Day 92 - We are the voices for the earth

Some years ago, a relative who was convalescing at home following a spell in hospital, was grateful for the opportunity of human company afforded her by the offer of the local Jehovah Witnesses to share with her in regular bible study. The relative in question was an evangelical Christian but was lonely and bored and the JWs must have thought it was their birthday (except they don`t celebrate birthdays, but you know what I mean!). Their weekly studies continued until I warned her that the next step would undoubtedly be the invitation to be baptised and become a paid-up member of the JWs. That was the wake-up call she needed to call an end to the sessions!

One of the things my relative did take away from the bible studies and found most appealing, was the JW`s belief in a renewed paradise earth. Not for the Jehovah Witnesses, the vision cherished by many Christians of an endless eternity in an ethereal heaven, spent in “ceaseless praise,” often caricatured as sitting on a cloud twanging a harp. A renewed paradise earth was a much more attractive prospect.

So, what do Christians actually believe about the Earth/Creation? Will it come to an end after the redeemed have been “beamed up,” as in the unusual doctrine of the Rapture? Is it expendable? As I`ve said before, I was brought up to believe that it was. There were plenty of hymns about our heavenly home but not so many about our earthly home, save from some well-known ones connected with harvest or a few children`s hymns about nature.

I was not aware as a young person growing up in the church of a doctrine of the Earth but I was aware of a doctrine of Creation, namely that God took seven days and that the world was 6,000 years old. Schooling soon challenged that notion quite effectively!

The American Pew Research Centre notes that, “public attitudes toward the environment may be tied, at least in part, to beliefs about the “end times” – such as the belief that the end of the world and the arrival of a messiah (or the “second coming” of Jesus) is imminent. For example, if one believes that the world is about to end, protecting the environment for the long term may not seem as important.” Another disturbing finding was that “those who pray regularly are less likely to pray for the environment than for other matters.” Seems to me that we need to be reminded that ”the earth is the Lord`s” and that especially as Christians, we have a sacred duty to care for it.

I end with a verse from a hymn by Shirley Erena Murray, entitled Where are the voices for the earth?

“We are the voices for the earth,

we who will care enough to cry,

cherish her beauty, clear her breath,

live that our planet may not die.”

Alan Kennedy