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QUITTING THE HOLOCENE
Scripture citations are to the New International Version,
British
usage edition (NIV-UK).
IT’S ALWAYS THE WAY. Just when you get used to living in one epoch, you have to pack up and move to another! Such is the fast-changing world in which we live. The time from the last major ice age to the present is estimated by geological science to have begun between 11,500 and 12,000 years ago. This period, during which Mr. and Mrs. Homo Sapiens have especially flourished the ‘sweet spot’ is called the Holocene.
From the standpoint of biblical chronology, one might quibble with the assumption of 12,000 years. For, depending on which figuring method one applies to it, the Bible seems to yield a period closer to 6,000 for human existence. Of course, this estimate does not include the age of the planet (which may be thousands of millions of years), nor the vast periods during which plant and animal life was developed. This phase of the debate is not the focus of this article.
The Dutch Nobel Laureate chemist, Paul Crutzen, has mooted the possibility that humanity may now be living in what he terms the Anthropocene, a geological epoch very different in cause and effect to those which preceded it an age in which the health and destiny of the planet may be determined by Man, rather than Nature.
Seems
Like Only Yesterday .
Trends can be identified with some certainty only when they have been under way for many years. It is likely, therefore, that the so-called Anthropocene age began decades or even centuries ago. Indeed, it is possible that it began at the onset of what the Bible styles ‘the time of the end’ (Daniel 12: 4), when there would be a massive increase in knowledge. This period probably began around the start of the nineteenth century, during the Napoleonic Wars, and just as the Industrial Revolution was getting under way in Great Britain, from whence it spread around the world.[*]
This dramatic period of change instigated a chain of events which helped to create our modern world: mass manufacture, the wedding of science and industry, the application of steam power (especially the railway), the large-scale mining of coal, (and, later) drilling for oil, and so on. These developments allowed the industrialised nations to wage large-scale mechanised warfare. For instance, the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Boer Wars (1880-1881, 1899-1902 [this latter, also known as the South African War] ), were, in some respects, practice runs for the Great War, which broke out in 1914. In that particular conflict, recent innovations in aviation, naval, and wireless technologies were united in total, global warfare.
The effects of the 1914 war resulted in widespread shifts in matters social, economic, political, religious and technological, laying the ground for the Second World War, 1939-1945. This clash of nations, in its turn, ushered in the Atomic era, since when advanced developments in science, medicine, chemistry and genetics have multiplied to a fantastic degree. In each department of the modern world industry, law, ethics, medicine, etc. there have been wide-ranging revolutions, affecting every detail of our everyday lives, from plastics, to the garments we wear, the food on our plates, or the toothpaste we use, and the things we watch on television or computer.
‘Kilroy
Was Here’
The complex infrastructure of the modern world is the most visible of the changes man has wrought on the environment. The Great Wall of China or Offa’s Dyke are nothing compared to the thousands of miles of highways which stitch our world together. By moving billions of tons of dirt and mud and fashioning bridges, dams and cloud-high buildings in mega-metropolises, humankind has stamped its permanent signature on the planet, visible from space.
The built environments of city-scapes have become, for hundreds of millions of earth’s citizens, a replacement for the hills, fields and trees of the natural. Within our large urban areas life operates by new and different rules. The alleys and structures of the modern city are the concrete and glass equivalents of the rural paths and villages, generating social structures and varieties of charity and misanthropy unique to themselves.
On the technology front, the World Wide Web assumes the aspect of an artificial universe, which, like its literal counterpart, is practically unlimited in size. And in his manipulation of chemistry, by creating new materials, or tinkering with genes such as isolating and patenting DNA, the stuff of Life Man has set in motion a future which, for good or ill, must and will be different from one which past civilisations could have offered or anticipated.
Bread
versus Stones
Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7: 9-11)
Once regarded as ‘Millennial blessings’, gleams of a coming utopia, many of the material innovations of the past two centuries have turned out to be detrimental, resulting in a degradation of the environment, such as air, water and ground pollution, the diminishing stocks of fish, or the islands of debris which spread over large patches of ocean and kill marine life.
