Creation Care encompasses all
Creation Care is one aspect of our work that cuts through everything that we do. It is the base on which everything stands and the foundation on which we have built everything we do. That means, whether it is the science team going out for bird monitoring, the Environmental Education team welcoming students at our Centre, the finance team balancing accounts, or the Communications team sitting behind a keyboard and writing about it, we are all motivated and linked by one thing, Creation Care!
Creation Care is such a broad term, one that involves many things, done in many different ways. But at its heart, Creation Care is simply man living up to his God-given mandate. Whether that is in their personal life, professional life, or during their vacation days. Conservation is part of Creation Care, which makes us as an organization, solely and deeply rooted in Creation Care.
A sit-down with Stanley
Earlier last week I had a chance to sit with Stanley, our Head of Department for Community Conservation, who has been working with A Rocha Kenya (specifically with the community department) for over 20 years.
Of course, the first question I asked him was what he understood by Creation Care, and his response was simple, ” Creation Care is our God-given responsibility to rule over creation.” Rule? I thought, is such a unique word, and can mean very different things, depending on how it is interpreted. So naturally, I asked him to elaborate a bit on what he meant by “rule over creation”. This is what he had to say, ” By rule, I mean stewardship of God’s creation. It is a responsibility as stipulated in Genesis. Rule in this context means to take care of, not misuse or ignore.“
I found that really intriguing. Many people misinterpret the meaning of God giving us dominion over the earth. They see it as permission to misuse and destroy the earth. Read more about that here.
The other group, and perhaps the most dangerous, is made up of those who feel indifferent about the whole thing. They don’t actively pollute the world, but they also don’t care about what is going on. As long as everything is okay in their lives, then all is good with the world. The elephants can go extinct tomorrow and they wouldn’t mind, because such a thing, doesn’t directly impact them. But from Genesis, we learn, whether it is the Amazon being scorched, the ice caps melting or plastic pollution in the oceans, whatever negatively impacts nature is our business because nature is our business!
For it is written...
Stanley continued expounding his point. ” Man was created specifically for this reason. The privilege of being created in God’s image comes with a responsibility of ruling over creation.”
At this point, he stopped and quoted Genesis 1:26-27 which says, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Creation Care in A Rocha Kenya
” The Creation Care project was aimed at arousing that sense of responsibility in the community members. The Dakatcha Woodland was being cleared at an alarming rate for sisal farming and charcoal burning. Besides being an Important Bird Area as declared by IUCN, Dakatcha Woodland is a beautiful part of God’s creation, and it was dying. People were exploiting the resources in an unsustainable way. All this, we believed, was as a result of lack of knowledge. Creation Care was necessary to bring about education and perhaps a change in attitude.”
He continued, ” The truth is that Dakatcha is a hard and dry place. We didn’t blame the community members, they needed to make ends meet. Living in such a place where it is dry, with little rain which can be so unpredictable, presents you with very limited options for survival. That is why, more than just providing knowledge, the question now was how do we help them make ends meet while looking after creation. That is how we introduced Farming God’s Way as an alternative mode of farming and source of livelihood. It enabled the community to look after creation whilst reaping enough to sustain them. “
What then shall we conclude?
With that, I sighed with relief as I nodded my head in agreement. And then, came his closing remarks, ” There is a deep interdependence between man and creation that is so deep and impossible to overlook. A thriving ecosystem leads to a thriving community. Pollinators (like bees) need a variety of foods to survive and exist, which they get from our gardens and natural plants that haven’t been destroyed. In return, they pollinate our plants and give us food. “
The reality that we often choose to ignore is that nature (creation) can survive without us. But there is no world or frame of existence, where man can survive without nature!