And Then There Is None...

“Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” Exodus 34.7 NRSV

I have always found this one of the more disturbing verses from the Bible! Growing up it didn’t seem fair to me that I should be somehow still responsible for the sins of past generations. As I grew older and my outlook matured somewhat I began to see it as being the dictates of a vengeful god, a god who refused to let any sin disappear but instead took it out on those in the future who were not responsible for whatever had happened. Perhaps this was to discourage parents from sinning, I didn’t really know, but knew that a god who would do this was not a nice god. And perhaps this was the real beginning of my life’s journey.

I’m sure there isn’t one person reading this who hasn’t heard of Global Warming. Whether they believe it to be true or ‘false news’, it is on everyone’s radar. But when I first clued into the rhetoric, it was speaking of the end of the century, affecting future generations, something to be concerned about, to try and do something about, but there was still time to make the necessary ajustment to how we treated the planet.

Today, my daughter and her family live in Cape Town South Africa. Over the past three to four years there, they have suffered from a severe drought. The resulting forest fires on the mountain near Cape Town during their summer seasons have been concerning. However, according to the latest news on April 12, drinking water will cease to flow out of the taps there. Global warming has arrived with a vengeance!

The verse I started with has now taken on a new meaning. My generation, and to an extent my parent’s generation and my children’s generation, have been responsible for the ecological disasters taking place around the world. We embraced the new technologies and the lure of a more affluent lifestyle, without considering the toll it was taking on the planet. Scientists warned that there was a finite amount of water and fossil fuels, that we were poisoning our environment with toxic wastes in both the soil and the air. But we didn’t really take them seriously. Those things are now affecting our children and grandchildren.

Can we make a difference before it is too late for human life on this planet?

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NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

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