Save the Ocean!

Yesterday as I was walking across campus to a class, I walked past a group of students trying to convince other students to stand for their cause: saving the world's oceans. As usual I just walked past them without saying anything (is that rude?), but simply overhearing some of what they were saying made me realize something.

You can't save the ocean.

Neither can you save any animals. Nor the rain forests, nor the atmosphere. There's nothing at all human beings can do to save any physical feature on—or above—the face of the earth.

Why? Because what is on the earth is finite. No matter what man does to save the ocean, one day it will have to go. Even if man could do something to "save" it, at best he can only prolong it's compatibility with human life.

It's curious, but after arriving at the class toward which I was headed, the assistant professor assigned to lecture turned out to be a fanatic of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. From time to time during her lecture, she would pose environmentalist questions on various topics, such as government conversion of lands into national parks, human use of natural resources, indigenous ownership of lands, etc. Yet every response, viable or not, was without exception a limited solution to man's infinite problem. If man exploits the earth without restriction, the earth will pass away. If he regulates his exploitation, it will still pass away. Though he can prolong its health, he cannot prevent its inevitable corruption.

In addition, man himself is also finite, both in time and in space. Everything that originates from man's doing and man's being is finite and will have a finite result. If he "saves" the earth, it will eventually come to an end. If he "saves" himself, he will also come to an end. But really, who am I telling? People know this, right? Why do I need to repeat what is—or at least should be—common knowledge? Doesn't everyone know that the result of all of man's efforts to save the world will only prolong its existence, and that it all has a last day?

Well, there's something else we all know, but some have yet to really discover it. Yes, man is finite, but man has eternity in his heart. This is by design—man was made this way, man is born this way, and man dies in the same condition. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has made everything beautiful in its own time; also He has put eternity in their heart, yet so that man does not find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."

What is eternity like in man's heart? It's an endless void. A gaping hole in one's being that nothing can fill. Despite all of the information available on them, I've never figured out what a black hole really is. But my best guess would be that it's something similar to the eternity in my heart. What can fill eternity? Or who can fill eternity? A loved one? No, human love is also finite, eventually to be sucked into the black hole of eternity without leaving a trace.

God is eternity. God is infinite. Only God can fill this void in man's heart. I've heard it called a "God-shaped vacuum within man", and I couldn't come up with a better phrasing of it if i tried. In short, God created man with the capacity to contain Himself, and man isn't satisfied until he receives and is filled with God. Man may deny this fact, but throughout the history of the earth man is the only being to have been inwardly driven to worship God. Man is also the only being to have tried saving the world. Wolves hunting rabbits to local extinction don't instinctively let some live to preserve them. Banana maladies didn't spare a few plants when desolating plantations. Nope, only man.

So why save the ocean? Why not save man instead? When we speak of saving the earth, we mean to save ourselves. But why not get to the point? Man is perishing, yet man can be saved. The way is NOT to regulate exploitation of the earth; that's only temporary and won't work forever. Man must receive God in Christ as the Spirit. When he does this, he will not only be saved from corruption, but will also find true peace, rest and satisfaction, having found God—the meaning of his existence on the earth.

Verse three from hymn 1327 in my hymnal:

Empty wanderer drop the striving—
Isn't worth all the troublin';
Open up your heart believing,
Call "Lord Jesus" and He'll come in!
Then today you'll find Him,
And calling on His name,
You're joined to Him, you're one with Him—
You'll never be the same.
You won't want to!
Jesus, Jesus is my life now,
Jesus, Jesus is my life;
I'm fully satisfied now,
Jesus, Jesus is my life.

Back at school from the weekend college conference in Big Bear. It was altogether amazing! When I get home and find my outline book I'll list the title. There was so much that was spoken, but the brothers gave us 4 words to sum up the 4 messages released:

See: We need to see the history of the world and trace God's move within it. In short, human history can be summed up by the significance of the four horses in Revelation: war, famine and death. Yet these four negative things spur on the running of the white horse, which is the gospel-going forth conquering and to conquer.
Pray: After seeing this vision we need to join ourselves to the Lord by offering our cooperation in prayer. Our prayer is firstly to have fellowship with the Lord, and then in intercession, intervening in the lives of others for their benefit.
Go: We need to use our talent given by the Lord by functioning according to our measure-practically speaking, we need to speak to others for their salvation.
Build: For the work of the gospel to be a prevailing one, we must see that it's a corporate, not individual matter. We must be pratically built up as members of the body of Christ with other members. Building is simply the mingling of God with man. We must receive the divine transmission from God, and receive and transmit Christ into others. In this way, the ones who are saved by us will not only be saved souls, but they will also become what we are-materials good for the building up of the body of Christ.

I hope there will be a time of overflow of the conference material sometime soon. I know there are some things that others saw that I didn't catch.

So I'm learning that although I'm busy with work and school, I'm not really THAT busy. There is always time for the Lord, for the saints. It only depends on where the heart is. So on that note I was able to continue in The Overcoming Life. It just gets better and better!