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How can ancient biblical stories guide us through today’s global crisis and offer hope for the future?

To understand the meaning and purpose of a faith-story for our time, let us look briefly at our current global crisis situation:

-      The biological life-supporting ecosystem is dying as areas the size of Switzerland are cleared each year from the Amazon rain forest - the major lungs of the Earth producing oxygen to breathe.

-      Western Civilization is dying as democratic institutions and economies, overwhelmed by financial debts and immigrants, begin to crumble.

-      Add rising sea levels flooding densely populated areas and major cities around the world. Has Earth become a Planetary Titanic?

 What to do when you and I are in over our heads?

 Humanity has faced that challenge for thousands of years! We have been in over our heads for eons but now we are at the point of being able to blow ourselves to smithereens and end all life.

When we respect the meaning and purpose of the biblical story, we see, for instance, that the story of Noah and today’s “Planet in Peril” or “Life after People” series share in common that humankind got in over their heads in abusing and violating everything life-sustaining, including the relationship with the Author-Creator of LIFE itself.

12 Step groups admit that only cooperation with the Higher Power can save-heal them out of the potentially deadly trouble they themselves got into over their heads.

Albert Einstein hinted that “you cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created the trouble.”

Star Wars, through its “The Force be with you”, tries to tell the old-old story that we humans have a habit of creating trouble and need the Higher Power to save us from the consequences of our own doing.

Perhaps we need to focus on the message of the story, not the details we can argue about.

Noah’s Flood and the story about our potential flood of self-destruction contain the same message: allow and work with the Higher Power to repair the broken relationship before it is too late.

Don’t wait until you are in over your head, because there are consequences. Listen to the wisdom of the ancients and learn from them the power of communal story.

To co-operate with, rather than fight the Higher Power may be worth a try. What do you think?