honors response 9

We all know the Sunday school acronym JOY.  Jesus, Others, Yourself.  That's the order we were told to put our priorities.  Jesus comes first, then everyone around us, then ourselves comes last.  When I was reading chapter six of For the Beauty of the Earth by Steven Bouma-Prediger, my mind kept coming back to this acronym.  Others.  Does that simply mean other people, or could it include it include all else that is around us?

Bouma-Prediger writes that virtues are what makes us who we are.  Defining virtue, he states, "In sum, a virtue is a state of praiseworthy character--with the attendant desires, attitudes, and emotions.  Formed by choices and habits over time, a virtue disposes us to act in certain excellent ways." (pg 140)  The fourteen ecological virtues Bouma-Prediger expounds are respect and receptivity, self-restraint and frugality, humility and honesty, wisdom and hope, patience and serenity, benevolence and love, and finally, justice and courage.  He speaks on the biblical stories, the theological themes, and finds ethical principles and moral duties on each of these fourteen virtues.  The two virtues that made me think of the JOY acronym was benevolence and love.

The common belief of humans having rule and authority over all of creation comes from Genesis 1:26 stating, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."  But we are not the rulers of creation.  We are here to simply take care of it.  Psalms 24:1 says, "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it", simply stating that all of creation is God's, not one thing is ours.

So how does benevolence and love fall into the whole idea of earthkeeping?  Well first of all, Bouma-Prediger defines benevolence as "the willingness to promote the well-being of another" and the definition of love to be the "unselfish concern for the good of that for which one deeply cares" (pg. 155).  Benevolent people perform kind actions.  In terms of the earth, these kind of people treat all things, people and other creation, with kindness   Love is quite similar to this.  We often relate love to an affection towards a person, however, it can also be placed in the context of places, aka nature.  Bouma-Prediger writes that we should show both these virtues of benevolence and love when taking care of the earth because all in all, the Earth is not ours.

So in my opinion, I think that the Sunday school acronym doesn't just apply to humans.  We are to also take the rest of God's creation under consideration when think of the "others" portion of the JOY acronym.