WHEN LEFT TO OURSELVES WE ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

I don’t know who said it but someone said about us human beings, “When left to ourselves we are an endangered species.”History and current events around the world prove this.  

Human beings don’t know how to share the planet with others.  Ideologies, worldviews, self-preservation seem to be the all consuming passion.  Everywhere we look we see anger, hatred, resentment, name-calling, character assassination (if not outright murder), and countless stories of man’s inhumanity to man.  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us” (Walt Kelly, 1970).

There is good news, however.  Into the mess comes the wonders of God.  Instead of writing off humanity as a lost cause, God comes to us as Savior.  He comes not to condemn us but to save us (John 3:17).  He comes to change the human heart so that people “may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10).  He comes not to shake His Sovereign finger in our face but to die for us on a skull-shaped hill called Golgotha, just outside Jerusalem.

In a world filled with divisions and complications of a thousand kinds, there is One who in His very life is the peace the world so much needs.  Whether or not the world is ready for Him, is another issue.  That the world need peace is beyond debate.  How to get there?  The debate goes on and on and on.  May I personalize Pete Seeger’s words (1955) and ask, “When will we ever learn?  When will we ever learn?”  

So the words comes - When left to ourselves we are an endangered species.  Is this too negative, too pessimistic, too defeatist, too fatalistic, too cynical?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  "Where have all the graveyards gone ... Covered with flowers every one …  When will we ever learn?”

When will we ever learn?