When Civilization Forgets Genesis: The Moral Chaos of Rejecting the Creation Order
Rejecting the God-given distinction between man and beast does not produce greater compassion. It produces greater barbarism.
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by Jason Mills
July 26, 2026
There are ideas so absurd they once belonged safely in satire.
Imagine telling your grandfather — a man who hunted, farmed, and fed his family from the land — that one day a political movement would treat killing animals for food as moral barbarism. Explain that raising livestock, fishing in rivers, and harvesting game in season would be criminalized.
He would not debate you. He would laugh. And yet here we are.
Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28 (IP-28) moved in precisely this direction, redefining animal abuse in ways that would effectively criminalize hunting, fishing, slaughter for food, and ordinary animal husbandry. Beneath the policy language is a deeper claim: that man possesses no unique moral authority over animals. The petition nearly gained enough signatures to place it on the November ballot.
That is not reform. That is confusion, codified.
Many Christians instinctively recognize this as madness. But fewer understand why it is madness. The answer begins in Genesis. Not Genesis as mythology. Not Genesis as “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Genesis, which describes our world — the world beneath our feet, the world after judgment, the world God preserved after the flood.
If we misunderstand Genesis, we will misunderstand reality itself.
Civilizations that reject God’s order do not become enlightened — they become inverted. And when that confusion hardens into law, societies eventually find themselves writing legislation against creation, reason, and the grain of reality itself.
The Foundation of Civilization
The story of civilization after judgment begins in an unexpected place: an altar. After the flood, when Noah steps off the ark, he does not build infrastructure, draft policy, or organize society. He first builds an altar, then he worships (Genesis 8:20–21). That is not a decorative detail. It is a civilizational order. Culture rises from worship. And every society has an altar. The only question is what — or who — is on it.
Modern Oregon is not neutral. Neutrality is a myth people tell themselves while switching gods. It has merely exchanged altars — like a river attempting to run uphill against the grain of creation. The worship of God has been replaced with the worship of self, desire, autonomy, and emotional sentimentality.
And once self becomes god, confusion is not a possibility — it is guaranteed.
Male and female become negotiable. Children become burdens. Marriage becomes optional. Truth becomes subjective. And eventually, even mankind and animals are forced into the same moral category.
When God is removed from the center, reality does not disappear. It collapses.
This is where movements like IP-28 come from. The issue is not ultimately animal welfare. The issue is worship. Worship determines how a civilization understands the created order.
Dominion: What God Actually Said
After the flood, God renews humanity’s original mission. The world had been judged, but mankind’s purpose had not been canceled. God actually reasserts it.
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1).
He also gives mankind a gift:
“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:3).
These verses are deeply inconvenient for those who reject created order. God does not apologize for meat. In fact, He authorizes it — explicitly, publicly, and covenantally. This is not a strange Old Testament exception tucked into ceremonial law. This command comes within the Noahic covenant — the covenant governing ordinary human civilization after the flood. In other words, it governs our world.
This means hunting is not barbarism. Fishing is not oppression. Ranching is not exploitation. Animal husbandry is not moral evil. A father teaching his son to hunt is not rebelling against creation order: he is participating in it. God gave animals into humanity’s hands, not for cruelty but for stewardship, nourishment, cultivation, and dominion.
The word “dominion” makes modern people nervous. Largely because we no longer know what it means. Biblical dominion is stewardship under authority. We steward as vice-regents under God (Genesis 1:26–28; Psalm 8:4–8). We cultivate fields, raise livestock, preserve habitats, restrain predators, harvest responsibly, and exercise wisdom in the use of created things.
Man does not own the world: God does. We govern it under God.
But governance is real. And hierarchy is unavoidable: God above man, man above animals.
Erase that structure, and you do not get compassion. You get chaos disguised as virtue. And that is exactly what is unfolding.
You may love your Labrador (indeed, you should), but your Labrador is not your covenant child. A deer is not your moral equal. A chicken is not your cousin. Animals matter because God made them. But human beings are uniquely sacred because God imprinted them with His image.
