Blogotional: "We Are All Going To Die"

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

"We Are All Going To Die"

Within minutes of reading this little gem of a story out of Australia

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."

I saw this one on the BBC web site and all I could do was sigh.

Over the last decade, you have surely heard many views as to why you should worry about carbon and climate change.

But the chances are you're not worrying about nitrogen.

In fact, there is a global nitrogen threat out there, yet the world seems not to notice!

I will not even go into the silly science involved in this story, I think the credentials of the man who wrote it say most of what needs to be said about the piece:

Mark Sutton is based at the Edinburgh Research Station of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

He is co-chair of the UN's Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN), director of the European Centre of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) and co-ordinator of the NitroEurope Integrated Project

Can you say, "axe to grind...money to raise."

But I am not writing this to argue with the science or make fun of the protagonists. There is a more fundamental question at play here. Why are we so susceptible to a doomsday scenario? Mankind has been foreseeing the end of our existence since the beginning of history. In medieval times Haley's comet was going to bring about the end of the earth. In the 50's and 60's it was nuclear war. Now it is climate change, and who knows, tomorrow it may be "the nitrocycle." We fall for this crap like rubes at a carnival every time.

Why do we lack hope so? Well, that one is easy - Because we lack a true understanding of our God! You know, the one that promises that all things work for the good and instructs not to worry about tomorrow.

What truly saddens me is that the church responds with programs to become environmentally aware. Not that operating a church plant in a sane fashion is a bad thing, that is not what I am saying, what I am saying is the church's first response should not be agreement to the fear, but rather the portion of the gospel message that reminds us that God is in control, and that leaning on our own understanding is the road to folly.

You know, in the end, we are all going to die. But the apostle Paul said:

Phil 1:21 - For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

1 Cor 15:54-55 - But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory. "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"