Garden to Garden: The Story of God and Us

By Mark Yoder

Good stories capture us. Gripping stories inspire us. God’s story changes us. In Garden to Garden, through the power of story, author Mark Yoder recounts the epic saga of God’s work with man. It began with the first garden in Eden and wraps up with Revelation’s last garden on the new Earth.

One of the great tragedies of not knowing the Bible is not knowing the story in it. Let’s correct that!

From the marvel of creation, through the colossal collapse of the fall, and on through God’s work to rescue it all, hear the plot twists and shocking acts of a heroic Savior. Written in a style loved by people who gravitate to stories, Yoder weaves the narrative of Scripture with tales of his own. Those who are unfamiliar with the general flow of the Biblical plot will learn the big picture alongside many of God’s individual acts. Those who could tell much of this story themselves will step back and once again be in awe of how astonishing this narrative is.

Gather ‘round… it’s story time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664236721

Mark Yoder

Mark Yoder is currently the lead pastor of Christ Community Church in Sumter, South Carolina, bringing with him over 25 years of student ministry experience. Working with teens those years cemented in him a love and appreciation for gripping stories. With five adult children, Mark and his wife Carmen also have a growing number of grandchildren who, like them, are learning to love a great plot.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Act I: The Creation: Made Well

Chapter 1     The GOAT

Chapter 2     Imago Dei

Chapter 3     And He Said

Act II: The Fall: One Bad Apple

Chapter 4     We Have a Problem

Chapter 5     Paradise Lost

Act III: Restoration Begins: Promises, Promises

Chapter 6     Re-everything

Chapter 7     The Power of a Promise

Act IV: Bondage and Deliverance: In and Out of Egypt

Chapter 8     A Deep, Long Sigh

Chapter 9   Deliverance

Act V: The Three-Legged Stool: Three Things That Shaped Israel

Chapter 10   The Law

Chapter 11   The Tent

Chapter 12   The Sacrifice

Act VI: Kings and Prophets: Life in a Kingdom

Chapter 13   Kings and Kingdoms

Chapter 14   Thus Says the Lord

Chapter 15   Voices of Hope

Act VII: Leaning Forward: The Posture of Both Old and New

Chapter 16   Todays and Tomorrows

Chapter 17   There Will Be a Day

Chapter 18   There Will Be a One

Act VIII: The Coming of Jesus: God With Us

Chapter 19   Just Like He Said

Chapter 20   The Humility of Humilities

Chapter 21   The Presence of God Among Us

Act IX: The Life of Jesus: Unprecedented

Chapter 22   The Power of Jesus

Chapter 23   The Wisdom of Jesus

Chapter 24   The Integrity of Jesus

Chapter 25   The Love of Jesus

Act X: The Cross of Christ: Let This Cup Pass From Me

Chapter 26   Debt Canceled

Chapter 27   Who Was Barabbas?

Chapter 28   The Comeback Victory

Act XI: God Now Has His People: Living in a New Covenant

Chapter 29   The New Covenant

Chapter 30   The New Law

Chapter 31   The Helper

Act XII: And They Now Have Their Place: The New Earth

Chapter 32   He Comes to Get Us

Chapter 33   Heaven for Now

Chapter 34   Heaven on Earth

Chapter 35   The Curse Undone

Chapter 36   Look What God Just Did

Small-Group Questions

Endnotes

SOME HEARTFELT WORDS

OF APPRECIATION

I recognize this is the part of the book that you feel is least essential, but I feel is critical. The chapters that follow are much more than the products of months of writing. They are the result of years of time with some incredible people to whom I owe much more than some thanks at the beginning of a book. They are just a handful of the many people God has used to fashion me in profound ways.

Tim Kallam, head pastor at Mountain Brook Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, is a godsend in multiple ways for me. Having served alongside and under him for 18 incredible years, I am the pastor I am today largely due to his leadership. I mentioned to Carmen, my wife, after the first half year there, that I had learned more in those six months about Godly leadership and Biblical teaching in all my education prior. His relentless pursuit to do things by the direction of scripture was a deep comfort. Ah, so this is what the church is really supposed to look like! Thanks Tim, you continue to have a deep impact on me.

