Bloggin’ the 28: Expanding the Scope of Stewardship
Continuing our summer Bloggin’ the 28 project, La Sierra University M.Div. student Jared Wright applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Stewardship to contemporary life.
He writes:
During my first year as a Theology major in
college, my professor, Lloyd Willis, the Australian dean of the
religion department, shared with us his conception of what he called
God’s “economy of miracles.” I’ve forgotten
exactly how Dr. Willis put it, but in essence, he stated that God will
not act supernaturally to accomplish what people can (and perhaps
should) do naturally.
A
few years later, toward the end of my college days, a friend of mine,
Kevin, an older man and atheist, expressed to me a common atheistic
sentiment toward God. He said that if there were a God, he would have a lot to answer for. How,
for example, could a God characterized by love simply sit by and watch
as millions of people on earth starve to death in famine-stricken parts
of Africa or India? If a human parent behaved in that way, he said, at the very least, they would be accused of gross negligence!
Both
of those thoughts impressed me, and over time, they have woven
themselves together to form a backdrop for my concept of stewardship: In
brief, God does not seem to intervene miraculously to accomplish what
human beings can and should be accomplishing on their own, and
secondly, (contrary to what my friend suggested), human tragedies like
genocide, famine, global warming, and war are not indicative of the
absence of God, but rather, they are indicative of human failure to
live up to the God-given charge to be stewards of what God has made.
