Parking Wild Animals

  The famous San Diego Zoo operates the much larger Wild Animal Park, far from the beach in northern San Diego County. One can see the entire park on the tram ride. (I realize it’s probably not called a “tram ride;” most likely it’s a “Jungle Safari” or somesuch. But you know what I mean.)
  The tram driver delivers a spiel about the different animals and their environments. During the course of this monologue, he tells you how the park is breeding endangered species for eventual reintroduction into their native habitats. The assumption of his speech, and of the park’s management philosophy, is that two environments exist in the world: the Wild, in which man plays no part and where plants and animals follow their natural course; and the Park, where man, for a limited time and for specified ends, controls the lives and breeding of animals and plants.
  But is this dichotomy, between the “natural” and the “controlled,” valid? I think not; it assumes man is not in charge of the natural environment. Scripture, however, teaches that God has given man dominion, the authority to rule, over the entire world (Genesis 1:26-30). Thus, there can be no part of the Earth in which man is not in charge. (One reason that we find human beings living in every imaginable environment on the planet.) Man can never escape his responsibility to rule.
  Given the inescapable universality of dominion, how are we to interpret the existence of the Wild, those vast stretches of land where very few people can be found, where feral beasts seem to run the show? Man, as ruler, has chosen to let these areas “grow free.” Through our land use choices, man creates “natural habitats,” and let wild animals live there. The Wild is the Park!
  The nearest analogy would be a man who puts his mower away forever and lets his lawn go. He may do so for any number of reasons, good or bad: he doesn’t have the time; he’s lazy; he enjoys seeing what turns up on its own; he wants to try xeriscaping; etc. My point is, a choice not to mow is as deliberate as a choice to mow. Both are approaches to his responsibilities as a homeowner.
  The difference between Los Angeles County and Yellowstone Park is not that man is in charge in the one place and animals in the other. Instead, it is that we have chosen to build in the one, and not build in the other; to control water in the one, and let it flow freely in the other; to improve on God’s creation in the one, and observe it in the other. I’m hard pressed to say which is the better choice; in fact, both, in principle, are equally good. God has given us the entire world, and told us to glorify him with it. We ought to do this responsibly, but we have a relatively free hand with the resources.
  The view from the tram is binary: part of the world is natural, where man has no say; the other part, where man runs things, is artificial. This view is false. In the view from the Church, man, as a servant of the Lord, runs everything everywhere. All is natural because all is under man’s dominion. All creation is a wild animal park.