Biblical Stewardship: What It Is and How We Can Go Further

How we understand our relationship to others matters.

For instance, if we consider ourselves to be the most important person in our family, workplace, or community, such a notion will no doubt influence the way we relate to those around us.

By contrast, if we feel fortunate to interact and learn from the amazing people in our lives, our relationships will likely be marked by gratitude and generosity.

The way we understand ourselves in relation to other people impacts our daily behaviors and attitudes. This comes as no surprise.

But what is often less obvious—and what this article will discuss—is that how we see ourselves in relation to the non-human elements of our world also deeply influences the way we live each day.

What is Biblical Stewardship?

For the past 50 years or so, stewardship has been the prominent creation care paradigm for environmentally-minded Christians.

Put simply, Christian environmental stewardship encourages care for the earth on behalf of the Creator. It emerged in the mid-1900s in contrast to interpretations of “dominion” (Genesis 1:26-28) that emphasized possession and control.

Too often, the concept of “dominion” has been understood by humans as a right to dominate the rest of creation. These interpretations have historically been intertwined with sexist and racist notions of male and white supremacy. During colonization, a dominion-infused theology often justified treating newly encountered lands (and their inhabitants) as resources to be controlled for personal and religious purposes.

Stewardship countered this self-serving approach. It instructed Christians instead to care for creation because of creation’s inherent goodness.

Limitations of Christian Environmental Stewardship

Stewardship represented an important shift in Christian thinking about the natural world. However, even helpful models have their limitations.

Over the years, the lack of concern Christians have shown for environmental causes has brought stewardship under close scrutiny.

Here are three issues often raised:

Stewardship Can Imply an Absentee God

While Scripture certainly calls humans to care for creation, it does not use the language of “stewardship” to describe our relationship with the rest of God’s world.

The biblical image of a steward is one who cares for the belongings of someone else while the owner is away (Matthew 21).

Yet the idea of God being “away” from creation is difficult to reconcile both with Scripture and our lived experience. Many Christians find themselves drawn close to God when they spend time in creation. Creation has long been considered a form of God’s general revelation: one means, along with Scripture, by which we come to know God.

Some theologians have suggested that imagining God as an absentee landlord has actually made it easier for humans to desecrate the earth.

Stewardship Can Make Creation Care Feel Like an Obligation to Care for Property

A second concern is that stewardship language often frames creation primarily as property that belongs to God.

The idea that God is the “owner” of creation, or that creation “belongs” to God, fails to recognize God’s deep love for the world and God’s immanence in it (John 3:16).

Understanding God’s relationship to the rest of creation as proprietary leads us to see our relationship with it in a similar light.

Often, stewardship is described as our responsibility, or even our job. These are not bad things. But on its own, this approach does little to cultivate love, reverence, and affection for the world in which we live.

Stewardship Can Situate Us Outside of Creation

Christian environmental stewardship can also advance the notion that humans are separate from the rest of creation.

By definition, stewardship is something done to something else. But we ourselves are creation. We are embedded within and dependent upon this amazing world God has made.

In fact, there are scores of microbial members of creation who live on and within us, helping us to stay healthy and happy. We are deeply and profoundly immersed within creation, not somehow situated outside it.

Recognizing how deeply interconnected life is can encourage us to live more carefully, aware that creation’s well-being is necessarily intertwined with our own.

How Can We Move Beyond Stewardship?

You may be wondering: If not stewardship, then what? In other words, how should we understand the presence of our human species in this world?

Several possibilities have been advanced and can be explored in books like Beyond Stewardship.

But perhaps the goal should not be to replace stewardship with a single new framework. Instead, let’s consider some general principles that will move humanity into more thoughtful, careful, and joyful living.

Think Relationally About the Rest of Creation

One rich source of insight comes from Indigenous traditions.

Many Indigenous North American groups focused on cultivating healthy relationships with the land and all members of creation (see Braiding Sweetgrass).

At first, talking about our relationship with the squirrels in our backyard or the worms in the soil may seem like a stretch. But consider: We readily talk about relationships between nations, corporations, churches, and ourselves and technology. Why not with the rest of creation?

Extending this relational thinking to non-humans can lead us to ask, what is the quality of those relationships? Are they healthy? Balanced? Abusive? Do I take more from creation than I give?

In human relationships, abuse is deeply damaging. On the other hand, mutual reciprocity creates a synergy in which both participants flourish through their connection with one another.

By bringing this approach to our relationships with non-human creation, we could choose to cultivate healthy relationships in all areas of our lives.

Begin With Honesty and Lament

Another promising insight comes from an emerging field called reconciliation ecology, which focuses on restoring healthier relationships between human societies and ecosystems.

An important first step in reconciliation ecology is to truthfully acknowledge the core of the problem and lament our complicity.

We need to confess that human activities have detrimentally altered God’s creation. Our actions have caused the loss of thousands of species. We have created conditions that are warming the earth and changing long-established patterns of rainfall and nutrient cycling.

These outcomes deserve lament and regret. But lament is not despair. From this deep sense of sadness a new conviction can emerge, one affirming that we can do better and we don’t want to go back to that kind of abusive living again.

Reconciliation ecology therefore offers a hopeful way forward.

Act in Kinship With the Rest of Creation

A friend of mine who teaches religion tells a story of striking up a conversation with an elderly Israeli rabbi on a visit to the Holy Land.

In the course of their dialogue, my friend asked this Old Testament scholar how he would translate the Hebrew word “Shalom” into English.

The old man hesitated as he thought. He replied, “I’m not sure it is actually a word in English, but I think a good translation of Shalom would be ‘fittingness.’ Shalom is what happens when everything fits together the way God intended.”

I’ve returned to this little story many times over the years. It reminds me of Indigenous teachings that encourage people to live in ways that help the land and its inhabitants thrive along with us.

Some authors have taken this concept and suggested the term “kinship.” This means understanding that we are part of a large family of creatures, all of whom are loved by their Creator and through their daily activities convey God’s goodness, while at the same time returning praise (Psalms 149, 150).

Furthermore, only our species has been created in God’s image. This means we have been given the capacity to set aside our own interests for the sake of others—other people and other creatures with whom we share this beautiful home.