Resource conservation and Christ's return

Folks,

I don't know whether this topic has been discussed before on this forum,
but I'd like to see what the experts have to say about it. My good
friend and colleague is a herpetologist who is especially interested in
the preservation of wetland ecosystems. The "frog forum" to which he
belongs had the following excerpt posted (see following message). The
basic question for me is how we as believers and scientists reconcile
the doctrine of the imminent corporeal return of Christ with the idea of
environmental conservation for the long term?

I know the "stewardship of creation" concept is most often given as the
justification for conservation behaviors, but many of the more
fundamentalist Christian groups dismiss such behavior as ridiculous if
the physical Earth will only be around a few more decades. It seems to
me that this is closely related to the YEC/OE question, and can be as
nasty a condundrum as explaining Original Sin or the origin of the
God-conscious soul.

Thanks in advance for your participation. I hope this is an appropriate
topic for our forum. If this has been discussed in depth before, please
refer to the appropriate archives.

Roger

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: No turtles?
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:47:30 -0600
From: Mark Bailey <mbailey@conservationsoutheast.com>
Reply-To: mbailey@conservationsoutheast.com
To: PARC@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Another factor influencing a person's worldview and attitude toward
long-term conservation issues is whether he/she believes the "end times"
(Armageddon, the Rapture, etc.) are upon us. People who fully expect the
world's imminent destruction will likely fail to see the point in
conserving
"non-essential" resources such as frogs and turtles.

A pre-millennium Newsweek poll conducted in 1999 reported, "A significant
44% of the population thinks that Jesus Christ will likely return to Earth
during the first half of the next century [that's now THIS century]. One in
five (22%) says Christ will definitely return, a view held by 40% of
African
Americans and more than one-third of white evangelical Protestants."

This is certainly not the forum to debate religious beliefs, but we need to
be cognizant of (and also sensitive to) the beliefs of a large chunk of
society, and what they mean to conservation. A great many people in the
United States have this worldview (including members of this listserve and
many of our most influential policymakers). While, as James Stuart said,
some creationists are indeed conservationists because they want to save and
protect the diversity of "God's creation," I suspect a larger percentage of
fundamentalists are not particularly concerned about the environmental mess
that future generations may have to deal with.

Mark Bailey

Senior Biologist
Conservation Southeast Inc.
2040 Old Federal Road
Shorter AL 36075
Received on Tue Dec 16 13:28:01 2003