New This Morning
New This Morning
New Thoughts on an Old Problem
June 14, 2024, 2nd pre-publish edit, July 7
Every day, we keep on filling up the trash can and putting recyclables in their container. Every week we seem to be able to fill the Garbage Tote to capacity, and at least, every other week, filling up the Recycle Tote.
Don’t you?
The nagging question is, “Where does it all go?”
Just north of here, the landfill has swollen into what could be called, “The Foothills of Niagara County.” So, that is a new geographical feature — probably able to be identified from Outer Space.
Recyclables?
All our good citizenship efforts seem to end up in Southeast Asia and eventually the Oceans. Who would have thought that such a large expanse as the Pacific could be filled with harmful items and chemicals and whatnot?
Who could have imagined that all the manufactured products that we were sold on as indispensable, and as improving our lives, would turn out to be methodically destroying those very lives?
Dump the refuse and chemical spills into the river. It has been assumed that the river will wash it all away. However, that assumption quickly turns into a presumption when we realize that that process is simply dumping our problems on someone else.
We have been indoctrinated for years by Madison Avenue advertising strategies like “We Cannot Live without Chemicals,” or check out this on the web. The pictures are simply astounding! https://www.pinterest.com/ciao_kate_/plastic-ads-1950s60s/
From manufacturing stuff, to the brief use of stuff, to the disposal of all that stuff, and please don’t ignore this or minimize it, we are destroying the very place we live — the only place we can live.
Climate Change? …When we were born, it was practically undetectable. Now, we see the results in Climate Change around the entire Earth. We are being warned by Science that if we don’t make radical changes, we will have nowhere to go to survive.
Don’t believe it? Are we too busy to be bothered with the details?
I think we don’t want to even think about it for a second. We were born into this slow moving, barely recognizable catastrophe. Unfortunately, our children have been born into a much faster moving, very recognizable catastrophe. It is like we have been sailing on the Luxury Liner, HMS Titanic, simply enjoying the trip…escaping all our troubles… pursuing a bright future.
Yet, there is, in reality, little or nothing we little travelers can do about it. So, we depend on leadership in Corporations and Governments to fix it.
However, like the HMS Titanic disaster, the extremely large and clownish assortment of Governments have too small of a rudder to turn this ship around, too little will to fix it, even though this Iceberg is our own creation and visible on a cloudless, fogless day. All the Captains of Industry, and all the Political Leaders, and all the Citizens of Earth see what’s ahead…
Notwithstanding all of that, I’m going to take a hard right turn here… I think there is some advice in the Bible which is parallel to this predicament…if you can at least think a bit about what the Bible says about all individual’s conduct, condition, and legal standing before God…
We are all born with a corrupted human nature that apparently is bent on our own destruction. God’s redeeming process, however, is also presented throughout the Bible and which can restore the God-nature in us. We can individually turn about to escape an eternal disaster — the fate of hurting and harming ourselves, one another, and this Paradise we have been given…
Stop blaming others for your own irresponsibility.
Stop blaming God for creating Icebergs, which other ships’ have been warning us about, repeatedly and for a long time. But we have been ignoring them. Renenber, this particular Iceberg is our own creation, not God’s.
We must own this, our climate predicament. It’s ours. It belongs to us.
Don’t you think we should own up to it, and at least try to do our part?
So, what do I contend is our part?
I know we cannot rocket to another world… even though billions of our dollars are spent each year on exploring the origins of Life, and the Universe, and on the search for habitable planets (which, by the way, only the extremely rich would be able to afford the tickets…)
Every one of us have been active, or passive, or, at different times, both types of participants in the mess in which we find ourselves.
Again, stop looking around for someone or something to blame… I mean even if you can positively identify the culprit, what would that actually do? What Court of Law will you pursue a conviction?
It is getting way past the time to avoid that Iceberg. Yet, God’s Gospel Ship has, in every instance, a great big rudder to avoid crashing into Icebergs. You don’t have to abandon ship and drown in freezing waters… but you probably should consider getting into one of God’s lifeboats…
Yet, I am not avoiding the reality of doom and gloom, because I am also telling you God has made a way of escape — sort of like the role the RMS Carpathia played in rescuing surviving passengers…
While we are throwing up our hands in indifference or in helplessness, or in disgust, may I suggest those raised hands begin to reach out to God?
This has been our choice and always has been our choice.
No matter how many ignore that choice, or how many times we refuse that choice, God is still here, waiting, and His existence is not dependent on our believing, dreaming, or hoping… “God is and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
That is a fact which I have discovered to be quite true. It is not escapism. It is Realism. You can discover this too, because all who call on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.” Saved from ourselves and everything else that hurts and harms in this world…
“And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were {dark}. “ — John 3:19, New Living Translation.
So true… Your choice.
By the way, do you like movies? Try this one out: Mark Ruffalo starring in “Dark Waters” — https://www.netflix.com/title/81192027
