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This morning Vogue magazine, guest edited by the Duchess of Sussex, is hitting the newsstands with a series of articles that reflect her concerns and those of Prince Harry. Among the articles is an interview cum conversation that the prince conducted with the primatologist Jane Goodall. In the piece she warns that if people can’t learn to live in harmony with the natural world, problems such as global warming will get worse. Prince Harry comments that he’s always thought that the natural world is borrowed and we need to leave something behind for the next generations. The idea that we have borrowed the planet is a new one for me. In Christian theology, creation is perceived as lovingly given to us by God. And it’s certainly a gift beyond compare, whether we think of waterfalls and mountains, or animals that Jane Goodall has studied and fought to save. The notion that God lovingly gave us creation – what theologians call God’s gratuity – is also bound up with the belief that it was given to us unconditionally. But the problem with a gift freely given is that it can be squandered and taken for granted. I was struck by the American theologian John Caputo’s description of creation as a beautiful risk. And creation does indeed seem a risky business given what humanity has done to it. That has been caused in part by attitudes shaped by biblical ideas about our role in creation. On Monday night at the Proms I listened to 200 young people sing Haydn’s Creation, based on the Book of Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost, and their words included the description of man as the Lord and King of nature, made in the image of his God. Except humanity hasn’t acted as in the image of God. As Haydn’s oratorio put it, man’s been led astray by his false conceit. The idea of us being the Lords of nature has caused us to arrogantly try and dominate rather than live in harmony with the planet as Jane Goodall has urged. Perhaps Prince Harry’s idea that we have borrowed the planet might be helpful. If something is borrowed, there is an obligation on the part of the borrower to care responsibly for what has been leant and hand it back in good condition. Or it might be worth rethinking our attitude to gifts. A start would be remembering what parents teach children about gifts – that they require thankfulness and appreciation. A mature response to a gift is to cherish it. In the Genesis stories, creation is the moment when God produced order from chaos. Unless humanity fully appreciates that creation, it could be returned to chaos once again.