lifeasmission

Book Review – Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People

February 6, 2010

I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People by Scott C. Sabin from Judson Press.

Sabin is the Executive Director of Plant with Purpose, a Christian relief and development agency.

Christians have a responsibility to love and care for our environment as part of God’s creation and Sabin gets that for sure, but that’s not the genius of the book.  The real beauty of this book comes in the author’s ability to explain to readers, with remarkable insight and simplicity, the inherent connection between caring for the environment and caring for the poor and oppressed. He does so by providing a relational framework for understanding the issues throughout the book.  Through first-hand stories and lessons learned from years of experience, Sabin unmasks the naivete and ignorance of the brand of evangelicals for whom creation care is auxiliary to (their version of) the gospel.  He suggests – at times more implicitly than explicitly, that all the challenges we face, as well as the solutions to those problems, are relational in nature

Throughout the book, the author tackles issues such as deforestation, sustainable agriculture, sanitation, grassroots enterprise, and climate change.  In each case, his aim is to point out how our engagement with these issues has everything to do with out concern for those who are most globally at-risk.

For Sabin,

…without God, all the development and environmental restoration in the world will not bring transformation.

At the same time, he is able to articulate that transformation is not something other than God-infused labors of development and environmental restoration.

As someone who believes that one of the hallmarks of the missional church is listening to voices from the margins, I was struck by this comment from the author.

The idea that stewardship and conservation are part of a liberal agenda seems ludicrous in much of the developing world.  I remember the shock on the face of our Dominican director when I tried to explain the suspicion with which many U.S. churches regarded the environmental aspects of our work.  It was a horrifying thought to him that American Christians would be less than enthusiastic about caring for the earth.  Many of our brothers and sisters in the developing world are way ahead of us in their understanding of stewardship, and there is much that we can learn from them.

For anyone wishing they could find a book that offers a global view of some of the most pressing environmental challenges without getting lost and confused in technical jargon, this book is an excellent resource. The book even features a discussion guide at the end for each chapter making it an excellent choice for groups interested in studying and talking about these issues together.  Through raising our awareness and offering practical suggestions, Sabin offers readers a hope for the future that is rooted not in our ability to affect change, but in God’s invitation to join him in his mission of the reconciliation of all things.

Posted in: books, environment, missional, stewardship