Recently my church has been studying the opening chapters of Genesis, and although the focus was on male and female relationships, I couldn’t help noticing again the commands to fill the earth and subdue it (Gen. 1: 28) and to work the garden and care for it (Gen. 2: 15).
Taken together, this has given humanity a cultural mandate to develop society, using the resources provided by the earth, but also a creation-care mandate, to nurture the earth that provides our God-given home.
So, later in Genesis 4, we find that people start building cities, raising livestock, playing music and working metal. As a town planner I’m more interested in building cities than raising livestock. You could argue about whether cities are a good thing or not and whether, had it not been for the effects of Adam’s sin, we’d still be living in a garden. Yet given the heavenly-city imagery of Revelation 21 I’m inclined to think that cities are not intrinsically bad, and at the very least are capable of redemption. As someone once said, the Bible starts in a garden and ends in a garden city.
