Have you ever wondered why we’re expected to care for ailing forests when children are starving? Surely people are more important than creation?

But here’s the thing: it’s easy to overlook the reality that the ‘very good’ world God has given us is remarkably integrated and interconnected. People can’t be compared to creation, as we are part of that very creation. God created humanity on the sixth day, and as he surveyed them and ‘all that he had made’, he concluded that ‘it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31). We are both part of creation and deeply reliant on the other elements of creation.

We often attempt to separate the world into spiritual and physical components, valuing the spiritual over the physical. This view finds little support in Scripture. We serve a God who came to us as a man, who walked dusty streets, and had nails driven into his hands. Was Jesus fully human or fully God? He was both! Any attempt to split these components of his nature has always resulted in heresy.

We face similar challenges when we try to separate our physicality from our spirituality. I am deeply spiritual, but have also been created to need oxygen, nutrient-rich food, clean water and many other conditions to support life. The attempt to separate inseparable parts, I believe, poses a great danger. It denigrates creation, including our physical bodies, and ignores the mission God has called us to participate in.

In the creation story, God creates us with a clear purpose, often known as the creation mandate. Humanity is to be fruitful and multiply, to till and keep the earth, and to rule over the animals. Our mandate clearly shows that God’s will is for humanity to bear God’s image by tending to creation and seeking its flourishing. In doing so, we too flourish. Land that is damaged harms us, and land that flourishes allows us to flourish.

Land that is damaged harms us, and land that flourishes allows us to flourish.

Creation care in the church can become lost when it’s simply a response to the political issues of the day. Instead, care for creation has been a part of God’s calling from the very beginning, far before political concerns flooded our consciousness. The Bible continually emphasises the importance of the land not just as a physical location, but as an active partner with God’s people. When sin overwhelms God’s people, we’re told the land spews them out. When they live righteously, the land flourishes.

The natural world was not simply created for us, but we were also created for the natural world. From the outset of creation, we have been called to live in right relationship with it. Current environmental issues may be an indicator that our relationship with the land has become unbalanced, but it isn’t the reason we care for creation. We do so because God called us to do so from the beginning

A flourishing creation results in flourishing people.

There can be a tendency to interpret Christ’s Great Commission as superseding our original mandate rather than complementing it. We are not called to go and make disciples instead of tilling and keeping the earth, but rather to do both. When we consider some of the ecological damage taking place, research shows that those suffering most in the world are communities who live in the Global South. Jesus clearly sought to care for those suffering. One of the clearest ways we can participate in his mission is to care for creation in a manner that alleviates many of the effects being felt.

We are not called to care for people over creation, but neither are we called to care for creation over people. The work of caring for children who are starving can’t be separated from caring for ailing forests—for the environments that people depend on and call home. We care for both as part of our calling and in recognition of the gift that God has given us in his very good creation. A flourishing creation results in flourishing people. This is kingdom work.

With thanks to Josh Bogle for this article, first appearing in the Better World Magazine—Edition 11.