Coming from a conservative family and surrounded by other conservatives at church and in education I have grown up surrounded by people with very good intentions and ideas but very poor understanding of many important issues. Among them animal rights and environmental issues. And I simply don’t understand how Christians can be so ignorant in this regard. From the very beginning we are commanded by God to care for the earth and the animals on it. Indeed one of our very reasons for existence is for the purpose of caring for creation (Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”).

The Bible is full of commands regarding the ethical treatment of animals. In Exodus 23:4 we commanded to show ethical treatment to even the animals of our enemies. In Exodus 23:12 we are instructed that on Sabbath the animals must rest as well. Proverbs 12:10 says that those who care for the needs of animals are “righteous.” Yet despite commands in both the Old and New Testaments there is very little outcry from the Christian community about poaching. Neither is there an outcry about the dying bee populations or the whaling industry. Every Christian I know has an opinion on Obamacare, but very few of them have opinions about issues of animal rights or even know of the various threats many species are facing. To me that is simply appalling.

I’m not saying we have to be a bunch of hippies who smoke pot and don’t eat meat. I’m not saying that radical groups like Green Peace are the answer either, they’re not. I’m not saying we can’t cut down trees or drive cars or anything like that. We as humans need to survive as well and sometimes that means killing animals for food or cutting an area of forest. I understand that I don’t take issue with it. But that isn’t an excuse for ignorance. As Christians we should be the ones leading the charge to end poaching in Africa. To end shark finning in China. To end whale hunting in Japan. To end the introduction of foreign species into the Everglades. To end the burning of the rainforests in Malaysia.

Can we have opinions on Obamacare or the Second Amendment or Social Security? Of course! But we need to keep things in a Biblical perspective and not forget what we have been commanded by God to do. Christians should be the loudest of environmentalists.