Is universal sterilization the end goal of environmentalism?

Environmentalism leads to universal sterilization. Seems like quite a jump, doesn't it? And yes, it is. The average environmentalist is well-intentioned and has a deep caring for the earth and humanity. We simply want to see people make positive choices that benefit all of creation, not decisions that bring short-term rewards but hurt the world in the long-run.

However, an opinion article from the New York Times (HT: Joe) reveals that this could be another realistic, albeit disturbing, route for some environmentalists.

Over the past few months I've written a few posts (Here and Here) about a trend I've noticed among some environmentalists that depicts humanity as a problem for the earth - a species the world would be better off without. I hadn't thought about it to this degree before, but in light of the NYT article, it does make perfect sense that a push for universal sterilization would be the logical conclusion of this point of view: if humanity is bad for the planet, then let's do away with humanity, right?

Hopefully Christians can begin to embrace a better view of environmentalism - one that promotes taking care of the earth (rather than the "this place is going down one day anyway" mentality), AND holds a positive view of humanity's role in creation.

Yes, humans are responsible for a great deal of evils against the planet (e.g. the oil spill in the gulf, extinction of a number of species due to over-hunting or destruction of habitats, smog, etc...), but that does not mean humanity is, by necessity, bad for the planet. Nor does it mean that humanity must be done away with. If we can hold to a view that promotes humanity and the planet, perhaps we can come to realize that when we live as we were intended to, both we and the earth are better off.

My All Conclusive Lost Theory

Lost is finally over. When I began watching this show I longed for the day when it would be over - when I would finally understand what in the world had been going on. Well, as I should have expected, now that the finale has come and gone I am STILL wondering what just happened!

The debate as to whether or not the series finale was a satisfying end to the show is now under way. Personally I was pleased with the ending and found it fitting. From others, I've heard everything from "It was beautiful" to "it was utterly disappointing." And I can't even begin to count how many times I've seen the phrase, "I told you so" on message boards from all of the Lost haters out there - those who have sat just on the outside of the hysteria pointing in at all of us Lost fanatics wondering, not about the island, but rather just what exactly was wrong with all of us!

I'm not going to attempt to give a commentary on the ending itself - I think this article did that quite nicely. Instead, I want to attempt to do what the series finale did not - answer the questions, because I believe enough bread-crumbs were laid out along the way to do just that. So, without further ado, here is my all conclusive Lost theory: (And I shouldn't even have to say it, but consider yourself spoiler-alerted!)

The Island:

The Island is the heart of the show, and any theory of what was going on must revolve around this one fact. I'm going to say this up front, the island was real. The characters on the island were never dead, it was not purgatory. If at this point you're still thinking that then, I'm sorry, but you just weren't paying attention.

But the island was special. What we know for sure is that at the heart of the island there's a light which is also associated with power and electromagnetism. Somehow it turned the Man in Black into a raging smoke monster, and tapping into it caused the "incident" that forced the creation of the Dharma Swan Station and the pushing of a button every 108 minutes. Tapping into this with the wheel at the bottom of the Orchid also was able to move the island and its inhabitants through time and space.

We also know that a common phenomenon on the island was hearing whispers, which were later revealed to be the voices of the dead who were unable to move on. In addition to this, there are several occurrences throughout the show of a dead person appearing to a living person, not to mention Hurley being able to see and talk with the dead, and Miles being able to hear the final thoughts of the dead.

What seems clear to me is that the nature of the island has to do with life and death. I believe that the island is actually supposed to be the gateway between life and the afterlife. Just consider the cliche of the light itself. How many so-called near-death experiences involve seeing a bright light? How many stories of the afterlife involve someone saying, "just go toward the light?"

The light at the heart of the island is "the light" of the cliche. This is why the whispers happen - for whatever reason, some people just can't make it to the light..

The Flash-Sideways:

The island being a gateway between life and the afterlife also explains the flash-sideways. As revealed in the final moments of the finale, the too-good-to-be-true flash-sideways timeline was also some sort of hereafter for the castaways where they struggled with their inner demons and/or lived the life they had always wanted to.

