Ecology And Christianity

Ecology And Christianity

Ecology and Christian Ethics
Though Christianity has a history in traditions of reflection on nature and human responsibility, it is also a very anthropocentric religion. Christianity is often accused of having a big role in the environmental crisis that the world is facing today because of its “dominant” thinking that humanity’s “mission” is to dominate and rule over all other species.
Even since the time of Adam and Eve, humans were given dominion over all animals and plants in the Garden of Eden and thus, the world, even though their main purpose was to take care of it: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it”. Through these words man receives a certain authority over nature and even though the true message is to “keep”, to take care of nature (in this case the Garden of Eden) we humans many times have a tendency to distort facts and see them according to our benefit…
Man has always been in the middle of all creation and maybe because of this the Christian thinking is something of this sort: rain falls, feeds the plants, the plants feed the animals and the animals feed us humans. So what does this mean? It means that we are the final and ultimate purpose of creation and that everything that exists, everything that God created has the purpose of making human life better. Many Christians disagree with this saying that rain falls and feeds the plants because that is what God intended and animals are for humans because that is what God made them for and not because we are the ultimate purpose of creation. But that is in a way the same thing… It means that “the world is here to serve man and man is here to serve God” and that God made animals and nature only for the benefit of humans!
If Christianities basic premises where followed it would be a very ecological religion. This world should be a gift given to us by God to cherish and take care of. Since the first chapter of the...