by Ernest O'Neill
Our Creator wants us to participate willingly and joyfully in his activity throughout the universe, so he has placed us on this planet for two reasons. First, we can experience what activity without Him achieves and secondly, we can experience what activity with Him achieves. The first means working as if there's no Creator and the second means working as if the Creator is in you.
If there's no creator, then we'd better grab as much of the things here as we can so that we have enough clothes and food and shelter. This means increasing your assets as fast as you can and holding on to them as long as you can. It results in the concentration of more and more assets in the hands of fewer and fewer oligarchs. This attitude is eventually destroyed by the simple fact that the universe originated from an unselfish Creator who preserves it.
If there is a creator then our responsibility is to find out what he wants to do through us to develop it as he has planned. This results in an honest desire to develop the world's resources for the benefit of all that live in it. This leads to the productivity described in Genesis 1:28 rather than the condemnation in Genesis 3:19. The application of this to our contemporary scene is the purpose of this CBI Quarterly in the coming years.