What is My Offering?

Theology classes are great places to hear unorthodox opinions. When you begin to get into the details of a classroom of students’ worldviews, a lot of different beliefs that people have had for years begin to come to the light of day. A few years ago, one of my good friends was in a theology class where the issue of environmental stewardship came up. Naturally, opinions began to get somewhat heated. One student spoke up by saying, “I litter daily.” He explained that environmental conservation is not a concern for Christians, as lost souls demand more urgent attention. If anything, he argued, Christians should encourage environmental degradation (as he does) so as to destroy the planet and speed up God’s second coming. While this student is an outlier, he does raise a valid question: how do we honor God in our use of the natural world? In light of the task of world evangelism, should we really care about recycling, protecting the rainforest, or saving the polar bears?

There is another similar situation I came across years later that speaks light into this question. A friend of mine was working with the retail and merchandise shop for a large Christian non-profit and noticed that many of the brands that the Christian charity was printing its designs on were not known for being ethical. Rather, they were known for having low prices but offering little clarity as to the working conditions in their factories. Considering the abundance of other brands who could guarantee ethical sourcing, my friend asked if the organization would consider switching suppliers. The response wasn’t surprising. It was a popular brand making a Christian product, so it must be good—right?

The questions about whether environmental management and protection matter, and if the brand of T-shirt we buy matters, are both centered on the same focal point: stewardship. What does God want us to do with our time, money, and resources? If we make things that appear to be Christian, support Christian organizations, and tithe our money, is that enough? And what if being environmentally conscious cuts into our profits and takes away from our livelihood? Choosing to recycle, buy sustainably, care for the land, and use fewer resources all take time and money. These are important questions to ask.

So, what is stewardship? Is it good stewardship to make decisions for the sake of our natural world, or is it good stewardship to primarily prioritize people over the planet on which they live?

A classic definition of good stewardship is found in the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus tells the parable of the talents. He says that a king returned after being away some time and asked each of his servants what they had done with the money he had entrusted to them. While the money they had earned was not a source of justification for each of the servants, it was an indicator of their heart condition. When the King returned in Matthew 25, some of the servants had been good stewards of the things entrusted to them and had good offerings to give. One servant in the parable above had misread his master’s character and had poorly stewarded his resources.

Much like the servants in the parable, we have been entrusted by the Lord with many resources at our disposal. While we know that we are saved by faith and not by any work of our own, our works do act as a kind of offering unto the Lord. We tithe, we do good works, and we invest our talents in the hopes that doing so is pleasing to God. Today, our task as Christians is the same as that of the servants in this parable from nearly 2,000 years ago. What kind of stewardship is pleasing to the Lord? When we finally see Him in glory, what kind of offering should we have prepared from our life of service?

From an environmental perspective, if we look at the abundance of natural beauty and resources on our planet, we can see that God has truly given us much to steward. Thankfully, God Himself gives us some sound advice on how to manage the environment in Genesis 2:15 after creating Adam. The verse says, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (ESV). The phrase “work it and keep it,” is a very interactional commandment. God did not tell Adam to leave all the beauty of nature alone and keep his hands to himself. Yet He also didn’t tell Adam to extract all the resources he could from Eden to earn more money or build a bigger altar. Rather, he told him to “work it,” so that its productivity and fruitfulness would multiply, and “keep it,” so that its beauty and original design would remain.

Rather interestingly, there is no room for an altar here in Eden. Later, after sin arrives, altars are instituted so that God can teach his people about atonement and sacrifice. Yet here in Eden, where humanity lives in perfect relationship to God, there is no need for an altar. What about their offerings to the Lord, then? If Adam and Eve want to give God a token of their adoration of Him, what are they to do? Abraham Kuyper, Dutch statesman and theologian, responds with this: “No altar stands in paradise, but all of paradise is an altar on which Adam as priest of God offers God the glory of his handiwork.” Rather than making something for God as an offering, Adam’s offering was “the glory of his handiwork,” or rather the way he acted in accordance to God’s design for him. Adam glorified God by following His plan for creation and stewardship, by caring for his world and his wife, and by acting righteously in the garden.

This should be how we seek to please God as well, though that is rarely the case. As flawed human beings, we love to make big, flashy offerings unto the Lord. Perhaps we sell “Christian” products without checking on the human rights of the factories where they are made. Maybe we push productivity over sustainability in our businesses, ignoring the non-monetary benefits of stewardship. We might choose jobs we don’t like or believe in because they pay more, convincing ourselves that with a bigger paycheck we can do more for the Lord. Whatever it is, the mindset is the same: use and produce as much as we can, with the land, our time, or our resources, so that we can give more to the Lord. We are making offerings to the Lord, but are we making them poorly?

The offerings of our work are not something God needs from us. He is in no short supply of money, time, or any resource. Even if He were short on people, He has the power to make the rocks cry out in testimony (Luke 19:40). When it comes to how we should act, or what our lives should produce, the thought should not just be around making or doing as much as possible. Even the idea of measuring a person’s success based on how many people they evangelize is an unfair metric. David Livingstone, often considered the greatest missionary to Africa, only brought one man to the faith. Yet he was obedient to the Lord, sharing the love of God even when it fell on deaf ears, and from that obedience grew great fruit after his death.

Remember again what Abraham Kuyper said: “All of paradise is an altar on which Adam as priest of God offers God the glory of his handiwork.” Our offering is of the same nature, except instead of paradise we have planet earth. The earth is our altar on which we make our offerings. Rather than offering big tithes, high church numbers, or the like, our offering is how we managed the little that God gave us. Did we take good care of our corner of the earth, appreciate its beauty, love our neighbors, and share Christ’s plan for renewal with them? Or did we grasp for more, spending our days ignoring the needs of our planet and our brethren because we were too busy being productive? God will not judge us as stewards based on how many souls we successfully evangelized, or how many Christian T-shirts we printed. He will judge us only on how obedient we were to His commandments to work and keep the earth, love our neighbors as ourselves, and love God above all.

This essay is an adaptation of “The Earth as an Altar Place Understanding Humanity’s Place and Duty in Creation through Neo-Calvinism” written by Eoghan Holdahl in 2023 for Pro Rege.

References:

Kuyper, Common Grace, Vol I, 170.