Earth Day: God’s Green Earth - Hildegard Of Bingen

1098–1179

The earth should not be injured. The earth should not be destroyed. As often as the elements, the elements of the world are violated by ill-treatment, so God will cleanse them. God will cleanse them thru the sufferings, thru the hardships of humankind.

Surprisingly, environmentalism can be a divisive issue for Christians. Some Christians fear that taking care of the earth can equate to worshiping nature. Yet in their concern to avoid idolatry, many Christians overlook God’s command to be stewards of his creation.

The psalmist sings, “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him” (Psalm 24:1). Granted, there have always been people who have “worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself” (Romans 1:25), but we don’t need to follow that path. This earth is God’s! Of course caring for it isn’t idol worship. It’s honoring God’s handiwork.

In the 1960s, people looked around and saw that humans were damaging the earth with their massive consumption of natural resources and the pollution and waste it created. US Senator Gaylord Nelson brought those who cared together for the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, to shed light on the fact that our earth is in trouble. We were not, and still are not, taking proper care of what is the Lord’s.

We may see the 1960s as the beginning of the environmental movement, but the seeds of this concern go far back in Christian history. Back to St. Francis. Back to this amazing twelfth-century prodigy, Hildegard of Bingen, quoted above. She recognized that the earth would be “violated by ill-treatment.” She foresaw the “sufferings and hardships of humankind” that this would cause.

It has been a long, uphill battle for the majority of Christians to recognize what Hildegard noticed, but we’re finally at a place where Christians and churches are realizing there is a need for creation care and finding ways to “go green” to make a difference.

God may be telling you to lead environmental efforts, or he may simply be asking you to be responsible with what you’ve been given. What can you do today to help care for God’s creation? What can you continue to do every day?

Look, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it all belong to the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 10:14