The Witness to Environmental Value Orientation

Every time you walk past a polluted river, tend a garden, argue about environmental policy, or admire a mountain sunrise, you are expressing something profound about your deepest values—and, whether you realize it or not, about your theology. The way you relate to the natural world is not a peripheral lifestyle preference. It is a window into your soul, a reflection of your worldview, and, for followers of Jesus, a dimension of your participation in God’s mission to reconcile all things to himself.

This post draws on the Perspectiva Value Orientation framework developed at Missional International (Watke, 2025), which is rooted in the groundbreaking cross-cultural research of Florence Kluckhohn and Frederick Strodtbeck (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961). Their Values Orientation Theory proposes that every human society must answer a limited number of universal questions about existence, and that different cultures resolve those questions in recognizably different—but not unlimited—ways (Hills, 2002). One of those universal questions is profoundly relevant to every person alive today: What is the proper human relationship to the natural world?

The three primary value orientations to this question are: (1) humans are subordinate to nature, (2) humans should live in harmony with nature, and (3) humans are dominant over nature (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Hills, 2002; Watke, 2025). Every individual—and every culture—holds a preference among these options. That preference shapes not only behaviors but also the conversations people have, the objections they raise, and the longings they carry. For the individual participating in conversational witness—engaging neighbors, colleagues, and friends with the good news of God’s kingdom—understanding these orientations is not merely an academic exercise. It is a missional necessity.

 

Why Your View of Creation Is a Missional Issue

Before exploring each value orientation, it is worth pausing to ask: why does any of this matter for Christian witness? The answer lies in the very nature of the God who sends us. The Missio Dei—God’s own redemptive mission in the world—is not merely the rescue of human souls from an otherwise condemned creation (Wright, 2006). It is the restoration of all things. Paul’s sweeping declaration in Colossians 1:19–20 describes the scope of Christ’s reconciling work as extending to “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” Romans 8:19–22 speaks of creation itself “groaning as in the pains of childbirth,” awaiting the freedom that comes when God’s children are revealed. The Revelation closes not with disembodied spirits floating in a spiritual ether, but with a renewed heaven and earth, a garden-city, and the tree of life bearing fruit for the healing of the nations (Revelation 21–22; Beale, 2004; Wright, N. T., 2008).

Creation care, then, is not a secondary concern for the environmentally inclined. As the 2010 Lausanne Cape Town Commitment declared, “Creation care is thus a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ” (Lausanne Movement, 2010). To proclaim “Jesus is Lord” is to proclaim Lordship over the whole created order, not merely the interior lives of human beings. This means that the way you relate to the natural world—how you speak of it, act toward it, and feel about it—already communicates something about what you believe about God, humanity, and the future. Your environmental value orientation is already a form of witness, whether intentional or not.

Equally important, the people you encounter in everyday life are already holding environmental value orientations of their own. The climate activist in your neighborhood, the farmer who sees himself as master of the land, and the Indigenous colleague who speaks of the earth as alive with sacred presence—each is expressing a deeply held belief about reality (Hiebert, 2008). Conversational witness requires meeting people within their actual worldview rather than assuming they already share yours. Understanding the three environmental value orientations gives you the capacity to enter those conversations with biblical depth, genuine respect, and the kind of questions that open rather than close (Vanhoozer, Anderson, & Sleasman, 2007).

 

Orientation One: Humans Are Subordinate to Nature

Some individuals and cultures hold the conviction that human beings are fundamentally embedded within natural systems that are larger, older, and more powerful than human civilization. This subordination orientation tends to view ecological crisis as the result of human arrogance and sees moral healing as requiring a return to humility before the natural order. Many Indigenous cosmologies, certain strands of deep ecology (Devall & Sessions, 1985), and growing numbers of urban environmentalists hold some version of this orientation (Hiebert, 2008).

The Bible is not silent here. In Job 38–41, God speaks from the whirlwind and catalogues the vast systems of creation that operate entirely beyond human knowledge or control—weather, stars, wild animals—humbling Job’s assumptions and revealing creaturely finitude before cosmic complexity. Psalm 8 opens with the question “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4, NIV), marveling at human smallness before the scale of the heavens. Ecclesiastes 1:4–11 observes that generations pass while the earth endures forever, pressing the reader toward humility about human permanence. Even Jonah’s story positions the sea, the storm, and the great fish as agents of divine discipline operating beyond Jonah’s control.

