Has the Planet Been Saved Yet?

"Save the Planet!" has been the war-cry for decades. Surely the planet has been saved by now, many times over!

I've been putting my empty cardboard boxes, bits of plastic and cans etc. in the recycling bin for many a year now. So, what about it?

I use hardly any water here in sunny Queensland. I turn off the tap when I'm brushing my teeth. Four minute showers are the norm even though our city reservoirs are half an inch from total capacity. I have a 10,000 litre rainwater tank. I don't know what to do with all that water! I use those silly dim light bulbs that claim to use less power and last longer than the type we used to use!

So what about it? Has the planet been saved yet?

The truth of the matter is that I've never been concerned about "saving the planet." I believe this line to be nonsense! However, I can tell you that God would have us be good stewards of the resources He has given us!

The world already has a Saviour. It doesn't need me or you as its saviour!

However, we ought to include good stewardship as part of our response of gratitude to God because "The Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world" 1 John 4:14.

Go ahead, recycle, if it makes you feel better, but trust only in the only means God has provided us. Trust only in Jesus Christ as our and the planet's Saviour!

The Chicken & The Egg

As I've demonstrated in previous posts, I like chickens and eggs! but which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The way you go about answering this question will give you great insight into your own worldview. Your worldview has to do with your personal belief-system, which is expressed by drawing conclusions from your presuppositions. To presuppose is to assume beforehand.

If you assume that the egg came before the chicken, then you are presupposing that the egg did not need a chicken to come into being - that the first egg produced itself, which egg was somehow a fertilzed egg which hatched an egg-laying chicken.

On the other hand, perhaps you assume beforehand that chicken eggs are a good indication that there must be at least one egg-laying chicken in existence. Therefore, when you see a chicken's egg, think about it, you logically assume that it came from an egg-laying chicken.

Does this mean that I am saying that the chicken came before the egg? Well, it makes good sense, doesn't it? Therefore, the chicken definitely came before the egg!

However, this leaves us with another question: If the chicken's egg is evidence of the existence of an egg-laying chicken, what does the egg-laying chicken indicate or give evidence of? Should I not presuppose that the first egg-laying chicken came into being, not from an egg, but because of something else?

This is where you really begin to see your presuppositions at work: Where did the egg-laying ckicken come from if it didn't come from an egg? Is this a neutral question? Can a person give an unbiased answer to this? Well, the chicken and egg question really becomes: Will I betray God before the rooster crows?

""Then God said, 'Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.' So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.' So the evening and the morning were the fifth day." Genesis 1:20-23.

Therefore the chicken came first, because God created egg-laying chickens on the fifth day!

Chicken Checking

So there I was at church yesterday morning, and who should show up but a chicken farmer! It's great when interesting people visit! Anyway, I got talking to him over a cup of tea after the service. Checking chickens out...

Turns out that white hens lay white eggs and brown hens lay brown eggs! Who would have thought? Mind you, I did, but I was thinking that this couldn't possibly be right!

Apparently, after a study done in 1988 (the result of which showed that Aussies preferred brown eggs over white eggs) Australia switched to brown, black, and speckled hens. I guess Rhode Island Reds fit the bill.

In Scotland there is the notion that brown eggs are somehow better for you. In Canadian supermarkets you don't get the choice. It's either white or it's nothing, zero, zip, goose eggs?

In Australian supermarkets your choice is of various shades of brown with not a white egg in sight. Of course, while in Australia Canadians and Scots who prefer white eggs could aways look around for some backyard egg salesman for the odd white egg. Just look for white hens in the driveway!

For some reason I've now got a craving for a white egg with a wee rampant lion stamped on it! What's with Scottish eggs having having a lion stamped on them? Well, it's to show that they are goverment approved, I think!

Enough on eggs!

But before we leave this subject: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Watch this space for the answer...

Cracking the Great Egg Mystery

This study is not an eggs-act science, but the other night in the supermarket I opened up different egg containers (free-range, barn laid, organic etc.) as part of a two-minute study I'm doing on three nations and their attitude towards eggs. The three nations studied are: Scotland, Canada, and Australia.

The Scots just like eggs. Give them brown eggs or white eggs (or any shades in between), they'll eat them; along with their Irish or Danish bacon, square sausage, black pudding, and tattie scones.

However (and here's where the study gets really interesting), the Canadians are not into brown eggs! They eat only white eggs with their back bacon, hash browns, and pancakes drizzled with thick maple syrup.

The Australians? Their eggs have to be brown. They eat only brown eggs with their bacon, sausages and toast covered in vegemite!

Data so far?

1. Scots' eggs = brown and white (and various shades in between).

2. Canucks' eggs = white only.

3. Aussies' eggs = brown (and various shades of brown).


Having analysed the data my conclusion is as follows: New study needed into

a) How the Scots get their hens to lay white and brown eggs.

b) How the Canucks get their chickens to lay only white eggs.

c) How the Aussies get their chooks to lay only brown eggs.

Watch this space for results of the new study...

ROAD RAGE!

Is it just here in Brisbane or is it everywhere else, but what's with the one lane, two lane, one lane roads they're building for us? What's wrong with leaving us with two lanes in each direction?

Reducing two lanes to one for short distances? All they're doing is building "hoon" lanes that serve only to further frustrate already frustrated drivers (not that I'm one of those!) Sure, roads cost money, tax-payer's money. But I wonder about the intelligence behind the concept of reducing two lanes to one for a mere few yards or metres only to have it increase back to two lanes on already overcrowded Brisbane roads.

While we're at it, what's with the planners in the new housing estates? Do they try hard to get us lost in their mazes of illogical chicaneries and dead-end streets? I'm sure they take their baby two-year old's scribbly drawings off their fidges and use them as templates to plan where their going to put streets in these new housing complexes!

These same streets are the ones with the big concrete "traffic calmers" on them, you know, the objects that, in the interest of "safety" are purposely planted in the middle of the road! If you don't know what I'm talking about, visualize those things in the middle of the road that are really hard to see on dark, wet nights (especially when headlights are coming towards you).

A favourite poem springs to mind. It sums up the angst I'm feeling. Robert Burn's "Epigram On the Roads":

I've now arrived, thanks to the gods!
Thro' pathways rough and muddy,
A certain sign that making roads
Is not this people's study.
And tho' I'm not with Scripture crammed,
I'm sure the Bible says,
That heedless sinners shall be damned
Unless they mend their ways.