Tomorrow is Earth Day around
the world. It was founded by
the late Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to help us remember the importance of
treating our planet properly.
A flood of movies has been released
in the past few years that emphasize the importance of taking care of our
planet – from the humorous Wall-E, to the suspenseful The
Day the Earth Stood Still to the blockbuster Avatar.
Although I believe much of the hype about catastrophic climate change is most
likely greatly inflated, we certainly do have a responsibility to care for the
earth.
In The Day the Earth Stood
Still (2008), the alien Klaatu says that it is more important for the
Earth to survive than it is for humankind to survive. There are few planets
that can sustain complex life, he says, and it would be better to destroy
humanity and let the earth have a fresh start than to let humanity turn the
world into an uninhabitable rock. It must be decided whether humans are capable
of improving to the point that they are not a threat.
Some time back, this examiner wrote
an article about
an essay by C. S. Lewis from Christian Reflections titled “The
Funeral of the Great Myth.” The “Great Myth” for Lewis was the idea that
humankind is progressing and gradually becoming better and better.
Developmentalism is not a new Hope that has just shown up recently. It has been
popularized in science fiction for decades, and been a subject of philosophy
for centuries. Somehow, it says, we will overcome our proclivity for destroying
ourselves – whether by war or by pollution. Peace will reign on Earth, and we
will take our place among the stars.
C. S. Lewis wrote an article in 1958
for the Christian Herald titled “Will We Lose God in Outer
Space?” (Published as “Religion and Rocketry” in the C. S. Lewis
anthology The World’s Last Night—1960, still available as a
reprint.) While logically explaining why life on other planets would not
preclude God or Christianity, he wonders whether God would allow us to venture
out with the possibility of contaminating unfallen races (a subject which, of
course, he delves into in his Space Trilogy). Lewis did not believe that we
would progress to a point where we would no longer be a threat to hypothetical
worlds.
In the 1951 version of The
Day the Earth Stood Still, the reason for Klaatu coming to Earth was not to
save it from us, but to save the other planets from us. The concern was not
what we were doing to our own species or our own planet, but what we might do
if we were to travel to other worlds. Klaatu explains how these worlds have
solved the problem of hostility and war – not through progressing beyond it,
but by controlling it. Robots have been programmed to take action against any
aggression. The peace is maintained by the threat of force.
Lewis believed that the final peace
will come by force. In 1952, he wrote “The Christian Hope—Its Meaning for
Today” for Religion in Life (titled “The World’s Last Night”
in the above anthology). He believed the Second Coming of Christ would be
apocalyptic in nature. No gradual “bringing in” of the Kingdom, but a sudden,
forceful take-over. He presents sound theological reasons for supporting such a
Coming, and uses the same arguments against Developmentalism that he used in
“The Funeral of the Great Myth.”
Lewis does remind us that Christ
said no one knows the day or hour of His Coming. He did not even know it
Himself (one of the great mysteries of the incarnation). But we should live
with the reflection that it could be at any moment, and that He will come in
Judgment.
We
cannot always be excited [about His Coming]. We can, perhaps, train ourselves
to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or
failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams on
it; that light which is so different from the light of this world—and yet, we
know just enough of it to take it into account.
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