There is genuine theological truth in the subordination orientation. Christian anthropology affirms that humans are creatures, not creators—sharing ontological continuity with the rest of the created order in dependence on God (Moo & Moo, 2018). The desire to transcend creaturely limits is, in fact, the very structure of the Fall. In Genesis 3:5, the temptation was to become “like God,” grasping at what belongs to the Creator alone. Acknowledging creaturely limits, then, is not a surrender to secular environmentalism. It is faithfulness to a theological category that Christian witness has always held.

At the same time, the subordination orientation in its unredeemed form cannot ground itself. If humans are merely part of nature, on what basis is the destruction of nature morally wrong? Moral obligation toward creation requires a transcendent grounding that naturalism cannot supply. This is precisely where individual witness becomes powerful: you can genuinely affirm the truth of creaturely humility while redirecting it toward its only coherent foundation—a Creator who values what he has made, who declares the natural order “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and who holds human beings accountable not as autonomous sovereigns but as responsible stewards answerable to him (DeWitt, 2007; Brown & Fileta, 2014).

In conversation, this might sound like: “You clearly sense that there is something sacred about the natural world—where does that sense of the sacred come from if nature itself is all there is? The Christian tradition has a deep account of ecological humility. Have you ever encountered the doctrine of creatureliness?” The goal is not to win an argument but to open a door—to show that the deepest intuitions of the subordination orientation find their true home within a theology of creation, fall, and redemption.

 

Orientation Two: Humans Should Live in Harmony with Nature

Perhaps the most widely shared environmental value orientation in contemporary Western and majority-world culture is the harmony orientation. People who hold this view believe that humans and the natural world are intended to exist in a relationship of reciprocal balance—that sustainable practices, ecological awareness, and right relationship with the earth are both morally necessary and practically achievable. This orientation appears across Indigenous cultures, Asian cosmologies, African communal worldviews, and the global sustainability movement (Hiebert, 2008).

The biblical resonance here is rich and immediate. Genesis 2:15 describes the human vocation in Eden as abad (to serve or till) and shamar (to keep or guard)—an active, reciprocal stewardship that is neither passive submission nor exploitative dominance but a cultivating, protecting partnership (Moo & Moo, 2018; DeWitt, 2007). Leviticus 25 embeds rhythmic restoration into Israel’s entire agricultural and social order: every seventh year, the land itself receives a sabbath rest (“the land shall have a sabbath to the LORD,” Leviticus 25:4, NASB). Proverbs 12:10 grounds care for the animal world in the character of the righteous: a good person “knows the needs of their animals.” And in Romans 8:19–22, Paul depicts creation not as a passive stage for human drama but as a co-participant in the eschatological story—groaning with humanity, awaiting redemption together.

The biblical concept that most fully expresses this orientation is shalom. Often translated as “peace,” shalom is better understood as comprehensive flourishing—the right-ordering of all relationships: human to God, human to human, and human to the natural order (Wright, 2006; Wolterstorff, 1983). The creation account’s culminating declaration that everything God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) reflects this integrated vision of harmonious order. Systematic theology also grounds harmony in Christology: Colossians 1:19–20 describes Christ as reconciling “all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross”—cosmic reconciliation, not merely individual salvation.

This is also the orientation that the Lausanne Movement’s Cape Town Commitment most directly addressed, declaring that “integral mission means discerning, proclaiming, and living out the biblical truth that the gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation” (Lausanne Movement, 2010). The individual who witnesses from within the harmony orientation is not adding creation care to the gospel—they are witnessing to the full scope of what the gospel has always promised.

But the harmony orientation in its secular form faces a persistent problem: harmony is perpetually disrupted by human self-interest. Every sincere attempt to build sustainable communities, reform food systems, or restore ecosystems runs into the intractable reality of human greed, short-sightedness, and conflict. A harmony vision without a theology of sin and redemption cannot account for why harmony is so difficult to achieve and so easily destroyed. This is where individual witness opens something profound: the gospel not only agrees that harmony is the goal—it provides the diagnosis of why we keep failing, and the only power capable of actually restoring it.

