Ecocatastrophes, part 3

Al Gore does have quite the resume.  How many politicians can boast the vice-presidency, the Nobel prize, an Oscar, and a Grammy.  While I remember nothing remarkable about his terms as our nation's Number-Two (which isn't a bad thing), the three awards heaped upon him came as a result of "An Inconvenient Truth," a film that arguably has served as the big shove the Green Movement needed to get governments to start enacting what they deemed environmentally friendly policies (a humorous sidebar on Al Gore's science here...good thing he's not Sarah Palin!).

So here we sit at the sunset of the twenty-first century's first decade with reptiles still striking us without warning on blue-sky days in our own home towns, and the planet's leaders gather to figure out what they will do about an issue that a pretty big chunk of folks thinks has no basis in science.*  Yesterday, I jotted about how there's the pretty big God who made the whole thing (here), and it seems pretty illogical that he would let a bunch of miscreants run it into the ground.  The Bible seems to say that, too.

Still, there's a unique and God-created and God-ordained relationship between man and earth.

Man is God's Appointed Steward of the Earth

The first unique aspect of man's relationship to the earth is that God created man from the earth (Genesis 2:7).  It is not surprising then that man should get what he needs for his physical survival from the material.

Second, while man was created from the ground, he is utterly set apart from the earth and all other created things because only man was created in God's image (Genesis 1:26).  Because of what God declared as he made man, man has a positional authority over the created realm.  Likewise, it is no surprise that for spiritual sustenance, man must depend on the One who breathed into him the breath of life and not upon the material world.

Third, God gives man marching orders (Genesis 1:28).

God blessed them; and God said to them,

1. "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth..."

2. "...and subdue it..."

3. "...and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Here we see God giving man not only his innate positional authority but also a functional authority over the created realm.  God required three things of man none of which will make the environmentalist smile.

First, God required man to fill the earth.  How many folks are on the earth?  6.6 billion.  What's that work out to?  You could fit everyone on the planet into the United States (3.5 million square miles) and give them a plot of land about the size of an average yard (150' x 150') and still have space left over.  Are there overcrowded areas of the earth?  Yep.  Is the earth filled?  Nope.  Is there plenty of water?  Yep.  Do we have the technology to make inhabitable those places that have previously been deemed uninhabitable?  Yep.

We think we know better than God.  "Well, it seems we'd better stop making babies because we might chew up all of our (fill in your favorite natural resource here)."  Fill the earth seems to be throwing down the procreative gauntlet.  We just don't trust him nor do we take him seriously.

Second, God requires that man subdue the earth.  Think taming a horse or a team of oxen.  You break its wild nature and bring it under your authority to get it to do your will.  Think plowed field.  Scattering corn in the middle of a glen with associated rocks and trees will produce a meager return.  Clear the trees, remove the rocks and plow the soil and the return will be much sweeter. 

Third, God requires man to have dominion over the earth.  Man is not to coexist within nature.  Man is not to defer to a creek full of salamanders when determining whether to erect an apartment building.  He is to rule over the creation for his good and for God's glory.

Man is God's appointed steward of the earth.  It would be foolhardy to level a forest and to not replant.  At the same time, can you imagine the eco-nonsense that would surface if Gutzon Borglum lived today and wanted to carve four presidents into the side of Mount Rushmore?  He'd never get it done.  Imagine the legal gymnastics required today if you wanted to turn a mountainside into a ski resort...even if you owned the whole thing!  It's nuts.

When man rejects the position God gave him and lowers himself to the level of the rest of the created order, he rebels against God's given directives, and he soils the image of God in which he was created.  It was that image within him that caused John Merrick to cry out, "I am not an animal!  I am a man!" (The Elephant Man, 1980...great movie, btw).  Man must minister within the created realm to the glory of God, to order and lead the created realm, and to thereby provide for his existence.

So let's stop acting like jackasses.

Tomorrow, we'll wrap this thing up.