It is unlikely that you will have missed that Sir David Attenborough is now 100; the BBC have been celebrating this for the last month. He has combined his passion of natural history and his skills as a TV presenter to shape the way nature documentaries are shown on the television. He has very largely shaped the national conversation on the environment and polls consistently show him as one of the most trusted figures.Some look at the natural world and see in it evidence for a loving, creator God. Attenborough is not one of these. He often speaks of the examples of parasitic worms, that debilitate their (sometimes human) hosts in order to live; he can see little evidence from these of a loving creator . From my perspective as a professional biologist, I admire the beauty of the natural world; I know this from staring at cells through a microscope. I can praise God for the beauty. However, I am aware that this is a consequence of evolution by natural selection, driven by random changes to our genes. This process does not need an intelligent creator to drive it; indeed it relies on chance and does lead to suffering as well as progress. But I would agree with those who say that this shows that if God has chosen to "create" through natural selection, then this is inevitable. If God has given the universe the freedom to progress by this mechanism, their must be pain. But the glory and the love are shown in what God knew all along; the wonder of nature that Sir David has spent his life revealing.
Yesterday, I was talking to some friends; amongst other topics, we reflected on the news and the tens of thousands killed in recent conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere. One made the point that when major charities make their appeals, they focus on one or two individuals at most to illustrate the suffering. If they did any more, we would not be able to take it in. Our capacity for empathy is easily overwhelmed. There is nothing new in this. In the First World War, Edward Shillito, a poet and Congregationalist minister in London reflected on how people had grown immune to the daily lists of dead and missing soldiers. In his poem, "Hardness of Heart" he complains that the deaths "are too many now" for anyone to comprehend. Only God understands and grieves each loss; our tears are no more.In the first watch no death but made us mourn;Now tearless eyes run down the daily roll,Whose names are written in the book of death;For sealed are now the springs of tears, as whenThe tropic sun makes dry the torrent's courseAfter the rains. They are too many nowFor mortal eyes to weep, and none can seeBut God alone the Thing itself and live.We look to seaward, and behold a cry!To skyward, and they fall as stricken birdsOn autumn fields; and earth cries out its toll,From the Great River to the world's end—tollOf dead, and maimed and lost; we dare not stay;Tears are not endless and we have no more.
