
I honor it, but not as God. Because of this I salute all remaining matter with
reverence, because God has filled it with his grace and power. Through it my
salvation has come to me.”

— St. John of Damascus (675-749)



“Believe an expert: you will find something far greater in the woods that in
books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you cannot learn from the
masters.”

— St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), abbot and author



“Any error about creation also leads to an error about God.”

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), theologian and philosopher



“Let a man fear, above all, me, his God, and so much the gentler will he
become toward my creatures and animals, on whom, on account of me, their
Creator, he ought to have compassion.”

— St. Birgitta (1303-1373)



“Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all
creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before.
Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as
I reflect that he is Lord over all things. …God writes the Gospel, not in the
Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”

— Martin Luther (1483-1546), theologian who began the Reformation
“What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the
obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God.
Everything bears this mark.”

— Blaise Pascal (1623-1620), mathematician and theologian



“Let him who possesses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may
not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence; but let him endeavor to
hand it down to posterity as he received it, or even better cultivated. Let him
so feed on its fruits that he neither dissipates it by luxury, nor permits it to be
marred by neglect. Moreover, let everyone regard himself as the steward of
God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself
dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be
preserved. …The creation is quite like a spacious and splendid house,
provided and filled with the most exquisite and the most abundant
furnishings. Everything in it tells us of God.”

— John Calvin (1509-1564), theologian and Protestant reformer



“True Godliness doesn't turn men out of the world, but enables them to live
better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it. …We have nothing that
we can call our own; no, not our selves: for we are all but Tenants, and at
Will, too, of the great Lord of our selves, and the rest of this great farm, the
World that we live upon.”

— William Penn (1644-1718), Quaker theologian and founder of
Pennsylvania



“Chrysostom, I remember, mentions a twofold book of God: the book of the
creatures, and the book of the scriptures. God, having taught us first of all by
his works, did it afterwards, by his Words. We will now for a while read the
former of these books; ‘twill help us in reading the latter. They will
admirably assist one another.”

— Cotton Mather (1663-1728), theologian and author
“There is no peace more wonderful than the peace we enjoy when faith
shows us God in all created things.”

— Jean-Pierre de Caussde (1675-1751), Jesuit Priest and Spiritual Director



“They (the creatures) encourage us to imitate Him whose mercy is over all
His works. It may enlarge our hearts toward these poor creatures to reflect
that not one of them is forgotten in the sight of our Father which is in
heaven.”

— John Wesley (1701-1791), Pastor, theologian, and founder of Methodism



“We have seen that the Son of God created the world for this very end, to
communicate Himself in an image of His own excellency. ... When we
behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening
cloud, or the beauteous (rain)bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory
and goodness; and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness.”

— Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), preacher and Pastor



“I believe that where the love of God is perfected and the true spirit of
government watchfully attended to, a tenderness toward all creatures will be
experienced, and a care felt in us that we do not lessen that sweetness of life
in the animal creation which the Great Creator intends for them under our
government.”

— John Woolman (1720-1772), Quaker preacher



“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and
awe — the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

— Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), philosopher
“As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other
bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining
colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the
Creator.”

— Carl von Linne (1707-1778), also known as Linnaeus, credited with
developing the modern system of binomial nomenclature used in taxonomy



“A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The
territory is the only part which is of certain durability. Laws change, people
die, the land remains.”

— Abraham Lincoln (1809-1965), U.S. President



“Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love
every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals, love the plants, love
everything. If you love everything, you will soon perceive the divine
mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it
better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an
all-embracing love.”

— Fydor Doestoyevski (1821-1881), author



“This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings,
And round me rings
The music of the spheres.

“This is my Father’s world:
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong
Seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.“

— Maltbie D. Babcock (1858-1901), pastor and preacher
“The more man distinguishes himself from the rest of creation, the more he
becomes conscious of himself as the subject, as an "I" to whom the world is
an object, the more does he tend to confuse himself with God, to confuse his
spirit with the spirit of God, and to regard his reason as Divine Reason.”

— Emil Brunner (1889-1966), theologian and author



“There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose
nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets 'things' with a deep and
fierce passion. The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print,
but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real
nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology
could do. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare
not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a
development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of
God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substation.”

— A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), theologian and Christian author



“Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite
majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a
meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one.”

— C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian author and professor, Oxford
University



“God is not identified with the world, for he made it; but God is not separate
from His world, either. For He made it.”

— Joseph Sittler (1904-1988), theologian, author, and Professor at the
Divinity School of the University of Chicago
“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the
interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another
and all involved in one another.”

— Thomas Merton (1915-1968), theologian and Christian author



“What a strange creature man is that he fouls his own nest.”

— Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994), U.S. President



“The supreme reality of our time is… the vulnerability of our planet.”

— John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), U.S. President



“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption
our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that
we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We
need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an
ever-increasing rate.”

