Calling A Spade "A Spade"

According to everything I hear and see these days regarding the state of our planet, Human beings are dirty rotten unnatural things who accidentally got into a position of dominance and are in grave danger of destroying everything if we don't exercise a little caution.

This seems to me to be a profound case of conceited false humility. We act like we're the worst affliction to scurge the face of the planet even though God created us to be here; and then we have the guts to think we have the power to destroy what we couldn't create.

My thought for today: it's time for a big, loud announcemnt. THE WORLD IS GOING TO END, EVERYBODY!

There. That's done. How 'bout quitting the speculation on hows and whys and get on with having a nice cup of hot chocolate and enjoying the snowy day outside? We might as well get used to the notion and move on. If Earth is going to burn up tomorrow, we'll hopefully get a chance to see what the new Earth's like. And in the meantime, it's nicer to enjoy the snow without making dire predictions about how in ten years there won't be any!

To listen to most folks talking or writing today, between Global Warming and irresponsible overpopulation we're on the verge of making ourselves extinct. Al Gore went on record a few weeks ago saying the world is going to implode in ten years from the force of out-of-control gobal warming caused, of course, by us dirty rotten non-Kyoto-compliant polluters.

What's worse, there's a fair-sized Evangelical Christian contingent in the country who is going along with this whole idea. While I can understand this kind of circular thinking and ridiculous theory spouting from people who don't believe in God (and therefore don't believe we were created for any person but sort of sprang up from under a mushroom by accident), it's clear to me that there isn't anything we're going to do that's going to cause the world to come to a fiery end...unless, of course, God destroys the world and we're too busy looking at the apparent causes and think we did it.

Now, it is a fact that Global Warming has a pretty prominant position in the end of the Earth as we know it.

Rev 16:8-98
The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.(NIV)

And this is interesting too:

Rev 11:16-1816

And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great-- and for destroying those who destroy the earth."(NIV)

The point is, the world is going to come to an end. That much is inevitable. But not until God commands it, and not until it's the right time. It's the right thing to do to exercise good management of the task God gave us when he told us to fill the Earth and subdue it, but this attitude that we somehow have the power to hold back the destruction of the Earth is pretty disturbing. It's going to end, it's going to end soon, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

As is the notion that Human beings are somehow the lowest, most unnatural, and most despicable things in Creation. God made us, and he made us to live here; and out of all the beautiful things he made, none of them but us are made in his image: the most beautiful thing of all. Running ourselves down as nothing but low-down curs out to ruin lovely Nature is a denial of our responsibility and of the God who made us to be like him.

We are the culmination of God's creation. And if that makes me uncomfortable to write, it's because I'm influenced just as much as anyone to believe in the image of Human beings as dirty rotten polluters bent on destroying everything we touch.

We're dirty and rotten in lots of ways; but that's not because God created us to be that way and it doesn't mean we should always run ourselves down as the lowest species to walk the Earth because we have intelligence and don't live like animals. We should at least believe we're capable of being what God created us to be and not act like he didn't know what he was doing when he made us!

Yes, we are usually irresponsible and careless of our duty to take care of the resources we were given. But I'm disgusted with the constant portrayal of humanity as the bad guys bent on destroying poor innocent lovely Earth. It's a cop-out and it's pure denial of God in it's basest form by denying he has the power either to create - since we all got here by evolutionary accident - or to preserve, since we humans can stop the end of the world God has in mind by simply stopping all our pollution.

Bottom line: if Global Warming is really a problem, we still don't have any control over whether or not the world burns up because of it. Because the world isn't going to blow away until it's God's time, even if it looks like we're doing it. Otherwise God will have to say to John, "You know all those prophecies I told you to write down? Well, we're making a little revision because those guys down there have invented an internal combustion engine and I don't think the Earth's going to make it to the Judgement Day I had in mind."

Nope...doesn't seem too likely to me, either.