Man has stewardship over the earth.

As we established last time, this is a momentous claim.

If you’re neglecting a proper degree of dominion over the earth, then you are messing up one of the first commands God ever gave our species.

However, this brings us now to a second basic observation: humans can and do mess it up. As sinful beings, we are prone to disobeying God’s commands to satisfy our personal desires—and the environment is no exception.

Accordingly, I believe that a factory dumping toxic chemicals into a nearby stream is a violation of God’s command to be good stewards of what we have been given (not to mention a violation of God’s command to love others as yourself), and thus is sinful.

Reckless environment-trashing is sin.

Establishing these two points brings us a bit closer to answering the climate change question. If we could establish that human behavior is causing carbon dioxide levels that are trashing the environment—something akin to toxic waste in a nearby stream—I think we could proclaim such activity to be sinful.

And I think that, in that case, Christians should strive wholeheartedly to reverse the trend, even if it means sacrificing the conveniences of life.

Being good stewards is that important.

But that dumps the next question straight into our lap.

Are humans messing it up so significantly that we need to be worried? I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an expert on this, but I also think I’ve seen enough to sufficiently reassure me. Because the predominant press is permeated with purported proof that people are producing the problem, we often don’t see the competing scientific research that flatly contradicts it.

As an example, take a look at this 40-minute video from The Heartland Institute which systematically walks through at least a dozen scientific observations—from historical temperature data to hurricane rates to crop production—all showing us that climate change is not happening the way it’s described, and what is happening is likely helping us rather than hurting us.

While Christians have an obligation to care for the environment, they also have an obligation to do so according to truth. Ignoring this important qualification can lead us headlong into the ditch on the other side of the road.

We are called to not trash the environment, but also to not worship it! Scripture clearly warns us against this second pitfall as well—we are strictly forbidden from worshiping created things instead of the Creator (Romans 1:25).

We’re here on this earth to use it, and if we avoid doing that because we’re held captive by lies, then we’re not being good stewards either.

That’s not the only danger in being misled about the climate. I gleaned another insight into the dangers of the climate narrative when watching the Agenda documentaries a few years ago.

Consider this: the environment is one of the largest, most all-encompassing subjects one can think of. Because it’s “the sum total of all natural things around you,” almost anything you do could be said to affect the environment in at least some tiny way. So, if we buy into misleading statements about how we’re on the broad and wide path to ecological destruction, and therefore advocate for government intervention to keep us all safe, we have to ask ourselves about the nature of this proposed government power.

This power would need to be as big as the environment itself—and the environment is pretty darn big. If almost anything could affect the environment, the government would need to have control over almost everything.

Simply put, control over “human action that affects the environment” is almost as close to “total control over human action” as you can get. 

We’ve begun to see this already. In the name of “the environment”—translation: the sum total of all natural things around you—the government justifies intrusion into transportation, manufacturing, and the pocketbooks of every ordinary citizen.

The all-encompassing nature of the environment makes it a wonderful excuse for those who are already predisposed to expand government reach over our lives. Of course, such power-grabbers just need to convince the people that there’s a crisis that demands such overreach.

As far as the climate goes, they seem to be doing a pretty successful job at persuading people of their own selected science and discounting legitimate scientific critiques.

Good stewards don’t let themselves be duped into patterns of bad stewardship. Being innocent as doves does not preclude being shrewd as serpents.

So it’s up to the clear-headed among us to discern what’s a real concern and what’s actually tyranny in environmental clothing.