The Earth—God’s Gift to Us
“IN THE beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He also pronounced the earth to be “very good.” (Genesis 1:1, 31) No piles of trash disfigured it; no garbage dumps polluted it. A beautiful gift was bequeathed to mankind: “As regards the heavens, to Jehovah the heavens belong, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.”—Psalm 115:16.
At Isaiah 45:18, he tells what his purpose is for the earth: “This is what Jehovah has said, the Creator of the heavens, He the true God, the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited: ‘I am Jehovah, and there is no one else.’”
He shows specifically what man’s responsibility toward the earth is—“to cultivate it and to take care of it.”—Genesis 2:15.
Jehovah sets the example. He takes care of the earth. One way is by recycling the important provisions of earth, the things on which all life on earth are dependent. A special issue of Scientific American had articles on several of these cycles, which included the energy cycle of the earth, the energy cycle of the biosphere, the water cycle, the oxygen cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the mineral cycles.
The Earth—Both Amazing and Beautiful
The widely published biologist Lewis Thomas, in the science magazine Discover, wrote this unqualified praise of the earth:
“The overwhelming astonishment, the queerest structure we know about so far in the whole universe, the greatest of all cosmological scientific puzzles, confounding all our efforts to comprehend it, is the earth. We are only now beginning to appreciate how strange and splendid it is, how it catches the breath, the loveliest object afloat around the sun, enclosed in its own blue bubble of atmosphere, manufacturing and breathing its own oxygen, fixing its own nitrogen from the air into its own soil, generating its own weather at the surface of its rain forests, constructing its own carapace from living parts: chalk cliffs, coral reefs, fossils from earlier forms of life now covered by layers of new life meshed together around the globe.”
These are just a few of the provisions that Jehovah has put in place to keep the earth functioning as a beautiful gift for mankind, a home created to endure forever for people and untold millions of other living creatures. Psalm 104:5 says: “He has founded the earth upon its established places; it will not be made to totter to time indefinite, or forever.” Another inspired witness testified to this same permanence of the earth: “A generation is going, and a generation is coming; but the earth is standing even to time indefinite.”—Ecclesiastes 1:4.
Astronauts circling the earth have waxed eloquent over this beautiful, fragile sphere sailing along in its orbit around the sun and have expressed the need for humankind to appreciate its beauty and to care for it. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, when he first glimpsed earth from space, radioed Houston: “It looks like a sparkling blue and white jewel . . . laced with slowly swirling veils of white . . . , like a small pearl in a thick black sea of mystery.” Astronaut Frank Borman’s comment was: “We share such a beautiful planet. . . . The overwhelming wonderment is why in the world we can’t appreciate what we have.” One of the astronauts of the Apollo 8 moon flight commented: “In the whole universe, wherever we looked, the only bit of color was back on the earth. There we could see the royal blue of the seas, the tans and browns of the land, and the whites of the clouds. . . . It was the most beautiful thing to see, in all the heavens. People down here don’t realize what they have.”
The facts show that statement to be true—people don’t realize the treasure they have. Instead of taking care of this gift from God, humankind is polluting it and destroying it. Astronauts have seen this also. Paul Weitz, commander of the first flight of the space shuttle Challenger, said that the damage man has done to the earth’s atmosphere is “appalling” when seen from space. “Unfortunately, this world is rapidly becoming a gray planet.” He further added: “What’s the message? We are fouling our own nest.” And especially has this destructiveness escalated perilously in these “last days.” Jehovah has pronounced his judgment against those who spoil the earth, namely, that he will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.”—Revelation 11:18.
An Ungrateful Society Unworthy of God’s Gift
A materialistic society has trampled underfoot spiritual values to give free rein to the flesh. The practical guidelines Jehovah gave mankind for happy and contented living have been pushed aside by the ascendancy of the selfish me-ism that characterizes our times.
Second Timothy 3:1-5 describes perfectly the perilous times in which we are living: “Know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and from these turn away.”
Commercialism fosters consumerism, and advertising is its handmaiden. Much advertising is appropriate; much is inappropriate. The latter fits Eric Clark’s observation in The Want Makers: “Not only does advertising help sell the wrong things to people who can’t afford them, it often does so at prices that are inappropriately high.” Says Alan Durning of World Watch: “Advertisers sell not artifacts but lifestyles, attitudes, and fantasies, hitching their wares to the infinite yearnings of the soul.” Advertising aims to make us discontented with what we have and desirous of what we don’t need. It creates an insatiable hunger; it leads to debilitating overconsumption; it spawns the proliferating waste dumps that pollute the earth. Its insidious persuasion worms its way even into the weary hearts of those living in hopeless poverty. Many advertisers aggressively market goods that are known to kill or sicken people.
What matters is our standing with God, as Ecclesiastes 12:13 says: “The conclusion of the matter, everything having been heard, is: Fear the true God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole obligation of man.” Those who do so will qualify for life in Jehovah’s clean Paradise! Jesus promised: “Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.”—John 5:28, 29.
When God’s Gift Will Be Appreciated
And what an unbelievably wonderful earth that will be! Jehovah has given us this breathtaking description of it: “I [John] saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea is no more. [God] will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”—Revelation 21:1, 4.
Gone too will be such former things as garbage dumps, toxic wastes, and those who push their trash off on others. Then the only people alive on the earth will be those who love their neighbors as themselves, who praise Jehovah for his gift of the earth, and who delight to take care of it and keep it in paradisaic condition.—Matthew 22:37, 38; 2 Peter 3:13.
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The Vanity of Materialism
Jesus spoke an incisive truth when he warned: “Keep your eyes open and guard against every sort of covetousness, because even when a person has an abundance his life does not result from the things he possesses.” (Luke 12:15) It is not what we have that counts; it is what we are that matters. It is so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life—the making of money, the accumulating of things, the frantic rush to grab all the pleasures the flesh craves—and to think we’re living life to the full, missing nothing, when we may be missing the best life has to offer.
It is only as life is slipping away that we realize what we have lost. We realize the truth of what the Bible says: Life is very short—a mist that vanishes, a puff of smoke, an exhalation, a shadow that passes, green grass that withers, a flower that fades. Where has it gone? What have we done? Why were we here? Is this all there is? Just vanity of vanities, a striving after wind?—Job 14:2; Psalm 102:3, 11; 103:15, 16; 144:4; Isaiah 40:7; James 4:14.
A man in a hospital, dying, looking out a window, seeing a hillside washed in warm sunshine, a mixture of grass and weeds, a few little struggling flowers, a sparrow scratching in the dirt for a few seeds—not much of a scene to emote over. But to the dying man, it is beautiful. A sad yearning touches him, to think what simple joys he has missed, the little things that mean so much. All so soon gone!
The Greek Scriptures of the Bible put it plainly: “We have brought nothing into the world, and neither can we carry anything out. So, having sustenance and covering, we shall be content with these things.” (1 Timothy 6:7, 8) The Hebrew Scriptures put it more bluntly: “Just as one has come forth from his mother’s belly, naked will one go away again, just as one came; and nothing at all can one carry away for his hard work, which he can take along with his hand.”—Ecclesiastes 5:15.
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NASA photo