Gaia Has Left The Building

The cat is out of the bag – the barn door is off the hinges – Pandora has opened her box – Elvis has left the building. There are any number of ways to say that show is over. The show being the world as we know it. Finito, as it were.

We’re not talking in terms of the Late, Great Planet Earth as Hal Lindsey envisioned it back in the 1960’s and 70’s. He foresaw the old-school end-of-times that would have us burning up in a nuclear conflagration along with the then evil empire. He assured us that China, or Red China as it was back then, was developing a tank made out of plywood. Jesus would come back in the nick of time and for awhile Henry Kissinger was the anti-Christ.

David Wilkerson picked up where Hal Lindsey left off and made a fortune hawking the fear of being left behind. But in terms of the latest doomsday scenarios, we’re not talking about something as benign as being left behind after the true believers are whisked away in a rapture. We’re talking more in terms of being evicted from the planet, by the planet.

James Lovelock is the esteemed British environmental scientist who developed the theory of “Gaia” some thirty years ago. In the 1960’s he was a consultant for NASA working on the question of why the planet Mars is as it is. It started him thinking about the home planet.

The earth as Gaia, a kind of “mother nature” is essentially self-regulating. Over the millennia the environmental systems on the planet have acted to provide an ecological balance. Everything worked fairly well, even through cataclysmic events such as asteroid strikes. The planet always self-regulates.

Then we came along. We got along just fine until around the time of the industrial revolution. Since then, it’s rather like we have acted like a virus and the planet has gotten a fever. According to professor Lovelock, even if we brought all of our bad environmental habits to a screeching halt, the damage has already been done.

His theory is that the planet will warm up sooner than anyone thought. He is not of the “I told you so,” mind set. And at the age of 90 he does not expect to be around when it happens. He predicts that people who are very young right now could live to see it. Unlike other environmentalists who are crying out, “Save the planet before it’s too late!” James Lovelock is calmly stating, “The planet will save itself. In fact, it is in the process of doing that right now. Save yourselves before it’s too late.” Basically, his plan for salvation is simple: move inland and closer to the poles while you are able.

So there you have it. Back when I was growing up and our worst fears caused us to practice crawling under our school desks to avoid nuclear incineration, we didn’t consider that if we survived the flash, the building would probably fall on top of us.

Preaching peace-wise, our core message is not the gloom and doom. The world has always in one form or another been going to hell in a hand-basket. That is a given. Our core message is also a given: that God is in the midst of it all, working to redeem the situation. Even Jesus was crucified and God worked that one out pretty well. Like all the greatest stories ever told, it will be interesting to see how this one turns out.

Take Care – John Mann

Comments

[michael hardin]

John:

Some folks look askance at the fact that our family is learning wilderness survival training (well, I don't believe in a Rapture). I too am VERY concerned about what we have done & are doing to our planet. Thanks for the heads-up on this blog!