Vol.IX No.XI Pg.5
January 1973

Ecology Bandwagon

Robert F. Turner

Ecology is the in thing now, and business is capitalizing on the swing. I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a sand and gravel truck which read, Save Our Trees, Buy Concrete Blocks! That has a nice American sound to it. There is even a deodorant that advertises it leaves that natural scent. Now what could be more natural than the odor we are trying to prevent?

I am all for seeking to understand and preserve a balance between man and his environment, and have fought pollution and waste of our natural resources since my Boy Scout days, but nature —the world, the universe —is the product of God, and made for mans use it is not a law unto itself. What is natural (Gen. 1:) must be dressed and kept, pruned and controlled (Gen. 2:15); and what comes naturally in man is not necessarily good. it is subject to his will —and appetites —and these too must be kept in subjection to Gods will.

We are intelligent beings, not by chance of natural selection or even because some abstract Nature made us so, but because the personal, no-less-actual-because-He-is-Spirit God made us so. The opposites, good and evil, emphasize the intelligent faculty of man —he has something to choose —and rejection of wrong is an essential part of accepting right. In the exercise of restraints —those dictated by Gods revelation and also those discovered in His handiwork, the universe —we grow and develop. It is the restrained, unnatural part of us (in the modern concept) that shows we are civilized beings--more than mere animal life, but persons, made in the image of God. Nothing could be LESS ecological than a rejection of the God who made this universe, and of the laws he gave for its use and development.

I fear some of our young people are hanging in with this nature kick —rightly and commendably concerned about clean air, water, and such, but failing to see that they are being sold an additional pitch for pantheism--nature-god concepts. God-less and amoral philosophers are using our current concern for ecology, as do some business advertisers —to further their own teaching. They do not believe a Creator exists, nor do they believe there are either purpose or absolutes in our existence. With them ecology is not something right or good. It simply serves their immediate survival needs.

And NATURE BOY, with his bare-feet and unkempt hair —doing his rather than Gods thing —is the child of this philosophy. He may not realize it. Many teen-agers, in process of growing up, find hippy styles an outlet for self-assertion, for throwing off childhood. But the styles originated in a far more serious rejection of authority and one who persists in this course will soon reject Jehovah God and His instructions. He becomes a throw-back —to be pitied as one would a retarded child who can not mature. More so —for this one will not mature, and must answer in judgement for his obstinacy.

When Gods Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God —now thats ecology.