Environmental Stewardship

The rain started a little after two on a Sunday afternoon in July and did not stop until past eight. By four o’clock the street outside Yahaya’s tailoring shop had become a brown river. By five it was at his doorstep. By six it was inside.

Yahaya had been a tailor on that street for fourteen years. His shop was a single room with two sewing machines, a cutting table, a wall of shelves and a rack of finished clothes waiting to be collected. That week the rack held eleven outfits of aso-ebi for a wedding the following Saturday, lace and brocade that the bride’s family had bought at great expense. He and his apprentice had been piling things onto the cutting table since the water first crept over the step, but there was not enough table. By the time the rain eased, the water in the shop was above his knees, and the bottom shelf, where the bride’s mother’s fabric had been folded, was under it.

The next morning, when the street had drained enough to walk, the men came out to see why. The concrete slabs covering the gutter were lifted one by one. What they found underneath did not surprise anyone, though nobody said so aloud. Pure-water sachets, hundreds of them, packed together like leaves. Plastic bottles. Foam food packs. A child’s sandal. Cement bags. A whole sack of household refuse, still tied at the neck, wedged where the gutter turned the corner.

Yahaya stood there with his trousers rolled up and his ruined stock drying on the wall behind him, and he found himself looking at a small bundle of fabric offcuts caught among the bottles. Lace. Blue lace, the kind he had been sewing the week before.

He knew where it had come from. On rainy evenings, like many people on that street, he swept the day’s scraps and nylon bags out of his shop and into the gutter. Everybody did it. The flood will carry it.

What the flood carries back

Nigerians know about water. In the rainy season, roads in many cities become rivers within an hour. Houses in low-lying areas take water every year. Some of the flooding comes from the sheer force of tropical rain or from rivers bursting their banks. In 2022 the country suffered some of the worst floods in a decade, when more than six hundred people died and well over a million were displaced. But much of the flooding in our towns has a simpler cause. The drains are blocked, and they are blocked by what we have thrown into them.

That is only one part of the picture. In many places refuse is burned in open heaps, and the smoke drifts into homes and classrooms. Gully erosion has swallowed roads and houses in parts of the south-east. Generators fill the evening air with fumes. Plastic waste lines our beaches and lagoons. And in parts of the Niger Delta, decades of oil spills from ageing pipelines, equipment failure, sabotage and illegal refining have damaged creeks, mangroves and farmland on which fishing and farming communities depend. Independent assessments have documented serious contamination in some areas, and clean-up efforts have been under way for years. Whatever the cause in a given case, the people who live there bear the cost in their health, their livelihoods and their water.

What does the Bible say to all this? Some believers feel that environmental concern is a distraction from the gospel, a matter for politicians and campaigners. Others have heard it presented in ways that seemed to put the earth in the place of God. Scripture takes a clearer path than either. It begins by telling us who the earth belongs to.

The earth is the LORD’s

David’s psalm opens with a sentence that settles the question of ownership:

“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof.” Everything on it, everything in it, everything that grows and swims and flies: all of it belongs to God. “The world, and they that dwell therein.” We belong to Him too. We are part of creation ourselves, made by the same hand.

Punchline

The reason David gives is creation itself: “For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.” The One who made it owns it. And because He owns it, He has the right to say how it should be treated.

God made the same point to Israel about the land of Canaan: “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25:23). Israel lived on the land. They farmed it, built on it and passed it to their children. But they held it as tenants. The landlord was God.

That changes the way we think about everything from the plot we build on to the street gutter outside the shop. When I throw my refuse into a drain, I am fouling a part of God’s world that He has entrusted to all of us, and none of it was mine to spoil. Paul quoted this same psalm when he told the Corinthians they could eat with a clear conscience, “For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (1 Corinthians 10:26). The world is God’s good gift, to be received with thanks. It is also His property, to be handled with care.

Made in His image to rule

The first chapter of Genesis describes the crowning act of creation:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion.” The image of God and the call to dominion come in the same breath. In the ancient world, kings would set up images of themselves in distant parts of their territory, statues that represented their authority. God places His image on the earth in living human beings, and He gives them authority to rule on His behalf.

The words are strong. “Subdue it: and have dominion.” The Hebrew word for subdue is used elsewhere of bringing land under control, and the word for dominion is the language of rule. Some have read these words as permission to do whatever we like with the earth. But consider whose image we bear. We are to rule as God rules. And how does God rule His creation? With wisdom, generosity and care. “O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches” (Psalm 104:24). He feeds the birds of the air (Matthew 6:26). He gives every green herb for food to every creature, as the passage itself says. His rule makes things flourish.

