God is a materialist. God loves the material world because He thought it up. He created it. He sustains it. So, as it turns out, materialism is not automatically agnostic or atheistic.
In fact, anti-materialism is the heresy known as Gnosticism, which values elite spiritual knowledge and devalues the physical world. As N.T. Wright points out, the Christian faith is not “a form of Gnosticism, escaping this wicked world of history and earth. It is a form of creational theology in which history and earth, space, time and matter, are redeemed. The Word became flesh, not vice versa.”
So, Christians should be the first to value the world God made. To celebrate it. To care for it. To fill our role of stewarding the gift of creation.
To this end, as I studied for Week 2 of my series on Genesis 1-3, I was struck by the importance of not placing the emphasis on Nature as some abstract, almost-deified “mother” — but to refer to the natural world as Creation. Nature might naturally happen, but Creation is created.
You want a fun challenge? Read the Bible — or any book in the Bible — through the lens of physical matter, mattering. You might get a fresh take on what God is up to.
The prophets repeatedly point to the devastation of creation as a result of sin and sinful systems. But they also share the promise of the renewal of creation as a result of God’s goodness and humanity’s reception of that recreative goodness.
I’m struck by John’s vision of this new creation in Revelation 21.24-26 (NASB):
The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.
What is this “glory and honor” that the nations (the peoples) bring into God’s New Creation? Could it be our participation in the creative works God has gifted us to do, here and now? Could it be that the “glory and the honor of the nations” includes the good gifts God has given us stewardship over?
God is Creator. God made us in his image. Therefore, we participate in creation every time we participate in crafting and sharing the gifts of creation. I think this means that every selfless kindness that is offered to a child or other person in need, is seen by God — and is a part of the New Creation. Every work of beauty that reflects the beauty God embedded in creation also can be — like taking a piece of wood or metal, a meal from the garden or fruit from the vineyard, and making something delightful to share with others. We can create with words, or music, or art, or the simple gift of time.
God created matter for us to work with. We share in God’s gift of creation when we shape and steward that matter as a gift back to God and the world.
In short, value God’s good creation enough to enjoy it, learn from it, and contribute your part to extending its glory and honor. And one day, in the New Creation, it will all come to its perfect and complete fulfillment.
If you’ve read this far, you deserve a treat: Robert Francis’s list of the 100 best bird names; pictures included. With a shoutout to the biblically-themed Apostlebird (#72), my favorite is the Bare-faced Go-away-bird (#19). You gotta love his name, but maybe not his call, which eBird describes as a “maniacal series of cackles and whines.”
Take a sabbath from whatever you’re doing, and spend 10 minutes enjoying these curious winged creations. What’s your favorite?
Photo credit: DickDaniels (http://theworldbirds.org/), CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
