A question to any religious Jews, Christians or Muslims on Apolyton

[Vesayen]

I just saw war of the worlds and I was thinking about this as I drove back.....

In Genesis(1:28) G-D sets up man as the "steward" of the earth. Do you feel bound in your normal life in any way, to NOT trash, or even better, SAVE the enviroment because of this.

Do you attempt to reconcile your religion with the reality of our consumer culture, or just ignore that aspect of it?

[BeBMan]

Bump

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The first two definitions of steward on dictionary.com are

1. One who manages another's property, finances, or other affairs.
2. One who is in charge of the household affairs of a large estate, club, hotel, or resort.

So "steward" could be used to mean "be in charge of" rather than "take care of." And this seems to be what Genesis 1:28 says. Here is the passage in a variety of translations. Probably the translation that gets closest to urging us to "take care"of the earth is the (notoriously loose) King James:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Still, the tension in that passage between "replenish it" and "subdue it"would seem to allow all manner of behavior, from saving the whales to strip-mining.

The New Living Translation is more typical, and less enviromentalist-friendly:

God blessed them and told them, "Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals."

I think if you're looking for Biblical condemnations of consumerism, you'd be better off in the New Testament.

[laurentius]

Everyone, regardless to what they believe for should have basic respect for this planet and everything on it. For me its not a religious thing but something that is just imperative and natural thing to do. If we are given the power to comprehend more complex things then other animals then sure its our duty and responsibility to take only what we need from the nature. So to answer your question, yes I feel very much bound to save nature and respect every living thing there.

[Edan]

IIRC, there are some pro-enviornment traditions in Judaism. For example, one tradition is that you would leave land unfarmed every seventh year, which would help prevent over farming the land.

[Elok]

Of course we're bound to take care of the earth. While the earth is a gift from God, freely given, and it will indeed be wiped out someday, the same can be said of human flesh--and we do believe in respecting our own bodies. All that we have been given is to be respected; polluting the earth on the grounds that "it's gone come judgment day and it's ours to abuse," as some of the nuttier fundamentalists are rumored to believe, is akin to saying "well, God 'gave' us His son, and Christ is mortal in his human form anyway, so we're within our rights to torture and kill him." You might as well wipe your butt with the tablecloth your dead grandmother left you. There's also the question of cruelty to animals, and of forcing others to live in the gunk and bad air you leave behind. And of course it's just plain stupid to waste the only Earth we've got, for practical reasons if nothing else.

[Straybow]

Err, considering that basic agricultural practices requires land to be left fallow (or, in modern times, grow a crop that replenishes depleted nitrogen and minerals) every third year anyway the sabbath year wasn't a ecological thing.