Does Earth Day Have Anything To Do With Good Friday?

Russell Moore:

Believing that salvation includes the restoration of creation does away the notion that the earth is irrelevant to the kingdom purposes of God—be they now or not yet—by declaring the place of the creation in the the establishment of the kingdom from the original creation through the Noahic covenant (Gen 9:8-17) to the final regeneration of the cosmos (Col 1:20).

We understand that we live in the “already” of an “already/not yet” framework of this restoration. We cannot therefore share an economic libertarian’s purely utilitarian view of the earth and its resources. Nor can we share a radical environmentalist’s apocalyptic scenarios of the complete destruction of the earth. In our care for creation, we must maintain both the necessity and the limits of environmental action, knowing that the ultimate liberation of creation has everything to do with our resurrection and the resumption of human rule through Christ over this universe.

That means that this Good Friday, and this Earth Day, we need to love what God loves: his entire creation. We need to conserve and care for the good earth that God has created. And we need to remember that, ultimately, the curse is rolled back by a bloody cross.

The risen Jesus, for his life and death and resurrection, saves us from an ecological catastrophe of the worst kind. And he raises us to newness of life to reign with him in a new creation—a different kind of Earth Day, a different kind of earth.

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