Dominion Means Stewardship and Caretaking

Kay Drinkwitz shares her thoughts on last Sunday’s Brewed Theology conversation on Christians, Creation-Care, and Climate Change.

In worship we talked and sang about praising all that is of God, encompassing all of God’s diverse and splendid creation from the very breath in our lungs, with our words and songs, our time, our love towards others, and our acts of kindness, faith, and service.

Genesis 1:28 tells us, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

In the group discussion, Deacon Steve Arnold shared that the Hebrew translation for “dominion” is not about ownership and control, but stewardship and caretaking.

We talked about ways we can be better stewards of God’s creation: being mindful and disciplined in reducing the amount of plastics we buy and looking for other alternative ways to reduce, recycle, and reuse. Another point brought up was to let nature be nature and not over-tending the land which can actually be damaging for pollinators and other creatures that rely on nature for their habitats.

At Faith, we have “Creation Care”, a committee of concerned congregants who address these very important issues and ways we can be good stewards of our Earth, from the prayer garden to possible solar panels, to giving out trees to plant, to looking at ways of changing the disposable cups we use for communion to a more compostable option.

Being stewards of all of the Earth and all of each other is the foundation of our faith and it’s something we all need to be proactive and intentional about. We are responsible for our words and our actions and they truly do matter.

If you have any cool ideas or suggestions for other ways we can help reduce our impact on the Earth at Faith, please reach out to the “Creation Care” committee and see their updates in the Tuesday email. All ideas and all people are welcome.