So human dominion is a royal stewardship. We rule as representatives of a good King, accountable to Him. A governor who uses his position to strip his province for his own benefit has betrayed the king who appointed him. Human beings who strip the earth for short-term gain, and leave poisoned water and bare hills to their children, have misunderstood what dominion means.

That does not mean development is wrong. Farming, building, mining, manufacturing, technology and trade are all part of what it means to subdue the earth, to bring out its riches for human good. A dam that brings electricity to a region, a road that connects farmers to markets, a factory that employs thousands: these can be faithful acts of dominion. The question is always how they are done, and who pays the cost.

Technology belongs here too. The phone in your pocket, the solar panel on a rooftop, the borehole pump and the weather satellite are all products of human beings using God-given intelligence to work with the materials of His world. Technology can serve stewardship wonderfully. Early warning messages can tell a riverside community that the water is coming. Satellite images can show where a pipeline is leaking or where a forest is being cleared. Solar power can reduce the fumes of a thousand generators. But technology also multiplies our capacity to harm. A chainsaw can clear in a day what an axe would take a month to fell, and every new device we buy and throw away adds to a growing mountain of electronic waste, much of it broken apart by hand in unsafe conditions. The tool is never neutral in the hands of fallen people. It magnifies whatever the heart intends, which is why dominion must be exercised by people who know they answer to the Owner.

And notice the last verse: “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Creation has value because God made it and delights in it. It is His handiwork, worth far more than the raw material we draw from it, and “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1).

To dress it and to keep it

Genesis 2 gives a closer view of the first man’s task:

This single verse is one of the most important statements in the Bible about human work and creation. God placed Adam in the garden with two responsibilities. To dress it translates a Hebrew verb, abad, that means to work or to serve. It is used elsewhere of farming, and also of serving God in worship. To keep it translates shamar, which means to guard, to watch over, to protect. It is the word used in the priestly blessing, “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee” (Numbers 6:24).

So the human calling toward creation has two sides. We work the earth: we cultivate, build, develop and draw out its fruitfulness. And we keep it: we guard it, protect it and hand it on in good condition. Work without keeping becomes exploitation. Keeping without working becomes a museum. God intends both together.

Nugget

God placed humanity in the garden to work it and to guard it. Dominion was never a licence to destroy. It is a trust from the Owner, and we will give account for how we have kept it.

This sense of accountability runs through Scripture. In one of His parables, Jesus describes a master who calls his steward and says, “give an account of thy stewardship” (Luke 16:2). And Paul writes that “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). The question on that day will be how faithfully we handled what was entrusted to us. That includes our money, our time and our gifts. It also includes the patch of God’s earth we live on.

Our refuse, our neighbour’s flood

The prophet Ezekiel delivered a stinging word to the leaders of Israel, whom he pictured as shepherds and strong sheep who abused the weak. Among their sins was this:

“Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures?” The strong sheep were not content to eat and drink their fill. They trampled the remaining grass and muddied the remaining water, so that the weaker sheep coming after them had only spoiled food and fouled water. “And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.”

Ezekiel’s immediate concern was the abuse of power among God’s people. But the image is unforgettable, and it describes exactly how environmental harm works. The person who throws refuse into the gutter upstream is rarely the one whose house floods. The factory that releases waste into a river may be far from the village that drinks from it. The household that burns plastic in the evening sends the smoke into the neighbour’s bedroom. The person who causes the harm and the person who suffers it are often different people, and very often it is the poor, with the least power to move, who drink the fouled water.

This is why care for creation is an expression of love for our neighbour. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39). “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour” (Romans 13:10). When Yahaya swept his offcuts into the drain, he was working ill to his neighbour downstream, and, as it turned out, to himself.

It also connects environmental concern to justice. A fishing family in the Niger Delta whose creek can no longer support fish, a farming community whose land has been degraded, a city street that floods every year because nobody clears the drains: these touch people’s lives, health and livelihoods directly. Believers should care about them for the same reason we care about the widow and the orphan, and should support lawful efforts to clean up, compensate and prevent further harm.

The laws of the camp and the field

The law of Moses contains some surprisingly practical instructions about the environment. Here is one about sanitation in Israel’s military camp:

It is easy to smile at a verse about a paddle and a hole. But notice the reason God gives: “For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp... therefore shall thy camp be holy.” Proper disposal of human waste was connected with the holiness of the community and the presence of God among them. Waste was to be dealt with deliberately, outside the camp, and covered. The camp was not to become a place of filth.

Long before anyone understood how disease spreads, this law protected Israel from many of the illnesses that thrive where waste is left in the open. In our own setting, cholera outbreaks still follow flooding and poor sanitation, and they still take lives. A household or church that takes sanitation seriously is caring for life.

