Preserving Our Foundations

Recently I was blessed to be able to visit the gorgeous Yellowstone National Park as well as the Grand Tetons. During one of the days we drove up to Mammoth Springs...

Mammoth Springs ^ Photo taken by my mom.

After seeing the springs, we took a break to watch a short film. Though at first I wasn't too excited about watching the presentation, I'm now glad I did...and here's why.

The short movie reminded me that we are all biased. You cannot be un-biased because we all have a worldview. Our biases depend on our worldview. Christians should strive to look at the world through Biblical eyes. This movie about Yellowstone, of course, came from a secular and evolutionary standpoint. I recognized its worldliness right away, when it quoted Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful and multiply" and proceeded to play evil-sounding music while showing the early American settlers chopping down trees for settlement...

Anyway, I guess I will post some thoughts / responses to the movie.

Destroying our home? 
Generally when coming from a secular viewpoint, humans are destroying the world - and how dare we! Not only that, but we continue to multiply and fill the earth, possibly overrunning and overpopulating and therefore destroying our home!

But, that's not quite the case.

First of all, God did indeed command humans to "Be fruitful and multiply" and that command still stands. He hasn't revoked it just because the world is saying we're a strain on the environment. (But the movie quoting that verse and then showing the settlers in a negative light...eh. It annoyed me). I honestly don't think God would give us a home, tell us to be fruitful and multiply, and then say, "Well, never mind, there's too many of you now. It's a strain on the environment. I revoke what I said." Nuh-uh.

Preserving it for who?
That being said, I found it ironic that over and over again, the presentation challenged us to preserve Yellowstone for future generations. Yet, taking a small deviation (it'll tie together in the end!), how can we do this if we abort our future generations?

Yes, we are supposed to take care of what God has given us. But NO, man does NOT belong to the earth. Earth DOES belong to man, unlike the quote used in the movie. Earth belongs to God - Psalm 50:12. We are just the caretakers. But somehow I doubt our preservation of nature will clean the blood of abortion from our hands.

I love Yellowstone. I am so glad I got to go. I actually hand-wrote this post in the car, and while doing so, a buffalo was sighted in the road ahead of us! Our car drove past him on the road, and he was only a couple feet away from us and I could even hear him breathing!

This is a zoomed-in pic Mom took of the buffalo as we drove past. 

I loved being at Yellowstone and viewing God's creation in its splendor. But I guess that's what it all goes back to. Creation.

Forgotten Foundations 
The movie also included a quote about civilizations falling because they have forgotten the foundations they were laid upon. It's so true. But our earth is not deteriorating physically because we have forgotten that we, too, are simply special animals evolved from goop. America is spiritually and morally deteriorating because it has forgotten her foundation on the Bible. It has forgotten one of the foundational books of the Bible - Genesis. Think about this: Why should we care about preserving our world or protecting our animals if we're just uber-evolved gloop? But we should care if...

- God gave us dominion over the animals. We are above the animals, but we also need to protect them. Why are we above the animals? Because...
- ...we're made in the image of God. Adam named the animal kinds, but no helper was found suitable for him (Genesis 2:20). That's because we're not just animals. And because we are not, that is why abortion is murder.

Genesis is such a foundational book. Think about it - it's why there is the sanctity of life and marriage, why bad things happen to "good" people (because of sin and the curse...if you would like to read an extremely good article on this subject check out Answers in Genesis here), and even why we wear clothes! It contains the first sign of a Redeemer to come. It's history and theology and biology.

The movie's quote about forgetting our foundations was correct. Our country has forgotten our foundations. Our founding fathers were not wild men who chopped down every tree and polluted every stream, discounting nature as something only to be used. Though they may not have had the idea to build National Parks someday, it seems to me that they were men after God's own heart, seeking to find a place where they could worship the Lord.

Yellowstone is a beautiful reminder of beauty, God's power, and also His judgement using the worldwide flood. It's a wonderful preservation of the fascinating quirks of our world, created so lovingly and creatively by our God.

But if we're to preserve Yellowstone for future generations, we need to make sure there are future generations. And we need to tell others of our foundations because the coming generations are Biblically inept. We who know the truth can't keep it hidden.

"Klarabelle"