Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, January 17, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Dominion means ownership and authority. Right out of the gate that’s problematic, of course, if one holds that all of creation belongs to God and that we are to be loving and careful stewards of what does not belong to us. I can’t deny the definition of the word. But I can argue that dominion—ownership, authority, rulership—does not have to play out in the way that it always has.
Human beings from their earliest societies have been obsessed with gaining power simply as a survival instinct. With a fear of death and a mindset of scarcity, they have set out to exploit everything they touch in the service of extending their lives. Rather than recognize God’s gift of dominion as a charge to keep all that we “own” in pristine condition for the good of ourselves and others, we have instead destroyed it with shortsighted, selfish thinking. I mean, who among us, if given a highly valuable gift, will willfully smash it to pieces, removing its value permanently? So this idea of dominion, if we must accept it, at least challenges us to preserve the value of the gift we’ve been given.
Another thought is that God gave dominion to all of humankind—not just to a particular sub-set of them. So for oil companies, for example, to knowingly profit from the inevitability of climate change, which they falsely denied existed and later have downplayed, is a direct slap in the face to the collective ownership of all creation by all God’s beloved human beings.
So, whatever you personally feel about the term “dominion” in this passage, even if we take it at face value, any and all attempts by a particular group of people to profit from creation’s destruction is a violation of what God actually called us to when we were created. Nuff said.
What do I believe is the proper role of human beings in creation?
