Product Description

'I was in the act of throwing away my family's rubbish while holidaying on a beautiful island when I heard God speak. I could easily have missed it, but an inner whisper asked, "How do you think I feel about what you are doing to my world?"'

Since the day God challenged him, Dave Bookless has been on a mission: to share with others the compelling biblical case for caring for the planet God made for his glory and his people's enjoyment.

This is not another book on green issues to make you feel guilty. The message is that there is hope. God can take your small and insignificant efforts and multiply them in his great plan.

Dave takes us right into the heart of his family and shows how living simply, besides honouring God, can be an exciting adventure

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161816 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Dave Bookless is National Director of A Rocha UK. He is married to Anne and they have four daughters.

Excerpted from Planetwise: Dare to Care for God's World by Dave Bookless. Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Extract from Chapter 2 The fall: Creation's groaning

It did not take long for there to be trouble in Eden. Almost before God had finished declaring it 'very good', the harmony and beauty of creation were disturbed. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were thrown out of the perfect garden. This dramatic event is full of important truths that still affect us today: truths about the relationships between God, his people, and the rest of creation. It's impossible to understand the state we are in, humanly and environmentally, or to understand why Jesus died, without grasping how we have fallen from God's good plans.

It is, most of all, a story of broken relationships. The friendship and intimacy that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God were gone. They had walked with God in the garden, enjoying the goodness of creation. Their nakedness showed they had nothing to hide from each other or God. After eating from the only tree God told them to avoid, all this changed. Adam and Eve hid their naked bodies from each other by making simple clothing, and when they heard God walking in the garden, they hid among the trees. The God whose purpose in creating was to enter into and facilitate loving relationships was rejected by the creatures chosen to bear his image.

The great drama of Scripture had quickly become a tragedy. Nothing would ever be the same again: a corrosive presence had entered the world and spoiled the perfection of creation. The rest of the biblical drama follows the disastrous consequences of sin's arrival and God's costly plans to resolve the crisis through Jesus.We cannot blame this on Adam and Eve alone, as the Bible is clear that every human being apart from Jesus has made the same choice. As Paul puts it, 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23).

Christians have usually seen this tragedy in terms of the broken relationship between God and humanity, and rightly so. Nevertheless, its results are far wider than this. Yes, humanity falls from grace, goodness and intimacy with God. However, it is not only about one broken relationship, but about how all the good relationships that God created have been spoiled.

... there are three main actors in the drama of creation: God, humanity and the rest of creation. We can picture the relationships as a triangle ... As human beings, we have a relationship both with God and with the rest of creation. In addition, creation itself has a relationship with God, as we saw earlier. When human beings turn against God, this not only breaks the relationship with God, but also affects the other sides of the triangle. When climbers are harnessed together by a single rope, the fall of one pulls the rope and inevitably affects all the other climbers. When the knitter of a complex pattern makes a single error, the whole item may need to be unravelled. The very relational, interdependent nature of creation means that one broken relationship affects all the others.

Because human beings turned against God's good plans, the broken relationships are seen in at least four directions, spelt out in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible:

* between God and humanity
* between human beings
* between humanity and the natural environment
* between God and his creation

Often, Christians only concentrate on the first of these broken relationships. We are thrown out of God's presence and no longer have a relationship of closeness and intimacy. From God's perspective, we, the creatures he made in his image to relate to him, are now cut off and in rebellion against him.

Yet, the impact of the fall goes further, as a damaging rift immediately opens up between the first two human beings. ...

Customer Reviews

What every Christian needs to know about environmentally responsible living
It seems rather strange to me that there hasn't been a simple introductory book on Christianity and the environment. It seems a remarkable oversight. Or perhaps there are some, and I've failed to find them. Either way, there is one now.

Planetwise deals with that recurring question of whether or not Christians should be concerned with the environment - and if they should, how should they live in response? The author's answer is an adamant yes, caring for the earth is not just an intrinsic part of the Christian faith, but right at the heart of what it is to be human.

Following a pattern of creation, fall, and redemption, Planetwise shows how the Christian message is good news for the whole planet, how God's promises include the earth itself, and where we have sold Jesus' message short with a narrow perspective of soul-saving and future heaven.

In response, Bookless calls Christians to incorporate good environmental stewardship into their discipleship, worship, and mission. That involves lifestyle change. "Can you spot Christians by the cars they drive," he asks, "the contents of their shopping trolleys or the amount of waste they send to landfill?" Perhaps one day we will, and we'll be a little closer to meaning what we say when we pray "your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

I Dare
I have read tis book at least twice. The first time was very quick because I could not put it down. The second not only to think about what I had just read but also trying to put them into practice. This is not just an easy to comprehend book, but also offers suggestions on how to put the principles into practice. I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who seeks to put care for creation into their lifestyle

A (mostly) persuasive rationale for Christian environmental action
Christians will find this short exposition of a rationale for Christian environmental concern both welcome and possibly a little frustrating. Among its strengths: a careful theological underpinning for the practical environmental concern that author Dave Bookless advocates; and a very proper attention to the impact that a creation-care perspective should have on worship and mission (unusual), as well as on discipleship and lifestyle, with some detailed agendas for action in each area.

But the theology is a bit uneven: it's very good on how hoping for a completely new earth to replace this worn-out one may well be a pious (and dangerous) illusion; but I felt it short-changed the reader on some really big issues in the area where science and theology don't really mesh - such as how predation can be a sign of the Fall when it's clearly been a part of life for far longer than humanity has. In this respect, the book could perhaps have done with importing some non-Western Christian perspectives - for example, Eastern orthodoxy's stress on the creation as still capable of reflecting God to humanity and drawing it upwards. Despite these quibbles, though, I'd still rate it as worthwhile reading for people of faith looking for inspiration to act on climate change.