In his latest documentary David Attenborough gives a sobering assessment of our impact on the natural world. Human beings, he says, are ‘intruders’ and that the natural world would do much better if we weren’t here at all. Sadly, it’s not a new observation. In 2003 Bill Bryson wrote in his book ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’: ‘if you were designing an organism to look after life… you wouldn’t choose human beings for the job’. It’s a depressing indictment of human nature, that the most intelligent being on the planet is slowly destroying it.
But the truth is that we are not intruders, and this is not how it was intended to be. The Bible makes clear that we are the pinnacle of God’s creation and that stewardship of the earth has been entrusted to us. We are not supposed to exploit the natural world but care for it on behalf of the Creator.
So, what went wrong? Quite simply our rejection of the Creator and His ways. We’ve cast off our intended role as wise stewards and instead have ravaged the world for our own ends. We still have time to change but if we don’t then the consequences are obvious.
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