Blog

By Carol Bolden

During our travels across America over the past six months, we’ve observed the tremendous diversity our country displays. With time in our pockets, able to travel back roads instead of highways, we’ve seen a decidedly beautiful country of buffalo herds, sunflower fields, meandering rivers, wild horses, flaming sunsets, wide-open spaces, majestic peaks, lush trees, sparkling lakes, breathtaking views, bald eagles, charming islands, and snow-capped peaks, testifying to its abundant beauty.

Observations about the state of our environment, though not scientifically based, do prove factual after a little research. In spite of its beauty, there are signs of an environment negatively impacted by man, its seldom-faithful guardian. While state and national parks appear well-cared-for, they face complex issues not easily remedied.

What we’ve noticed: Bugs and birds are diminishing at a tremendous rate. The bugs we remember as children that caked our windshields during travel, are scant today. So are birds. Karin Brullllard tells us in her September 2019 Washington Post article that North America has lost three billion birds in 53 years, representing hundreds of species. Birds, a well-monitored species, are like the canaries in coal mines— harbingers of danger. Today, they warn of a wider environ- mental dis-ease. Other creatures are thought to be fading, are more challenging to count.

Douglas Main tells us in his February 2019 National Geo- graphic article that insect populations really are plummeting. A new study suggests that 40 percent of insect species are in decline, among them Monarch butterflies that winter in the Chincua Mountains in Mexico, who have declined because of land-use changes, and bees who are facing collapse from a variety of causes.

Having spent several years as an amateur beekeeper, I’ve suffered the loss of entire colonies due to mites, pesticides, and/or inexperience. My loss was minuscule compared to what’s happening in the wider environment. Around 2007, beekeepers in the United States raised the alarm that thousands of their hives were mysteriously empty of bees. This new phenomenon, colony collapse disorder, led to a global concern. The U.S. alone lost more than 28 percent of colonies during the 2015-16 winter, a loss which has not abated.

Fruits and vegetables, important components of our diet, depend on bee pollination for reproduction. At least 30 per- cent of the world’s crops and 90 percent of all plants require cross-pollination to spread and thrive according to one gar- den magazine. Follow this train of thought to its end and you can see the precarious place our world is in.

Pesticides are being used indiscriminately, negatively affecting human, vegetable, and animal health. In several populated areas, we’ve seen pesticides used to keep weeds at bay. Most recently, we’ve witnessed the spraying of pesticides in flower beds and gravel areas near where we’re parked in Benson, Arizona. The pesticide used is most likely Round-up, one currently under fire for its cancer-causing ingredients.

“Excessive use of pesticides may lead to the destruction of biodiversity. Many birds, aquatic organisms and animals are under the threat of harmful pesticides for their survival. Pesticides are a concern for sustainability of environment and global stability,” say Mahmood, etc. in Effects of Pesticides on Environment from March 2016.

A 2010 study by S.A. Rogers discovered that pesticides travel up the food chain straight into our national parks. The study he reported found pesticides originating from as far away as Asia in eight Western U.S. national parks including Sequoia, Glacier and Rocky Mountain. As a global community, we have failed our heavenly dictate to care for the earth.

The delicate balance of nature is being challenged out of convenience, ignorance, greed, and neglect. God’s chosen gardeners have been weighed and found wanting. One day, this world will be re-made into its original state. As we wait for that day, let’s go the extra mile to take care of our world by educating ourselves on how we can best care for our state and national parks. For help, go to www.doyourpartparks.org.

–Carol Bolden is traveling through the United States in a motorhome with her husband Thom. Read her blog: https://outlookmag.org/off-to-see-america-traveling-by-motorhome/. She was communication assistant at RMC until her retirement in August 2019. Email her at: [email protected]

By Becky De Oliveira

As a child, I was routinely taught that scientists were most just “guessing” about their theories. “They have to have faith just as much as we do,” teachers and other adults said. These adults made scientific-sounding arguments for a young earth, evolution being the primary scientific theory they were eager to debunk. When my children were in elementary school, they came home telling me they’d been informed that dinosaur bones had been placed in the earth by Satan himself, to trick us and cause us to lose our faith.

“Interesting,” I said. “That certainly is a theory.”

My oldest son has gone on to study environmental earth science at university—basically, geology. This sits uncomfortably with certain Adventist church members who raise their eyebrows and cluck about the “dangers” involved in studying earth science.