In their final conversation, Jack's father Christian essentially tells him that where they are, there is no time, so the people he's with could have died before him, or well after him. They then go into the church (the Dharma Lamp Post, the station that determined when and where the island was) and have their reunion. Some of the characters had talked about "leaving" prior to this, Christian calls it moving on. While everyone sits in the pews of the church, Christian walks into the light.

I believe Christian entering the light is supposed to symbolize some sort of reincarnation or rebirth. Again, "the light" plays a key role, and I think it's the same light that's at the heart of the island. Had Jack not fixed the light, Christian's, or anyone else's, moving on would not have been possible. This is why the events on the island were so important to the events of the flash-sideways. Without fixing the light, Jack would never have been reunited with his friends.

Time Travel:

Christian's comments about there not being time in the flash-sideways also explains the time-travel that was the driving force of Season 5, other "flashes" in time that occurred throughout the series, the fact that time on the island was different, and even the fact that the island could move through time and space.

If there is no normal sense of time in the flash-sideways, or afterlife, and the light is the gateway to the afterlife, then there would be no sense of time in the light either. So remember that all occurrences of time-travel or time variance in the show had something to do with the light. When Desmond's consciousness traveled through time, it was because of exposure to the light via turning the key in the Swan (remember the sky turning purple?). When the island moved through space and many of the characters began flashing through time, it was because Ben turned a wheel that was tapped into the light. When the second plane flew over the island and Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid were sent back to 1977, they were accompanied by flashes of light. Finally, when Juliet set off the H-Bomb at the site of the Swan (where they were attempting to tap into a pocket of energy, or the light), there was a flash of light and the characters were sent back to their original time.

This all makes sense of there is no time associated with the light. Tapping into the light, or messing with the light, would easily result in jumping through time because time would not flow consistently in a place where it didn't exist. I believe Christian Shepherd's comments to Jack at the end of the show were more telling than we might have realized.

(SIDEBAR: As for Juliet saying, "it worked!" in the Season 6 premiere. I don't think she was talking about the H-Bomb. Instead, I think at that point she was already "seeing" the flash-sideways and the line "it worked" was in reference to Sawyer unplugging the vending machine in the flash sideways to get the Apollo Bar. "It worked" was part of the same conversation in which Juliet said, "We should get coffee sometime, we can go dutch.")

The Island's Protector:

If the light at the heart of the island is not only the gateway to the afterlife, but is also so powerful, and potentially destructive, then it makes sense to have a protector. Obviously Jacob was not the first such protector, nor, I would assume, was his so-called mother. Unfortunately, the identity of the first protector cannot be known or accurately guessed at. Was there a higher power deciding? Did this higher power set up this protection system? If so, why? And who made the rules?

I don't think we can know these things. All we can know is that this system has been around for quite a long time. It was clear from the events of his birth that Jacob came from ancient Rome (his mother speaking Latin, styles of ships, tools and clothing, the nature of the Man in Black's dagger). So Jacob likely was the island's protector for around 2,000 years.

It sure seems like the island's protector was given some special abilities (long-life, control over who comes to the island, etc...). Some of the candidates for the next protector also had abilities, such as Hurley being able to communicate with the dead. Perhaps this explains why Walt was "special," he was a candidate and was given a special ability.

The Egyptian icons all around the island, including the statue, the writings in the temple, and even the game that Jacob and the Man in Black play indicate that there had been a protector at least as long ago as the ancient Egyptian empire. These themes might also give a clue to another of the island's mysteries.

The Cork:

In the finale, Desmond is lowered into the heart of the island where he pulls a cork out of a pool, threatening to make the island sink. The cork itself appears to be a carved stone covered with Egyptian Hieroglyphics. This begs the question, did the Egyptians make the cork? If so, and the light indeed is a gateway between life and the afterlife, then did the Egyptians somehow make this gateway? If so, how? Or did they simply leave their mark on the cork, or maybe even create a new cork? If so, how were they able to do this?

