Enviro-Stewardship: And Behold, It Was Tov Me’od

Since October, I've been posting Dad's monthly "Environmental Stewardship" column, which he writes for local church newsletters. Here's John Berge's column for May: 

I recently read that “The Hebrew vocabulary includes no word equivalent to our term ‘Nature,’" by which we include all the plants, animals and microscopic creatures, usually excluding human beings.

I presume this lack of of a Hebrew word is also true of the term ‘Environment,’ which includes the physical elements that surround us – rocks, soil, air and water. ‘Ecology’ comes to us from the Greek, but even though the New Testament was written in Greek, I doubt its inclusion since the word was coined much later. This does does make it difficult at times to translate environmental and ecological messages from the Old Testament to the present. But the messages are there in abundance.

"Genesis 1" by Maximino Cerezo Barredo

For example, in the first creation story in Genesis, after each of the first stages (days) of the creation, God saw that it was “good.” After the creation of man and woman he saw that it was “very good” because now there were stewards to care for His creation, to have “dominion” over all. Dominion is best interpreted as not domination but stewardship.

In the New Testament, in an event which is not generally considered an ecological or environmental reference, Luke tells of the healing of ten lepers. (Luke 17:11-14) They were told to “go and show.” They were to walk in order to be cleansed. Likewise, to be good stewards of God’s creation, we must act, not just talk or muse about the problems that face us in protecting our environment for ourselves, our offspring and our God, but walk the talk.

The City of Racine is taking two such actions: There is a growing group, including the City Administrator, who are aiming Racine towards being a waste-free city, an excellent target to work toward – whether it can eventually be attained or not. Every department in the city is to search out goals and programs to reach this objective, not only within their department but within those portions of the city over which they have jurisdiction or influence.

The second action is to initiate a city commitment to the Paris Accord. This agreement aims to respond to the global climate change threat by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Several cities in Wisconsin, including Kenosha to our south and Milwaukee to our north, have committed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.

What specific goals, challenges and efforts the city will make has not been determined at this time, but it will take actions by all citizens as well as government to reach the goals of the Paris Accord, with or without leadership by the President and the Federal Government. As environmental stewards, appointed by God in Genesis, we all must act.

Note from Paul: Google Translate gives "טבע" (teva) as the Hebrew word for "nature." It may be a non-Talmudic word; if you want to delve into that further, there's a theological discussion here.