What are those dangers?

I suppose the primary danger is that increased knowledge would lead to a corresponding and highly correlated decrease in faith. That is possible. But as many a wise person before me has pointed out, faith that is untested is not faith at all. Faith based on ignorance is what, exactly?

Skepticism toward the scientific community has led to some foolish and destructive behavior by individuals and leaders, in this country and many others. How many out- breaks of measles have resulted from an insistence—against overwhelming consensus to the contrary from the medical community—that the MMR vaccine is responsible for autism? It is interesting that so many people are convinced of the likelihood that doctors, medical researchers, and other experts are conspiring to cause harm to millions of people (for profit perhaps)—but that the sources they trust that call these experts’ claims into question are blameless and trustworthy with no ulterior agendas whatsoever. Why would that be the case?

Sometimes it is easy enough to see why people reject evidence they don’t like. Certain discoveries may “touch on people’s lifestyle or world-views, or impinge on corporate interests” (Lewandowsky & Oberaur, 2016). Other times rejection of science appears to be an identity-based decision, a sort of tribal impulse. Perhaps alignment against a much-hated political party?

One interesting factor with climate change denial is its association with low tolerance for ambiguity (Jessani & Harris, 2018). The science surrounding climate change is complicated and messy and contains a high level of complexity. People with low tolerance for ambiguity like familiar explanations and black-and-white conclusions.

I am reminded of a person who wrote to me about a year ago complaining that I raise unsettling questions in my writing and, at that time, on the podcast I co-hosted. She did not want to think about hard or uncomfortable things. And fair enough. It’s a free world. But it’s also a complicated world and it won’t get any easier from our collective refusal to see problems. If we truly have faith, perhaps it’s time to stop being so afraid of what we may see if we look.

–Becky De Oliveira is a doctoral student in research methods at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and is a member of Boulder Adventist Church. Email her at: [email protected]

References

Jessani, Z., & Harris, P. B. (2018). Personality, politics, and denial: Tolerance of ambiguity, political orientation and disbelief in climate change. Personality and Individual Differences, 131, 121-123.  Lewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2016). Motivated rejection of science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(4), 217–222.

By Rajmund Dabrowski

Just like the Seneca,
I have lost my place.
And where I’ve been planted now, Soon will be shakin’ . . .
Too soon tomorrow will come. —Brewer and Shipley

Sidewalk encounter

A family of four walked out of a store. It just happened that I caught up with them as they crossed the street toward their parked car. The father tore up a receipt, I assumed, and threw it on the sidewalk. In a split second, I could not help but to approach him and say, “Sir, I think you dropped something.”

His reaction stunned me. He bent over and picked up the smithereens while the family watched. Then smiling, he reacted, saying, “Thank you. Yes, these were mine. I am sorry.”

Even today, I reflect that his reaction was one of many he could have chosen. Our city was saved from the wind carrying the trash in odd directions. The lesson, I conclude, was most useful to his two young kids.

Living in a culture of consumerism and junk, many of us have views on why our neighborhoods are littered with trash. We may recall being scolded by parents when throwing an apple core on the ground. To be forgiven once did not mean avoiding being lectured in the future about keeping a clean environment and the consequences of disobedience.

Diploma for recycling

My unforgotten moment of environmental conscience happened in grade school. It all goes back some 60 years to the streets of downtown Warsaw when I visited local editorial and printing establishments to solicit donations of print paper to be thrown away. Today, a reminder hangs on the wall—a diploma signed by a principal and a PTA president. It states that I am commended for “very good results in collecting paper recyclables for the school year 1960-1961.” Nostalgia is taking me to the day when in front of the entire school I was singled out for such an accolade. It feels good, though.

Clearing the ruins

The second reminder of my personal environmental activism is a high school experience a few years later when our class of 35 participated in a “civic duty” day challenging us to clean the rubble of a ruined Krasinski Square in Warsaw, a reminder of WWII. I recall getting involved once a month and picking up bricks and loading barrels with dirt. Walking by the square several years later, I was proud to have had a little part in making the city beautiful again.

