Yale student offers guidebook to caring for God’s world

NEW HAVEN — Betsy Painter has always had a love of the natural world, and when she reads her Bible, she sees God's love for the Earth throughout its pages.

In her new book, “A Christian's Guide to Planet Earth,” published by Zondervan, Painter has tried to help others who want to put their faith into action to help preserve God's creation.

“A lot of Christianity might focus on humans being saved, which is wonderful news, but as I read Scripture, I see it talk about all of creation being restored,” Painter said.

“My whole life I have been just wrestling with and thinking about how science and the natural world and heaven and God interact and relate to each other and my experience is there's typically a gap there between science and faith, which never made sense to me because I love both,” she said.

Painter, a native of Brentwood, Tenn., is a student at Yale Divinity School and also studies at the Yale School of the Environment, focusing on coastal ecosystems, the ocean and wetlands. She also has interned at A Rocha USA, a nationwide Christian community working on conservation and ecological action.

“I didn't realize how much of a scientist I was until I was at the Divinity School,” she said. “The faith side has always been a deeply personal interest that gave me a lot of joy in my study of science. It's very humbling and fun.”

Her book, with its subtitle, “Why It Matters and How to Care for It,” devotes chapters to a diverse group of topics, such as fresh water, endangered species, mountains and minerals, pollinators, the poles and global climate. Each describes the threats, presents a biblical perspective and offers people practical ways to take action.

“I wrote this book because, just from my work in the environmental sector, a lot of people feel anxious about the state of the planet and the trajectory of the planet in this time of climate change,” Painter said. “What's before us is very bleak and can bring a lot of despair, and rightly so, but I wanted to meet that with the hope of the gospel.”

When Painter reads the Bible, she sees passages that assure her that God is wants to save and restore the Earth as well as humanity. “It's what I mean by retrieving the whole picture of what happens on the cross and the resurrection,” she said. “It spans the entire cosmos if we take Scripture seriously. It's not just humanity.”

There's Colossians 1:1920: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

She sees it in the Book of Revelation: “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,' for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.'” (21:1, 3).

“Also, Romans 8 is really clutch, just about all of creation groans waiting to be liberated,” she said.

Painter, who attends St. John's Episcopal Church, said, “I've learned a lot from the Catholics and especially the Orthodox. Their theology on nature is really beautiful.”