Let Creation Rejoice
The Bible is bathed with images of God caring for his creation in all it’s complexity. Yet in the face of climate change and other environmental trends, we continually hear that a so-called perfect storm of factors threatens the future of life on earth. Jonathan Moo and Robert White ask, “Do these dire predictions amount to nothing more than ideological scaremongering…? Or are there good reasons for thinking that we may indeed be facing a crisis unprecedented in its scale and in the severity of its effects?”
The authors encourage us to asses the evidence for ourselves. Their own conclusion is that there is plant of cause for concern. Yet if the Christian gospel fundamentally reorients us in our relationship to God and his world, there ought to be a place for hope. Moo and White reflect on the difference the Bible’s vision of the future of all creation makes.
Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope And Ecological Crisis. By Jonathan A. Moo and Robert S. White. Downers Grove, Illinois.: IVP Academic, 2014. 185 pages. ISBN 978-0-8308-4052-6. $15.83
“This book was provided free from IVP ACADEMIC and Brave Reviews with my promise to post an unbiased review.”
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All of heaven and all creation sing the wonders of His love. – Fee
God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good. There was evening and there was morning: the sixth day. – Genesis 1:31 CEB
When I was a young boy there were many nights I would spend out in my driveway staring up at the stars with my father. He and I would lean against the back of the small white Toyata truck and sit in awe and wonder of the galaxies within sight and yet out of grasp.
It was there staring up at the stars that my dad taught me about constellations and the intricacies of the Creator God would had spoken the world into motion. I came to learn more about this same Creator who cared deeply for me and for all of the earth.
My dad was the kind of guy who would stop his car abruptly to get out and help a slow moving box turtle across the road. He would pick up trash that wasn’t made by him and was always careful not to run over the stray toad with a lawn mower. Once upon hitting a raccoon on the way home from work he remarked, I just couldn’t brake fast enough, as I scrubbed entrails off the front bumper.
Don’t get the wrong idea. My dad was not an environmental activist or a peace loving hippie. He was a strong and caring man who served in the US Army for 30 years. He served in the Vietnam War twice and was a decorated veteran. He loved his country, his family, and his God. I suppose it was simply his way for trying to make the world better. That’s what he was in the business of, trying to make people’s lives better.
In Let Creation Rejoice, there’s much of this same intent. The authors, Moo and White, view the Earth as a place christ-followers especially should be good stewards of. Let Creation Rejoice is as a book on eschatology (a study of the end times) in that it looks at the current state of our planet and predicts some pretty alarming things concerning the sustainability of resources and human population explosions.
In the Genesis creation account God instructs mankind to be fruitful and multiply, to take dominion over the Earth. This dominion is a great responsibility, one in which we still share. There are some serious questions to be raised about not just what we are resourcing from our planet, but also how we are resourcing it.
Let Creation Rejoice examines the ecological crisis from a biblical worldview with the hopes of directing readers to action in how they live their day-to-day lives in true responsibility over our planet.
My only negative critique is that while the subject matter of Let Creation Rejoice is remarkably compelling, the way in which is it presented reads very text-book like. Given the nature of the subject matter this is not surprising, however when reading this book I found myself being lost in the way it was written rather than engaging with the content.
For anyone wanting a deeper perspective from a biblical angle on the ecological crisis, this book is for you.
Get it. Read it. Live it.
Originally written and shared at WhatMicahReads.Tumblr.com, but Micah has generously shared his review to get this book on your radar!
