we are obsessed with variety

by Mark Hammerschmidt

 

Okay, you win, true believers, I give in. I throw up my white flag in surrender and take your theory of the Bible being an accurate history of the creation of the Universe as truth. At least for the sake of this argument, I am willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it all as fact. Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Moses parting the Red Sea, the virgin birth, resurrection, eventual eternal life in Paradise (if we are somehow one of the lucky few to slip under God’s radar and make it into Heaven), Hell—all of it! I’m right there with you. I believe it all.

So what is a new believer to do next? Well, let’s open the Bible and find out.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26).

No wonder religious folk get so bent out of shape when you bring up the EPA or climate change or the dangers of fracking. This planet is ours to do with as we wish. God says so.

But if you were to use a friend’s vacation home, you wouldn’t trash it like you do the earth. Even if your friend said, “Make yourself comfortable. Mi casa es su casa.”

God may have put everything on Earth for us, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all ours for the taking. You have to take into consideration the things that we really need. We have to be responsible and pick and choose which lives to destroy for our benefit. It’s like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God put it here, but look at what happened when Eve listened to Satan and ate of the fruit. You need to apply that same rationale to everything you do.

It’s like this—God created this world for us, but does that mean we are entitled to all of it? Shouldn’t we take into consideration that some things that we really need to survive require the existence of other things that we may not necessarily want, and taking pleasure the destruction of everything for no real reason (other than our own demise) isn’t such a great idea?

That’s the real curse of man. It’s the irresistible craving we all have to destroy ourselves. We can’t stop it. We’re fiends.

Take, for instance, oxygen. Oxygen isn’t just a passing fad that a few fringe weirdoes enjoy. Oxygen is necessary for survival. Without it, we cease to exist. All of us. Trees, on the other hand, don’t require oxygen like people do. Trees take that nasty carbon dioxide stuff that people exhale and essentially turn it back into oxygen. It’s a wonderful relationship. One would think that making sure that we have plenty of trees around to keep us in oxygen would come second nature. Instead, we've cut down most of the trees that God put here to provide us with clean air. Then we wonder why the polar ice caps are melting.

And this goes for just about everything.

Yes, I agree that those new Nikes not only make you look amazing, they actually give you an extra half inch on your vert. But as a God-fearing human, shouldn’t the actual planetary devastation and human exploitation that one pair of Nikes has on a global scale mean more to you than listening to the media’s words in your ear telling you that you how cool they are?

Maybe I’m using the Bible wrong. Maybe you’re just supposed to pick and choose the parts that fit your life and make you feel comfortable. Is that why it’s broken into verses?

With all the royal screw up us humans have blundered through, you would think God would come smite us to show us a lesson like he did in the Old Testament days. Or is that what all this religious fuss is about? You’re worried that God is going to teach us a lesson like he so often did in the Bible and you’re trying to cushion the blow?

That seems a strange way to go about it. Why not stop waiting for God to punish us and just start doing things right? Why not back away from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and eat some of this other fruit? Look, there are apples and oranges and bananas. All kinds of fruit. Stop worrying about what other people are doing and focus on yourself for a while. Because for everything you condemn in one person, chances are you are violating twice as many rules yourself.  

And if I hear one more person discount the plight of the polar bears in favor of economics, I’m going to flip out. Saving the polar bears isn’t the issue. The demise of the polar bears is a symptom of a larger problem. The polar bears are the canaries in the coal mine. Forget saving them because they are cute and fluffy and drink Coke. Save them because once their gone, guess who’s next?

But that’s what we want, isn’t it?

Call it self-fulfilling prophecy or call it human nature—just don’t ever say we didn’t have warning. It’s in the Bible. In the first chapter, even. You don’t even need to read the whole thing. Just the first few pages. Or did you interpret those to say that humans should destroy everything because we can? I mean, think about it—you’ve spent all these years pissed off at Eve for the whole fall of man thing, when all this time, you’ve been doing the exact same thing.

Now that you realize it, you can stop the cycle. But it's up to you to decide what to do next.

[image credit]