What Man Has Done To It
Microscope

Through our telescope we have scanned the heavens. Through our microscope we have peered into the tiny universe of the living cell, while other instruments reveal the inner workings of the atom. These are the extremes of large and small: the infinite and the infinitesimal - somewhere between these extremes is the 'ordinary' world of the landscape in which we live.

We are talking now about our planet, this 'mother' Earth. So let's examine more particularly the state of the world in our own age. It was perfect, once. God made it ''very good'' (Genesis 1:31), but is it still "very good" today?


Earth, the Blue Planet

The world is good: from outer space, astronauts have difficulty finding words to express the stunning beauty of our planet. Most obvious is the natural splendour of our blue planet: the vast oceans, swirling masses of cloud, snow-covered mountain ranges, lush green jungles and sandy deserts.

Closer inspection reveals evidence of man's efforts to transform the surface of the planet: the great cities he has built, and his other feats of construction, such as the Great Wall of China, canals, reservoirs, neatly planted forests, vast fields of wheat and rice.

The Earth from lunar orbit

On Earth itself, beauty surrounds us: snow-capped peaks, clear lakes and rivers, coral islands, vast rain forests, plains of grass. With his camera, man captures the colours of autumn leaves, the unique symmetry of a single snowflake, the exquisite delicacy of a bat wing, the majesty of great beasts of prey. Here is beauty at close range - and we are foolish not to see in all these things God's hand at work.

The Earth's beauty spoiled by man

Victims of famine

Sadly, there is another picture that can meet the eye: it is a picture of smoke-stacks, of shanty towns, of sewage spilling out to sea, of devastated crops and disease-ridden animals, of famished and dying children, of terror and war.

In the distant view, perfection; in the close-up, too, perfection; but the honest reporter has to include those other less than perfect scenes. What has happened to a world that was once very good? What has gone wrong?


What went wrong?

The Bible provides a number of clues. When God made man, He gave him freewill and unhappily that freewill was immediately misused: Adam and Eve, our first parents, disobeyed God's instructions. And the result, described in Genesis, is important in understanding the environmental crisis we have today:

"Cursed is the ground for your sake [said God]; in toil you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you ... in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Gen. 3:17-19

Now we must be very careful in deciding what this very early Bible passage says, and what it does not say. For a start it reminds us that looking after the earth is a big responsibility, and sometimes a painful one; it requires sweat and toil, as man has to battle with weeds (and pests and other setbacks). We cannot expect life to be one long holiday, nor was it ever promised that man would live in luxury and ease.

Even less was there any suggestion that man would live for ever. The opposite is true: he would return to dust. Man is mortal because God would not allow disobedient people to live for ever. Thousands of years after the words of Genesis were written, the apostle Paul wrote about man's mortality in the words

"The wages of sin is death"

Romans 6:23

Though it is not the subject of this booklet, we have to ask our readers to think very carefully about the fact that there is no such thing as an after-life for souls in heaven, nor any scripture which teaches that we are basically immortal. The Bible is quite clear: death is real; man can only survive it by faith in Christ - but this is the subject of a later chapter in this booklet.

Surely this early passage in Genesis also tells us that it is actually God's will that man should learn to live with toil and pain. They are not in themselves evil, and by the frustrations and trials of life, we learn to look for higher things and appreciate God's higher purpose in it all:

"The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Romans 8:20, 21

Nuclear power plant

Self-inflicted trouble

What we have described so far could be called the 'natural' decay, wastage and frustration of life as we experience it, and we must not flinch from accepting this.

Civilisations have come and gone. But added to the natural decay, there has, in recent times especially, been the damage that man quite thoughtlessly has inflicted upon himself and on the planet. Of course we deplore the rotting crops, the oil slicks, the polluted atmosphere, the terrible fate of thousands who die from hunger and disease; but who is to blame? Who caused these things?

God is not to blame; so many of man's calamities are brought about by man himself - they arise from his greed, his selfishness and aggression.


In his letter in the New Testament, James wrote about man's base nature:

"You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures."

James 4:2, 3

"Unfair!" you may say. But deep down you know it to be a true - and frightening - description of those who have misused the world in their craving for power, pleasure and profit. We may justly condemn the "scorched earth" policies of twentieth-century tyrants, who devastated the countries they conquered - and often their own as well. But in a more general and long term sense, the whole human race has been guilty of "scorched earth" policies.

Burning Oil Wells in Kuwait

Many are the environmental catastrophes which man has brought upon himself. And what about the personal catastrophes which are also often self-inflicted? We are sorry for those who suffer the effects of drug abuse, or perverted sexual practices, but (as they often admit when it is too late) they bring disaster upon themselves. AIDS is one of the most terrifying of those disasters, but it is only one of man's self-inflicted diseases. We have all come across the smoker who warns us about the dangers of his habit - but does nothing about it himself. Tragically, the innocent suffer as well.

Hypodermic syringe

What can be done about it?

Anti-nuclear protest march
Anti-nuclear protesters

So what can be done? Does it help to sign petitions? Should we march, demonstrate or protest?

Let us by every means make sure we do not ourselves add to the pollution; let us clean up where we can; let us buy from the supermarkets those products which do less damage to our environment. But in the end, we must face the fact that man, on his own, will never restore perfection to this fair planet. He may have limited success in cleaning up a few of the rivers; he may try to discourage the wilful burning of the Amazon rainforest; he may do his best to relieve famine and hardship, and find cures for the chronic diseases of mankind.

But there is no complete and lasting solution - man is not getting better, nor is the Earth getting cleaner. In fact there is good reason to believe that, left to ourselves, we are heading for environmental disaster.

Yet there is an answer, and it is the goal of this booklet to describe it. The earth will one day be once more "very good"; the environment, about which we are all so rightly concerned, will one day be cleaned up.

But it will come about in God's way, in God's time, and not man's.

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