Whatever happened to eden?

A look at the Christian's responsibility to his environment.

Allan R. Magie, Ph.D., is professor of environmental health, School of Health, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California.

Ah the genius of man! We have re shaped our life style. Worshiping at the altar of the Gross National Product we have spewed forth from industrial complexes unnumbered gadgets and assorted things.

And we grow still more demanding. Our appetite for the bigger, better, and faster is insatiable. So we provide our selves with pocket computers, drive-in restaurants, Disneylands, massive sports stadiums, taller buildings, faster cars, artificial grass, computer games, paper plates—until finally some of us are be ginning to notice something. There aren't so many trees left. Or flowers, birds, seashells, fish, butter flies, bears, clear mountain streams, or marshes.

Instead there are a lot of buildings, pavement, parking meters, telephone poles, traffic signals, litter, noise, exhaust fumes, vapor trails, and crowded, jumbled, nerve-jangling confusion.

But we get used to the noise and litter and all the rest. We say that it's progress—the price we have to pay. And no one really seems to care—that man is building an ever more distorted life for himself.

The creation of man was God's crowning act. The earth had been adorned with all the requisites for his complete development and enjoyment. The climate was ideal. An endless variety of foods was provided to delight his taste. Flowers and trees in a profuse number of colors and shapes filled the landscape to please his senses. Birds of various hues sent melodious trills across the open spaces. Different kinds of fish glided easily through the crystal water of streams and lakes. Animals moved over the green carpet, each with distinctive features that made them unique in the habitat they occupied. Natural laws were set in motion that governed the development and relationships of all, both animate and inanimate.

Into this perfect setting God placed man. He would be the custodian of this world. God would be his teacher. The earth was his schoolroom, all nature the object of study.

"And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. 2:15). Unfortunately, most of us take this to mean that man is to cultivate his own food without considering the deeper implications. "Dress" and "keep" imply far more. Great care was to be taken with the living plants and animals in man's environment. The resources entrusted to man were to be protected from abuse. Future generations would depend on how he "preserved" and "conserved" this bequest. The earth was to be held by man as a trust, and he was to serve the land as a guardian. The Owner expected him to maintain its perfection and intricate balance.

Then man sinned, and all nature responded to the change. Death stalked the land. The soil still brought forth food for man's sustenance, but along with desired plants it grew weeds. More effort was required to "dress it and to keep it." Man increased in number. He abused his surroundings. He became a linear process in a cyclic world. He began to look on nature as an enemy to be conquered. He built cities. He dug treasures from the bowels of the earth. Factories, powered with the energy of buried pre-Flood life, turned out products that re structured man's environment. And soon man forgot that he was a part of the life around him, although he depended on this life for his very existence.

Now, suddenly we find that it may already be too late. Entire species of animals have disappeared. Our basic needs—water, air, and food—are be fouled with the products of our own design. We have been forced to re member God's command to preserve and conserve the earth's resources.

Ecology. An old word, yet with striking new meaning today. It describes the relationships that exist between living things and their environment. It offers to us some disquieting facts:

1. The earth's resources are limited. All life must share its bounties. The sun's energy, trapped by green plants to convert lifeless atoms into life-sustaining food, passes on to man and animals, then to bacteria, maggots, and fungi. Simply put, all forms of life are dependent on one another.

The current energy crisis—caused by fears of an inadequate supply of petroleum fuel to power our ravenous technological marvels—is part and parcel of our entire environmental problem. It is the sort of symptom we can expect when a part of nature (in this case, man) begins to exceed the capacity of its habitat to provide unlimited raw materials.

The energy shortage portends the shortages of metals and other essential raw materials. We must begin to face up to the reality that man is pressing dangerously close to the limits of the re sources and resilience of the earth. Food shortages and famines are becoming all too frequent. Fishery stocks in the ocean are rapidly declining.

2. Every organism is absolutely dependent on other organisms. For example, certain plants depend on animals to pollinate their flowers, eliminate their natural competitors, and disperse their seeds in an interdependence of different organisms that we call a community. Following the strands far enough leads us to the obvious conclusion that every thing in the environment is virtually connected to everything else. A small disturbance or problem in one part of the interdependent network of organisms may become amplified as it reaches other organisms and cause large, distant, and long-delayed effects.

