The State
April 9, 2018

Columbia, SC

U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan claims that drilling for oil is part of a creator’s grand design. I believe there is a creator and we are called to be good stewards of God’s creation. Searching for and burning fossil fuel damages God’s good creation.

In the short term, creation is damaged by spills such as Deepwater Horizon, which dumped 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In the long term, as NASA reports, global warming is caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — i.e. burning fossil fuel.

Global warming threatens creation itself. Flooding, extreme weather, drought, sea rise, wildfires, population displacement leading to hunger and war … I don’t believe all that is part of God’s design. And try this on for size. God created dolphins and whales. They use sound waves to find food, avoid danger and find family. Seismic testing, the front end of oil drilling, disrupts their system of “seeing” and kills them. Does God want that?

I used to tell my seminary students that part of their task as a pastor was to make sure that people worship the right God when they seek to be religious. I believe we often confuse our own desires with what God wants.

God wants wholeness for creation, not brokenness. Rep. Duncan needs to wake up and smell the burning planet. By he way, just because the Creation has uranium in it doesn’t mean we have to make atomic bombs.

Rev. Jim Watkins
Pawleys Island

http://www.thestate.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article208148269.html