Dominion or Worship?

We began the American Government class today for some high school home schoolers at our church. My Beloved and I are co-teaching, and I think I'm going to enjoy the term! I'm doing the planning and assignments, and he's doing the lecture part. We're meeting for a 2-hour class once a week, and the students have out-of-class work to do independently the remainder of the days. This is a great way to get ready for college course work and independent study. I've taught this course a couple of other times, but with My Beloved now retired, this is the first time we'll have the opportunity to teach it together. He has a much broader grasp of government than I do (I don't really even like to watch the news), and besides that, I just like to be in his class! We have a little website for the class, if you'd like to peek in.

One of the topics of discussion today was man's creation/dominion mandate, that God intends for man to subdue and rule over the earth. We showed a brief 10-minute excerpt from Into the Amazon: One Lost World, 30 Men, Seven Mysteries, a collection of 4 DVDs published by Vision Forum.  Doug Phillips builds the case of the dominion mandate, that the Amazon awaits man's dominion over it, to harness it for the good of man.

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. ~ Genesis 1:28

This is the antithesis of today's environmental determinism that replaces the worship of the creator with the worship of the creation. I've heard it couched in terms like "nature reclaiming the earth." This belief holds that man is the intruder into nature. But that's not biblical thinking. Nature as we know it is part of the Fall as described in Genesis 3.

... cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you (v. 17-18).

The thorns and thistles and weeds that proliferate and would invade every inch of ground without man's intervention are indicative of the defective state of nature after the Fall. Can you imagine what nature would have been like before the Fall?! Still, so much of it is absolutely beautiful--the breathtaking scenes of Into the Amazon are just a glimpse of the grandeur of nature as God originally intended it to be. (BTW, the scenery alone is worth watching the DVDs!) We can hardly imagine what nature will be like on the new earth!

But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. ~ 2 Peter 2:13

The Amazon itself is a controversial place. Those who worship the creation subjugate themselves to the Amazon. Those who worship the Creator seek to fulfill God's mandate to subdue the Amazon.

Antithesis of belief. Antithesis of sovereignty. Antithesis of worship.