A Biblical and Historical Study
Chapter 2 (Genesis 1:27-28)
“We will lead the exploration of space because discovery is one of the tests of the vitality of a nation.”
Richard M. Nixon (then Vice President of the United States) 10/25/1960
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade… not because (it is) easy, but because (it is) hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…”
President John F. Kennedy 9/12/1962
Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK’s widow, once said, “At night before we’d go to sleep, Jack (JFK) liked to play some records; and the song he loved the most came at the end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were, ‘Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.'”
This was the America that I grew up in–filled with promise. I have often wondered, “What went wrong? “Why hasn’t America fulfilled it’s potential?”
The Bible says:
“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:27-28
In these verses, God gave Adam & Eve four commands:
- “Be fruitful and multiply” (meaning: “Reproduce, become numerous”
- “Fill the earth” (meaning: “Spread out across the earth”)
- “Subdue it” (meaning: “Conquer it“)
- “Have dominion over it” (meaning: “Rule it”)
Man was created to be a conqueror–to gain mastery–but not over other men. He was to explore the earth, to study it, and to figure out how to live upon it–all of it.
Did you know that almost 1/2 of the earth is still uninhabited?
If man’s energies were invested in harnessing–exploring, studying, utilizing–the resources of God’s creation as God intended, the rest of the earth’s land surface–not to mention the ocean, the moon, and other planets–could support a much greater population than we have today.
Yet today, rather than facing these challenges, we talk about “population control.“
population control = "a policy of attempting to limit the growth in numbers of a population, especially in poor or densely populated parts of the world, by programs of contraception or sterilization." (The Free Dictionary)
The 1972 Report of the President’s Commission on Population Growth and the American Future concluded that:
“No substantial benefits would result from continued growth of the nation’s population.”
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, 3/27/1972
And in 1974, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger, issued National Security Study Memorandum #200, that concluded that continued global population growth posed a grave security risk to the United States. Kissinger argued that:
“We cannot wait for overall modernization and development to produce lower fertility rates naturally”
Henry Kissinger, NSSM #200, 12/ 10/1974
He called for an “all-out-effort to lower growth rates.”
Specific strategies included undermining the traditional role of motherhood and “concentrating on the education and indoctrination of the rising generation of children regarding the desirability of smaller family size.”
And in 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, in a 7-2 decision, that:
“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a fundamental right to privacy that protects a pregnant woman’s choice whether to have an abortion.”
Oyez, re: Roe v. Wade, (Jan 22, 1973)
The Bible says:
“Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…”
Romans 1:21-22
Maybe that’s what happened to America.
Look at the Space Program today. Instead of planning colonies on the moon, or Mars, today we spend billions trying to find rocks with bacteria on them, hoping to find the origins of life.
Our nation has truly lost it’s way.
It seems that when the elimination of individual human lives for the perceived good of society-at-large became an option, society was no longer driven by the need for more living space. Yet it was that very need that would have driven mankind to conquer the earth–as God desired–or reach out into space–as John F. Kennedy dreamed–and fulfill his God-given potential.
That’s part of what people are talking about when they call for “a culture of Life rather than a culture of Death.“
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
The speech he was planning to give later in the day–the speech that he did not live to deliver included these words:
“We in this country, in this generation, are–by destiny rather than choice–the watchmen on the wall of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint… That must always be our goal… For as it was written long ago, ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.'”
John F. Kennedy, REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY AT THE TRADE MART IN DALLAS, TX, NOVEMBER 22, 1963 [UNDELIVERED]
It raises some interesting points.
In 1962, for example, President Kennedy appointed Byron White as justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. White turned out to be one of the two jurists who voted against Roe vs. Wade, and he wrote the dissenting opinion, saying:
“The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries… I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States…”
Judge Byron “Whizzer” White, writing for the minority, January 22, 1973
It leaves us with a lot to think about doesn’t it?