Dominion

I have a lot to say on this one word. Dominion. For me it summarizes an immovable concept in God's order of things where people, nature and God intersect. And while I could expand on this in many directions I'm going to focus on a chronological walk-through of humankind as told by the Bible.

"In the beginning the universe was created...now this has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams

Let's not try to cover any territory here that Mr. Adams has already addressed so profoundly and instead start at the beginning of people on Earth.

Genesis 1:26 

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth….”

AND

Genesis 2:15 

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Some translations say rule instead of dominion but you get the idea. It's governing, managing and in God's emphasis of servant leadership it's not to hard to think of this dominion as a responsibility, possibly even a stewardship of fish, birds, etc. This is further demonstrated through the charge place on man to work and keep the garden.

The next section introduces us to the original sin. The disobedience of Adam and Eve by taking what they shouldn't have and then being expelled from the garden.

Genesis 3:23

God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

So where does the dominion land in this whole process. Is it revoked? Is it destroyed? Do Adam and Eve keep it? As we come to learn throughout Jewish history and the teachings of Jesus, there was a separation that was established at this point in history. God (perfect) still desired to be with people (fallible) because He is love. However, He can't be with imperfect things because He is just. We'll get to God's workaround for the conundrum soon. Here comes the immovable nature of dominion. God does not revoke dominion but leaves men and women with this responsibility. They continue to work the land but without the garden established by God We see this lived out further by God's people as they are commanded to sacrifice living things to take their place on death row. In Leviticus 16 we read about the scapegoat. The sins of the Israelites are transferred to a goat (or other living thing) which is led off to its death thereby killing the sin. Of course the process is repeated as frequently as new sins demand it but the order of things don't change. The things (animals) over which we have dominion are capable of bearing our sin.

To sidestep the timeline temporarily - we do see many instances of people willingly giving up their dominion to evil powers. Satan collects this dominion and claims it as his own but notice that the dominion is never destroyed or revoked by God just transferred.

Enter, Jesus of Nazareth. A man both God and human. The son of God and man commissioned to be the ultimate scapegoat. As Jesus is murdered on a wooden cross he accepts into himself the sins of the world. He exhibits the love that is God as well as obedience to the Justice of God by playing by the rules. There is an immovable dominion that must be followed and death is demanded as payment for sin.

But there is a twist...

Colossians 1:15-17 (emphasis added)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

God's great workaround. By allowing His son to die he fulfills his perfect justice while still demonstrating immeasurable love. The language in this scripture hearkens back to creation. All things were created through and for Christ. But more importantly for our purposes here, in him all things hold together. The dominions that were created and never destroyed fell apart without him. We have animal sacrifice, back-breaking work on hard ground, hunger, ecosystem breakdown and a hundred other examples of a broken relationship between people and the environment. This brokenness shows up here as "groaning."

Romans 8:19-22 (emphasis added)

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

There is hope on the other side of the grave though! God's genius continues to be demonstrated as Jesus is resurrected and takes back all authority in heaven and earth. Dominion is lumped in with this package deal and now all of a sudden we have Jesus reaching down to us, alive and eternal, offering reconciliation of all things including dominion over nature. It's a gift he offers freely, producing endless stories of miraculous changes throughout the millennia and to this day it is the people who align themselves with Jesus' mission who can demonstrate what dominion over nature looks like in a perfect way. They can relieve the stress on plants and animals and rivers and soil reconciling all things to God's original gift.

I want to share some thoughts with you about why there doesn't appear to be a record of Jesus speaking directly to environmental dominion (a.k.a. creation care or stewardship) but I'll save that for another time. I'll leave you with one final verse that hints at where I'm going.

2 Corinthians 5:18-20

18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.