When a society begins confusing those categories, civilization does not become compassionate; it begins malfunctioning. Before long, we find ourselves governed by architects of managed absurdity: a moral vision that mourns chickens more than children, elevates sentiment above stewardship, and slowly teaches society to forget what humans, families, and creation are actually for.
The Great Inversion
Today’s moral inversion is breathtaking. Endangered owls are mourned while unborn babies are destroyed. The killing of livestock is vilified while physician-assisted suicide is celebrated. Pets are anthropomorphized while confused adolescents are sterilized in the name of compassion.
A civilization that cries harder over chickens than children has not become more loving. It has become morally lost.
Anti-Genesis activists routinely grant greater emotional urgency to animal suffering than to abortion. This contradiction is so glaring that it will blind anyone willing to look at it honestly. The same political coalitions horrified by fishing hooks also defend the dismemberment of unborn babies as “healthcare.” The same culture demanding legal protections for animals celebrates gender ideology that denies the created distinction between male and female (Genesis 1:27; c.f. Matthew 19:4).
The Bible consistently maintains distinctions. So does natural law. So does ordinary human experience. And, until very recently, so did anyone with functioning eyeballs. From the opening pages of Genesis, reality is ordered through distinctions: Light from darkness, land from sea, male from female, mankind from animals, order from chaos. Creation flourishes precisely because categories remain intact. Chaos begins when categories collapse.
But reality is a stubborn thing. A society may reject God and His design, but it cannot escape it. Eventually, consequences arrive. Once civilization forgets God, it will eventually forget what humans are, what families are, what justice is, what food is, and what animals are for.
The problem with IP-28 is not merely that it would have devastated hunters, ranchers, farmers, and ordinary families (that’s bad enough). The deeper problem is what it reveals. It reveals a civilization increasingly alienated from God and reality itself.
Rebuilding
After judgment, Noah stepped into a broken world. The flood had ended, but sin had not. The ground still resisted his labor. Human hearts remained unchanged. And yet God still spoke with clarity: Build.
The order God gives is not optional — it is the architecture of any restored civilization (Genesis 8:20-9:7): Worship first, then ordered life, then family, then dominion, then justice.
That blueprint has not changed since the days of Noah.
The answer to civilizational confusion is not retreat. It is faithful obedience. Raise children who love truth. Teach them to worship Christ. Build households that do not bend to age. Plant churches that refuse to compromise. Build businesses that serve rather than exploit. Steward land. Raise livestock responsibly. Teach sons to hunt. Teach daughters wisdom. Support honest labor. Pursue justice that is not selective.
Live like reality is real. Because it is. Live under Christ’s authority in ordinary ways. Be faithful in a world that is forgetting what faithfulness even looks like. Christians must remember that the hard soil is still God’s field. Oregon is hard soil indeed — but it is still the King’s possession. Christ has not surrendered His world to decay, nor has He abandoned His people.
Our hope rests in the fact that the greater Noah has already come. Jesus Christ did not merely step into a storm — He stepped into judgment itself. Where Adam failed, Christ obeyed. Where Noah stumbled, Christ ruled perfectly. He exercised dominion without sin, authority without cruelty, and truth without compromise. And now He gathers His people for worship, then sends them back into the world as builders —faithful stewards of a restored creation under His lordship.
So worship Christ on Sunday. Then return to your homes, businesses, farms, schools, churches, and neighborhoods carrying His light into all the hard places.
The answer to confusion is not despair; it is presence — faithful, unflinching, Christian presence.
Hard soil is still God’s field. So plant truth anyway. Raise families anyway. Run for public office if needed. Hunt honestly. Farm gratefully. Worship without apology.
And refuse to forget this: Christ still rules the world that modern man is trying so hard to unmake.
— Jason Mills serves as a pastor at Foundation Bible Church in Boring, Oregon. This essay originally appeared at TruthScript, which you should follow.
Ah, the refreshing return of aspiring to a life filled with eternal purpose. By sharing true doctrine contrasted by secular philosophy, you offered a map with bearings and Jesus Christ as our compass. Thanks for starting my week out on the right path.