Maintaining Dominion as Excellent Stewards of the Earth

We’re on the brink of June and summertime is already in full swing here in Louisiana! Cicadas are buzzing, fireflies glowing, and to hail the bloom of the season, we’ve been spending more time in the yard, sprucing it up and tossing any clutter. Very early in my educational career, taking good care of the environment was instilled and drilled into us as students. Every year in elementary school, we planted beans in Styrofoam cups, read books like The Giving Tree, and talked about the importance and impact of conservative consumption of the earth’s resources. By the end of the day, all of us were giddy over recycling and promised the teacher to shut off the water when we brushed our teeth that night. As several years passed, my fellow students and I expected the increasingly hackneyed “bean plant project,” but what stuck with me was the certain gravity of taking good care of the earth. “Going green” is a common trend nowadays and though many participate in the effort for the sake of the earth itself (or maybe lower electric bills), ultimately it fulfills a divine order, decreed In the Beginning.

Immediately after he manifested the earth in its entirety – sea, sky, land, plants, and animals – God ordained, “’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over…all the earth’” (Genesis 1:26) The crux in that phrase is the word dominion, which comes from the Latin term Dominus, directly meaning “lord.”  From the very beginning, God has charged us with the responsibility to practice a sort of lordship; to be excellent stewards of the good gifts he originally presented to Adam. Stewardship, by its definition, involves managing another’s property or business. For example, a king would require a steward to keep things straight and in order if he were away from the kingdom. Consider then, the magnitude and significance that mankind is called to be stewards for the property and business of the King of Kings. This task is no doubt very daunting, but St. Josemaria Escriva wrote that such work “is a participation in the creative work of God,” and through it we further reflect his image and likeness.

While the earth is certainly ours to accept and “lord over,” it’s still God’s gift to continue giving. We can’t accept the gift, however, without the grave responsibility inseparably attached to it. As stewards, we know that we don’t have the total authority over the world that God has; but, when we take care of the earth, we allow God to work through us and he can keep offering it to mankind. In other words, the garden will keep growing as long as we’re tilling it.  Our task from God should be done gratefully and eagerly – it’s natural, isn’t it, to happily care for such a glorious gift?  Since God gave us the earth and asks that we exercise dominion over it, we should always strive for moderation when using its resources. Ultimately, we’re responsible for seeing that they are never exploited, so to speak, through excessive waste. We will have optimal use of them if we consume with caution, and ensure that future generations reap the benefits, too. Considering our dominion apart from excellent stewardship of God’s gift, there’s still the “green movement” and even legislation urging us to reduce and reuse. There are human laws to prevent us from abusing the earth; but the compulsion to tend to it properly is, at its foundation, hardly political. While these laws might be needed to prevent littering or keep the air clean, we need only to recognize our role as stewards to compel us to keep the earth beautiful.