By: J. Charles Coughlin
If you have never watched the series on HBO, “From the Earth to the Moon,” you are missing out – big time. It is a history-based docudrama about the American space effort beginning with Kennedy’s 1962 speech to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The cast of actors is amazing, and the production is stunning. It is heartwarming to watch the government and the private sector function in a manner that ultimately realizes that very goal in 1969. It harkens back to a different era and has its own lessons for today, but that is not why I am encouraging you to watch it.
The fourth episode of the series is entitled “1968.” It acknowledges the cataclysmic events of the year (two assassinations, protests, and political conventions) within the context of the heroic efforts to have the first manned space mission to go into lunar orbit.
As the crew of the Apollo 8 mission came around from the dark side of the moon, they were the first human beings to see “Earthrise.” They were the first humans to fully appreciate the singular nature of our planet within the cosmos, seeing a glorious blue planet surrounded by the dark vastness of space. After witnessing the singularity of our creation, the crew read the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve to the largest tv audience (at the time) to ever tune into a broadcast.
The Earthrise photo was later adopted by the environmental movement as a call to preserve our planet, rather than a testament to our creation. If you accept, as I do, that God has created everything, then by logic it is our duty to preserve God’s creation. That kind of narrative, though, has largely been given short shrift by the environmental movement. The suggestion of a God who created us was seen as to divisive amongst many of the proponents of environmentalism who just want to blame mankind, which is certainly a lesser truth.
I bring this up today, not only to encourage you to watch the show but also to remind us that this secular divorce from the creation story is still alive in our politics today – right here in Arizona. Our firm has been working for several years trying to persuade lawmakers to adopt some type of workable solution so that rural Arizonans can protect themselves from unscrupulous and unprincipled water users who today can dig a well and pump as much water as they want, to the point that their neighbors well runs dry.
In today’s instance, the perpetrators are largely agricultural and ranching interests who currently dominate the rural water markets in Arizona and see no reason to diminish their own authority. In so doing, they are ignoring Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31, and Mathew 22:39 which all require us to love our neighbor as ourselves and ignore the wisdom enshrined in our Arizona license plate to support the Golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
But such is the play of our politics today, and the hurdles we must continually overcome. I have very good friends on the other side of this issue. I hope they can come to see the Earthrise photo as a call to humility before our God and withdraw their insistence on power accruing to themselves at the cost of their neighbors.
Much of our politics is broken today, but this would be a good start at setting the right example. I know the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee has the correct view of these issues – it’s not about the environment it is about doing right by God.
Let’s not make the same mistake again, call it what it is.