Our House
Chuck was talking to me a little while ago about an issue that we have both heard, namely that some Christians feel that we don’t have to worry about what happens to the earth because this is not our “final” home and that if Christ comes soon, none of this matters. I heard such things 40 years ago around the first Earth Day. I remember getting into such a discussion with a young woman once who said that all this worry about the earth was wrong, that we needed to just focus on God, and in a discussion with a self-professed “Jesus freak” who said essentially the same thing. My response was then, and still is now, what will you say to God when you die and are held accountable for your actions on the earth, his creation? The woman actually thought about it, but the Jesus freak quit talking to me.
I have thought about this a bit recently after Chuck and I talked. Imagine if a young couple were given a beautiful house to live in, everything taken care of for them, while their father built a new home for them on the other side of the mountain, in a place even more beautiful. Their father had actually built the beautiful house they now lived in, including wonderful gardens around it. Now suppose that young couple trashed the house and the gardens, saying it didn’t really matter what they did because their father was building an even better home for them on the other side of the mountain.
Can you imagine what most people would say about that young couple? Spoiled rich kids who can’t appreciate what is right in front of them. They do not deserve that home on the other side of the mountain.
Most people would not think highly of that young couple. So this is what I don’t get. It is not okay to trash something that your earthly father built even though it is not the final destination, yet it is okay to trash something our heavenly Father has created because it is not the final destination. That is really odd.
The photo above is from the Alabama Hills below Mount Whitney near Lone Pine, California. It is sort of looking out from the “house” of earth toward the mountains.
— Rob