…We learn in Genesis that God has promised to fulfill all of creation, not just humanity, and has made humans the stewards of it. More importantly, God sent Christ into the very midst of creation to be “God with us” and to fulfill the promise to save humankind and nature.

God’s redemption makes the creation whole, the place where God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven... (Church of the Brethren, Creation: Called to Care, 1991.)

Humans are Creatures, Interdependent with All Other Creatures

Humanity is intimately related to the rest of creation. We, like other creatures, are formed from the earth (Gen 2:7, 9, 19). Scripture speaks of humanity’s kinship with other creatures (Job 38-39; Pss 104)... Creation depends on the Creator, and is interdependent within itself. The principle of solidarity means that we stand together as God’s creation. We are called to acknowledge this interdependence with other creatures and to act locally and globally on behalf of all creation. (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice, 1993.)

The first two chapters of Genesis illumine the right relationship of human beings to their Creation and the nonhuman creation. God put man and woman, created in God’s own image, in the garden “to till it and to keep it.” “Tilling” symbolizes everything we humans do to draw sustenance from nature... Tilling includes not only agriculture but mining and manufacturing and exchanging, all of which depend necessarily on taking and using the stuff of God’s creation. “Keeping” the creation means tilling with care — maintaining the capacity of the creation to provide the sustenance for which the tilling is done. This, we now have come to understand, means making sure that the world of nature may flourish, with all its intricate, interacting systems upon which life depends. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice, 1990.)