The people in Minamata, Japan, are a striking illustration. For centuries they had lived on rice and the fish caught in the waters of Yatsushiro Bay. But one day a chemical plant was built on the bay, and the wastes from the plant were pumped through a long pipe that ex tended for some distance out into the bay. But the pipe did not extend far enough. Bacteria in the oozy mud on the bay bottom converted one of the wastes, the metal mercury, into an organic form called methyl mercury. Other organisms picked it up. These were eaten by small fish, which, in turn, were eaten by large fish, which were then caught in the nets of the fishermen from Minamata. Scores of those who ate the poisoned fish began to develop such disorders of the nervous system as blindness, insanity, and the inability to carry out simple body functions. Although the chemical company was required to compensate the victims, who can place a value on one human's potential? Are the material gains worth such a price?

3. The mercury disaster in Japan brings us to a phenomenon often overlooked—everything has to go some where. We extract large amounts of material from the earth, convert it into new forms, and discharge it into the environment. Often the natural processes of organisms cannot use or destroy it, and it accumulates. We are, belatedly, noticing accumulations in harmful amounts of many substances in places they don't belong. And, suddenly, we are reminded that anything that fails to fit into the normal process of life is a threat to its finely balanced cycles.

4. Every gain is won at some cost, or as has been aptly stated, "There ain't no free lunch!" When man interferes with natural processes to provide himself with a more comfortable life he must accept the consequences. Anything extracted from the environment must be replaced. The payment cannot be avoided. The subsequent degradation that has followed man's interference with the environment has involved the air we breathe, the water we drink or bathe in, and the soil in which we grow our crops. Even the esthetic quality of our recreational facilities has been hampered—pine trees dying from air pollution and beaches coated with oil spilled by a passing tanker or dotted with the smelling, rotting carcasses of fish killed by chemicals dumped into the water.

Air pollution is well-nigh universal. It is no longer just a nuisance, but a threat to our health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements the automobile, the electric power plant, the jet airplane, the gigantic industrial complex, and, indeed, the modern city itself—are, from the stand point of environment, rapidly becoming costly failures. Our purpose here is to respond as Christians to the obvious need for a change, lest man eliminate himself from the earth.

It is clear that humans are a major part of the problem. We can't blame ignorance. We are all polluters, either directly or indirectly. Materialism drives people to want lots of things cheap, regardless of social costs. Greed leads industry to seek the quick dollar. No one can deny that our environment, and us with it, is in peril. We have come a long way from the unspoiled beauty of the Garden that God provided us. The earth's surface has been reshaped. Rivers have been redirected. Forests have been obliterated. In addition to extinct species, more than one hundred are seriously threatened. Suddenly we have nowhere to throw our wastes, and we face being buried in our own litter.

Cities have grown together, forming immense metropolitan areas that continue for vast distances, and the quality of life in these cities has declined. We have become a country in which licensed drivers outnumber registered voters. Two cars roll off Detroit's assembly lines for every baby born, and the average commuter spends the equivalent of one month of daylight hours driving to and from work each year!

Let's face it. We've failed to follow God's plan. It wasn't His idea that we should build vast cities. He knew that selfish use of the earth's resources would pose unknown hazards to our health. The only answer to our dilemma is to turn to the Source of all life. As in the spiritual dimension, so in the physical, God has provided a way out. It takes courage, commitment, and sacrifice. Christians must shun a life style that contributes to the wasteful use of re sources and alters the environment, making it unsuitable for the abundant life. Christ has shown us that here on this earth we are to practice the principles of heaven and begin to live its life.

And what type of life is that? A simple one, with simple needs, a life maintained with few frills and sustained with the natural products of the earth, a life that relates properly to nature because we want to be a part of God's original pat tern of harmonious interdependence. It is a life that is learning to do without the artificiality of modern life.

God's plan will work if we are willing to do it His way.


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Allan R. Magie, Ph.D., is professor of environmental health, School of Health, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California.

March 1980

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