Rumours of Grace: From waterworld, to home, to wasteland?
The Bible opens with a story called Genesis.
The word Genesis comes from the Greek
word for beginning, think generations or genetics.
And Genesis itself begins with chapter
one, which describes the beginning of the
world. If you read it with a little care, you will
see that it is highly structured like a poem. So
it should not come as too great a surprise that
many scholars of the Bible see it as more of a
symbolic or metaphorical work.
Genesis One begins with a scene of stormy, wet, dark chaos. The writer probably had in mind a storm at sea. Not a very hospitable place for us to live. However, promisingly, the “Spirit of God hovered over the waters”. With God present, something just might happen.
And something does happen; God speaks words of power and order begins to replace the chaotic, deadly waterworld. Light invades the dark and both have their domains. Water is relegated to the region below the earth and the region above the sky dome. Sun, moon and stars are placed in the day and night skies. Creatures are placed in the waters, in the skies and on the land.
Finally, when all is in readiness, God creates human beings. He blesses them and invites them to have children and fill the earth. He thus encourages them to build cultures of all kinds. Those cultures can include things such as grass huts, cafes and colleges.
God created this world as our home. It is the living, breathing environment that provides humans with all we need to live and thrive. That is, among other things, one of the truths set forth in Genesis one.
This home is the only one we will ever have. If we burn this one up there will be no ticket to another. I don’t say this so much because Genesis One prevents me from suggesting that there are other inhabitable planets in the universe, I say it only because the nearest star to ours, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light years away, or about 25 trillion miles. And the chances that around it there is a planet on which we could live as we do here are slim.
This incredible planet has an amazing past that goes back about four billion years. And up until very recent times it was cloaked in life: oceans were brimming with fish, enormous flocks of birds frequently darkened the skies and old growth forest covered vast stretches of North America, including all of southern Ontario.
The planet is still a rich home for humans, but that is not likely to be the case for much longer. From recent postings and news items, it appears that only about half the animal life that once existed in the oceans exists today. We are doing a lot of killing out there and extreme weather events, such as the flooding in South Carolina and the droughts on the west coast, are becoming more common.
It is these extreme weather events that should be a real source of worry for us because they are what scientists have been saying for a long time now would be among the early results of climate change.
As is well known now, climate change is linked to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which is the result of our burning fossil fuels. And, as humans keep using fossil fuels, the temperature of the atmosphere increases. There is already too much CO2 in the air at this point that significant climate change is no longer avoidable.
Ocean levels are climbing, the temperatures in the Arctic are rising quickly, African deserts are expanding and Canadian forests are drying out, turning into tinderboxes.
Alarmingly, if you look at any graphs that project the rise of atmospheric temperature in the decades most of us will live to see, what you find is, no pun intended, chilling.
The obvious way to address this problem would be to cease the use of fossil fuels. However, even though it has been known for decades that we should do this, we haven’t; we drive more, consume more products, build bigger homes, fly more frequently and so forth.
Countries that sit on impressive oil reserves like Canada want to use those reserves to get richer. If all the 1.5 or so trillion barrels of oil that are estimated to exist in the ground were burned, our planet would be toast. We are changing, but it may be too late, the global economy is still very much a fossil fuel based economy. We may well be headed for a semi-apocalyptic future. However, we should not give up.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Genesis One begins with a scene of stormy, wet, dark chaos. The writer probably had in mind a storm at sea. Not a very hospitable place for us to live. However, promisingly, the “Spirit of God hovered over the waters”. With God present, something just might happen.
And something does happen; God speaks words of power and order begins to replace the chaotic, deadly waterworld. Light invades the dark and both have their domains. Water is relegated to the region below the earth and the region above the sky dome. Sun, moon and stars are placed in the day and night skies. Creatures are placed in the waters, in the skies and on the land.
Finally, when all is in readiness, God creates human beings. He blesses them and invites them to have children and fill the earth. He thus encourages them to build cultures of all kinds. Those cultures can include things such as grass huts, cafes and colleges.
God created this world as our home. It is the living, breathing environment that provides humans with all we need to live and thrive. That is, among other things, one of the truths set forth in Genesis one.
This home is the only one we will ever have. If we burn this one up there will be no ticket to another. I don’t say this so much because Genesis One prevents me from suggesting that there are other inhabitable planets in the universe, I say it only because the nearest star to ours, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light years away, or about 25 trillion miles. And the chances that around it there is a planet on which we could live as we do here are slim.
This incredible planet has an amazing past that goes back about four billion years. And up until very recent times it was cloaked in life: oceans were brimming with fish, enormous flocks of birds frequently darkened the skies and old growth forest covered vast stretches of North America, including all of southern Ontario.
The planet is still a rich home for humans, but that is not likely to be the case for much longer. From recent postings and news items, it appears that only about half the animal life that once existed in the oceans exists today. We are doing a lot of killing out there and extreme weather events, such as the flooding in South Carolina and the droughts on the west coast, are becoming more common.
It is these extreme weather events that should be a real source of worry for us because they are what scientists have been saying for a long time now would be among the early results of climate change.
As is well known now, climate change is linked to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which is the result of our burning fossil fuels. And, as humans keep using fossil fuels, the temperature of the atmosphere increases. There is already too much CO2 in the air at this point that significant climate change is no longer avoidable.
Ocean levels are climbing, the temperatures in the Arctic are rising quickly, African deserts are expanding and Canadian forests are drying out, turning into tinderboxes.
Alarmingly, if you look at any graphs that project the rise of atmospheric temperature in the decades most of us will live to see, what you find is, no pun intended, chilling.
The obvious way to address this problem would be to cease the use of fossil fuels. However, even though it has been known for decades that we should do this, we haven’t; we drive more, consume more products, build bigger homes, fly more frequently and so forth.
Countries that sit on impressive oil reserves like Canada want to use those reserves to get richer. If all the 1.5 or so trillion barrels of oil that are estimated to exist in the ground were burned, our planet would be toast. We are changing, but it may be too late, the global economy is still very much a fossil fuel based economy. We may well be headed for a semi-apocalyptic future. However, we should not give up.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