Has the human race, in effect, asked for a fish, but instead been given a snake? Asked God for bread, and been handed a stone? Putting it simply, has mankind availed itself of earth’s promised bounties, only to find that it has been hurt by them? What does this say about the benevolence of the Creator? Such an outcome has theological implications, providing fodder for arguments in favour of atheism.
For daylight on this question, we should bear in mind that our Lord’s words were intended as assurance to the children of God, as shown by His use of ‘son’ and ‘Father’. They relate to spiritual things, and do not constitute a blanket guarantee about material well-being for the entire race. Nonetheless, none of the benefits mankind currently enjoy would have been possible without God’s intervening providence.
Back
to Nature
Regardless of a list of dire consequences, humanity’s choice need not be between progress or the primitive state. Being ‘in tune’ with the earth is not necessarily the perfect solution. Paradise was lost in Eden, and Man and the planet put under a curse, as related in Genesis 3: 17-19:
To Adam [God] said, ‘Because you . . . ate from the tree . . . cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground . . .’.
The thorns and thistles, though literal in Adam’s case, are a metaphor for the impediments with which Adam’s race have been presented by a hostile planet, such as foraging, competing for shelter and food, and protecting oneself from predators viral, animal and human. And as Adam was condemned to this distress for the rest of his life, so all humanity must struggle for existence until such time as God relieves them. In the meantime, and although not the ideal solution, Science and Technology have improvised tools with which the race has vanquished many of these ills, resulting in overall well-being and an improvement in living standards and longevity. (Hands up, anyone who would like to go all the way back to raw nature?)
Of course, mankind have exploited the planet’s resources, one nation seeking competitive advantage over another. The ‘resource wars’ predicted to occur in decades to come, may or may not materialise, but it is not difficult to imagine that as sources of fresh, clean water become more polluted, or as oil wells dry up, nations will scramble for the first place in the queue. In fact, this has already begun. China, that great gobbler-up of resources, is investing heavily in Australia’s mining industries and western Canada’s oil sands. Various countries are attempting to force natural gas from the rocks, using the controversial and expensive process of ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing).
Demi-Gods
and Big Foot
An aerial photograph of the English landscape reveals the outlines of thousands of villages which vanished long ago. Foot-worn paths are clearly visible. The soil retains the imprint of generations of travellers and merchants long dead. And just as the tread of men and women and children passing to and from the market stall is imprinted in the ground, so has the human race marked the planet with its modifications of nature.
The human family has fulfilled the prediction which Satan made to Eve (Genesis 3: 5): ‘Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ Man in the collective sense has become a god of the earth, though at great cost to his spiritual well-being. For only through experience and sin has he arrived at this point in time. It remains to be seen how much grief and sorrow awaits the race in years to come.
A
Future Unlike the Past
It’s
impossible to know in detail how all this will work out. Each generation and
epoch brings its own unique configuration. But in broad outline, we may rely on
the biblical prophecies that tell us the blessings to come will exceed the woes
of the past. The developments of the past two hundred years are intended by God
to prepare the whole human family for the epoch of blessing to come the Millennial Age. And whatever damage the earth has suffered, we may leave it
with the Creator God who made all things that it will not be irreparably
destroyed. Just how this will be accomplished, we cannot know. As for the
spiritual side of things, Christ’s Kingdom will be the antidote. Earth, sea and
sky, are the Lord’s. Through Christ, He will repair and restore all things, to
His everlasting glory.
Isles of the southern seas,
Deep in your coral caves
Pent be each warring breeze,
Lulled be your restless waves:
He comes to reign with boundless sway,
And makes your wastes his great highway.
– Charles Edward Oakley, 1832-1865
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NOTES
[*] INQUA Commission on Stratigraphy and Chronology
(INQUA-SACCOM)
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Copyright September 2012 ukbiblestudents.co.uk
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