Category Environmemt

Earthquakes, floods and famine – “There but for the grace of God go I”

Stephen Thorp Leave a comment

The recent tragedies in Morocco and Libya have been truly heartbreaking. With 3000 people dying as a result of the Moroccan earthquake, and the possibility of 20,000 people dying in the Libyan floods, the amount of human suffering is hard to imagine or comprehend. It’s no wonder that many traumatised victims, trying to make sense of things and come to terms with their grief, have been recorded by journalists as simply saying ‘It’s the will of God’ or ‘Allah wills it’, which leaves the rest of us safely looking on from the comfort of our homes thinking, ‘well, thank God I wasn’t caught up in that’ or ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. But now, of course, the difficult questions arise! Why aren’t buildings built to be more earthquake resilient, and why aren’t dams which are known to be faulty immediately repaired? Surely a lot more lives could have been saved if only they had been. Perhaps part of the problem is a fatalistic mindset, which encourages people to believe that certain tragedies are an ‘act of God’ and ‘what will be will be’. If this is your attitude, then why should you bother learning from your mistakes or from tragedy, because effectively all responsibility is taken out of your hands and left in the hands of the divine. But this isn’t a biblical perspective, because despite the fact that the world is imperfect (as so clearly demonstrated by recent events) God cares! “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all that he has made” (Psalm 145.9). So, instead of thinking that God is aloof, uncaring or absent, we should think of him as being deeply concerned and hands on, working through the kind and compassionate words and deeds of those who act in his name and struggle to bring assistance and relief to the needy. In a sense, this mirrors the Gospel itself, for God has always sought to step into the world rather than step out of or away from it. This is most ably demonstrated in the person of Jesus, who taught his disciples to love God and their neighbour as themselves and who by his death, demonstrated a selfless love for the world so that it might be renewed, restored and forgiven of sin. Although we might tend to think ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ when it comes to earthly tragedies, in the light of sin the Gospel message might be summed up in the words ‘there but for the grace of God, goes God’ achieving for us something that we couldn’t possibly achieve for ourselves.

So, in the face of calamity, whether it be at home or abroad, let us hold on to the fact that God’s love and compassion is with us, and echo and demonstrate it in our own thoughts, words and deeds.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. Lamentations 3.22

Are We Contributing To Our Own Extinction?

Stephen Thorp Leave a comment

During September many viewers were left stunned having watched Sir David Attenborough’s latest television documentary Extinction: The Facts with the broadcast on the BBC deliberately timed to give publicity to the urgent report published by the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity a few days later. This report concluded that “humanity is at a crossroads and we have to take action now to make space for nature to recover and slow it’s ‘accelerating decline’.” Indeed, Sir David Attenborough warned that “we are facing a crisis – and one that has consequences for us all.” Not only did one expert state that of the eight million species on Earth, a million are now threatened with extinction, but the links between nature and the environment and our own future physical wellbeing were made abundantly clear. Alongside the familiar concerns of climate change, intensive farming and industrial scale encroachment upon the natural order by humans ravaging and plundering it’s natural resources, seas, forests, land etc, and polluting the environment – a stunning (and some would say somewhat controversial) link was made between the ever increasing ‘close contact’ of humans to animals resulting in the transmission of viruses from one species to another, leading to an increased likelihood of pandemics across the world, such as SARs, MERs, Ebola and the coronavirus Covid-19.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the convention’s executive secretary stated that “Things have to change. It is land. It is forest. It is agriculture. It is the ocean. It is pollution. So we need to change our production patterns, our consumption patterns. The choices of the food we eat, human encroachment in the wildlife, into the forest. So these need to change”.

The problem is that for so long we have viewed the earth as our domain, a simple resource to reap and plunder as we see fit. We have forgotten that first and foremost the Earth is not a resource but a gift! And it is not ours alone, but a gift for all generations. For so long we believed that there was enough food in the world to feed all it’s people, if only we could share it more equitably – but we underestimated the profit motive, the rapid advance of technology and the expansion of populations. Now we are struggling to feed the world and live sustainably. We are damaging the world and in a whole manner of different ways we are risking our collective futures. The time has come for change!

In his book Renewing the face of the Earth, David Atkinson reminds the Christian that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it’ (Psalm 24.1) and that we have a royal calling to serve and protect it for the good of all, whether it be by our political involvement or personal living. We can hold governments and large organisations to account by the choices we make at the ballot box, the cash till and through the charities we support. Together as individuals and as communities we can make a difference! But this will require us to think and act generously in the best interests of others, and often sacrificially for ourselves, which mirrors the love of God for us in the person of Christ. Atkinson thinks it is not by accident that the Church’s Holy Communion service reminds the recipient that they are called to be ‘living sacrifices’ as they go out into the world, living generous and unselfish lives – which is in fact, is a sentiment that many of us could adopt if we wish to continue to live in a just, caring and sustainable world which does all that it can to preserve the environment, protect our biological diversity and promote our mutual wellbeing.

How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104.24

The Depths Of Love, Despair – And The Marina Trench

Stephen Thorp Leave a comment

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On the 13th May the world woke up to discover that Victor Vescovo, a retired naval officer, had broken the world record for the deepest dive ever made by a human being inside a submarine by descending nearly 6.8 miles (35,853 feet/10,928 meters) in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. Naturally Vescovo was very excited and pleased with his achievement, “This submarine and it’s mother ship, along with the extraordinarily talented expedition team, took marine technology to a ridiculously higher new level by diving – rapidly and repeatedly – into the deepest, harshest, area of the ocean.” he says. The extreme pressure at such a depth would be the equivalent of 50 Jumbo Jets standing on top of one another said the BBC. Along with the new technological achievement, Victor Vescovo and his team were delighted to discover previously undiscovered sea life at the bottom of the ocean ranging from shrimp-like anthropods with long legs and antennae to translucent “sea pigs” similar to sea cucumbers. However, one disappointing feature alongside the discovery of new sea creatures was the discovering of plastic and other human contamination at the bottom of the ocean. Finding plastic at such depths highlighted and confirmed the fears of scientists across the world that plastic waste had reached epidemic proportions in the world’s oceans with the United Nations estimating that 100 millions tonnes had been dumped there to date. The consequences and repercussions of such a desperate discovery have heightened calls for greater and more urgent action by the world’s authorities to conserve the environment.

This is a call which will resonate with many people around the world and especially Christians who will recall the fact that theologically speaking when God placed Adam in the ‘Garden of Eden’ he made him responsible for not only working the land but for the taking care of it. In fact, God trusts us to take care of the environment and doing so for the long term and future generations is not only good stewardship but is the epitome of loving God and one’s neighbour as oneself. Yes, it may be true that even at the bottom of the ocean ‘our sins will find us out’ (Numbers 32.22) but it’s not too late to resolve things. If we have the brains, intellect and technological skills to even get to such incredible depths, surely we have the capacity to find the means by which we can clean our oceans and the environment, and transform the way we use and recycle plastics to our common good. We just need to have the will and determination to do so. A children’s chorus describes God’s love as being as ‘high as the highest mountain and as deep as the deepest sea’, let us all reflect this truth with the deepest love and concern that we can muster for the world in which we live and the people we share it with.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may …. grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Ephesians 3.17-18