LDS Earth Stewardship

Maybe my inclination to creation care was awakened by growing up in a little logging-fishing town on the southern Oregon coast in a single wide trailer in a trailer park. Maybe having less made me more prone to consider scant resources, as did goodly parents who lived through the Great Depression and WWII. Thrift, making do, and being grateful for creation were knitted into their very beings. Their conversion to a church that espoused similar values, earned from the hardship of poverty and hard work, surely helped reinforce such values.  

Maybe it was the couple of years I lived on an LDS church-owned cattle ranch in Henefer, UT as a 8-10- year-old, working with nature—land and animals, irrigation water and shovel, time and thought.  

And then there were and are the teachings of our church that helped give me reason for the hope and affection I have for this evolutionary marvel by God & Co. 

We have good cause in our theology to care for creation. A theology that subscribes to all truth regardless of source. We don’t need to slap a label on it and call it ours. We can just be happy it is from God and that  all are alike unto our Heavenly Parents. 

Reading the autobiography of  Mahatma Gandhi in my twenties gave me even more reasons to care for creation and recognize that other species are more alike unto us and God than we want to see or admit. This propelled me into  eating meat sparingly and eventually I became a vegetarian. It also caused me hear the creation story in the temple with new insight: 

On the second day of creation, Elohim commands Jehovah and Michael to “form mountains and hills,  great rivers and small streams to beautify and give variety to the face of the earth.” A profoundly simple  purpose—beauty and variety. Not merely for our survival or wealth building.  

On the fifth day, after every living, creeping, and growing thing is made—everything but us—Elohim asks Jehovah and Michael to command each cadre of remarkable creatures to “multiply in their respective elements, each after its kind, that every form of life may fill the measure of its creation, and have joy therein.” 

That every form of life might have joy. Not just me and my species. Gandhi’s religious tradition, of living  with great respect and care for all lives, made me reflect with more humility and concern for how other  lives are treated by me and my kind. I turned to vegetarianism in part because our industrial food complex treats our fellow creatures as mere commodities, with little or no concern for their pain and discomfort, let alone joy.  

Since then, I have learned about the additional benefits to the environment, water consumption, and our health that comes from eating meat sparingly.  Because the true cost of most of our food is subsidized by the government to large corporations, eating organic, whole and less processed local foods is more expensive. In fact, in many cases it does feel like creation care costs more. My crushed walnut shell cat litter is significantly more expensive than the mined clay-based litter. My non-plastic earth-friendly deodorant is more expensive. Likely, the washing detergent and dryer sheets cost more per load. I could go on.  

Yet the cost of not caring for our earth—or our own health—is like racking up our credit card. We are  enjoying what we want for the convenience of the moment, but are paying a high interest rate on top of  having the balance eventually and painfully come due. We are seeing that with climate change. It’s not a healthy or sustainable way to live. And it is often harming the poorest across the globe.