In conversation: “Your conviction that we should live in harmony with nature—where does that deep intuition come from? The biblical narrative actually begins with that very vision. And it goes further than sustainability promises to secure: it speaks of a renewed creation, a transformation that makes permanent what our best efforts can only temporarily achieve. Does your framework have an equivalent vision of ultimate, secured harmony?”

 

Orientation Three: Humans Are Dominant Over Nature

The dominant orientation holds that human beings are qualitatively distinct from the rest of the natural order and possess unique rational, moral, and creative capacities that ground their authority to manage, develop, and transform the natural world. People who hold this orientation tend to view human ingenuity, technological progress, and cultural development as broadly positive forces. This orientation has deep roots in Western modernity and is often—though not always fairly—associated with the biblical dominion texts.

The biblical grounding for this orientation is real and should not be minimized. Genesis 1:26–28 explicitly links the imago Dei—being made in the image of God—to radah (dominion) and kabash (to subdue) (Middleton, 2005). Humans are given representative authority over creation, a royal stewardship that images God’s own sovereign governance of the cosmos (Moo & Moo, 2018). Psalm 8:6–8 declares that God has placed all creation “under their feet,” crowning humanity with “glory and honor.” Even Jesus appeals to human priority in Matthew 6:26–30, arguing that if God feeds the birds and clothes the flowers, how much more will he care for human beings—establishing a clear anthropological priority within the natural order.

The cultural mandate—God’s commission to humanity to fill the earth and develop its potential—is a genuine and important theological category (Bartholomew & Goheen, 2014; Wright, 2006). Human creativity, city-building, agriculture, medicine, music, and technology are expressions of the cultural mandate, the providential unfolding of human capacities within and upon the natural order (Genesis 4:17–22). The New Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22 is a city—a cultural artifact set within a renewed creation—suggesting that human creative transformation of the natural order is not finally overcome in God’s purposes but fulfilled and purified.

Yet the dominant orientation becomes dangerous—and theologically distorted—when it severs the connection between human authority and human accountability. This is precisely what historian Lynn White Jr. identified in his widely discussed essay (White, 1967): the environmental crisis, he argued, is deeply rooted in the Western Christian tradition’s tendency to read dominion as license for exploitation. While White’s analysis was contested, his observation exposed a genuine failure in how dominion theology has often been practiced. Exploitation of creation, however, does not arise from too much biblical dominion theology—it arises from dominion theology severed from its covenantal accountability to God and neighbor.

The Hebrew radah and kabash are exercised not by an autonomous sovereign but by a vice-regent—a representative of the true King, accountable to him for how the estate is managed. When dominion becomes usurpation—when humans act as if they own what belongs to God—it represents precisely the Usurper archetype described in the Missio Dei Circumplex (Watke, 2025): seizing what belongs to God alone, treating the natural order as raw material for autonomous human projects. Individual witness to someone holding the dominant orientation does not require abandoning the genuine insight of human uniqueness. It requires grounding and directing it: “If dominion over nature is legitimate, to whom are we accountable for how we exercise it?”

 

The Witness You Already Are: Environmental Values in Everyday Conversation

Conversational witness is not a program. It is not a scheduled event, a technique, or a script. It is the overflow of a life genuinely inhabited by the gospel, flowing naturally into the conversations that ordinary life produces. This is particularly true of environmental conversations, because ecological concerns arise constantly in daily life: in the news, in weekend plans, in how we eat, travel, and consume.

The individual equipped with an understanding of environmental value orientations does not need to force a theological agenda into these conversations. They simply need to listen well enough to recognize which orientation their conversation partner holds, and then engage from within that person’s own framework. This is the apostolic pattern (Newbigin, 1989; Goheen, 2011). Paul, speaking to the Athenians in Acts 17:22–31, did not begin by condemning their worldview. He began by identifying what they were already reaching for—the unknown God—and then revealed that this unknown God had now been made known in Jesus Christ. He moved from their intuitions to the gospel’s fullness.

