‘This is all I have learnt: God created man plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated’
Ecclesiastes 7:29 (Good News)
Though I studied Earth Science in college, I don’t regard myself a scientist. However, this has never stopped me from making reference to what I learned in reference to maters of life and faith. I enjoyed studying plate tectonics and earthquakes. They gave me a view of how God created the earth in such a way that it is balanced and the systems of the earth ideally should be in a state of equilibrium.
After every major earthquake, there are smaller quakes called aftershocks that occur for the next few days. If you hold a board down a basin of water and let it float abruptly, that represents a quake. Then the board will move for some time until it balances and floats on the water. This process is called isostacy, and it is what happens when we experience aftershocks; the disturbed systems are returning to a state of equilibrium.
In plate tectonics, we have trenches and subduction zones. This is a conveyor belt like system where new material comes from deep in the earth through the trenches, pushing the old ones further away. The old materials end up in a subduction zone where they are swallowed back into the earth. This happens unnoticed below our continents. There is a trench in the Atlantic Ocean and a Subduction Zone in the earthquake prone Indo-asia and Far East.
The two examples exemplify the verse above that quotes the preacher saying that man is out on the wrong path. There are enough resources for everyone on earth if we use the resources sustainably. The problem is that man has gone out to overexploit what we have. The ground water reserves are almost depleted- and cities like Mexico City are sinking. We have cut down our forests and are emitting dangerous gasses into the atmosphere; now the rains have gone and the polar ice is melting. Food is scarce so we have come up with genetically modified foods as a remedy to our sins. With no regard to the natural systems to regenerate themselves, then in one hundred years, the earth may start being un-inhabitable.
Someone must save man from himself, thank God that Christ died on the cross for such a problem and time as this.
© 22nd February 2011
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