Adam was formed out of the dust of the earth. Adam is an “Earth-ling” or a “soil-man”. The Hebrew Bible employs the adam/adamah word play to indicate their inter-connectedness. As “Earthlings”, we are part of creation and belong to the earth.
This ‘belonging-ness’ to the earth compels us to ‘care’ for the earth.We are indebted to ‘tend’ and ‘keep’ the earth. True, we have the mandate to ‘rule’ the earth but that is not a ‘licence” to misuse, overuse and abuse the earth. We are ‘Earth-ling Rulers’.
Our ‘rulership’ mandate was never meant to be to exploit its wealth, deplete its reserves, and pollute natural resources. Rulership is Responsibility. With great power comes greater responsibility. We are to care for the world and nurture healthy relationship with the earth.
Technology and our modern-day gadgets may give us a sense of ‘power’, ‘invincibility’ and ‘control’ over the earth but we can’t live our lives entirely live in a ‘virtual’ world created with megabytes and megapixels entirely dis-engaged with the real world. We are to recognise our inter-relatedness with the earth and nurture a healthy relationship with it.
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