A follow-up to last Sunday’s post, inspired by this article from CNN:
“A small brown rat which lived on a tiny island off northern Australia is the world’s first mammal known to have become extinct due to ‘human-induced climate change,’ the government says.”
As a Christian, I must confess the demise of the Bramble Cay melomys greatly disturbs me. Sure, it’s only a “small brown
rat” on some obscure South Pacific isle nobody’s ever heard of, but the media
is obviously convinced this particular small brown rat matters. After all, the little guy has been front and center on
every major news outlet for several days now, eclipsing even the latest alleged
faux pas from the media’s perpetual nemesis, President Trump.
So, even though he looks like every other species
of dun vermin I’ve ever seen in my life, let’s mourn this late little fellow’s
unique and special contribution to our ecosphere.
Enough with the Sarcasm Already
Okay, fine, enough sarcasm. But since we’re on the subject, let’s look at extinction from a Christian perspective.
In Genesis 1, mankind was tasked by God as follows:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Now, there is no explicit provision in this very early mandate to the human race that we must at any and all
costs keep every species of creature under our dominion alive and prospering, but I will
concede that with God-given authority comes some very serious conferred responsibility.
If God himself cares for the least of his creatures, we should surely do likewise.
After all, we have on record that the Father attends to
the falling of each sparrow, that he
cares for the cattle of monstrous pagan nations and that
even oxen and donkeys deserve the occasional day of rest and refreshment just like everyone else. The book of Proverbs explicitly states that righteous people look out for the condition of their animals, which implies that those who don’t are not the righteous sort.
The Rat Shall Lie Down with … Well, Probably Other Rats
Thus, if I personally had anything to do with the demise of the Bramble Cay
melomys half a world away, I am deeply sorry. My belief system gives me
reason to regret its passing and hope we can all do better as opportunity
allows us.
I should probably add that as a Christian, I am looking forward to and praying for the return of the Lord Jesus to reign
over our planet for a full thousand years, as prophesied in both Old and New Testaments. When he comes,
as Isaiah put it:
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”
In such an atmosphere, if reestablishing
the existence of a particular lost subspecies of brown rat is really and truly
cosmically significant, we can be confident the Bramble Cay melomys will once again thrive. God
can easily make that species prosper; after all, he can raise the dead. Nothing
truly good or important is ever lost where Jesus Christ is concerned. If we are to have sea creatures in the millennium, something like this will be necessary anyway.
So from a biblical perspective, that little brown rat is in pretty good shape. At very least, Christians who stop to mourn
the passing of the species will do it out of respect for its Creator and for their
own responsibilities to him, even if they can’t sincerely pretend to get all worked
up about a creature we all spend our hard-earned money trying to exterminate
when we find them in the basement.
Survival of the Fittest
But let’s examine exactly the same news
item from the perspective of the secularists at CNN for a moment, shall we?
Outside of a Christian worldview, nobody anywhere has the slightest rational reason to
give a fig about the extinction of a species of rat.
If Charles Darwin’s theory is even remotely
correct, a species becoming extinct is not an indication that man has failed to
adequately shepherd his planet; it’s an indication man has succeeded. It’s
survival of the fittest, right? And if the Bramble Cay melomys could not survive without man’s help, well then, it was obviously unfit. Evolution is just doing its
job of ensuring only the best genes get passed on to the next generation. We
should be celebrating!
Furthermore, in a Darwinian economy, species come and go all the time. That’s how the process works. Some neo-Darwinians question whether there even IS such a thing as species in the first place. After all, in the long run, plants and animals are always morphing from one thing to another — dinosaurs into birds, common ancestors into apes and men — after which members of the obsolete “species” gradually and necessarily disappear from the gene pool. On what rational basis does an evolutionist get worked up about the demise of one out of 64 species of rats, the world’s most populous mammal, thought to number in the billions?
Yet Another Obsolete Species
Moreover, if Darwin’s theory is correct, the
folks at CNN themselves are the product of random chance in an uncaring
universe. One day they too will go the way of the Bramble Cay melomys. From a purely
materialistic worldview, there is no logical reason any secularist anywhere
should mourn the passing of a single news reporter — or, for that matter,
every one of the world’s news reporters. After all, the evolving technosphere has rendered them as obsolete as a brown rat.
Let’s face it, if any of the many progressives working at CNN or anywhere else in the media genuinely cares about
the Bramble Cay melomys, it is very much in spite of his worldview, not because
of it. For anyone who argues that evolution is the way the world works, compassion for rats or anything else in the ecosphere is a breakdown of ideological
consistency, not evidence of it.
Now, if that sounds just a little depressing, as a Christian I can definitely tell
you I know of a God who cares for both rats and CNN reporters, the latter far more than the former.
Can a materialist say the same?
Hmm, concerning the last paragraph. Have you done your research to affirm that that information concerning CNN and God is really correct?
ReplyDeleteIf God so loved the world, which includes some pretty horrible individuals, I am confident he can indeed love even CNN reporters. He makes it to rain on the just and the unjust, after all.
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