Nature

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth. (Psalm 19:1-6)

 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

The scholars claim that God speaks to us in many ways, but the main two are through His Word and through nature. It’s understandable that those who do not know God would reject His Word, but if you listen to popular discussion and popular media, nature is all the rage. In fact, some have declared that humanity is not part of nature, but a plague thereon. That seems an ironic concept in juxtaposition with the claim that man is nothing more than a big-brained animal with delusions of grandeur, just another mistake made by blind nature as it evolves.

Another example of this irony is that the same people who proclaim that nature is so important and that mankind’s manipulation of nature is wrong tend to see nothing wrong with artificially ending the life of a child in the womb rather than letting nature take its course. Those same people proclaim that the traditional nuclear family is passé, oppressive, and unnecessary because technology has made male and female cooperation unnecessary for procreation. What our natural genes dictate in terms of our body structure doesn’t even matter anymore. We can surgically transform men into women, or women into men and then pour chemicals into their bodies to force our natural bodies into whatever they want.

This is not to say that only “those people” who worship nature unless it doesn’t bow to their personal petty godhood are the only ones who do think they should be the exception to nature’s rules. If you eat more than your body needs, you get fat. If you don’t move your body against resistance enough, you get weak. If you handle chicken-wire without gloves, you get lots of little scratches and cuts. How many of us want to find something that will make fat, wrinkles, blemishes, and stretch marks go away? How many think we can get through this pandemic without their catching the virus? How many think we shouldn’t wear masks, and yet think they should be exempted from catching it?

          How would my life change if I stopped trying to dictate to nature? At the moment, I suspect it would be much better. But it’s human nature to dictate to nature. It leads to a sort of split-personality or hypocrisy that results in failure to do ourselves or our world much good.