The person who mourns the destruction of a rainforest, who keeps a permaculture garden, who speaks of nature in almost reverential tones—this person is reaching for something real. They are sensing what the scripture calls the intrinsic dignity of creation as God’s handiwork. Psalm 19 declares that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Colossians 1:16–17 announces that all things were created by Christ and for Christ, and that in him all things hold together. The sacred intuition your neighbor carries is not wrong—it is simply orphaned. It has been separated from the only framework that can finally ground and secure it.

Similarly, the person who is passionate about sustainable agriculture, who organizes community cleanups, who argues for corporate responsibility toward ecosystems—this person is expressing the harmony orientation’s deepest impulse: that the world is meant to flourish and that human action can either contribute to or diminish that flourishing. The gospel does not contradict this. It confirms it, deepens it, and provides the one source of power capable of actually achieving it: the reconciling work of Christ and the renewing presence of the Holy Spirit.

And the person who believes in human capacity, who sees technology as the solution to environmental problems, who is suspicious of narratives that reduce humans to just another animal—this person is holding something genuinely biblical: the unique dignity and creative vocation of human beings made in the image of God. Conversational witness does not tell them they are wrong to value human creativity and development. It invites them to ask what kind of accountability should accompany that authority, and who the Creator to whom they are accountable might be.

 

Shalom as the Integrating Vision: What Only the Gospel Can Offer

One of the most remarkable features of the Christian worldview is that it does not force a choice among the three environmental value orientations. It integrates them within a coherent theological narrative: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.

The subordination orientation’s insight—that humans are creatures, not creators, embedded in a natural order that exceeds them—is fully affirmed. The Bible does not endorse the arrogance of anthropocentrism. Humans are finite, creaturely, dependent. They are dust who will return to dust (Genesis 3:19), and this is not a curse to be overcome but a creatureliness to be embraced with gratitude.

The harmony orientation’s vision—that the world is meant to flourish in integrated wholeness, that right relationships between humans and the natural order are both possible and morally required—is also fully affirmed. The shalom of Eden is the original condition, the eschatological goal, and the present responsibility of everyone who has been reconciled to God through Christ. Creation’s groaning (Romans 8:22) is heard and answered, not dismissed.

And the dominant orientation’s recognition of human uniqueness—that the imago Dei sets human beings apart, that human creativity and governance of creation are not impostures but vocation—is also fully affirmed. The cultural mandate is not abolished by the Fall but reoriented (Bartholomew & Goheen, 2014): now exercised under the Lordship of Christ, accountable to the one who said “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1, NIV).

This integrating coherence is the distinctive apologetic advantage of the gospel in environmental conversations. No secular environmental philosophy can simultaneously affirm human uniqueness (dominant), call for human humility (subordinate), and ground a vision of comprehensive flourishing (harmony) within a single coherent account of reality. The biblical worldview does exactly this, because it grounds all three in the character and purposes of the triune Creator—the one who made the world, who entered it in the incarnation, who is restoring it through the cross and resurrection, and who will complete its renewal in the new creation.

 

Living the Witness: Practical Postures for Environmental Conversations

Understanding value orientations is not enough. The goal is to inhabit this understanding so naturally that it shapes your listening, your questions, and your responses in real conversations. Here are some practical postures for living out this witness.

Listen for the orientation before you speak. When someone expresses an environmental conviction—whether about climate change, land use, wildlife, or consumption—resist the impulse to immediately evaluate or correct. Instead, ask yourself: is this person expressing subordination (humans have gone too far), harmony (we need to find balance), or dominance (humans can and should manage this)? The answer will shape what kind of response will be most fruitful.

Affirm before you redirect. Each orientation contains genuine insight. The subordination orientation’s ecological humility is not merely a secular environmentalism to be debunked—it resonates with deep biblical truth about creatureliness. The harmony orientation’s vision of shalom is not a pagan ideal to be corrected—it is the Bible’s own original and ultimate vision. The dominant orientation’s conviction about human uniqueness is not arrogance to be deflated—it reflects the genuine dignity of the imago Dei. Affirming what is true and good in someone’s orientation builds the relational trust necessary for deeper conversation.

