For some reason I subscribe to TIME magazine. It comes every Friday, I take about five minutes when I get home from work to page through it, see there is nothing in it, and toss it. This week's issue was different, I was enjoying it, good articles on the election, financial collapse and government bail-out, lifeline for GM, even a Q & A from Alec Baldwin, etc., til I got close to the end. Then I came across this headline:

The Good Book Goes Green

Did I read that right? And the picture? Yep, there is a new color-coded Bible that is being marketed to environmentalists, which "calls attention to more than 1000 verses related to nature by printing them in a pleasant shade of forest green..."

At my core, I obviously have no issue with printing a Bible of recycled or enviro-friendly paper, covers, etc. I recycle, try to conserve gas and electricity, try to use eco-friendly materials, etc. I'll probably even put solar panels on my house and buy a hybrid for my next car. But these two points raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels, just ask my wife:

1. This new version's message, states an introductoin by Evangelical eco-activist J. Matthew Sleeth, is that "creation care" - the Christian catchphrase for nature conservancy- "is at the very core of our Christian walk."

Hmmm...nature conservancy...core of our Christian walk...at least they provide a counter-point by Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, "...but when they asked Jesus what was most important, he said 'Love your God, and love your neighbor as yourself...'" There is much more we could add to the list before nature conservancy even gets a mention.

2) Then they discuss something that I've encountered much in the recent past when I ask what biblical support we have for the case being made for the religious green movement. I'm continually referenced to Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

As you can see, the NIV translates this "dominion" as "rule," but the King James translates it as "dominion." In any case, according to Strong's, the original Hebrew here is radah and can be translated into English as subjugate, to crumble off, rule, dominion, take, prevaileth, reign, or ruler. Furthermore, the English word stewardship is oikonomia and "primarily signifies the management of a household or of household affairs." It is used in various places throughout the Bible, including when Paul "applies it to the responsibility entrusted to him of preaching the gospel" in 1 Cor. 9:17 and in Eph. 1:10 and 3:2 where "it is used of the arrangement or administration by God, by which in 'the fullness of the times' (or seasons) God will sum up all things in the heavens and on earth in Christ. A final meaning from Strong's that provides the closest link to what the "Evangelical eco-activists" want it to mean is that "a steward oversees another's goods and dispenses them in accordance with the Master's desires," though I still see that as a stretch.

I could go much further and also dissect the Greek translations of the English "steward," (which simply means overseer or manager)but I'll save you the agony. My point here is what it has always been. I do believe we are to take care of God's creation, but I do believe there are limits to what humans can do. Not all natural disasters are man-made, the earth has warmed and cooled before carbon emissions, "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth" and "this world in its present form is passing away." We are not sole proprietors of the earth, God is sovereign, Man is fallen and the earth is under the same curse, we can't just stop using carbon and turn things around, it's deeper than that.

You know that I believe STRONGLY in an apolcalyptical interpretation of Scripture as a whole, and I think there's no arguing the theme that runs through the Bible, and two tenets of apocalyptic thinking, that this age is passing away and a dominant mood of strain and tension, with pessimism concerning the present. That clearly is applicable here, if, and only if, one is concerned with a serious biblical interpretation using the rules of exegesis, number one being that the text means what the original author meant it to mean.