THE EARTH IS NOT MY GOD

Earth Day is a crock.

It is the high holy day of the environmentalism cult and I choose not to engage in that particular brand of idol worship.

I choose not to worship the earth as if it were a god and I were a savage. I am its steward, not its slave.

I wasn’t created for it, it was created for me.

Man exists not as an accidental product of earth’s evolution, the earth exists as a home for man. It did not produce us, it was produced for us.

God made the heavens and the earth, and he made them for a purpose – and humankind is that purpose.

The problem with Earth Day is that it gets everything bass ackwards. It views the planet as the priority, when in actuality humankind is the priority and purpose. The earth was created by God, but man was created in God’s image.

The environmentalists’ perversion of the relationship between man and nature seeks to turn things completely upside down, fostering confusion and degeneracy. Applied through government mandate, the principles of environmentalism choke off human progress and prosperity.

They also deny the fact that the earth is a gift to man from God.

And it has been stocked with the things that are necessary to support human needs for as long as God intends for humans to populate this planet.

Coal, for example, is not some evil substance interlarding the earth as a temptation to energy excess. It is, rather, a gift from God to give us light and heat, to fuel our industry and better our lives. The oil and gas fields around the world are not environmental cancers, they are miraculous aids to transportation, manufacturing and physical comfort.

They are all blessings.

They are causes for rejoicing.

But those who would leave them in the ground, who would turn their back on their bounty, are showing indifference and ingratitude. They are spitting in the face of the God who provided these resources for us.

Granted, we are not to be despoilers of the earth, we are to be its stewards. It is not moral to waste or to be filthy, to destroy just to destroy, to leave things – large or small – in an ugly and dangerous state. And we should take care of what we are responsible for. Good farming, construction, logging, drilling and mining practices conserve our resources so that they last longer and are used more efficiently.

We should turn off the lights when we leave a room, conserve water, protect our soil and let nothing whatsoever go to waste. We should reuse our trash when possible and produce less trash in the first place.

We should let some trees stand and some vistas go untouched by the hand of man. The beauty of nature is of practical worth, it is in and of itself a resource that – in balance – should be preserved. We should only kill things that we’re going to eat, or which are going to eat us. We can also kill things that are messing with our stuff – like bugs on our crops and mice in our houses.

But it’s got to stay in balance, and the needs of man must always trump. The world doesn’t stop for a snail darter or a spotted owl or some obscure species of desert wildflower.

We are shepherds of the earth. That means we must protect it and watch over it and keep it safe.

But we have to remember the context and purpose of that protection. The shepherd, after all, watches over the sheep so that he can shear their wool and eventually eat them. His stewardship is self-serving and fully directed toward his own self-interest.

And so is ours.

Earth Day is a great day to remind ourselves of the bounty of the earth, especially when managed under the ingenious hand of industry. It is a day to thank God for the richness of this earth, which supports us all so well. It is a day to worship the God who made the earth – but not the earth itself.

And it is a day to redouble our efforts to resist the paganism of our day, the cult of environmentalism. It is scientifically and morally wrong, it is nothing but the worship of a very large idol.

I don’t go along with it. And, I wager, neither do you.

by Bob Lonsberry