What I’m Thinking: Dominion

Genesis says that God gave dominion over the newly created world to the newly created human beings. We’ve certainly demonstrated our power over the Earth. Have we demonstrated our care, and our responsibility?

Here’s a transcript:

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday in the church calendar, but it’s not the mystery of the Three in One and the One in Three that’s got me thinking. Instead, it’s the Old Testament reading, which starts with the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, and ends with chapter two verse three. It’s the first story of Creation, where God makes the world progressively over the course of six days.

What I’m thinking about is the verse in which God gives dominion to the human children that have been created: Dominion over the birds and the fish and the plants and the animals.

Well, I don’t really know whether it was God who gave us dominion, but the simple truth of the matter is that human beings have exercised dominion for centuries. Not just modern peoples but ancient peoples, who reshaped the world in order that they might have terraces for farming, so that they might have special ponds for fish, so they might do a wealth of things and make their home their own.

In these modern times, it’s inescapable. We have dominion over the Earth. We reshape it very nearly at will, and we reshape it in ways that we do not anticipate or even mean to do.

Well, folks, since we have that dominion, I think it is up to us to exercise it responsibly. Not just on our own behalf, but for all those other living things with which we share this planet: all the way from the plants of the ground, the fish of the sea, to all those four-legged or two-legged or winged creatures that we so enjoy.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear about what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below; I’d love to hear from you!