mynameisstephen said:
Study the soil for a moment. It naturally produces weeds. Millions of useless weeds sprout like there’s no tomorrow, strangling our crops and ruining our lawns. Pull them out by the roots, and there will be more tomorrow. They are nothing but a curse!
Couldn't disagree with you more. Weeds are only a curse because we define them that way. Lawns are useless and suck up water. Weeds like Dandelions take less water and are edible. Some are medicinal. Maybe we need to stop growing lawns and go with what God gave us- the weeds.
Consider how much of the earth is uninhabitable. There are millions of square miles of barren deserts in Africa and other parts of the world. Most of Australia is nothing but miles and miles of useless desolate land.
Well, you might find this land "uninhabitable," "barren," and "useless," but the indigenous hunter-gatherers who happily lived there for generations from the beginning of human habitation there don't. It looks barren to you because you don't know where to go for food and water. It looks useless because we're trained to live in climate-controlled structures and turn water on the tap. But to the native people there these places are lands that are filled with life and meaning, and are beautiful and rich with life-giving sustenance. Us Westerners define this land as "bad," when it is actually very good.
Not only that, but the earth is constantly shaken with massive earthquakes. Its shores are lashed with hurricanes; tornadoes rip through creation with incredible fury; devastating floods soak the land; and terrible droughts parch the soil. Sharks, tigers, lions, snakes, spiders, and disease-carrying mosquitoes attack humanity and suck its life’s blood.
Yes, and without these forces, life on earth would cease to exist. Without the capacity for things to be remade, to die, to be flooded... no change would occur. There would be no possibility for new life, because the planet would be saturated with life-forms.
Furthermore, in the natural cycles of destruction and in predatory animals, there is great wisdom and beauty. There is the tangible power of God and the cycles of life and death and new life. There is the constant creation of the earth. There is art. Have you ever stood in an extreme thunderstorm, feeling the power of the gusting wind and the lightening, and the boom of the thunder, the driving rain streaking down your body? Let me tell you from experience- God is in that wind, rain, and thunder. Have you ever felt the earth writhe with an earthquake, or watched a flash flood devour a canyon? In person? I have, and let me tell you it is a spiritual experience. There is a raw power there that speaks to God's majesty and glory. Indeed, the very rocks and trees cry out the glory of God, and His voice is in the thunder. Have you ever been in the wild in close proximity to a predator- a bear, or cougar, or bobcat, or wolf? Hung out with a snake? Looked deep in the eyes of lion? They are beautiful creatures with much more sentience than you may realize.
I would propose... all nature is a living testimony to the Presence of God. Complete with its cycles of destruction and birth, it is very good. As it is written- "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Adam and Eve did not cause nature to become "fallen." It is as God intended it to be. Death is not our enemy, but our friend, for it is only the birth into a new life. Destruction paves the way for new creation.
All these things should convince thinking minds that something is radically wrong. Did God blow it when He created humanity? What sort of tyrant must our Creator be if this was His master plan?
I would like to consider myself a thinking mind, but I do not feel anything is radically wrong with nature. I am no stranger to pain, or to death, or to suffering. But the suffering in nature that you speak of teaches me valuable lessons. I learn the power of God, the comfort of Christ. I learn that in my deepest pain, God holds my hand. I learn that after a flash flood rips apart homes, or an earthquake flattens a city... it brings the best of all humanity's traits out. People who were fighting and self-centered just weeks before come out in neighborly love, forgive each other, and help each other rebuild. Strangers take one another into their homes and love abounds. I learn that after a devastating forest fire, wildflowers peep out from beneath the ashes. And so life is borne of death, and the creative acts of God continue.
In that coming Kingdom there will be no more pain, suffering, disease, or death. We are told that no eye has ever seen, nor has any ear heard, neither has any man’s mind ever imagined the wonderful things that God has in store for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Actually, God did not curse all creation. He cursed humanity- Adam and Eve. I believe the rest of creation is as God intended it. God only said "cursed is the ground for thy sake"- that is, that their offspring would have to work hard to be fed. He didn't say the ground (and the rest of Nature isn't even mentioned, aside from the serpent) was cursed for any other purpose, only that it would be difficult to work for Adam and Eve, and they would have to toil to get grain for their bread.