Caring for Mother Earth

Today, it’s not so much clearing the ruins of a post-war destroyed city. It’s about halting global warming, battling for clean air and unpolluted water. It’s about protecting the forests, wetlands, or a disappearing rare animal species. It’s also about saying no to unquenched exploitation of earth’s resources, unbridled over-consumption and production of waste. It’s about being inspired by a teenager, Greta Thun- berg, or a stalwart protector of animals, Jane Goodall, or vice president Al Gore. Their messages are as challenging as the call of scores of environmental scientists, going through our daily activities to protect the clean and tidy surroundings, caring for God’s planet, our Mother Earth.

Beautiful temples

Never to be forgotten was a conversation with Caridad del Rosario Diego Bello, director of Havana’s Office of Religious Affairs, during a trip to Cuba with the Maranatha Volunteers International team. She remarked that when you see a beautiful, freshly-painted building in one of our towns, it is a Seventh-day Adventist temple.

It should make us proud to see our churches well looked after, no matter whether you see them in Africa, Asia or America. And hopefully it should make us cringe to see the unkempt lawns and peeling paint of a church sign, or plastic bags blown against a church wall.

Seventh-day Adventists are not called to passively wait till the end of the world. Along with scores of our fellow humans, we can conclude that it is man who is destroying the world by his irresponsibility toward the earth and its inhabitants. Yet, we recognize that the end will come about by the direct intervention of a supernatural force. We are reminded, again and again: “The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroy- ing the destroyers of the earth” (Revelation 11:18, ESV).

God created beautiful people for a beautiful earth. When God created, He liked what He saw. He “placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it.” So, what are we admonished to do today?

–Rajmund Dabrowski is RMC communication director and editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: [email protected].

By Eric Nelson

At creation, God placed Adam and Eve in a perfect environment, the Garden of Eden. “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15). God created the ideal setting full of wonders to experience and by which to be inspired. The lush garden setting must have been an amazing and gratifying experience. On every hand were reminders of their Creator God and His character. He made all this for them to enjoy and to provide them with inspiration.

Adam and Eve must have felt awe and amazement, wonder and appreciation for this incredible environment that God created just for their pleasure and enjoyment.

We, as Adventist Christians, of all people, should be able to resonate with Adam and Eve since we live here in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. People come from all over the world to see this area, to enjoy our mountains and incredible scenery. They come to camp, hike, climb, jeep, or to simply drive through the scenic byways and wonder at the beauty. Many visit to enjoy our national parks and wildlife. There’s something special here that beckons us to enjoy this rich experience, where we have the privilege to live and work. We are so very blessed to live here amid the vistas that can draw us even closer to God through the reminders of His creation in the beauty He has placed at our doorstep. We can join David in rejoicing, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). Or we can reflect with great understanding on his words in Psalm 121:1-2: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” How can we not get up in the morning and view the beauty we live in without being drawn closer to God?

I believe God placed within each of us a hunger for the enjoyment of His second book, nature. There is something healing and restoring about it. Little wonder that there is such an attraction to nature ingrained in our souls. We are nourished and calmed as we experience the natural world around us. Ellen White wrote, “‘God is love’ is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass. The lovely birds making the air vocal with their happy songs, the delicately tinted flowers in their perfection perfuming the air, the lofty trees of the forest with their rich foliage of living green— all testify to the tender, fatherly care of our God and to His desire to make His children happy” (Steps to Christ, p. 10).

Into this description of the beauty of our surroundings, let me introduce a disturbing reality. What is your reaction when you see someone tossing trash out of their car window? Or what impression do you have when you hike to a unique and special location and see that overlook littered with water bottles, cans, and trash? The words of Revelation 11:18 come to mind: “The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.” Of course, we are to care and look after the wonderful gift that God has given us in creating this world. We ought to be disturbed to see this precious possession abused and mistreated.

We must care and tend this resource and be disturbed when this wonderful creation is trashed and destroyed. But there is a trap that I sometimes find myself slipping into, and to which, perhaps, you are also susceptible. At times I am so busy and focused on work, thoughts, activities, drivers, hurrying to do something, that I don’t even see the beautiful foothills, snow caped peaks or the wonders of God’s creation around me. To ignore this incredible gift is to ignore nature’s way of reminding us of the Creator Himself. Let us not become so busy or allow our senses to become so dulled that we cannot appreciate and see God’s witness to us through His creation.

It is important for us to be blessed and impressed by God through nature. Today, take time to look for His signature and message to you from His incredible gift.

–Eric Nelson is RMC VP for administration. Email him at: [email protected]