Noah's Ark and Mass Exctintion

It was recently just announced that the Javan Rhino has officially become an extinct species.
Add it up to another tragedy that we will glance at as we scroll down our newsfeed this week.

I saw a bumper sticker this morning that said something like, "Climate change, a serious endangerment to unicorns." It was supposed to be funny... making climate change sound like a mythical thing such as unicorns...
Yet the irony is... we can now substitute Unicorn for Javan Rhino.

Future generations will likely know little about them, they will become mythical legend. Along with thousands of other species.

We hear abut these animals going extinct and sure it makes us sad, but for the most part we feel disconnected from that information. As if we have nothing to do with it.


But if the Lion King has taught us anything, its that We are all connected in the great circle of Life.

Recently I found myself spending Black Friday not at the mall but touring the Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky with my family. If you haven't heard of it its a life-size replica of Noah's Ark... in the hills of Kentucky. Pretty impressive stuff actually.
Over the past several days I've been wrestling with it all. What is it that drives us to replicate this monstrosity of a project?

There is a group of people who's faith is very much like a large boat. Their belief is a structure to be built. Church is a place that you go. For this person, everything in the Bible adds up together to make a packaged "case for God." (Although if you actually just read the Bible it tends to not fit into any of these categories it is placed in.) For this group their faith is identical to a giant Ark that must be carefully constructed in just the right way so that every piece fits and it can carry them all to the other side.

The way in which this group tends to understand apocalypse is by seeing the end of the world or last days or better, the eschaton as something we are totally unconnected to... Its the belief that the end is coming and we have nothing to do with it... It happens to us and its out of our control.
And so the goal: To Escape It.


This sort of theology is very dangerous...
This sort of theology harms that which we've been given to take care of...
This sort of theology kills Rhinos.

I find it compelling and in beautiful cohesion with Scripture and particularly Genesis that the story of Noah's Ark is about our God once again partnering with faithful humanity in serving creation. God speaks, Noah responds in incredible faith, and namely all sorts of species are rescued from a flood.

Isn't it interesting then, that we can take a story like this and not focus on the relationship with God and humanity or creation... but use it as an instrument to prove something. We can take a narrative that seems to speak directly to God's desire to save every "kind" on the earth, and praise it, and build a shrine to it. Then in the next moment we can roll our eyes at the thought of Climate Change and be apathetic that another "kind" has now gone extinct.

It's amazing that we have difficulty seeing that we are unfaithful Noahs.

What does it mean that the story of humanity and God's people has always be a participatory story?
That from God's initial call in Genesis for humanity to take care of creation to Jesus' call to His disciples to announce the coming kingdom of heaven by healing the sick and raising the dead... that the end of all things has always been linked to the beginning of all things.

Like all those parables Jesus' gives us to be found faithful with what we have.... isn't because God is going to be angry when He shows back up and you haven't cleaned your room!
It's because we are all connected to everything and there is a reason we are here. There has always been a Missio Dei we are invited into.

So we can make a mess of the earth by our consumerism, our fossil fuels, our carbon footprints, our nuclear bombs, our plastic and chemicals, and leveling of rainforests...
We can continue to choose Hell and while singing I'll Fly Away...

Or we can receive the call that our loving Creator continues to draw us into... Loving God and so Loving Creation.

So may we participate in the coming Kingdom, the making of all things new, and may we sing Come Lord Jesus, Come.