The television show Planet Earth,
made by Discovery Channel, may as well be the best made educational and
entertaining show on the features of this earth we are living on. I just
recently saw an episode that focused on the mountains. It explained how it
formed, showed the inhabitants of different mountains and how they adapt to the
harsh living conditions of the place. The narrator, David Attenborough,
mentioned that people often talk of conquering a mountain, and yet in truth
they have not. “We are only visitors,” David said.
At first, if you’ve never seen
Planet Earth before, it may sound boring but it is quite the opposite. This
show teaches us to admire the nature that God has created. It is telling us
about His creativity and His power and His attention to detail. It shows all
the variety of mountains, plants and creatures that God has given us. But at
the same time, this show demonstrates how all of creation has fallen; Pumas are
trying to maim other animals for food and even male bighorn sheep fighting
against each other as a proof of who’s stronger and a competition to decide who
gets the female. Climate change has been changing the life of the different
animals residing in the mountains. These mountains sometimes hold our violence
and other people’s riches since drug trades often take place in mountains,
where there are no eyes that spy. Even our attempts to conquer the highest of
mountains, Mount Everest, show our fellness, in that these attempts highlight
our desire for personal glory. We long for the recognition that comes with
being able to scale that treacherous mountain.
With all the majesty of the
mountains and the adorableness of the different creatures, it makes you wonder
what it will be like in the new earth and heaven. If the natural landscapes we
have now are already breathtaking, how much more when Jesus comes again?
But until then questions arise:
What are we personally doing to care for nature?
How can we prevent the extinction of endangered species?
Planet Earth is a great series! Why do you think the folks who created it went to all the effort to do so? Some of the things they filmed had never been filmed before due to extraordinary difficulty. What drove them? I imagine the answers you'd get might be different than the ones you wrote about above -- which doesn't mean your observations are incorrect, simply that our frames influence the way we see the world.
ReplyDeleteI think climbing Everest is inherently different than destroying mountains through things like mountain top removal. I think climbing, in general, has quite a bit of respect for nature and for preserving the goodness therein.
According to the filmmakers, what is human purpose in the world? How do they show that while filming non-human activity?