God will Restore Nature

 God loves music. He invented music. God also loves you. He planned you before the creation of the world.

God wants everything in creation to shine like beautiful art and sing like lovely music.

We see this marvellous beauty in nature. The poets and artists of the Romantic period celebrated this beauty.

This beauty can still be seen, but we also see how we humans are spoiling nature. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean there is a huge pile of rubbish. Dolphins eat plastic bags and choke on them.

God has given us beautiful poppies and we have made effective painkillers from them. The best painkiller for dying cancer patients is heroin, but unfortunately this very good medicine is tragically abused.

God created us as sexual beings, not just to produce children, but to have love, companionship, pleasure and joy, but what do we see in the world? Porn addiction, human trafficking, rape and forced prostitution.

God has made us different. Who can run or dance like the black Africans? But we have so misunderstood our differences that cruel hatred and racism is ruining humanity.

God created us as spiritual beings to live eternally with Him in His own image, but we have corrupted our spirituality. We see cruel religion and witchcraft everywhere.

God is watching all this and He is suffering.

Creation itself is suffering because we humans have failed as stewards of nature.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Gen 1:27–28 NIV

That was in the beginning, but many years later the apostle Paul wrote.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope

that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Rom 8:20–22 NIV 

Many today see how our planet is corrupted. Our existence is threatened. They want to save our planet through political action. Without God, that would be the only way.

They understand that the fate of the planet is inextricably linked to humanity, but they do not understand that without God our humanity and our existence has no future.

Nature is corrupt because we humans are corrupt. God did not make us this way. We have corrupted God's creation. Only with God can we find the way out.

God and Climate Change

“Being compassionate means providing a fence at the top of the cliff, not just an ambulance at the bottom.” Fred Nile, Australian Christian politician.
 
I think Fred Nile is speaking about upholding God's ordained social order and moral law to protect us. If you believe in the Bible, it is hard to disagree. 

However, in the current crisis, we should apply this principle also to management of land and water resources. Massive amounts of water have been sacrificed to maximise export dollars, for example in coal mining. We need that water to produce food and fight fires.

Government priorities have been wrong in moral policy but also in land management policy. I avoid the word 'environment' because I am not a Green. We on the conservative Christian side need to do some serious rethinking.

The black and white climate debate obscures inescapable problems. 

Environmentalists focus on overuse of fossil fuels causing global warming. Conservatives say this is a pseudo-scientific hoax designed to undermine capitalism and bring in socialist world government.

But doesn’t the Bible predict environmental disasters in the last days?

And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. Luke 21:11 (NKJV)

If greenhouse gas levels are a problem, why is the focus almost exclusively on use of fossil fuels?

• What about the intensive use of agricultural chemicals?

• What about the progressive degradation of agricultural soils and the dramatic decline in the nutritional content of food produced by modern methods?

Why is there so little discussion of the worldwide decimation of bees and other insects? We need bees to pollinate the plants we must have to survive.

The use of glyphosate-based herbicides worldwide dominates farming in many countries but this chemical is toxic to bees.

• In California, intensive production of almonds is sustained by using these herbicides and also by orchardists hiring bee swarms from beekeepers. Untold millions of these bees are dying but the practice continues.

What about the systematic poisoning of marine life with plastic waste and other chemical pollutants? 

Our current industrial and agricultural systems are not sustainable.

Look at the Middle East, mostly desert. Why? God’s judgement on the enemies of God’s people?
 
Maybe so. But God has also blessed the Persians and Arabs with untold wealth from oil. I am not God. We need to understand that we don't understand so many things.

But what about unsustainable agricultural practices over many centuries? Hard to deny.

However, the Jews in Israel have reversed this process. This is undoubtedly due in part to the blessing of God sending more rain. 

However, the Jews have also pioneered drip feed irrigation and strategic tree planting and no doubt other wise land and water management practices. Why are we just admiring them and not learning from them? Is that biblical?

Perhaps the environmentalists are right. We may be on a one way road to destruction.

Why should Christian conservatives resist this narrative? Why should we be committed to the status quo?

Does Bible prophecy encourage this mind set? Does Bible prophecy encourage us to expect never ending economic growth through deregulated capitalism?
I don’t think so.

Bible prophecy tells us that Jesus will return and set up the Kingdom of God in a time of horror.
On the other hand, there are Christian spiritual leaders with apparently genuine prophetic credentials who say God has raised up President Trump.

Maybe this is true. But that does not make all his policies right.

This world is on the road to destruction, how quickly or how soon, we cannot tell. Bible prophecy clearly teaches this.

If we are on the road to destruction, environmentalism, however sensible, will not save us.

Does this mean we should do nothing to improve environmental management?

The positive example of Israel is a good answer to this question.

The Green lobby focuses on a global approach to climate change. However, innovative land management practices in Israel and parts of Africa have shown that rainfall and climate can be positively influenced at a local or regional level.

This approach does not seem to be central to the agenda of either the Right or the Left in Australia and many other countries.

What we often see instead is a polarised debate which is leading us nowhere.