The Dominion Project is an effort to network and collaborate among Christians who believe that rightly exercising dominion on the earth requires honoring God’s original design.
Restoration vs. Replacement
Many Christians today seem to operate under the assumption that exercising dominion means that whatever we can make or do is good; the world is broken due to sin, so everything man accomplishes is restoration.
But restoration isn’t just building whatever we want. Restoration is rebuilding the original in a manner that brings it back to its former glory.
When old buildings are deteriorating, there are two main approaches to fixing them. One is to simply “do what works.” Builders using this approach often aim for the cheapest and fastest options, maybe throwing in laminate floors and particleboard cabinets, and even replacing the historical aesthetic with a new, modern one.
Historic reconstruction is different. Restorers start by identifying the original builder’s vision. Then they lovingly and carefully repair and rebuild with materials and workmanship intended to honor that design and merge with it seamlessly. It often takes longer and carries a greater expense, but it prioritizes the intent of the original master designer/builder, rather than that of the restorer.
We live in a culture where the vision of the Master Designer and Builder is being set aside in favor of the aspirations of man, so pervasively that we often don’t even notice it. We’ve grown to value artificial substitutes more than the originals they replace, as if cheap plastic flooring were superior to polished hardwood.
Most of us have accepted these substitutes as not only good, but better than the real thing, without even thinking about the implications of what we’re accepting. It’s what we’re told, and so we believe it — we don’t question it.
Honoring the Design
The purpose of The Dominion Project is to acknowledge that God’s design is good, and it should not be lightly set aside or displaced by inferior substitutes. Human activity and creation is not inherently bad, but should be carried out thoughtfully, with consideration for whether it merges seamlessly with and supports and restores God’s design, or whether it sets up man in a lofty position.
Some examples of common ways and areas in which man’s creations or methods are treated as superior include:
- Institutional education, as a replacement for organic, community-based learning
- Vaccine-induced immunity, as a replacement for naturally-acquired immunity
- Individualism, as a replacement for the central role of family & community
- Genetic modification, as a replacement for honoring the natural balance of the ecosystem
- Numerous plastics & industrial chemicals, without regard for their impact on human & environmental health
- Baby formula in bottles, as a substitute for mothers’ milk from the breast
- Processed & synthesized foods, as a substitute for whole, natural foods
- Heavily-segregated churches, as a substitute for whole-community worship
(Note that many of these things may not be inherently wrong. Some things only become wrong when out of balance or decontextualized, so that they’re treated as superior, in themselves, to God’s original design.)