International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Issue 32:4, October 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 3.6 MB PDF)

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Mission and the Groaning of Creation

Christian understanding of humankind’s place in the universe is rooted in the Hebrew Genesis story. Created “in the image of God,” the mother and father of the human race are instructed to “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over . . . every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:27–28). Two chapters later, their ill-used curiosity leads to judgment and a world filled with imperfection and death. Their progeny’s assiduous obedience to the first injunction may be judged by the nearly seven billion humans who now inhabit the planet. As to the exercise of “dominion,” never has the earth been more subdued than in the twenty-first century. Human domination has traumatized the fragile ecosystem, extinguishing species on a scale and at a rate unprecedented.

When Paul observed that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Rom. 8:22), he was not forecasting destruction of the planet by smugly hegemonic “Christian” civilizations that would emerge centuries later, in part because of his success as a missionary. It was the physics and chemistry of post-Enlightenment science that enabled Western societies to exponentially amplify both their domination and its effects, with disastrously irreversible consequences. The science and technology that gave us bright lights, high-speed travel, creature comforts, and an ever-increasing array and volume of possessions turn out to have unwittingly locked us into a Faustian bargain. The gospel of plenty, carried obediently to the uttermost parts of the earth by its emissaries, is at last being appropriated by the vast populations of the non-Western world. Too late, those of us who have been its chief beneficiaries and advocates now realize that this “good news” could doom the planet.

Westerners, including missionaries, have been self-consciously certain of the superiority of their way of life, evident in their material accoutrements and in the powerful armies and economies of their nations. Missionaries—replete with incontrovertible material evidence—innocently thought that adoption of Christianity would have a “civilizing” effect on converted peoples, transforming the inner élan of societies and launching them on a developmental trajectory that would one day enable them to consume like us. Alas, so it has proved to be! And now, caught up in a way of life from which there seems to be no voluntary escape, we find ourselves complicit in human-induced climate change, with its concomitant degradation of habitat and destruction of species. According to current estimates by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, of the 40,177 species assessed, 784 are extinct, while another 16,119 are threatened with extinction (see www.iucnredlist.org/info/categories_criteria). The greatest number of extinctions—256—has occurred on the continent of North America. But species have disappeared in other parts of the world as well—185 in Oceania, 50 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 36 in South and Southeast Asia, 29 in South America, 16 in Europe, 11 in West-Central Asia, and 1 in Antarctica. The scale of our scorched-earth destruction makes Cambyses II or Genghis Khan look like mild-mannered organic gardeners.

Only now are Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox missiologists starting to realize that strategies for saving the world have been framed within a theological cocoon that prevented them from adequately understanding the end result of their civilization’s notions of progress, development, and the social-material destiny of humankind. The planet is simply too small to accommodate large numbers of human beings who think and live as we do.

We are therefore pleased in this issue of the IBMR to lead with two outstanding essays, written by younger thinkers, that reflect on the missiological implications of creation stewardship. In his lead article, Allan Effa provides a helpful survey of evolving Roman Catholic, conciliar, and evangelical thinking and action on environmental concerns. Willis Jenkins follows by providing readers with a much-needed theological and ethical framework for addressing what is perhaps the most pressing missiological agenda of the twenty-first century. And as Christoffer Grundmann’s article reminds us, for two millennia Christians have understood healing of the whole person to be integral to mission. On this point they have consciously reflected the mind of Christ, whose attention to the blind, the crippled, the deaf, and the leprous dominates the Gospel accounts of his short life and ministry in Palestine. His first disciples were explicitly commissioned to heal the sick (Luke 9:1–2; 10:9), and following his ascension, his disciples continued to pay special attention to those incapacitated by illness and injury.

As we grow into our understanding of the missiological implications of a stricken planet and move beyond mere concern with our own small bodies to concern for the larger living planet on which we sojourn and for which we are uniquely responsible, we join Paul “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:20–21).

—Jonathan J. Bonk
bonk@omsc.org

 

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Issue 32:4, October 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 3.6 MB PDF)