Devotional:

Psalm 22.28

For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

“What’s the difference between dominion and domination?” I asked the question before the Sunday School class with curiousity about how they might respond. We’ve been working our way through Diana Butler Bass’ book Grounded which address the particularity of God’s creation and humanity’s responsibility to be good stewards of this gift. At first the room was quiet as people put their thoughts together and then they started flooding out:

“Dominion is like a kind a gracious king who cares about the kingdom, whereas domination like a ruthless ruler who does whatever they want.”

“Dominion means responsibility and domination means destruction.”

We listened to one another and then took it a step further to contemplate whether we’ve cared for the earth with dominion or domination. We shared stories of pristine wilderness experiences and incredible natural beauty. However, we also shared anecdotes of ruined soil, toxic water, and tainted air.

In Genesis God’s gives humanity dominion over creation. We were given the responsibility to care for the planet with love and devotion. And our lives are such that today we are intimately connected with the dirt beneath our feet, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, even if we take them all for granted.

But we don’t care for creation simply because God told us to.

On a primal and fundamental level we affirm that dominion first belong to the Lord, and that God rules over all nations. There might be days when this seems strange, and even paradoxical (particularly when we see images of atrocities from all across the world) but this world belongs to God first and only secondarily to us.

Imagine, if you can, that your best friend in the world offered to let you borrow his or her car, or maybe a house to stay in… Would you not take care of it even better than your own? Would the thought of his or her generosity be such that it would propel you to be an incredible steward of the gift rather than taking it for granted?

The earth is a precious, and at times fragile, gift. And, more often than not, we treat it terribly. We rarely think twice before flicking a piece of trash out the window while we’re driving, we take our clean drinking water for granted, and we assume that because a particular item of food is available at the grocery store that we are entitled to it.

But we are not entitled to anything.

This earth is a delicate gift offered to us with an expectation of responsibility. Just as we have been given dominion (not domination) over the earth, we remember that God has dominion over us.