Ask questions that reveal presuppositions. The most powerful conversational moves in environmental witness are not declarations but questions—questions that gently surface the assumptions beneath the surface orientation. “Where does your sense of the sacred in nature come from?” “What accounts for why harmony is so difficult to sustain?” “To whom are human beings accountable for how they exercise their authority over the earth?” These questions do not create conflict. They create depth—and depth creates space for the gospel.
Let your own life be a form of witness. Individual witness is not only verbal. The way you care for your own space, consume resources, advocate for justice in land use, and speak about the natural world with reverence or indifference already communicates your deepest beliefs. A Christian who speaks of creation as sacred, who tends a garden with love, who refuses the “toxic idolatry of consumerism” described in the Cape Town Commitment (Lausanne Movement, 2010)—this person is already engaged in environmental witness before they say a word.

Offer the eschatological horizon. Perhaps the most distinctive contribution the gospel makes to environmental conversations is the future. Every secular environmental vision—whether subordination, harmony, or dominance—must ultimately reckon with entropy, extinction, and cosmological dissolution. The universe is cooling. Species are dying. Rivers are drying up. On purely naturalistic terms, the best that any environmental ethic can offer is a delay. The gospel offers something categorically different: a new creation (Wright, N. T., 2008). Not the preservation of what exists, but the renewal and transformation of the whole. The God who raised Jesus from the dead will raise the creation from its groaning. This is the hope that secular environmentalism cannot manufacture, and it is the witness that only the follower of Jesus can authentically offer.

 

Conclusion: You Are Already in God’s Environmental Mission

You do not need a program, a platform, or a position to participate in God’s mission through environmental witness. You need a biblically formed understanding of your own relationship to creation, a genuine curiosity about the environmental values of the people around you, and the willingness to let the gospel’s full scope—cosmic as well as personal—shape the conversations your life naturally produces.

The person subordinated before the majesty of the natural world is sensing something true—and you can tell them where that sense of the sacred ultimately leads. The person yearning for harmony and flourishing is echoing the Bible’s own original vision—and you can show them that vision in its fullness. The person confident in human creative authority over the natural order is reflecting a real dignity—and you can invite them to discover the accountability that makes that dignity responsible rather than destructive.

The triune Creator’s purposes were always cosmically integrative. From Genesis to Revelation, the story Scripture tells is not the story of God rescuing souls from a burning world. It is the story of God restoring all things—remaking the heavens and the earth, reconciling what was fractured, fulfilling what was only previewed in Eden. Every human intuition about the proper relationship to the natural world is, at its best, a fragment of the comprehensive vision of shalom that this story unfolds. Your role in God’s mission is to hold the whole story—and to tell it, one conversation at a time.

 

Sources and Further Reading

• Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014.
• Beale, G. K. The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
• Bookless, Dave. Planetwise: Dare to Care for God’s World. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.
• Bouma-Prediger, Steven. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
• Brown, Edward R., and Jason Fileta, eds. Creation Care and the Gospel: Reconsidering the Mission of the Church. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2014.
• DeWitt, Calvin B. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Faith Alive, 2007.
• Devall, Bill, and George Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985.
• Goheen, Michael W. A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
• Hiebert, Paul G. Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.
• Hills, Michael D. “Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s Values Orientation Theory.” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 4, no. 4 (2002). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1040.
• Kluckhohn, Florence R., and Frederick L. Strodtbeck. Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, IL: Row Peterson, 1961.
• Lausanne Movement. “The Cape Town Commitment.” Lausanne III, Cape Town, October 2010. https://lausanne.org/statement/ctcommitment.
• Lausanne Movement. “Creation Care as Mission.” Lausanne Sustainable Cities Initiative. https://lausanne.org/report/sustainable/creation-care.
• Moo, Douglas J., and Jonathan A. Moo. Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World. Biblical Theology for Life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018.
• Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005.
• Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
• Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity. 6th ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015.
• Vanhoozer, Kevin J., Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman, eds. Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
• Watke, Curt. “Environmental Value Orientation: Componential Analysis.” Perspectiva Worldview Research Series. North Augusta, SC: Missional International, 2025.
• White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Science 155, no. 3767 (March 1967): 1203–1207.
• Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.
• Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
• Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.