How Green is my Valley : God's Vision of the World

How Green is my Valley : God’s Vision of the World

It wouldn’t have come to this if God’s vision of the world had been realized. Perhaps an obvious statement but it seems to me society has gone so far away from the original vision of the world God had for it that only disaster can come upon the world. Many millennia ago the world was a garden paradise. It was in fact the original Garden of Eden, full of beautiful flowers in wonderful abundance, green fields, blue seas, and air so fresh, so balmy, one could get drunk on it. It was all so very intoxicating. Everything was pure: from the oceans abundant in fish, clear streams running from the mountains down to the sea, thick forests of trees giving out so much oxygen it was indeed a real paradise. Today is very different. Why? Things like the industrial revolution didn’t help. The era of social change, moving to capitalism and a wealthy factory owner class of top businessmen meant the end of God’s vision for the world was in sight. You might say this social change was the end of simplicity and the end of the world’s health. Nature was beginning to corrupt. Forests  were being cut down and factories sprang up in places which had been wildflower meadows, open countryside of much beauty. The world was moving from being a place of great beauty to something choking with fog as smoke billowed out of the factory chimneys. Man’s ‘mind-forged manacles’ had come into being. God’s vision of the world was not meant to be this. He had no truck with capitalism, consumerism or any such thing. People were to live simply on the land, self-sufficient if you like, much like Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers in ‘The Good Life’. The paradise on earth could only be maintained within these very limited parameters. For economic and social change meant the end of the good life for many rural dwellers.

The Act of Enclosure saw many lose their land in the eighteenth century, so much so that it was the beginning of the end and a new working class of factory workers came about, but in this very push for more economic stability the seeds of man’s destruction were being sown. It was love of money that created the times we live in of disastrous climate change that probably cannot be reversed. All the greenhouse gases that have built up since Victorian times signal the end of civilization. The ice caps are melting at an increasingly rapid pace, and as the planet heats up torrential rains flood so many places on earth, not least in England, now a hell hole for so many. Only a new realization of God’s vision of the world can save the planet. It was the ultimate Green Dream, and if one cannot go back to the most natural way of life the world’s population is doomed. It is a love of nature that is the key. Nature has been so badly abused over the last two hundred years that now air in China is so bad that they have to wear masks to go out on the street.

 The oceans are acidifying, the soils of the world are prone to desertification. These are the last days of the planet unless things can be reversed immediately. They will be no fish in the ocean all too soon and the world’s soils will not be fit for food production because of intensive farming methods and chemical sprays and treatments. That wonderful thing – the compost heap – would keep the soil in good health. Our vegetable waste, leaves from the trees, all rotting down and going back into the earth is a simple process but such an effective one in maintaining a green planet. If people everywhere were to become green and grow their own vegetables, even keep hens, chickens, maybe a pig or two, the world would have a better chance than its well-established consumerism dictates. Luckily many now recycle but this is only a first step; if there was a serious  green movement for every household to partake in salvation would be possible even now. You would be following Nature’s dictates, God’s will if you like for a healthy green world that could become a paradise again with no coal burning factories, no blots on the landscape. The world was meant to be a garden paradise for all of humankind to enjoy, a heaven on earth. Mankind has gone so far away from God’s vision of the world everything we hold dear is imperilled.