Everybody Loves Pandas
Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
Everybody loves pandas, don’t they? We must love them because we are trying to save them from extinction, with some success; pandas have been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable. Apparently, their habitat in China is expanding, so that the likelihood of those adorable black-and-white icons of world wildlife may not disappear after all.
However, I recall one British comedian poking ironic fun at the mission to save the pandas by saying that we could do without them. After all, he opined, they seem determined to commit species suicide, so why not just let them go where the dinosaurs and mammoths went?
A Christian position is more logical – less sentimental, but more compassionate. If pandas had already gone extinct, then we could clearly live without them. However, given that humanity has a mandate from Genesis 1 of stewardship of the Earth and its resources, it is certainly admirable to attempt to preserve what we have in the way of panda populations.
The concept of panda extinction is inconsistent for evolutionists. A hard-line evolutionist should want them to die out because, in the survival of the fittest stakes, pandas have proved themselves less fit. Yet most people, while holding evolutionary philosophy, would rather try to take steps to preserve the cuddly looking giants.
It is only those taking a biblical worldview who can view the subject with any degree of rationality. Animals are only animals. When they die, their souls return to the ground. Yet, the survival of pandas has only occurred because of massive human effort – effort that is not wrong and can indeed be justified from Scripture.
Prayer: Thank You, Lord, for the beauty of Your creation. Thank You for the varied creatures that You have placed in it, of which pandas must be among the most beautiful. Help us to know how and why and what we should preserve, as part of our stewardship of Your creation. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: Michigan State University. (2017, August 28). “Keeping pandas off endangered list ledge.” ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 28, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170828105401.htm.
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