Another law concerns trees in time of war:

Even during a siege, when an army might be tempted to strip the land bare for siege works, Israel was forbidden to cut down fruit trees. “For the tree of the field is man’s life.” The trees would feed people long after the war was over. Short-term need was not allowed to destroy long-term provision.

That principle applies far beyond warfare. Cutting down every tree for firewood or timber without replanting, removing the mangroves that protect a coastline, digging sand from a riverbank until the road collapses, building on the natural drainage channels of a city: all of these sacrifice tomorrow’s life for today’s convenience. “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast” (Proverbs 12:10), and God Himself reminded Jonah that He cared about Nineveh’s people “and also much cattle” (Jonah 4:11). God notices what we do to His creatures and to the land that feeds them.

Stewardship without worship

There is a danger on the other side, and Scripture names it. Paul describes people who “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Creation is not God. It is not divine, and it is not to be worshipped. Some environmental movements, and some traditional religions, treat the earth, rivers, forests or spirits of nature as sacred powers to be appeased. The believer cannot share that view. We care for creation because it belongs to the Creator, not because it is itself a god.

That frees us from fear as well. Some talk about the environment in a tone of despair, as though everything depends on human effort and the end is inevitable. Scripture gives a more hopeful picture. “By him were all things created... and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16-17). Christ holds creation together. Paul writes that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22), but he describes this groaning as the pain of birth, waiting in hope for the day when “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). God has not abandoned His world. He intends to renew it.

That hope does not make our care irrelevant. It makes it meaningful. If God values creation enough to redeem it, we should value it enough to care for it now. And Scripture includes a sober warning: in John’s vision of the final judgement, God will “destroy them which destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). Hosea, describing a nation without truth or mercy, said, “Therefore shall the land mourn” (Hosea 4:3). Moral and environmental decay are often bound together. The same greed that cheats a neighbour will poison a river if it is profitable.

Faithful stewardship in daily life

What does this look like in practice for a Nigerian believer, family and church? Here are some places to begin:

• Bag your refuse and use the licensed waste collection service in your area. Never throw refuse into drains, canals or open spaces, especially when it rains.
• Reduce plastic where you can: carry a reusable bag to the market, refill water bottles, and sort plastics for the collectors and recyclers who now buy them in many cities.
• Plant and protect trees around your home, school and church compound. They give shade, hold soil and reduce flooding.
• Before buying land or building, find out whether the area floods, and respect drainage channels and building setbacks.
• Use water carefully, whether it comes from a borehole, a tanker or a public tap. Fix leaking pipes, and keep wells and boreholes well away from soakaways and septic tanks.
• Keep generators outside and away from windows. Every year people die from generator fumes in closed rooms.
• Pay attention to the seasonal flood and rainfall outlooks issued by the national weather and hydrological agencies, and help vulnerable neighbours prepare.
• Clear the gutters on your street with your neighbours before the rains. Many streets have done this together, and it works.
• Support lawful advocacy and clean-up efforts for communities affected by pollution, and pray for those who govern and those who manage our resources.

Churches can lead here. A church compound that is clean, planted with trees and free of rubbish preaches a quiet sermon. A church that organises its youth to clear a neighbourhood drain, or partners with a local school to teach children not to litter, shows its community that the Lord of the church is also the Lord of the earth.

None of this earns salvation. We are saved by grace through Christ alone. But the grace that saves us also renews the way we live in God’s world. A believer who knows that the earth is the Lord’s will begin to treat it as such.

The bride’s mother was gracious about the fabric. Yahaya replaced what he could with his own money and finished the rest in time, working through two nights. But he could not stop thinking about the scrap of blue lace in the gutter.

The next Saturday, he went from shop to shop and house to house along the street. He told them about the lace, which embarrassed him, and about the sack of refuse, which embarrassed others. He proposed that they clear the drain together on the first Saturday of every month during the rainy season, and that every household and shop subscribe to the licensed refuse collector instead of using the gutter. Some laughed. Some agreed. The imam of the small mosque at the end of the street agreed at once and brought six young men the first morning. Yahaya’s own church sent its youth group.

He put a sack in the corner of his shop for offcuts. Every few weeks a woman from a nearby compound collects them and turns them into cushions and rag mats, which she sells at the market.

The next July the rain came again, hard and long, as it always does. The water rose in the street. It reached the edge of Yahaya’s step and stopped there. Within an hour it was gone, flowing away through a clear gutter.

Punchline

“Everybody used to say the flood would carry it,” Yahaya told me. “The flood carried it. Right back to my shop.” He laughed. “The earth is the Lord’s. He gave us a gutter to keep.”