In fact, the Bible says that Nature is a testimony of God and glorifies Him. Even after "the fall," God's people gave Him praise for all the goodness of Nature. Read psalm 65 and 104, for example.
Out of destruction and suffering come all the best traits of humanity, and indeed if we look at the world, we often find that people in the third world who suffer the most are also the most content, loving, and hospitable people, whereas us in the U.S. with all our stuff are suffering from enormous rates of depression and anomie.
Suffering occurs here on earth for two reasons, in my experience:
1. People causing suffering to each other- war, a lot of disease (not all, but a good portion is because of lack of health care and/or unhealthy behaviors), poverty, loneliness...
2. People fearing things that really need not be feared. Death is the biggie. Rather than accepting the cycles of Nature, learning from them, and supporting one another, we sit around moaning about them and worrying.
Think for a moment what it would be like if food grew with the fervor of weeds.
It does. Those weeds
are food. Take any survival course or learn about indigenous people's foodways (hunter-gatherers), and you realize that the earth is chock full of food and medicine. God gave us all we need, and it's still here for the taking, except where we've paved it over and built strip malls and parking lots.
Consider how wonderful it would be if the deserts became incredibly fertile, if creation stopped devouring humanity.
The deserts
are fertile, but with drought-resistant plants. If the whole earth was the same ecosystem, I'd find it boring. The desert is beautiful and full of life too, you just have to hang around a while and learn where to look. And creation devouring humanity? We're the ones that are consuming resources and destroying habitats- who is devouring whom? Personally, I love wilderness and wild animals. In that solitude and wildness, I feel the closest to God that I come to in this lifetime. Not all Christians want the whole earth to be only about humans. Some of us even think God created us as stewards of the earth- dominion isn't just about our own desires and needs, but also about responsibility.
Imagine if the weather worked for us instead of against us, if disease completely disappeared, if pain was a thing of the past, if death was no more.
If we build according to common sense, the weather typically does work for people. Yes, if we build in a flood plain or try to grow crops in a desert, we're going to run into problems. But God gave us plenty of suitable places to build houses and grow food, aside from giving us lots of wild resources that are edible, medicinal, and useful. It is our own stupidity that is causing us to have most of our problems. Yes, occasionally there is a real natural disaster, but mostly it's of our own making.
Disease is caused by organisms that also were created by God. They have a purpose. Unless you propose that bacteria and viruses and parasitic insects were somehow created by someone else.
Pain... pain is tough. I have an illness that sometimes puts me in excrutiating pain. And while it is awful, it also causes me to call on God, to lean on Him even more. Pain can result in good as well as bad.
Death is not a bad thing to me. Spiritual death is horrid, but physical death is simply transition. It is the birthing process into the Presence of God. It doesn't bother me at all to consider that I will die one day and be born into the Kingdom. I look forward to that day when I become spirit and perfect.
The whole face of the earth is nothing but ugly sores of suffering. Everywhere we look we see unspeakable pain.
I'm really sorry you feel this way. I'd find it incredibly depressing. I go out in nature, into the wild, and I find beauty. Joy. The power of God. Solitude. Yes, I see a lot of pain, mostly in human beings. But I see celebration too. Love. Hope. Faith. Even in pain, I see goodness- grief shows love and compassion. Sorrow shows sensitivity. Loneliness shows a desire to reach out to each other and to God.
But instead of believing God’s explanation and asking Him to forgive us and change our appetite, we run deeper into sin’s sweet embrace. There we find solace in its temporal pleasures, thus intensifying our pain, both in this life and in the life to come.
I believe it goes farther than this. If we truly repented- not just asking forgiveness, but turning also away from sin
and equally importantly toward Christ's teachings, our world would change. We would cure ourselves of our deepest suffering- a self-imposed separation from God and one another, the ultimate and meaningless pain of killing each other, of the consequences of our greed.
In Peace,
Kim
