A great principle underlies human affairs, in the view of the Psalmist: “The earth is the Lord’s and its fullness.” 

It is an idea fully harmonious with that expressed as a narrative by Genesis: God creates the world, forming it from chaos, and individuating it into an ordered panoply of beings, which God then regards and judges to be good, again and again, and at the end, after the creation of humankind, very good. The One who creates the world has the title to it, surely, thinks the Psalmist.

This title is the precondition to what follows: God’s allotting the earth to its creatures, and ultimately, to Adam, who is uniquely enabled to govern the world. 

That power devolved upon us comes with two instructions, says Genesis: to work it and to guard it. They are the two poles of a single unified idea: God desires us to use the powers granted us to develop the world’s goodness creatively but on the condition that the world of His creation should be guarded and preserved. That means, the integrity of the divine gift of the world must be respected, but it is a gift meant to be used and that use is meant to be a blessing.

From the two-part instruction, one easily sees so much of what motivates people in our economic and political life throughout history. There are loud proponents of the instruction to guard the creation. They caution us, lest we destroy this amazing world we have been gifted. We dare not diminish it, we dare not think that it will always recover without injury from human heedlessness. We dare not hand over to our children and grandchildren a gutted world, reduced in its ability to support human life and all the lives of the other creatures whose welfare is significantly tied to our own.

There are, on the other hand, those who see and embrace solely the instruction to work the world and develop its potentials. They see how coordinated human effort is capable of abetting hunger, of lengthening lives, of freeing lives from disease and of poverty. They chafe at those who treat the world as hands-off museum, and who do not see that our power to be creative is as much a divine gift as the world outside and is itself a part of nature.

If one tosses away the biblical narrative that has been the supporting arch of our civilization for centuries, one can see how these two instructions and the two world-views that flow from them can easily be taken as contradictory positions. Proponents of each tout the good that their view promotes and sees the other view as its deadly enemy. Thus, on one side have arisen those who believe that we preserve and protect creation only by rejecting human creativity, seeing any change we bring about as inevitably cancerous. We would best not create at all — even following that logic to the point of choosing not to procreate, and now, in a recrudescence of paganism, assuring that an ever-larger contingent of our youth will never be able to procreate, by offering their bodies on the altar of these beliefs. For they see all this as deeply moral, an affirmation of something primordially important — protecting what has been given us.

On the other side, there are those who believe that the divine empowerment of humankind is without conditions or limits of any sort. Unrestricted exploitation of nature and of our fellow human beings is what the smartest do; everyone else can be derided as deserving their lot for not having beaten the more daring to the draw. As for nature: carpe diem! Grab what you can and enjoy. Leave tomorrow for the poor suckers who come afterwards; if it pleases us, we should have enough wealth to ensure our kids won’t suffer too much.

Both these positions are extremes, granted. But what halts the logic at the core of each position from going to the extreme? Seen alone, guarding nature seems to admit of enviro-extremism. Similarly, if we take only the imperative to develop the world as relevant, who is to say that any care needs to be taken at all to forestall the many other effects that development inevitably has?

What saves these two imperatives from establishing an endless war between their proponents and the mutual canceling thereby of whatever good each contains? It is the core biblical teaching that they both stem from a Unified Source; both are really only the head and tail of a single coin. Nature must be preserved so that it can be developed with profit forever; nature is only preserved in us when we actualize fully the creativity nature’s God gave us, just as the natural world strives to do in its way. 

Seen as two poles, as two struts set against each other, whose opposition brings about stability and strength, we have something upon which a mighty, lasting structure can be built. But if the two struts do not meet in a triangle, limiting each other but supporting each other, then they both follow their tendency to the extreme and fall to the ground.

Ours is a time sorely in need of reacquaintance with this fundamental and unifying biblical conception. We do not have a freehold on the world or any of its properties. We have instead a divine user’s license. We are not bidden to reject our creative nature, but to use it under the terms that we have become aware of, in large part through the Bible’s contribution. We are social creatures who do best in freedom, for freedom is the state of our Creator in whose image we are made. And the Creator, entirely self-sufficient, chooses in that freedom to create others, to make love possible, and the families and communities that follow.

And it is in the Creator’s image alone that that freedom will be sustainable — reflecting a devoted and loving benevolence, as selfless as the Creator’s willingness to risk rejection and rebellion by creating us. 

As we face the chaos created in large by the neglect of this biblical conception, we must resolve that our choices in the days ahead are again informed by it. Let us not slip unaware into the whirlpool of mutual cancellation that already tugs at our feet. Conserving the best of what humanity has realized to this point is our job. There is nothing better than offering a vision into which all fit and in which our efforts complement and complete those of our fellows. That has been the promise of American freedom and explains our willingness to protect it from all foes. The divine harmony is meant to encompass us all in our life together as a nation. 

Again and again, vision must be renewed. How clearly we can see today that the future of all depends on it.