Kevin Delaney, one of my most treasured friends, I hope you at least have a sense of just how much you have made me a better follower of Jesus. I have this profound sense that there may a moment, a million or so years from now, when Jesus might talk with me about characteristics in my life that turned out to be pleasing in His eyes. If He asks me if I have an idea of who in my life here helped shape that trait, it’s a pretty good guess that you’ve been a part of that. Our conversations have challenged, nurtured, shaped, and taught me. You are a people person like few I know, but it has gone so much deeper than that. You’ve always been a breath of God’s words to me. Press on, brother!

To the people at MBCC who let me cut my teeth in so many ways, I can’t thank you enough for those years. Thanks for letting me make my own mistakes, for growing alongside me, for the encouragement, and for countless memories.

Speaking of Community Churches, a big Oh my! to Christ Community Church in Sumter, South Carolina. With regularity you hear me say I have the best job in the world. I sincerely mean that. Thanks for journeying with me and allowing me to exercise one of man’s greatest God-given roles, to be His storyteller. It is a sheer delight to lead you. I catch myself regularly saying to the Lord, Thank You, Jesus, for giving me the privilege of walking alongside your church here. I’m so enjoying the ride!

To the elders and staff at CCC, I hope you never grow tired of me expressing my appreciation for the type of people you are. I have colleagues and friends who serve on staffs at other churches, and who are day by day growing wearier. I wish they could spend a solid year working in God’s vineyard alongside you, just like I get to do. They would end that year refreshed and charged with vision. I know we’re not perfect, but it’s hard to imagine it being much better than serving alongside you!

And to my family. I could write a solid book of just my appreciation to you. To Caleb, Micah, Christian, Moriah Grace, and Naomi, who grew up in a family with their dad being on staff at a church, thanks so very much for embracing that and all that comes with it. You all have had such key roles in what God has done in our ministries, and I’m beyond proud of what you’re allowing God to do in telling His story in your lives as well. Rebekah, you make us better by picking up the Yoder last name, and we’re so much richer for it. Sam, I’m just so excited you’re joining the clan! You fit like a glove. You all continue to teach me regularly. Thanks for the challenge through your daring faith.

Carmen, this is the thanks that doesn’t come without some tears of gratitude. Next to helpmate in my dictionary would be your picture. I tell couples getting ready to be married that they are going to say I do while standing next to the person that God will use more than any other person to shape them into who God wants them to be. I speak from experience. You are ferociously loyal, compassionate to the hurting, inquisitive like few people I know, and incredibly sacrificing. I don’t know where you get all the energy, but I’d hate to see what our family would have looked like had you not been here. I owe you doesn’t begin to express my thanks. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and love you more today…

To you, the reader, thanks for the time. My prayer is that you’ll gain more than an understanding of God’s story. I’ll pray you’ll find yourself literally right in the middle of it.

INTRODUCTION

WE LOVE A GOOD STORY

As I write, we’re still in the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, including the quarantining, the masks, and the social distancing. Had people the ability to foresee it, along with the raw desire to make lots of cash, I suspect they would have invested in several ventures: providers for the streaming of movies and church services, food delivery such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, and online platforms for church giving. The usage of those businesses skyrocketed. People stayed at home looking for stuff to do. Those businesses took some significant steps forward. One example: Netflix.

In the first quarter of 2020, Netflix added 15.77 million paid international subscribers.¹ All kinds of reasoning can go into it, but let me simplify. We love good stories, and they’ve made a killing providing them. Movies, documentaries, novels, TV sitcoms, mystery series, and on and on. We thoroughly enjoy getting wrapped up in a good tale, from Tiger King to The Stranger to the Star Wars series to binge-watching old sitcoms. Who doesn’t enjoy getting wrapped up in a good plot line?

And if the story is told well, that’s icing on top. Harlan Coben is a New York Times best-selling author with over thirty novels and over seventy million books in print. Just do a little math with me. Seventy million books at roughly twenty-five dollars a pop. That’s $1.75 billion worth of story he’s sold! Why? Primarily because he can craft a great story and tell it in a gripping way. We get drawn in, and we love a mesmerizing plot.

