Sufficiently Large
While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large, with plenty of resources to accommodate all the people He knew would come into existence. All the 5 billion people on the earth could live in the state of Texas in single-family homes with front and back yards and be fed by production in the rest of the United States.
From Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History, Providence Foundation. The authors hold courses and seminars based on the book that were attended by more than 25,000 people in 2004. Via Harper’s Magazine, February 2005.
March 8th, 2006 at 12:01 am
So…you choose to publish this provocative statement without comment…do you hold it to be true?
March 8th, 2006 at 12:08 am
If I held it to be true, I probably wouldn’t be the sort of person who reads Harper’s. Correlatively, see my earlier post and discussion here. Perhaps my faith that the quote is self-mockingly absurd was unjustified?
March 8th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Fair point. I have not taken the time to read your entire blog. And yes, one can choose to make assumptions about those who read Harper’s, however I did not. Your comment provoked me as one who deals with the pragamatic realm of working within the property sector steering change towards more responsible, ethical behaviour and attempting to inspire sustainable development practices.
March 8th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Yes, I would have thought the idea of 5 billion people in single family Texan homes ought to offend the sensibilities of anyone even mildly interested in sustainable development! I certainly wouldn’t recommend reading my entire blog. In fact I wouldn’t recommend reading any of it. It’s nice to know people stumble across it from time to time though, like flotsam on a deserted beach…
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Hold on though, isn’t this true? Obviously not the stuff about God necessarily having decided to make the earth capable of feeding everyone – if he were that nice, it would be difficult to explain how hundreds of millions of people have died in famines, and continue to do so – presumably this is down to the evils of free human choices. But isn’t it true that 5 billion people could fit in Texas and be fed by the agricultural production of the US? It seems to me that this is an environmentalist point because it indicates that we really don’t need to be consuming so much of the world’s resources.