No 'tree-hugging' issue

[adapted from Tower of Light]

The events so far, the events in nature, and on the societal front, have been a microcosm. More will come. They will break us down. That, according to a word of knowledge, a prophecy that spoke boldly and directly against not just blatant misuse of science as seen with cloning but in the sophisticated lifestyles we had developed, the sophistication that displayed itself in all the newfangled products, in all the electronic gear, in all the paper-pushing and mouse-clicking jobs that were tethered to electromagnetism. They are things the Pope expresses concern about (as had the two previous Pontiffs). "You think of the changes in very simple ways, without realizing the fundamental mistakes of mankind," said the missive. "The very artifice of your societies is false and against the accordance of God's Will. This artifice shall not last. Your very conceptions of happiness and comforts are a great evil and falsity. They will not stand. My greatest nemesis is science, even more so than the media. The science that alters life, the science which creates a counterfeit heaven, the science that toils with the womb and genes, the science that has filled the air with the power of the enemy, the science which creates chemical witchcraft and fouls the earth, the science which seeks to create life but cannot in actuality even sustain it, the science which has denied God. This will fall, and all of its creations with it."

God is about goodness. He is not about sophistication, which speaks to pride. And pride went before the fall. It was what the message prophesied. A "peasant attitude"? Peasants lived a more natural existence. They farmed. They bartered. They had seen God everywhere. They relied on Him. Our society was now so convoluted that the collapse of two buildings sent an entire infrastructure into paralysis and this was the major lesson: We were overly "sophisticated." We were far too focused on what we built, instead of what God had made. We were distant. And as September 11 had displayed -- in full view of the world, in full view of anyone who had a TV (which was now nearly everyone) -- what we had built was a house of cards.

Could it actually be the case that many of our proudest achievements, the hallmarks of advancement and intelligence, were wrong? Had we really changed the face of the planet in a way that God not only did not intend but found to be so errant that He would have to allow the natural order to take hold and put us back in place?

Whatever was coming, I knew one thing: individual farms like those in peasant times were much more resilient to regional events -- less reliant on a global infrastructure -- and there was a lesson in that.

A breakdown was coming. This was an actual word of prophecy. God was moving to advance the earth in a way that was more moral and natural. He was purging sins that would otherwise be atoned for in purgatory or even deeper levels and nudging us so we got with the program. It wasn't just the common forms of sin. It wasn't just the cohabitation, adultery, drug use, profanity, perversion, irreverence, pornography, blasphemy, selfishness, arrogance, greed, theft, murder, embezzlement; it was also the sins against nature. These were usually ignored. Rome did not ignore them. A "sophisticated" throwaway society had reached the ultimate in disposability with abortion and now discarded embryos, but there was a root cause that had led to these forms of disturbance. What God had created was being disturbed in a way that a few short decades before would have seemed unimaginable. Regard for life began with the smallest. Plankton was dying in the oceans. Cape Cod had no more cod. In the Chesapeake, bushels of oysters had declined to one-half of one percent what they had been a century before. There was a hole in the ozone layer. Glaciers were melting. Pollutants from the combustion engine -- now considered an indispensable part of humanity -- caused not just asthma and other respiratory distress but genetic alterations.

Pollution especially affected the pre-born. Was this not a pro-life issue?

The level of synthetic materials in our environment was awesome. Finally, there was true use of that word: "awesome"! Despite decades of warnings, despite those who raised the alarm about a "silent spring," despite the government's own research (under both liberal and conservative administrations), chemicals known to harm humans were being used in a geometric progression.