The Earth is Our Home

Dan Darling interviewed Mike Witmer about how Christians are seeing the world and how eschatology tells us how to participate in culture around us.

We think you believe that you heard people say "Earth is our house" You can even use this expression yourself. The earth is not only our house but also our house. This is our residence, we are owners. We do not pass through the lessee. We can complain to the landlord and it is not a tenant who can eventually continue to live elsewhere. We stayed here - rocks, water and air balls of width 7,900 miles (13,000 km) - we are in charge of maintenance. Now, as a caretaker, we are doing very badly. We do not seem to pay sufficient attention to the deterioration of our family.

The third element of the Pope's new lens on our common house Catholic social thought is the recognition of global human development, including the protection of our common house planet. In Latin America there is an Amazon basin, an area that is rich in biodiversity, indispensable to protect life on the planet. Francis witnessed the destruction of the Amazon; even though it destroyed the ancient culture and made the majority of the population poverty, ongoing environmental hazards caused the earth to suffocate.

Secondly, since the earth is our house, ecological perception is important. We must cherish our house, it is only achieved by ecological consciousness. Without consciousness we mean that we will not take care of the earth. If our planet is destroyed by our carelessness, we will not be able to go home. The earth is indeed the place where our house and many plants and animals live. We know this well, but we do not understand that the Earth itself is alive. As plants absorb sunlight and animals take their lifetime nutrition at the end of the day, we must be careful about the metabolism of our planet. Therefore, we think that we are part of this autonomous process, and we realize many cycles to which we belong.