Here’s another proof of our love for story: just watch a crowd during a sermon. (Not literally. It would tend to highly frustrate guys like me.) Generally, what you’ll find is a nod of agreement. A focus of attention. And if the preacher is good, you may even see a note being jotted down. But watch what happens when the illustration comes. You know, the well-told story. Notes cease being taken, not because of lack of interest but because people shift from listening to engaging. You can almost see them leaning in.

Stories are the flavor of life. Sit down with a group of friends over dinner, and you’re not likely to spend your time teaching each other lessons or principles. Almost certainly, you’ll spend the bulk of your time telling stories. The hilarious mistake one of you made back in high school, the best moment from your college spring break in the mountains, how sick you were with the flu during exams, the shock or excitement of someone’s engagement, the bizarre thing that happened at work today. Stories are natural.

But even without intention, stories at times do, in fact, teach us. Lessons abound. God knew that and hard-wired our love of story into us and into the way He teaches us. He didn’t just tell us about His love; He demonstrated it, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.² It’s not surprising that of all the methods Jesus used in teaching, His parables top the list of most memorable. Undeniably, we love a tale.

Matthew James Friday, in an article on the importance of stories, described it this way:

Whether in caves or in cities, storytelling remains the most innate and important form of communication. All of us tell stories. The story of your day, the story of your life, workplace gossip, the horrors on the news. Our brains are hard-wired to think and express in terms of a beginning, middle and end. It’s how we understand the world.³

I’ve had a general principle in preaching. I’m not 100 percent on this, but I try to remind myself that if I have a point that’s important enough to make, it’s important enough to illustrate. A great tale might not make the point, but it can sure drive it home. Feedback I’ve gotten after a message will often be about a point, but usually those are the points about which I’ve told a powerful story to explain or reinforce it.

This Will Certainly Draw You In

Want to make a story more interesting? More gripping? More likely others will listen? Include the hearer in the cast. Make it about them. People generally like good stories, but they can’t stay away from a tale about themselves.

In a group picture, I, like you, look to find myself first. I’m not sure I can explain it because I hate the thought that it’s just arrogance. Plus, I’ve seen myself countless times over a lifetime, so it’s not like I forgot what I look like. But I still look for me. We all do it; we’re drawn to ourselves.

That’s true as well when people hear stories about themselves. Even if it’s not flattering. Just to know we’re a part of the story makes us pay special attention.

About a year ago this was driven home to me a couple of times in a personal way. Over the years of doing student ministry, we’ve been blessed to have some amazing students come through the ranks and have developed relationships with them during those vulnerable and shaping teen years.

Two of those students, in the course of about five months, released books. Interestingly enough, both of those books were woven around the stories of their faith journeys and how God took their messed-up lives and made something much better. Just the titles are eerily similar—Wrecked and Redeemed by Benji Kelley and Broken and Beloved by Sammy Rhodes.

I was drawn to both of these books primarily because I know both these guys very well. They’ve eaten in my house numerous times; we’ve done retreats and played ball together; and it’s been a joy seeing their ministries flourish. I was pulled in quickly to their books because they were laced with their life stories. And then, in both of their books, they told stories about our time together. I was interested before; I was deeply engaged now. We just love a good story even more when we’re a part of it.

My point is not to highlight the darkness of my self-centered soul. It’s but to point out that, in our eyes, great stories become even more interesting when we have a part in them. Hold onto that thought.

Why This Book?

From Genesis 1 all the way through Revelation 22, scripture is a story. Please don’t forget that. Even among the measurements of the tabernacle in Exodus, the lists of genealogies in Numbers, the prophetic declarations in Jeremiah and Isaiah, the hundreds of bumper-sticker sayings in Proverbs, and the fresh wind of the New Testament, the Bible, with all its writings, is the beautiful weaving of God’s story. And it’s a supremely beautiful story. Conflict, twists, tears, heroes, loss, tension, disappointment, jealousy, love lost, and love found—it’s all in there.

Fran Sciacca has written a powerful book, So, What’s Your Point?, describing the major themes, plots, and movements in this wonderful play. His point is for us to find ours. As in, where do we fit? Make no mistake; scripture is not the story of us. It’s God’s story. We are but players in it. But players we are!

As much as I was excited to see my small mention in Benji’s and Sammy’s books, it pales to the thrill of knowing I have a particular place in this legacy I’m about to tell. You have a place as well. Some chapters, you may see it clearly, while others, not so much. But you’re in here. We fit, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. You and I are as good as in their shoes.