— Victor Lebow, economist Journal of Retailing, 1955



“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than
contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We
must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just
after we got through using it.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), U.S. President
“The dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to
which greed and selfishness are contrary to the order of creation. …A given
culture reveals its understanding of life through the choices it makes in
production and consumption… a great deal of educational and cultural work
is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible
use of their power of choice…”

— Pope John Paul II (1929-2005)



“Folks, our Lord and Savior put a human face on poverty long before we
did. And his concern for the degradation of creation is inextricably linked to
his concern for those whose options for life have been severely degraded as
well. The poor! So what do we do until He comes? What leadership do we
bring? I think we do what He would have done.”

— Bob Seiple, president of World Vision and past president of Eastern
College and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary
“The Torah (or covenant law) conveys an ethic of environmental care with
social justice - not over against or instead of, but together. Key passages
such as Exodus 23, Leviticus 19 and 25, and Deuteronomy 15 express the
covenant obligation to respond to the poor, to give animals sabbath rest, to
let the land lie fallow, and to cancel debts periodically, if not to redistribute
land. Theology with this sensitivity poses no either/or choice between caring
for people and caring for the earth. The way people treat land and animals is
as important a sign of faithfulness as the way people treat each other.
Modern anthropocentric Christianity forgot this, bowing to ideologies of
economic growth that sacrifice both ecology and equity.”

— Dieter T. Hessel, theologian and Christian author

“There is no way you can be faithful to Scripture and sensitive to the leading
of the Holy Spirit without becoming involved in the efforts to rescue the
environment. … Rescuing the environment from an impending disaster is
biblically mandated and ending the careless selfish life-style that has brought
us to this impending disaster is a Christian obligation. … One of the primary
reasons for efforts to preserve God’s creation lies in the growing awareness
that those who are most prone to suffer the consequences of environmental
irresponsibility are the poor. …Irresponsible stewardship of God’s creation
and our greedy exploitation of natural resources have wrought unbelievable
suffering. … Even though Christians have been commissioned by God to be
good stewards of His Creation, they appear to be the least concerned with
what is going on.”

— Tony Campolo, evangelist, Christian author, and Professor, Eastern
College

“The earth is not ours, nor did God create it for us to do with as we please.
In truth, there is no scriptural basis for arguing that the earth belongs to any
of its creatures. It is the Creator who holds the earth’s title; it is God who is
Lord and landlord. The nature of our habitation on earth can be no more than
that of favored tenants, a fact that fundamentally alters the meaning of
dominion.”

— Michael L. Blaine, Pastor, Park Avenue Baptist Church
“The creation of our Lord does not belong to the rich who possess it nor to
the poor who need and want the resources. Neither the greedy nor the needy
can claim ownership! God owns everything! The earth is the Lord’s! …The
community of faith cannot be silent any longer. We must speak out and
proclaim that all unrighteousness is sin. It is unrighteous to denude the
forest, to pollute the air, and to squander the richness of the earth. Creation
does not belong to humans; it is God’s property. Therefore, to disrespect
God’s authority and ownership is to commit both the sin of disobedience and
the sin of rebellion.”

— Bishop George D. McKinney Jr., Pastor and founding President of
Charles H. Mason University

“Christians must become vigorous environmentalists because God’s Word
demands it, because we are destroying the Creator’s garden, and because
many secular environmentalists are on a deep spiritual pilgrimage. If we
don’t show then that biblical faith is what they are looking for, they will find
some other religious foundation for their ecological concerns. Make no
mistake: a spiritual battle is raging; Satan would love nothing better than to
persuade modern people that the best way to solve our environmental crisis
is to abandon historic Christian truth. The way to defeat Satan is for all
Christians to become committed environmentalists and to ground their
struggles to save the earth on solid biblical foundations. …Obviously, God’s
Word compels us to become more concerned with the environment, so that
means we must change. …We need to repent of our unspoken belief that
more is better, that more and more material abundance brings fulfillment.
…I’m afraid that one reason Christians fail to live more simply for the sake
of the poor and the environment – one reason we persist in our practical
materialistic worship of things – is that we don’t really love Jesus very
much. We substitute lukewarm faith and mere tradition for a passionate love
for the Lord and a radical commitment to worship and to obey him at any
cost. Colossians 1:18 says Jesus is to "have the supremacy." Is that true for
you and me? …If he is not the center, the power, and the norm for all we do,
then our environmental activity and social concern will be a hollow echo of
a well-meaning but often confused world searching desperately, often in the
wrong places, for joy, hope, and peace. So, yes, let’s carefully tend the
Creator’s garden, reveling in its astonishing splendors and awesome glory.
But let’s worship only the Creator who is also the Redeemer.”

— Ron Sider, Professor, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and
President of Evangelicals for Social Action
“Romans says the creation was ‘subjected to frustration, in hope that it will
be liberated from its bondage to decay.’ In hope! There is hope for the earth.
As Christians, we can and should have hope for the earth, as well as our
hope of heaven.”

