Our Christian Role on Earth: Developing the Earth or Preaching the Gospel?

What is my role as a Christian living on this earth? This is a question that all of us, who desire to live out God’s will in our generation, deeply contemplate. It is a fitting question, born out of a desire to understand our responsibility. As people living within a numbered span of time, we must indeed reflect upon and answer this: what is the responsibility or command expected of me while I reside on this earth? In other words, is there a specific duty entrusted to me to fulfill in my lifetime? For most of us, the answer is “yes,” but we differ on what that duty actually is. In this article, we will explore these differences in how we perceive our responsibilities.

When answering the question of responsibility, we begin with our humanity. Since our understanding of being human is drawn from our first parents, Adam and Eve, we turn our gaze toward Genesis. The Book of Creation identifies the responsibility given to man as “subduing the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28). From this, we find that the human responsibility is to develop the earth. It leads us to the conclusion that our mission is to fashion the world according to God’s desire.

However, there are Christians—many of them within Evangelical circles—who do not find the idea of looking back to the beginning of creation to find our mission post-Fall very convincing. They have their arguments. These are not merely people who are uncomfortable with the idea that developing the earth is a primary human responsibility; they are those who have labeled such an understanding as “false teaching.”

How could they call a command clearly given to humanity in our Bible a “false teaching”? Let us extract their two primary reasons. The first is the claim that the command in Genesis existed before the Fall and cannot serve as a principle for those of us living after the Fall. Therefore, it is not a command applicable to us today. They argue that we are separated from the world and the conditions that existed at the beginning of creation. They further contend that we will only reconnect with that world after the Lord returns.

To strengthen the argument that the command was pre-Fall and does not apply to us now, they provide detailed points. Some say that the law to “subdue the earth” was omitted from the command given to Noah (Genesis 9). For these individuals, the only parts of the original mandate that remain for us to fulfill are multiplying and filling the earth. Others suggest that the absence of the word “subdue” in the Noahic covenant implies that the concept of dominion never meant anything more than multiplying and filling the earth in the first place.

The second reason they categorize this teaching as false stems from the fear that believing it will cause us to deviate from or lose focus on the “New Commandment” our Lord gave us. For them, the Lord’s new command is to “Preach the Gospel” (Matthew 28:19-20). Consequently, they argue that the command we must teach and obey is the new one the Lord commanded. Thus, in the time between the Fall and the Second Coming, their primary responsibility is to witness to God’s righteousness, live a life of holiness, and help people attain the knowledge of the Savior in every way possible.

It is one thing to say we should not let our focus drift from the mission of witnessing to the Gospel. However, claiming that the mission given to humanity does not concern us—based on this fear—carries several dangers. it strips us of our responsibility to rectify and fashion the things God began during the six days of creation. Just as He separated light from darkness and the dry land from the water to make our earth suitable, it prevents us from believing that we, as creatures reflecting His image, have a responsibility to make the earth suitable and better. When we believe we share the responsibility of co-laboring within creation, everyday tasks and activities that seem ordinary take on a deeply exalted and spiritual meaning. When we neglect this command as a divine mandate, many of the actions we perform become trivial in our eyes. We would perform them only because we must survive, and survival necessitates eating and drinking.

When we believe that the command given to man before the Fall is also ours, we realize that every responsibility is an exalted will of God to be performed with great reverence. Believing the Genesis mandate applies to us allows us to see ourselves as God’s representatives on earth. We see ourselves as God’s partners; our administration becomes one of stewardship. If the command in Genesis is for us, then the Garden of Eden appears to us as a mere beginning and a hint of what creation has the potential to become. We then understand our responsibility to enrich and improve as an act of cooperation with God.

Our Lord is not called the “Second Adam” without reason. He is the indicator that God’s work of restoring creation, which began at the start, continues through Him. Indeed, all things have been subjected to Him (Hebrews 2:5-9); and He has left us His footprints to follow. Therefore, preaching the Gospel and developing the earth should not be presented as opposing goals. Both should be done with the mindset and understanding of honoring and remembering the Lord. We can understand our work as the field where the Gospel we speak and proclaim bears fruit. Doing good, just like preaching the Gospel, is indeed a responsibility and a command we have received from God—one we must strive to fulfill daily. Our work, too, is a command received from God.

[1]  Given that the article was originally written in Amharic and then translated into English using AI, it’s important to be mindful of potential nuances that might have been lost in translation.