Article in Stretton Focus, November 2013
That’s the catchy title of a popular television programme. People are helped to look at their family tree and discover connections with distant relatives, whom they didn’t even know existed. The result of this discovery could be both surprising and shocking.
It might also come as a surprise, or a shock, for some folk to know that there is a family tree wherein every person on earth is a connecting branch, twig, leaf or fruit.
It’s the tree of the human family, which goes back way beyond any written records found in the archives. At the last count, it was 4.5 million years ago when primitive life first appeared on this planet. Life then began to evolve from simple cells to more complex life forms, and eventually about 200,000 Homo Sapiens (i.e. us) began to organise themselves and create the kind of world we now live in.
Haven’t we done well! There is an element of surprise in the amazing scientific advances we have made. But there is also a shocking element when we look at what we have done to each other and to what we are still doing to our Mother earth, who gave us birth.
There have been countless wars, crusades, holocausts, slavery, apartheid. We have polluted seas and poisoned the air, felled forests and wiped out many species of flora and fauna.
“Who do you think you are?” could be heard as an accusation, from God, or from Creation itself. What are you playing at? Don’t you realise that you are part of creation, and that you have some responsibility for what the future holds?
Evolution would, of course, go on without us if it had to (after all, we’ve only been around for a split second in cosmic time) but far better that we should get a bit of wisdom and some humility. Then we might become what the Bible says we are meant to be – co-creators with God.
Donald Horsfield