Again, these are questions that can't have definite answers. My theory is that the Egyptians knew some secrets of the island that were forgotten over time - secrets that Jacob didn't even know, especially since it appears from the final episodes that Jacob was clueless about a lot of things.

The bigger question, though, is what was the cork holding back?

Evil Forces:

When Desmond pulls the cork out of the pool, the water is drained and the bright, yellow glow turns red. To me, this seems like fairly clear imagery of Hell - the fact that Jacob tells Richard that the island is like a cork holding back Hell, I don't think that idea is such a stretch.

But what are the implications of this? Again, if the island is the gateway between life and the afterlife, then does removing the cork and opening up Hell mean that the gateway becomes a gateway to Hell? Or is it rather giving Hell an opportunity to escape and come to earth? Once again, I don't think that we can know the answer for sure, but I'd lean more toward the latter, and I think the Man in Black gives us more clues about this.

The Man in Black:

The Man in Black, or the Smoke Monster, is the villain of the series, even though we didn't realize it until the start of the final season (or the end of the 5th season if you were clever enough to figure it out). What we didn't learn until the episode "Across the Sea," however, was that the Man in Black used to be a regular human being who was turned into the Smoke Monster by being thrown into the heart of the island. What happened when he entered this place? We'll never know. What we do know is that he emerged seemingly unstoppable, having the ability to change shape and take the form of deceased people, and that he was bent on the destruction of the island.

The Man in Black plays the part of a deceiver, tempting anyone he could to help him in his plot to overthrow the protector of the island and ultimately destroy the island itself so that he could leave. His role in the series seems like a strong analogy for the devil, who is already condemned but is nevertheless trying to take as many people as he can down with him. I'm not sure that the creators of the show were trying to say that the Man in Black was the devil, but rather were setting him up in a devil sort of position. Would it be possible for another smoke monster to be created by throwing another person into the heart of the island? Who knows? But the fact that Jacob's mother said that to go into the heart of the island would be worse than death might indicate that it had happened to someone before.

The Island after the show:

While the show ended with Jack finally fixing things (repairing the light), and allowing his friends to go safely home, this was not the end of the island. Instead, Hurley became the island's protector with Ben as his assistant. We can only speculate what happened after this. I would imagine that like Jacob and Richard, Hurley and Ben experienced extraordinarily long life. I would also imagine that, like Ben suggested, Hurley ran things differently than Jacob did. It became clear toward the end of the series that Jacob did not have all the answers. While there might have been certain rules that he had to obey, and Hurley would have to as well, it seems as though it would be possible to run the island differently than Jacob had. I would hope that Hurley did things, as Ben said, better than Jacob did.

I would also imagine that Hurley still ran into problems. Perhaps a new smoke monster emerged. Perhaps groups of people continued to come to the island and try to tap into it's power. As is evidenced by the fact that Hurley and Ben ended up in the flash-sideways, they clearly did not live on the island forever. So either they voluntarily passed their duties on to someone else, or they, like Jacob, were overthrown. As with many of the other questions, this can't really be known, unless of course, the writers decide to create a Lost spinoff... but somehow I doubt it!

Music Love to Music Eh?

I was reading this article on Relevant's website about, well, I'm not sure what. I stopped about 5 paragraphs in, where he starts talking about what kind of music he likes, when I realized that my love for music has simply waned in the past few years.

There was a time, probably High School and College, when I bought new CD's on a very regular basis. I soaked in music, went to concerts frequently, had conversations regularly about bands I liked, wore band t-shirts and on and on.

These days I mostly just listen to ESPN Radio.

I don't think it's that I don't connect with a lot of newer music. That's not it at all. The truth is, I never much cared for Top-40 radio and always preferred either bands not many people had heard of, or at least B-side tracks that never played on the radio. So what I think my musical drought boils down to is effort.

When you don't care for the mainstream artists, finding music you like is hard work. It means reading articles, wading through hours of bad music to find a few gems, asking people what they're listening to lately, etc... It takes a lot of time and energy. If you don't spend it, you end up listening to the Top-40 stuff, getting bored of your old collection, or doing what I've been doing, listening to talk-radio instead.

