The world exists in its present stable state by the will and power of God, its Maker. This is God’s world. And since it’s God’s world, we are not its owners, free to do anything we want with it. No, we are its stewards; we answer to God for the way we handle its resources.
Moreover, since it’s God’s world, we must not belittle it. Much religion has built on the notion that the material order—reality as experienced through the body, as well as the body that experiences that reality—is evil, and accordingly, it’s to be snubbed and overlooked as far as possible.
This view dehumanizes its adherents. Sometimes it calls itself “Christian”, but actually it’s as un-Christian as can be. Why? Because matter, being created by God, was and is good in his eyes—“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). And that is exactly how we should regard it—“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).
We truly serve God by embracing, enjoying, and using temporal things with thanksgiving, with a sense of their value to him their Maker, and with a grateful sense of his generosity in giving them to us.
“It is good to give thanks to the LORD” (Ps. 92:1). But it is an ungodly, inhuman, and bogus “spirituality” that seeks to serve the Creator by scorning any part of his creation.