“The Land Is Mine”

by John Comer

Several years ago I found the hand-written deed for land bought in Arkansas by one branch of our family after they migrated from Georgia shortly following the Civil War. Clear title was somewhat more casual back in those days, so there are several paragraphs testifying that it was common knowledge in the community that Dr. McRae was legal owner of the said farm and had the right to sell it to great-great Uncle William. Once this was recorded in the court house, nobody questioned who the new owner was.

But who actually was the real landowner? God told Moses, “. . . the land is mine, and you are but aliens and my tenants.” There seems to be a principle involved here that land is simply entrusted to us by God, and we should never lay too strong a claim to it. We will hope that Uncle William, good Irish Presbyterian that he was, agreed.

Ecology is what we’re leading up to here. We have an obligation to take care of the land for the ultimate owner. Bible believers should be the most ecology-minded people of all. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always worked out that way. We sometimes seem to have misunderstood our role.

On the sixth day of creation, humans were told to “subdue” the earth, and it may be that we have taken this to mean we can abuse and destroy it at will. This would be wrong. A Jewish Torah translation uses the term “master it.” Perhaps this suggests a bit more finesse in our subduing of the planet. In some areas we are making progress at taking a gentler approach in our use of the land. For example, when we strip mine minerals from within the earth, we now often restore the land by contouring its surface and replanting it with native vegetation. (Or at least make a tourist attraction of it, as has been done with the massive Lavender Pit Mine in Bisbee, Arizona.)

We Christians hold the correct view that the Lord will return, and the earth as we know it will be no more. But we may have misconstrued this to suggest that because it is temporary, there is no need to take good care of it. We cannot assume that the Lord will return so quickly as to make our preservation of the planet unimportant. Whether his return is sooner or later, in the meantime it will be nice to have a green earth, blue skies, and clean water.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” We’re just taking care of it for him.