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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 14, 1985
PAGE 9
forget that to our peril. Already the situation is precarious
and make no mistake about it: our military leaders understand
this well and they are worried.
Mr. Overton, too, understands full well the importance of the possession of
mineral resources--and the near-guaranteed access to those minerals the
nation doesn • t have in abundance--as a major factor of national power.
Those of you familiar with Hans J. Morgenthau's classic work, POLITICS
AMONG NATIONS, know that he deals at length in chapter nine with the ele
ments of national power. He classifies natural resources as being second
in importance to that of geography.
Today's young generations don't think, or like to think, in terms of na
tional power.
Certainly the environmental extremists don't think along
this line. In this light it is interesting to reflect on the fact that
President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the first and foremost American
conservationists.
But he was a great believer in national power, too.
While Mr. Roosevelt was the inspirer of the national park system, he never
would have locked up the public resources from prudent development.
Today's most extreme environmentalists are sometimes called "preservation
ists" because they want to keep nature virtually undisturbed from human
activity--the opposite of the instructions given by God to the first man,
Adam, who was told (Gen. 2:15) to "tend and keep," not keep away from, the
garden in Eden. Also note too that one of the rivers that ·went out of Eden,
called Pishon, flowed
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a1:ound· the whole land of Havilah, where there is
gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there"
(verses 11-12, RSV). God placed mineral resources in the earth for humani
ty's benefit. While the extraction of these God-given resources has often
been done in an uncaring manner, this is due to the greed of man.
It
doesn't have to be this way. Extremists swing to the other end of the pen
dulum and try to prevent development, even exploration, in order to prevent
damage.
Some environmental extremists claim that Christians have taken God's in
junction to Adam to "fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen. 1:28), as Biblical
license to man to do anything with the physical environment he wishes.
Singling out this passage, they overlook the follow-up injunction to "tend
and keep" the environment. Thus the extremists conclude the Bible is no
guide to the management of the earth's resources. These people are gener
ally ardent evolutionists anyway who believe man is just another form of
animal life. They don't believe the clear explanation that man was made in
the image of God and was to have dominion over "the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the air•••and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth" (verse 28).
To believe such runs counter to their ecologically
egalitarian thinking. To continue with Mr. Overton's remarks:
We have seen Congress three times declare in favor of a strong
domestic minerals industry, and we have seen many more times that
Congress will pass legislation which undermines its own declared
policy. When the laws are passed that place de facto OFF LIMITS
signs to minerals exploration and development in some two-thirds
of our vast public lands--an area nearly equal in size to all the
states east of the Mississippi--hardly a thought is given to the
impact on the domestic minerals base.