ReclaimJesus.net

September. Labor Day. This means only one thing.

Actually, it means lots of things. It means putting away the summer wardrobe; no more whites until next June; tuning up your arm for throwing the old football, raking the old leaves, shoveling the old snow. Labor Day. Ugh!

Labor Day means one other thing, too. It means answering that age-old question you’ve been called upon to answer since kindergarten: What did you do over your summer vacation?

I didn’t do much. Unless you count re-discovering creation.

The point of our "Be Fruitful, Stop Multiplying" series is two-fold. Last time we dealt with Point No. 1. Today, we address Point No. 2.

Unfortunately, bad theology begets bad ecology. Fortunately, the converse is also true. Not-bad (or good) theology begets non-bad (or good) ecology. And for many, if not most, citizens of the world, underlying their views on how the ecological crisis should be dealt with are their theological views.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded, gets a tip of the hat for this series on “Be Fruitful, Stop Multiplying.” After re-reading our first two blogs in this series, you will come to the point of all this.

We left off last time asking ourselves this question: Is the direction to multiply an invitation to do so responsibly, or is it an obligation to do so regardless of the consequences? Perhaps it would help to get to the answer to this question by looking at the historical times in which these particular words, “Be fruitful and multiply,” were crafted. To find out what its intended purpose was at the time.

In Gen 1: 27 God gives humankind dominion and control over every living being on the earth; one verse later, in Gen 1: 28 he directs humankind to be fruitful and multiply. Here is a thought provoking question for you: What if the two directives are contradictory? What if they get in the way of one another? What if you couldn’t fulfill the responsibilities inherent in the first directive without violating those of the second? And, of course, vice-versa.

Today we complete our conversation about “Imago Dei” by asking ourselves this final question: What if we didn’t believe in God at all and did nice simply because that’s what we do?