So maybe it's time I started doing a little musical homework once again... any suggestions?

Making sense of Revelation

For some time I've wanted to take a stab at seriously studying the book of Revelation - but with my mind more on the present than in the future. In the church tradition I come from, Revelation is pretty much only discussed in terms of the future, sometimes with curious speculation, and sometimes with paranoid predictions about how the end will come and what hot-button political figure it will involve. Either way, the conversation doesn't lend itself to much present day application.

I have to believe, though, that in light of a firm conviction that all Scripture is useful, not to mention a word up front from John that, "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy," (Rev. 1:3) that if we could set aside for a moment the obsession with the future, that we could find a lot more ways to apply this book. It makes me wonder how much edification we've missed out on.

So tonight I started a study on this book with my youth group where our main concern will be moving from simply curiosity about the future to application for the present. I'll try and remember to let you know how it goes.

N.T. Wright announces retirement

Bishop N.T. Wright announced his retirement as the bishop of Durham. It looks like he'll still being teaching publicly and writing books, and will make a return to university teaching. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this has on his writing.

Fine, here's a real post!

Okay, after typing that last post I realized that after a month of non-posting it just wasn't right to merely post that I haven't been posting. Wow, what a crazy, mixed-up sentence!

Anyway, last night in youth group I taught about how God is both infinitely big and beyond us (transcendent) and incredibly close and deeply interested in each of us (immanent). We had small groups at the end and one of the High School guys made the comment that he was driving on the highway with his family recently and had this realization that God intimately knows every person in every one of the other cars around him. He said that his family talked about that for a few minutes and how cool it is that God can know us all so well.

And suddenly it occurred to me that even though God's transcendence and immanence almost seem like a contradiction, the truth is that it is only because God is transcendent that he is able to be immanent! I mean, I'm capable of knowing the names of maybe a few hundred people, maybe a thousand or so, and I'm capable of being friends with a good number of people and closely knowing a handful of them. But God is capable of knowing absolutely every detail about every person who ever was, is and will be (well, even if you're a free will theist you've at least got to admit that God will eventually know every detail about the people who, at this point, will be!).

If God were not transcendent - if he were not completely beyond our human capacities - then he woudln't even have the ability to be immanent with all of us.

It's pretty amazing.

Wow

I really haven't posted in quite a while... sorry about that.

Here we go again

Apparently Brett Favre just won't give up... or won't go away. I'm not really sure which one anymore. Only a few weeks after announcing he's done with professional football for good (again), Favre reneged and signed a deal with the Vikings.

You may be thinking, "But wait, hasn't the preseason already begun? There's no way that Brett, at 39 years of age could be ready for the upcoming NFL season!" Ah, but there's no need to worry, because, to quote the ESPN.com article:

"Favre has been working out regularly with Oak Grove High school players in Hattiesburg, according to WDAM-TV, and has not missed a practice even after telling the Vikings he would remain retired."

The thing is, Brett, practicing with High School players might get you ready to play the Lions, but there are still 14 other games against REAL NFL players to worry about!

I like what the article goes on to report about Aaron Rodger's reaction:

"Aaron Rodgers, who inherited the starting quarterback position after Favre retired -- then unretired -- said, "I don't have a reaction," the Journal Sentinel reported. "It doesn't pertain to me. It has absolutely nothing to do with me. It doesn't change anything. It has nothing to do with the Green Bay Packers.""

I might go ahead and add, "It has nothing to do with the entire NFL!" I predict Favre and the Vikings make very little impact on the NFL this year and finish in the middle of the NFC North.

Teaching ideas?

I'm working on some devotionals/teachings for an upcoming weekend camping trip with my youth group. There will be three lessons total. Any ideas for topics? I have a few, but I'm having a hard time settling on one. So I thought I'd fish for some ideas and see if I get anything I like better. So... shoot.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Craig Ferguson

Craig Ferguson explains where Western Society went wrong... and how we ended up falling in love with the Jonas Brothers.