John 10:10
Several years ago I uprooted myself and left Tennessee for the lovely state of North Carolina, my new home. I drove, along with my oldest brother and sister, from Mt. Juliet, TN on a Wednesday and on Sunday I began visiting churches. My fourth Sunday in Charlotte I visited Uptown Christ Covenant Church. During that worship service we sang O Come and Mourn and I was hooked. A few months later I joined the Church.
John 10:10 is the life verse of Uptown Church. In it Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” This is the goal of the Church and one of the primary ways I have received this life from the Church is through community, specifically Life Groups (home Bible studies).
Lately I have been reading Wendell Berry’s The Way of Ignorance. Tonight I read an essay titled The Burden of the Gospels and near the end of the essay Berry speaks about this verse. He defines it’s meaning as this:
“When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly, this, I think, is the life He means: a life that is not reducible by division, category, or degree, but is one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material, divided only insofar as it is embodied in distinct creatures. He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified “Christians,” but rather to become conscious, consenting, and responsible participants in the one great life, a fulfillment hardly institutional at all.”
Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance; The Burden of the Gospels, pg. 136
To Berry life does not merely mean how we relate to each other. That is part of it, but not the entirety (and maybe not the majority). Life is engaging with all sentient and non-sentient beings on this Earth. It is in fact engaging in life with the Earth.
Over these last few years this is what I have come to believe about what Christians commonly refer to as the “Creation Mandate.”
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28
Within this mandate humanity is called to multiply and have dominion. What I believe we have completely misinterpreted in this verse is what it means to have dominion. This dominion does not solely mean we rule over creation as dictators. If it did what we are currently doing to the Earth makes sense. Destroying the atmosphere and flushing our pesticides down the Mississippi River and creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is completely acceptable and should be applauded.
Instead of having dominion I believe we are to be stewards. As stewards of the land we are only keeping it for a certain time until the rightful owner returns. Who is the rightful owners? Posterity and posterity alone.
True life recognizes our fallen selfish tendency to look out solely for ourselves. True life sees this in relationships with others and the Earth. “Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law,” Paul the Apostle tells us. Jesus defined our neighbors as everyone. Does this include the Earth? It has too because the alternative is too damning.
