Our earth is like a child that has grown up without parents, having no one to guide and direct her. Some have attempted to help her but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her with no consideration other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought for their own children who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her with little consideration, and then when she shudders or blows her breath, they are offended and raise their fist at God (The Shack by William P. Young).
The lack of consideration that people here have for their country astounds me. Along every road in the market, the gutters are covered in trash. The rivers are flowing with plastic and wrappers. At the internet café the other day, someone on my team finished a drink and a little boy held out his hand. Thinking he was offering to throw it away in a waste basket, she handed it to him. He went out the door and threw it into the street. There’s no such thing as littering here, or if there is, no one is enforcing the law against it. Rather, it seems that they are encouraging it.
I remember my first week here, I was so angry with the garbage and the way that people were treating the earth. I remember trying to think of ways to clean it up. I imagined creating a dump. There would be dump trucks thereby putting people into work. There would be community service teams that would work together to clean up India.
Week two came around, and I started getting used to it. A girl on my team threw her own bottle on the ground without a second thought. I accepted it as normal. After all, the cows are living in the streets, eating the garbage piles. It seemed to be helping everyone. How quickly we become ignorant. How quickly we conform to negative behavior.
I was reminded today as I was listening to The Shack of the pain that earth is feeling. How is India taking care of her provider? How is India leaving the world for the next generation? Children are growing up thinking this is normal. They are growing into adults that are indifferent to the lack of love that is shown to the environment. This is their home. I just don’t understand how they can treat their home, our home, this way.
We are supposed to be the ones taking care of the earth. God gave us this earth so that we could be master over it. We have taken for granted too long the beautiful gift that God has entrusted to us.
