How would an alien look at a dead earth, its people either long-dead or long departed for other climes after messing this place up?
Judge not this race by empty remains
Do you judge God by his creatures when they are dead?
For now, the lizard's shed it's tail
This is the end of man's long union with Earth.
When we are gone, what do we leave behind? A wrecked and empty earth, too dead for life to survive? Wreathed in beauty like the photo that's not from the Hubble photo at all, and yet too hot, too wrecked to support the life that God breathed into it?
I'm not a big believer in a Return to this planet as it now is. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is too beautiful, too terrible for that. I believe in a judgement, a change of state, a Resurrection. But I'm happy to be hazy on the where and when. Maybe at the true end, when all has petered out into the void whence it came - because God's not in a hurry - maybe that's when the End comes. Though I know that if God is a God of Resurrection, then what we do with this earth matters - wrecking it is not the plan. Stuff is good. God loves it. That's why he made so much of it.
They tell me I am required to believe in the resurrection of the body, but I'm not awfully happy about it. I've never been all that fond of this body in the first place,and the thought of being reunited with it for all eternity makes me profoundly depressed. There are all sorts of little tweaks that would have made life more comfortable, if anybody'd asked me. What about people with BDD? Do they get let off, because theirs would be an even worse future state.
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