We have a saying at our church that we’ve used over and over as we’ve talked about this story: The only way to find our story is to know His. Lean in closely; you’ll see yourself all over this book.

From Garden to Garden

Over these pages, through thirty-six chapters, we’ll gather ’round together to summarize and retell God’s story. It is epic. You’re likely familiar with the garden of Eden at the beginning, where God placed man and woman. It was majestic, and that’s where we’ll start as well. Then, a massive fall from this garden. At one point, Adam and Eve literally took steps out of and away from that garden.

God had a choice: scrap it all and start over, or work with us and restore what was lost. In the last chapter of scripture, Revelation 22, after each plot twist and turn has been completed, we see another garden. It’s found in the new heaven and the new earth. John described it this way:

And on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His bond-servants shall serve Him.⁴

At that point, God will have done it, bringing man from garden to garden.

The simple definition of saga is a long story of heroic deeds. Don’t think of story in the sense of a dreamed-up tale to help communicate a truth; that’s a parable. Think of story in the same way as when you and friends gather around and tell adventures of your past.

Historical truth is important. In God’s saga that we will walk through, these things happened. On specific days to specific people in specific places, these subplots played out. And through these events, God changed everything.

These are heroic deeds. The word saga comes from the twelfth or thirteenth century in Norway and Iceland. We didn’t even change the word for our own language: saga for the Norse, and saga for us. The point of these stories? To highlight the heroism of the legendary heroes.

As we walk through this epic, my primary aim is to shine a bright light on the massive achievements of our Hero. God, from creation to fall to rescue to Law to sacrifice to redemption to garden to garden, is majestically heroic, and I pray we’ll stop long enough in places to pause and appreciate just what He’s done.

Gather ’Round

Over the Christmas season a year ago, our church decided we wanted to give our community a present—the gift of story. Our hopeful desire was to present the Christmas story to them again as it is, an epic saga. Instead of them coming to only sing carols, we wanted them to be able to just sit and listen. We would be storytellers. They could just sit in wide-eyed wonder at the epic story played out right before them.

We began that night with what has become one of my favorite sentiments of Christmas. Andrew Peterson has a Christmas song that captures it all: Gather ’Round, Ye Children, Come. It’s first line expresses my desire for us over these chapters.

Gather ’round, ye children come, listen to the old, old story.⁵

I can easily imagine what that looks like. If I had my way, you’d be sitting around a campfire with a couple of people hearing this saga, as if for the very first time. Or maybe with a group of close friends, drinking coffee, or your family on a long, easy hike in the woods. This book is my version of story time.

Maybe it would help, as you read this book, if you were to get in a place where you can position yourself to just hear a story. Get your favorite beverage and just …

Just listen.

If you’re fairly unfamiliar with the Bible, this book was compiled with a special heart for you. It’s entirely likely that the shocking truth of this story will sound more amazing to you than it does for those who have grown accustomed to all the plot twists. I envy you for that. The uniqueness of God’s great saga of reclaiming all of creation is brilliant, majestic, gripping, and powerful. If you capture just a portion of this great mystery, my job has been accomplished.

For those who already have a pretty good grasp of biblical truths and the unfolding story that scripture tells, my desire is for you to recapture the awe and wonder of even part of what God has accomplished. Try not to jump to the mental end of each story, just because you already know it. For this one time, for these moments in this book, ask God to help you forget what you already know and be swept away in stunning bewilderment at what our Hero has done.

A special thanks to my daughter Christian, who has a whimsical spirit like few people I know. She’s the founder, owner, writer, creative thinker, poet, and everything else that goes behind a venture called sunlit letters. It’s a creative outlet for her to express intriguing thoughts and to connect with Jesus at a level that stretches us. Follow her on Instagram at sunlit.letters.

Because of her unique way of both seeing and saying things, I asked her to introduce each section with a short poem. You may find them more encouraging and eye-opening than my own writings, and I am totally comfortable with that. Thanks, Chrish.

You’ll find some Small-Group Questions at the end of the book. You may find it helpful to walk through this journey with a small group of fellow travelers. Questions are given for each of the acts, so you could walk through this entire journey in roughly twelve weeks.

