Text Copyright © 2022 Ronald Ray Lambert
All Rights Reserved
When God first created this world and all the living things to live on it, He said it was very good: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) We also read in 1 John 4:8: “God is love.” So should we not expect that nature should be governed by the law of love?
There are traces of goodness and love that remain in nature, but it has been marred. Something has gone very wrong.
I was walking on the nature trail around Lake Shellenbarger at Camp Au Sable, a church camp near Grayling, Michigan, where I twice served two summers as a junior youth counselor. But at the eight o’clock position on that path, I came across the carcass of a young deer, badly rotted and half eaten. It was too big to be a fawn. Probably a yearling, when it died. But it was so disconcerting—it should not be there! There is a word some people use for such times: “angst.” It has been defined as “philosophical pain.” Here was something that should not be! I was sad to see what had become of the deer.
Years ago I was a junior youth counselor at Camp Au Sable, earning tuition credits towards my sophomore and junior years at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, Michigan. My friend, Jim Ayers (who later went on to sing bass for the King’s Heralds Quartet), was also a counselor. He was teaching the Pathfinder honor in Reptiles and Amphibians. At one point he called over a group of junior youth, to show them in a rectangular glass aquarium a snake eating a frog. I did not say anything at the time, but I was thinking, “Jim, what are you doing? Showing this horrible thing to these young children as a ‘wonder of nature’?” Yes, it was a wonder that the snake could unhinge its jaw so it could swallow something so big. But that poor frog was still alive! Angst!
Have you ever heard a rabbit squeal in terror and despair as it is caught by a predator? Normally rabbits do not make much sound. But sometimes they do. Angst!
Have you ever watched a cat cruelly play with a mouse before killing it? Angst!
Yes, of course we know the ultimate cause. Because our first parents sinned. And all the children of Adam and Eve continue their legacy of doubting and disobeying God. Perhaps you might say it is not a surprise that we suffer. We die. We all feel aches and pains. We age, and feel the vigor of youth fade away. Things go wrong, and we need to see a doctor. Accidents occur, and we have to be hospitalized. People we know, loved ones, die unexpectedly. People give way to drugs and alcohol, or other indulgences, to try to medicate their mental and spiritual pain. But in a way, this is all to be expected. Humanity has fallen into sin.
But why do the animals suffer too? Why is all of nature filled with death and dying? Why is nature made to share in the consequences of our sin?
This question attracted the attention of the English poet, Lord Alfred Tennyson. In a poem he completed in 1849, he expressed wonderment at how humanity is still able to have faith in a Creator, Who is supposed to be a God of love, when we see what we do in nature. Here are four lines from Canto 56 of his poem In Memoriam A.H.H., where he is speaking of humans who have faith:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
(Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H. )
Tennyson may be dramatic in the way he said things; but basically he was wondering how people can continue to have faith in a God of love, when the malignity we so often find in nature seems to contradict our religious beliefs.
This is a valid question. What is the answer?
The Bible tells us that one of the consequences of sin was that God cursed the ground: “…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee….” (Gen. 3:17, 18)
This curse on the ground requires some thought. Research on helium in granitic zirconium and its diffusion rate by Dr. Russell Humphreys and others reported in Creation Research Society Quarterly—a peer-reviewed Creationist scientific journal—may bear on this. When uranium undergoes radioactive decay, it gives off as a by-product helium gas, which becomes trapped for a time in the zirconium in the granite that forms the earth’s crust. Because it is a very light gas, it slowly diffuses out of the zirconium. What Humphries reported (following up on an earlier observation of unusual amounts of helium in granitic zircon by Dr. Robert V. Gentry) was that the amount of helium remaining in the zirconium is whole orders of magnitude greater than it should be, if millions of years have gone by, which should have allowed a steady-state balance to have been achieved between rate of continued formation of radiogenic helium, and its diffusion rate out of the zirconium. (Link: http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Helium.htm )
The logical explanation suggested by some looking at this data was that at some time in the recent past (only a few thousand years ago) the rate of radioactive decay was greatly accelerated for a short time. It has been shown in the laboratory that the rate of nuclear decay can be accelerated millions and even billions of times if matter is heated up to the plasma state. So we do know it is possible for the rate of radioactive decay to change; it is not necessarily always constant, as many scientists have previously believed.
If this speculation is correct, then it could provide the mechanism by which the ground was cursed—DNA sequences in plants, animals, and man were extensively damaged by temporarily increased radiation. Could this be what gave rise to thorns and thistles, fangs and claws, and the hundreds of “lethal genes” that have been identified in humans?
We do have the declaration of God that the ground was cursed, however it was achieved. But He also said that the curse on the ground was “for thy sake”? Does that mean the curse was just punishment because of what Adam and Eve did—or does it mean more? That it somehow was meant to be a benefit to us in some way?
The Apostle Paul addressed this subject of corruption in nature and why God allowed it to be. We find this in Romans 8:19-23. We read in the New King James Version:
“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:19-23.)
This indicates that creation will be delivered when the children of God are delivered. The suffering and dying animals are waiting for us. Jesus said that every sparrow that is used in sacrifice is remembered by God (Luke 12:6). Why would God remember them unless He intends to resurrect them to help populate the New Earth? Likewise our beloved pets. Would not God raise them up if we ask Him to? He promised: “And whatever you ask in My name, this I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13; NASB.)
What is the significance of this? Why should the corruption in nature, “red in tooth and claw,” give us hope?
We gain insight into this in the sacrificial system that God instituted for ancient Israel. For example, we read in Leviticus 5:5, 6: “And it shall be, when he is guilty in any of these matters, that he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing; and he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin.”
Further insight comes from the way this is discussed in Hebrews 9:22. I read it from the NASB: “And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Why did God do this? Why did God link together our sin with shedding of blood, and making it a requirement for forgiveness? Obviously, God wanted to impress upon ancient Israel, and all of us who learn of their system, how grievously terrible a thing sin is, that it must result in death.
Secondly, we also know that the blood of those animal sacrifices was a type or symbol that pointed toward Jesus Christ, who is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13:8) So Jesus on Calvary is the Redeemer for Adam and Eve, and all their descendants who put their trust in God.
Let me suggest to you a third reason. When we look upon the corruption in nature, and see the suffering and death, we see the reality of what sin is, demonstrated. It is an object lesson. One definition of sin is that it consists of selfish striving, as opposed to the kind of love which seeks to upbuild others in mutual nurture. Nature red in tooth and claw shows us what the end result of selfish striving really is. Do we think our minor sins do not matter all that much, and we feel no shame at our self-promotion, or put-down of others? See where that principle of behavior leads, in nature red in tooth and claw.
This should make all the more wonderful the promise God has given us of the final outcome for ourselves, and our world, given in Revelation 21:3-5: “And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
SEE ANOTHER TOPIC
Commentaires