Cindy and I spend a lot of time in Arizona. There is an operation out there called Biosphere. It is a sealed environment. It began as a serious scientific investigation into what it takes to create a sustainable ecosystem. At one point there were even people living in it. Ultimately, however, it seems to have devolved into a tourist attraction.
Why?
Biosphere failed because its ecosystem was not sustainable and could not be made to become sustainable. We hear a lot about sustainability these days. We worry about climate change because an ecosystem that is heating up, as ours clearly is, is not sustainable. That is to say, our ecosystem, earth, cannot go on like this indefinitely. Good intentioned people are working hard to change things in order to acheive sustainability……..in order to achieve survivability.
They tell us that climate change is an “existential crisis”.
And they are right.
They propose solutions:
Electric cars
Wind and solar power.
Mass transit
They hope for a tech breakthrough:
Fusion energy
But, the cold hard truth is that world population has tripled in my lifetime and will double again in a few decades. In spite of our best efforts, our global “carbon footprint is getting worse, not better. At some point in the future “planetary warming” might slow down…….but, if so, that slowing hasn’t begun yet. The cold hard truth is that there is no viable plan to stop the warming much less reverse it.
What this means is that sustainability on this planet…….is a mirage.
What this means is that life, as we know it, on this beautiful planet simply cannot go on indefinitely. The best we can hope for is to delay our inevitable doom. The science is crystal clear and we are ignoring it.
And that…….is the bad news.
But, there is some good news. It turns out that science is telling us……if we will only listen….. what the Bible has been telling us for centuries. This planet is not immortal. It was never intended to be immortal. Sustainability is a human idea, not God’s idea. God planned for a beginning. God planned for an end……and it is going to be ugly.
Secular humanists cling to sustainability because they have no “plan-B”. For the same reason, they ignore the long term projections of science.
Christianity, however, describes an end to this physical world that aligns with the long term projections of science at least in broad strokes. In addition, Christianity offers the hope of a world after this world.
Christianity agrees with science that the planetary ecosystem that we call earth is doomed.
But
Christianity offers sustainability…..for your spirit.
And that is the good news.
in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
2 Timothy 3:1-5,ESV
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Revelation 21:1, ESV