My deep prayer is that by the time we all reach the end, you’ll be left a little speechless, and with whatever breath you can muster, you can whisper with me, Wow! Look what God just did.

So gather ’round, come pull up a chair, and listen. It’s quite a legend, quite a story, quite an achievement, quite the extraordinary saga. Let’s get to Act I and the first garden.

ACT I

THE CREATION: MADE WELL

                             He took a spool of destiny

                             unwound a thread of Best For Me

                             then chose His strongest needle

                             from His favorite Secret Place

                             with skill, He knit all parts and core

                             of one who none had seen before

                             and in its very center,

                             of Himself He left a trace.¹

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CHAPTER 1

THE GOAT

Thirty-Two Years in the Making

The idea came about sometime before the 1997 NBA season. NBA Entertainment producer Andy Thompson pitched an idea to executive Gregg Winik and to the head of NBA Entertainment, Adam Silver. It was to produce a yearlong documentary of the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan. Rumors were stirring that this would be Jordan’s last year with the Bulls.

Talking head coach Phil Jackson into all access wasn’t a tremendously difficult thing to do. Jackson could call off the cameras at his discretion. Otherwise, they’d film virtually everything, including practices, plane trips, cutting up in the locker room, and all the four-letter bombs that dropped.

Michael Jordan’s permission was a little more tenuous, so Silver decided a preemptive move would be beneficial. As a bonus to MJ, the offer was made that nothing of the filming would be released to the public without both Jordan and Silver signing off on it. Jordan accepted.¹ In some ways, it would be a documentary in which the one being documented had editorial license.

As we now know, it took thirty-one years for Jordan to sign off on the release of what has become The Last Dance. Ten episodes were produced, chronicling the legacy of Jordan and the Bulls’ 1997–98 championship run. When it was released in 2020, ESPN had a virtual monopoly on sports television. The fan support was unprecedented. With almost all live sports having been canceled due to the coronavirus, sports radio on Monday mornings was almost exclusively given to discussion of the two episodes that aired for five consecutive weeks on Sunday nights.

I met with a group of men on Monday mornings. We normally had a little difficulty turning off the sports conversations and transitioning to the meatier life topics. From April 20 to May 18, 2020, it was almost impossible. All we wanted to chat about was The Last Dance.

The topics of conversation? How different basketball was during that era. The controversy between Phil Jackson and Jerry Krause, general manager of the Bulls. Jordan’s gambling and whether it played a part of his first retirement. The unheralded greatness of Scottie Pippen. But perhaps the most common conversation piece was this: can we finally put to rest that Michael Jordan is, in fact, the GOAT—the Greatest of All Time?

That GOAT discussion happens in almost every popular sport: Tom Brady as an NFL quarterback, Tiger Woods in the PGA, Serena Williams in tennis, Muhammed Ali in boxing, and on and on. The simple thought behind the logic goes like this: the GOAT is the best we’ve ever seen.

In God’s great saga, it’s almost meaningless to call Him the GOAT. We haven’t even started yet, and even if you’re not all in with following Him, you’d likely not want to jump into an argument against God as GOAT. Well, of course He is!

That’s not exactly where I’m going. I want our eyes to focus on a different direction. As Genesis 1 begins, what we’ll see is that the creation is also the best we’ve ever seen. It was ideal, perfect, flawless, pure, without defect, and textbook brilliant.

Five times in Genesis 1 (verses 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25), we find God looking at what He had made and noting that it was good. That first statement came after God simply separated the water from the land. He looked and determined that it was good.

Quick thought: good? How is this so marvelous? What’s so great about large puddles of water and some landmasses? Seems empty, doesn’t it?

Here’s a peek into what the creation was like. We rarely, if ever, view God as having low standards. I’ve never heard anyone say they felt like God didn’t expect enough from them. Quite the opposite. His standard is impeccable. It’s more likely that someone would feel that God’s standard for us is too high. Or they’d say, He just demands too much excellence.

What level of insanity would it take to think that God looked at His own work with some kind of low standard? As if He wouldn’t expect much of Himself? That His declaration of good as He evaluated His own work was not really that good after all? Do we really dare to imagine He would have lower expectations for His own quality of work than He would for ours? That’s absurd.

