I thought birds were boring and birders a little nerdy. Then I moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
For a Nebraska kid who grew up on sparrows, crows, and the occasional robin, the variety of colors, sizes and shapes of birds (eighty species found only in Ethiopia) were mind-boggling. Mouse birds fought each other for the rotting avocados that fell from our tree; masked weavers built their hanging nests in the branches just above our porch; ibis regularly walked our lawn, pecking for grubs with their long beaks; vultures held court on the rooftops across the way.
My wife kept detailed notes in her bird book, writing the date and place next to every new species she saw. One of our Ethiopian friends began calling it her “Bird Bible.”
Birds have made news lately, specifically that birds are dying in record numbers across North America, a staggering loss of 2.9 billion birds, or a 29 percent decline since 1970! “The mass disappearance of North American birds is a dire warning about the planet’s well-being.”
Putting a face (or song) on these statistics, another study warns that our warming climate is pushing several state birds to move outside their own states to escape the heat, including Minnesota’s state bird the Common Loon, whose haunting calls I’ve relished while canoeing across northern Minnesota lakes. Georgia, New Hampshire, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania might also no longer see their own state birds within their borders.
This great bird die-off is no surprise to God.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care” (Matthew 10:29).
But not only birds are at risk. The October issue of National Geographic focused on the incredible increase in extinction across all species: “Extinction rates today are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of times higher than the background rate. They’re so high that scientists say we’re on the brink of a mass extinction.” While an asteroid impact caused the last mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago, today it is human activity: “the asteroid is us.”
Many might watch BBC’s series Planet Earth and catch occasional glimpses of holiness. Indeed, Bible predicts we will find God in the birds (and newborn babies and everywhere else): “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…,” (Romans 1:20).
Theologian Daniel Migliorie sums it up this way: “God is eternally disposed to create, to give and share life with others. The welcome to others that is rooted in the triune life of God spills over, so to speak, in the act of creation.”
Consider our world: 250,000 kinds of plants and 750,000 varieties of insects (do we really need so many bugs?) Consider our universe: 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy that is only one of 100 billion galaxies.
This “overflow” of creativity tells us something about the nature of God, even though we might disagree on the process (created directly or superintended through natural processes discovered by science).
St. Augustine makes this point regarding Jesus’ famous miracle turning the water into wine:
“For He who made wine on that day at the marriage feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the self-same does this every year in vines. But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year: it has lost its marvelousness by its constant recurrence.”
Have we also lost the marvelousness of the world around us? The lavish diversity and complexity of the natural world is a by-product of God’s own creative nature.
Does God care that we humans are trashing his creation?
Maybe not. The verse quoted above goes on to say: “So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows,” (Matthew 10:31).
Some Christians use this and other verses to argue that, while perhaps regrettable, damage to the natural world is inconsequential. What are a few million birds, more or less? Nature is simply a stage for human beings, the true stars of the show and the only creatures important to God.
Thus, some Christians deny our responsibility to God as “caretakers” of creation (the true meaning of “have dominion over”). In particular, some conservatives label environmentalism in any form as liberal, and thus, suspect. In the same way, some evangelicals endorse politically-generated talking points that label climate change a hoax.
However, major evangelical alliances around the world take caring for creation seriously as a mandate from God.
In the 1970s, Billy Graham instigated a global congress to re-frame Christian mission in a world of political, economic, intellectual, and religious upheaval. In July 1974, over 2,400 participants from 150 nations gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the first International Congress on World Evangelization. TIME magazine called it ‘possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held’.
The third such international congress was held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. The Lausanne Cape Town Commitment (2010) concludes:
“If Jesus is Lord of all the earth, we cannot separate our relationship to Christ from how we act in relation to the earth. For to proclaim the gospel that says ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to proclaim the gospel that includes the earth, since Christ’s Lordship is over all creation. Creation care is thus a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ.
The gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation. All three are broken and suffering because of sin; all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God; all three must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’s people.
This gathering of evangelical leaders from every corner of the globe went on to recommend:
We encourage Christians worldwide to:
A) Adopt lifestyles that renounce habits of consumption that are destructive or polluting;
B) Exert legitimate means to persuade governments to put moral imperatives above political expediency on issues of environmental destruction and potential climate change;
C) Recognize and encourage the missional calling both of (i) Christians who engage in the proper use of the earth’s resources for human need and welfare through agriculture, industry and medicine, and (ii) Christians who engage in the protection and restoration of the earth’s habitats and species through conservation and advocacy. Both share the same goal for both serve the same Creator, Provider and Redeemer.
In 2015, the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the largest association of evangelicals in the US, endorsed the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment quoted above. They offered this rationale:
In 1970 the NAE declared that “those who thoughtlessly destroy a God-ordained balance of nature are guilty of sin against God’s creation.” In 2004 we affirmed that “government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation. This involves the urgent need to relieve human suffering caused by bad environmental practice.”
NAE President Leith Anderson wrote about who will suffer the consequences of ignoring the mushrooming threats to creation:
“We need to move past debating and focus on the poorest of the poor who are neither scientists nor politicians but are the most affected by how we care for God’s creation.”
The tenor of these brief quotations is clear. Evangelicals who deeply believe in a Creator also deeply care about what is happening to His creation.
God is for the birds. We should be also.
