Question from IPHC ministries: Do you believe Christians should participate in Earth Day observances and other “green” initiatives? Why or why not?

Growing up very near the coast of NC I had amazing opportunities to cultivate a love and care for the earth.  My personal experience comes from that of a Christian home and parents who taught me to love God, love others, and care for the world around me, and certainly this included caring for the earth as God’s creation.

My childhood was an outdoor experience.  My brother and I along with friends who lived close by, would play outside for endless hours.  I have had my fair share of lighting bug fun and tag in the early evening hours.  My friends and I would basically live in our neighbor’s pool during the summer months (which thankfully often spanned from early spring well into the fall) and was home to a landscaping nursery.  We were surrounded by beauty.

As a student at a small rural school, I had incredible experiences thanks to an amazing Academic Enrichment Teacher that I still am in touch with and adore to this day.  From moving turtle nests to safe locations or in helping them hatch and scurry to the ocean safely, to  outings on the sound or deep-sea fishing expeditions, I was blessed with these opportunities and experiences.  This in turn cultivated a love for marine life.  In fact, I even considered becoming a marine biologist as a high schooler.  I participated in multiple “beach sweeps” cleaning up the coast.  I was a founding member of our High School’s ecology club.

It is additionally notable that a love for nature was also cultivated having grown up with family who were farmers.  My favorite thing to do on the farm as a child was to feed the baby calves with my Aunt Teen, and go horse-back riding with my Uncle Billy.

Yet, today there is a reality connected to ideology that “saves the whales and kills the babies” that I do not understand, even though I recognize that thinking is not renewed under the truth of God’s word – Who is Life.  I have celebrated Earth Day in the past from the point of stewardship and knowledge that “the earth is the Lord’s.”  However, the founder of “Earth Day” is an accused, escaped murder, and that matters to me.  http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin072501.asp

The article, first posted in 2001, and a bit more tongue-in-cheek and harsher in tone than I prefer, calls us to pause and consider the foundation.  Foundations matter.  And honestly it’s not just this point that causes me to be wary of a seemingly genuine celebration that highlights the earth, it is the agenda that is behind this movement in full force.  The reality is in living on this side of time the enemy of our souls is the prince of the air, and his subtleties (or sway as I John 5:19 describes) lead even insightful, genuine people astray.  Good intentions are not necessarily God inspired.

Beyond that I believe it is good and right to love the world around us and steward it well.  It is part of expressing Who God is, and we have a responsibility.  The political agendas and distractions can often be a pitfall and call the earnest in heart under the banner of a false precept.  The banner that I want to always fall beneath is the banner of God’s love… and He so loved the world.