When God looked and saw the land separate from the waters, He proclaimed it as good and outstanding! Exceptional! Mind-boggling!

Bible scholar J. W. Dawson explained it this way:

The emergence of the dry land is followed by a repetition of the approval of the Creator. God saw that it was good To our view that primeval dry land would scarcely have seemed good. It was a world of bare, rocky peaks, and verdureless valleys—here active volcanoes, with their heaps of scoriae and scarcely cooled lava currents—there vast mudflats, recently upheaved from the bottom of the waters—nowhere even a blade of grass or a clinging lichen. Yet it was good in the view of its Maker, who could see it in relation to the uses for which he had made it, and as a fit preparatory step to the new wonders he was soon to introduce … In this wondrous progress of creation, it seems as if every thing at first was in its best estate. No succeeding state could parallel the unbroken symmetry of the earth in the fluid and vaporous condition of the deep.²

Let me simplify. We can’t even imagine the amazing things God was looking at because He was scanning the GOAT. When we get to the end and look at Eden, it was the greatest of all time. Four more times He would look out and see the same thing—the goodness of what He had created.

But that’s not exactly what I see when I look out, you say. That’s correct because what you and I see is not exactly what God saw. The world we live in now is not the same as the world that was made by God. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and that part of the saga isn’t until chapter 5.

Look at What I Just Did

Back to what God saw and how He felt about it. I totally enjoy home projects, from tiling to light carpentry work such as molding. I’ve renovated a couple of our bathrooms, and while the work always takes longer than I was planning, there’s an incredible sense of fulfillment. I find myself noticing tile everywhere I go. I notice grout lines and how precisely the tiles are laid.

I’m not a professional, but there is an incredible sense of accomplishment when I stand back and look at the work. There’s just something about taking a room that has been stripped down to the walls and—step by step, piece by piece—creating a new room. Sure, it gets tedious. But there’s just something about stepping back and seeing what’s been done.

There’s a kind of pride in the work that is quite healthy. It’s the pleasure of looking at a finished job, knowing the work it took to get it done, understanding the planning and precision required, and enjoying it. It’s the slight grin of appreciation in what you’ve done and knowing that it’s good.

You see that? It’s good.

When God stepped back those five times and saw that His work was good, I wonder if there was a powerful and overwhelming response that was felt throughout the cosmos. God recognized that His work was outstanding!

We learn in John 1 that it was the Son who fashioned everything. It’s not beyond reason to think that perhaps the Father looked at the Son after those days of creation and communicated that all He had done was fine work. It simply couldn’t have been any better.

A Gift from Your Father

Over the past decades, a battle has gone on between those who are conservationists and many in the Christian camp. Sometimes, the battle has risen to warlike status—and sometimes just murmurings of disagreement. The battle lines are drawn like this: conservationists believe in using the earth and its resources in such a way as to conserve them for future generations.

Conservation International released a video that emphasizes the importance of nature. The script reads like this:

"Some call me Nature. Others call me Mother Nature. I’ve been here for over four and a half billion years, 22,500 times longer than you. I don’t really need people, but people need me. Yes, your future depends on me. When I thrive, you thrive. When I falter, you falter. Or worse. But I’ve been here for eons. I have fed species greater than you, and I have starved species greater than you. My oceans. My soil. My flowing streams. My forests. They all can take you … or leave you. How you choose to live each day, whether you regard or disregard me, doesn’t really matter to me. One way or the other, your actions will determine your fate. Not mine. I am Nature. I will go on. I am prepared to evolve. Are you?"

The clip ends with this text printed over a scene of planet earth: Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.³

Certain camps within the followers of Jesus have often railed against this message. After all, even a casual reading of the creation account in Genesis 1–2 shows the climax of creation not as the earth but humans. We are charged to have dominion over the earth with its plant and animal kingdoms. Revelation, the last book of the Bible, reveals that the present earth will be destroyed. Once again, I’m getting way ahead of ourselves in this saga.

This teaching, however, that humanity holds dominion over the earth and other life-forms and that the earth will be altered also has led many Jesus followers to abandon any sense of care for our planet. After all, we’re going to get a new one anyway, right? What’s the big deal with taking great care of an old car if you know you’re trading it in?

Conservationists have been labeled as tree-huggers, as if there were something wrong with loving the