Articles - Bulletin
Make Your Mother Proud
Make Your Mother Proud
(Kent Heaton)
No, this is not an article of showing your mother what a good job you have done or how you have finally grown out of your adolescence to adulthood or that you finally found a job where you can move out of the house. There are many things we should do as children to show our mother how we have learned to stand on our own two feet. However, the idea of making our mother proud of us is found in a most unlikely place but not that unusual. Driving through my neighborhood on Monday mornings there are large blue recycling bins with the words inscribed on the side, “Make Your Mother Proud.” Let me say at the beginning the principle of recycling is very good as I have my blue bin by the side of the road filled with all those wasteful elements of a modern society. But the idea that recycling plastic and paper and aluminum is somehow connected to a mystical mother of nature is innocent at first but deceptive in conclusion. Who is the mother earth? How can we understand earth to be our mother without acknowledging the Creator as the only creator of our world?
The beautiful world that we are stewards of belongs to our Father. This is my Fathers world that he has given to me to share and the world shows the glory of our Father. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalms 19:1). “He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens at His discretion” (Jeremiah 10:12). “I have made the earth, and created man on it. I--My hands--stretched out the heavens, and all their host I have commanded” (Isaiah 45:12). The glory of the earth is praise to the Creator for His divine will established its order, its design and its purpose.
Given honor to “mother earth” is to give honor to the elements of the world as created through an evolutionary process of natural adaptation. The world is established through the word of God and held together by that same creative word (2 Peter 3:5-7). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The man was given task to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over … every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). He was also told to “tend and keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15) when he was placed in his first home. As a consequence of sin the ground was cursed where man would toil by the sweat of his brow to bring forth crops (Genesis 3:17-19). Following the flood man was allowed to eat meat and again was told to “fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1-7). A covenant was established by God with mankind and with the animals and with the earth. Man is accountable to the Father for care of creation; not a mystic mother.
The stewardship of the earth is seen in how man learns dependence upon the Father. Considering this is the world of the Father one can see the “invisible attributes” (Romans 1:20) of God and come to worship the Father through the revealed word of His revelation. The righteousness and wrath of God is revealed in His word (Romans 1:16-18) as the thumbprint of the Creator is found in the evidence of creation (Romans 1:20-23). Giving honor to the Father is to give honor to the one true Creator of heaven and earth.
It seems irrational to the human mind to consider the Father and the Son without suggesting a mother. However, the glory of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1) concludes with only the reality of the Father and the Son to determine how great our Father is and how so unlike He is to man (Psalm 50:21). "’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
One day this world will all be burned up and destroyed (2 Peter 3). It is winding down. “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner; but My salvation will be forever, and My righteousness will not be abolished” (Isaiah 51:6). Recycle our world to help care for the earth but spiritual recycling is eternal (Acts 3:19; Romans 12:2).
