Rivers or Reservoirs

I had lunch with a new friend the other day.  In the course of the meeting he shared with me that he has learned to treat his money like a river, not a reservoir.  That God provides in order for him to give, and that he has to keep 'the flow' going in order to keep it healthy.  I felt like that was a really good picture of the Christian life in all areas.

Whatever God gives us is to be treated like a river.  Prayer, mentorship, joy, food, hospitality, prophecy, righteousness, courage, discipline, and service, as well as money.

So what has God given you?

Are you giving it away?

======================

² “I will make you into a great nation 
   and I will bless you; 
I will make your name great, 
   and you will be a blessing. 
³ I will bless those who bless you, 
   and whoever curses you I will curse; 
and all peoples on earth 
   will be blessed through you.”


Genesis 12:2-3

Dominion?

I had someone throw the "earth is our God" idea my way the other day, admittedly they had been encouraged in this train of thought by the effects of inebriation...

This concept was one that I had encountered in my college days, and it reminded me of a paper I had written exploring the philosophical axioms required for one to take the stands that the “deep ecology” wing of the environmentalist camp posits.

In order for one to believe that we have a duty to earth itself to protect it and to value it, irrespective of our use for it* one has to assume a few basic axiomatic principles.

Those principles are:

A belief that there is a distinction between humanity and the rest of the universe
A belief in the inherent value of the non-human universe

Without these two truths, the belief in humanity’s responsibility to the rest of creation simply makes no sense. Admittedly, not all people who believe that we bear a duty to creation would cite these two claims as a basis for their belief, but they do so implicitly.

The interesting observations come when we begin to look at the cosmology of those who hold this position; a belief that the entire universe is a result of random processes, which demands that:

There is no distinction between humanity and the rest of the universe as both are results of evolutionary forces, and continue to act according to the pressures those forces apply.
There is no value, in anything!

When we look to the cosmology found in the Bible we find that the assertion that God created the universe without humankind and pronounced it “good,” and then we find that the Creator of this valuable universe then created mankind and mandated humanity to care for the earth and to be responsible for it. The Bible teaches that man was created from the earth, and yet filled with the breathe of God, a part of the created order, and yet a representative of God to that created order. (Check out the title link)

The unfortunate thing is that the non-Christian individual who is caring for the earth lacks the philosophical basis to do so, while the Christian individual who possesses this basis, often simply fails to care for the earth.

*The “wise use” camp, which is where most environmental sentiments come from, states that we have a duty to protect the environment for the sake of human enjoyment of it, and betterment by it.