Our Environment

I had a discussion with a family member about a "church" that's being built locally. It's actually a very liberal, pluralistic organization that includes people professing to be Buddhists, Christians, new agers, pagans, secular humanists as well as people who don't believe much at all. It was an interesting discussion, and several things came up that created even more discussion. Animism, the notion that inanimate objects have a "soul," came up. This is an idea that the Bible does not agree with. You do see it in certain native American Indian belief systems though, as well as some major world religions. It always seems to be related to pantheistic thought, another concept that the Bible flatly rejects.

So if inanimate objects don't have souls, can we treat them however we wish? What is our responsibility?

God created the natural laws of physics and the universe and they serve His purposes. He upholds all things by the Word of His power, as it says in Hebrews 1:3. We're created in His image, with the spiritual and intellectual abilities He deemed proper for us to have. He gave us the ability to relate to Him and He originally gave us dominion over the earth. That means that we're supposed to manage it wisely and like everything else we've been given, glorify Him with it by using it to serve His will. I don't know if anyone living today has all the answers about that, but common sense should at least give us all a clue when managing resources. In any case, it should be looked at closely and studied thoroughly so that our management responsibilities can be carried out intelligently.