I read an article recently that spoke about how man has become so far removed, so shut off, from nature, and how it's really a metaphor for how man has become removed and shut off from God...
Somewhere along the way, man decided he was smarter than God. What God had provided for him, wasn't good enough. His ego demanded that he kept striving for new and better inventions and technologies, and in his quest to master the world around him, and bend nature to suit his convenience, he failed to see (or maybe he just failed to care) that he was destroying the same earth upon which he relies.
Somewhere along the way man decided that all human life was not, in fact, created equal, and somehow that gave him the right to exploit his fellow man to suit his own ends, and further his own cause. Certain cultures and skin colors were somehow deemed to be more disposable, and less valuable, then others.
Somewhere along the way, man decided that the he could improve upon the food that God provided for him through nature. He had to go and genetically modify it, spray it, chemically alter it, process it, refine it, pasteurise it, homogenise it, irradiate it...and then wrap it in pretty plastic.
And then when man began to fall ill, in ways he had never fallen ill before, instead of admitting his mistake - that man-made food is not, and can never be, as healthy or nutritious as the food that God provided for us - he went and invented a heap of pills to "fix" the problem.
Could we be any more arrogant?
I cannot help but wonder: where will it all end?
How long will it take - One generation? Maybe two? - before all the native animals, the rainforests, the bees are extinct?
How long before little family farms - where land and livestock are cared for and nurtured - are extinct...gobbled up by giant corporations, whose only aim is higher and higher profits?
How long before clean water and clean air are also extinct???
How long before all cultures are extinct, except for "Western" culture?
When will we rise up and say "Enough"? Where do we draw the line that says "You go no further"?
The Native Americans have a saying: "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children."
But what is going to be left for our children, I wonder?
I hear people, confused and disillusioned, asking "How could God allow such things to happen?". The answer is that God allowed us to have free will, so the real question is: How could MAN allow it to happen?
Or even more uncomfortably....How could WE allow it to happen?
Yes. You and me.
I'll be the first to put my hand up and say that I did not make so much as a peep, when Allied forces stormed into Iraq, to save the world from all the "weapons of mass destruction", leaving a trail of chaos and uranium pollution.
I kicked up no fuss when oil spewed into the gulf of Mexico, poisoning and suffocating everything in it's path.
I made no hint of protest over covert military operations that are spraying us all with chemicals, HAARP technology that is so powerful it can manipulate the weather and worse, Aussie soldiers being killed by Taliban guns: the same guns that were supplied by the U.S themselves, during the Cold War, or the World Trade Organisation's plan to restrict vitamins and natural health products, and put them under the control of pharmaceutical companies.
I have said nothing, and done nothing, about the 120,000 women and girls who are trafficked into Western Europe every year, the 27 million slaves in the world, the 300,000 child soldiers fighting in armed conflicts, the 2 million women and girls subjected to female mutilation every year, the 300,000 prisoners of conscience rotting away in jail cells around the world, the ten languages that die out every single year, the 44 million child labourers in India, the 100 million landmines still quietly waiting below the surface for their unsuspecting victims, or the fact that Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
Or that we in the Western world consume 6 to 7 kilograms of chemical food additives every year.
I went right on with my everyday life, because the damage and destruction was not affecting me directly. Not yet, that is.
If I am truly honest with myself, I have to admit that I have failed miserably in my God-given responsibilities: To be my brother's keeper, and a caretaker of God's creation.
I'll be the first to put my hand up. I'm as guilty as the next person. But the buck stops here.
We can no longer lay the blame only on a faceless few, who walk the corridors of power, putting money above people and planet.
It's easy to blame a group of people who have no name or face, while we continue to buy the products produced by those same companies who razed the rainforests, poisoned the rivers, and paid massive amounts in celebrity endorsements, all the while exploiting sweat-shop labour...
And vote for the governments that allowed it to happen. (Remember that in a democracy, a government is supposed to serve the people - that's why they're called "public servants" - and not the other way around...).
How can we blame others, while we ourselves, insist on a lifestyle that is high in disposable income, and disposable stuff.
We are responsible, too.
I think about Jesus, and how He would NEVER have stepped aside, and allowed such atrocities and injustices to go on. I think about how he stood up for the oppressed, challenged the status quo, and taught that every soul created by God was precious and priceless, and no-one was more, or less, important than anyone else.
Can I truly profess to be a Christian, then, if I don't at least try to do something???
...but what?
That is the question.
What??
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