— Howard A. Snyder, Pastor and Professor, United Theological Seminary

“Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement
for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and
stewardship. Did God make the world? Does He sustain it? Has He
committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for His own
creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned. … So
God’s mighty acts in creation and redemption are to be made known
throughout the world. I hope, brothers and sisters, that we will not be afraid
to bear witness to the Creator, as well as the Redeemer. Just as the apostle
Paul did when confronted by the philosophers in Athens, we need to hold
together in our evangelistic witness the creation and the cross – the God who
made us, and the God who has redeemed us in Jesus Christ. If either is
omitted, our gospel has become truncated.”

— John R. W. Stott, theologian and Christian author

“We need to repent of our willing cooperation in our money-centered
culture, which is depleting the natural resources that God designed for all
humankind. He gave us a good earth. Let us serve him by helping to
preserve it for our children. ‘A good man leaves an inheritance for his
children’s children’ (Proverbs 13:22 ).”

— Paul Brand, surgeon and Christian author

“For me, the world of nature bears spectacular witness to the imaginative
genius of our Creator.”

— Phillip Yancey, Christian author
“It is time for God’s people to rediscover the Word of God. Much of it we
already know. We have devotional resources, study guides, and translations
enough to fill up row upon row of shelves in the bookstore. Many of these
are quite helpful. Nonetheless, it is my belief that large portions of Scripture
are still hidden from God’s people. These are the portions that deal with
creation and its care. We all believe in creation. We know that God is the
Creator of all things. However, usually it is only the preschool classes in our
church schools that ever give creation more than a sidelong glance. Most of
us can praise the Creator in our prayers buy cannot say much more than,
‘thanks for the sun and the cute flowers.’ Yet, I would respectfully submit to
you that this portion of the Bible may as well be buried in a time capsule
underneath the cornerstone of your church and mine. When will we retrieve
this buried treasure? When will we be faithful to the full counsel of God?”

— Stan L. LeQuire, Pastor and Christian author

“A case can certainly be made that Christians bear a major responsibility for
our ecological crisis. But the fault is not their biblical but their unbiblical
view of nature. Christians have long failed to understand what the Bible
really teaches concerning nature and our responsibility for it. For this there is
no excuse. Repentance must be our first response. Our second response must
then be to right the wrongs of our faulty understanding and act accordingly.
We are all responsible to know what can be known of God’s will for nature,
and we are then responsible to act on that knowledge.”



— James W. Sire, Christian author and senior editor for InterVarsity Press
“As Christians cannot be indifferent to knowing God as Creator, or to the
joys of celebrating his creation, so they cannot be indifferent to the needs of
creation, especially when these needs express themselves as the ecological
crises of the modern world. Because ruling, in the kingdom of God, is to be
expressed by service to those ruled and by the command to cultivate and
keep (Genesis 2:15 ), management and preservation combine in the concept
of stewardship. While the stewardship of creation is a professional calling
for some Christians who serve as scientists and resource managers, it must
be the avocation of every Christian. Involvement in the care of creation, both
corporately and individually, on issues of both worldwide concern and local
significance, represents every Christian’s appropriate obedience to the
imperative of Genesis 1:28.”

— Fred VanDyke, David C. Mahan, Joseph K. Sheldon, and Raymond
H. Brand, authors Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for
Environmental Stewardship

“We don’t believe we are going to reverse the environmental crisis by
simply passing laws. We have to change the human understanding of its
place and purpose in creation. Unless you have that fundamental change in
values, many of us believe environmental degradation will be irreversible.”

— Paul Gorman, founder, National Religious Partnership on the
Environment

“No matter how hard we try, we cannot separate God’s work of creation and
His work of redemption. Paul makes it perfectly clear the Logos, Jesus as
wisdom personified, is the force behind both redemption and creation. I’m
amazed that Christians have missed this for so long. Our presentations of the
gospel have not touched on creation. … But we now have an opportunity to
bring these two great mandates back together. We can use environmental
issues as a port of entry for presenting the gospel to Generation X, if we can
ever get over our fears of being labeled ‘New Agers.’”

— Kevin Graham Ford, Christian author and evangelist
“Many evangelical Christians are very reluctant to accept the fact that
poverty for the millions is directly linked to injustice, to power struggles that
increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It is also difficult for
us to understand that so much human suffering is directly related to our
abuse of God’s creation. … When John 3:16 boldly proclaims , ‘for God so
loved the world,’ we are to understand that God’s love extends to the cosmos
(in Greek – the entire created order). … the hour has come for the church to
dig a little deeper, to discover just how mighty our God is.”

— Myron S. Augsburger, Pastor, author, and past president of Eastern
Mennonite University

“We have a strong Christian responsibility to care for the earth and every
part of creation. We also have very strong Christian responsibility to care for
each other in the world, our neighbours in other countries, especially those
who are poor and who need a lot of help in order to get them out of
poverty.”

— Sir John Houghton, evangelical Christian, Professor of Atmospheric
Physics at Oxford, and co-chair of the Scientific Working Group of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change




“Earth is crammed with heaven
And every bush aflame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes.”

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet 1806 - 1861