Notes from Down Under
|
POPULATION EXPLOSION |
|
by
Ernie Klassek |
It was a catchcry of the twentieth century. In
my childhood days it had a different name. I remember people talking about
"the yellow peril", a theory that the peoples of that skin colour would eventually outnumber all other races and take
over the whole world.
In
my grandparents' time it was commonly held that only the poor had lots of
children. In my parents' time-those sad years that followed the First World
War-the popular sentiment was, "No more wars!" What that generation
of Europeans didn't say out loud was, "No more children." Boys were
often referred to as cannon fodder, and more so after the second World War. So
people simply stopped having children.
You
couldn't blame them. The two World Wars had killed generations of men and
youths: husbands, uncles, nephews, grandfathers, fathers, sons and brothers. In
Germany and Austria the census of 1946 showed a ratio of six females to one
male.
In
due course, the French invented the pill, and the Chinese came up with their
one child per family policy.
I
came to the Lucky Country as a migrant in 1954. After a few weeks on my first
job, my workmates asked me what I thought of Australia. I had nothing but nice
things to say about a country that seemed almost too good to be true. Then they
wanted to know whether I had any criticism, and I said: "You fellows don’t
have enough children. Here you are on a continent as big as Europe, and all you
have is 8 million people." One of them laughed and said: "You mean
populate or perish." Others made comments like: "That's why they are
bringing blokes like you out here" and "Australia is mainly desert." The Labor voters among them said: "We
don't want all these migrants, only the Liberals do." (I
found out later that Labor had approved Australia's immigration policy in
1948.)
In
1959, I began reading a Bible given to me at a naturalisation
ceremony. In the first chapter I read that God had blessed the man and the
woman He had created, and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and
replenish the earth" (Gen
1:28, KJV). It took many months to read the rest of that remarkable book,
and nowhere could I find either a command or a recommendation from God to
counter what He had told the first man and woman.
"If
you don't stop having too many children, you will overpopulate the world"
is not what God said, but what people who don't believe Him say.
Their
reasoning ranges all the way from: "If we don't stop populating, there
will be nowhere for us to live" to "there is not enough arable
land" and "there won't be enough food."
We
often hear about a stockpile of food in many countries-I have heard it called a
"butter mountain"-but we rarely hear about free shipments of surplus
food to those who are starving elsewhere. Merchants seem to follow a policy of
"hold in reserve and sell when the price is right."
Everybody
knows what we could do with the astronomical sums of money plus the time and
effort spent on armaments: We could easily house, feed, educate and make free
health services available for all our fellow men in the third world. What
everybody doesn't know-because it's not made popular nowadays-is that God
doesn't want us to have armaments.
What
He wants is for us to have is faith in Him. If at any time it may seem that
there is not enough arable land, He can make more. Whether He flattens the
Himalayas and other mountain ranges, whether He sends the right amount of rain
into the desert regions whose soil is often rich in minerals and nutrients,
whether He reduces the size of the oceans and increases our land mass that
way--or by other means that we don't know of--He can
do it.
As
God poetically put it to the ancient Israelites who didn't believe Him:
"Was my arm too short to ransom you? Do I lack the strength to rescue
you?" (Isa
50:2, NIV) "Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor
his ear too dull to hear" (Isa
59:1, NIV).
Like
the ancient Israelites, modern mankind as a whole does not believe God. Yet,
among all the millions on earth, there are some who do. God gave them their
faith.
Look
what Jesus said God would do for their sake in times of trouble to come:
"For the trouble at that time will be far more terrible than any there has
ever been, from the beginning of the world to this very day. Nor will there
ever be anything like it again. But God has already reduced the number of days;
had he not done so, nobody would survive. For the sake of his chosen people,
however, God will reduce the days" (Matt
24:21-22, GNB).
God
calls those who believe Him "His chosen people", and He repeats the
promise to reduce the days of mankind's destruction.
Whether
we are among the millions who don't believe God or whether we are among the few
who do, God has already determined to save mankind.
But
there is a difference between the two. Those who don't believe will live in
fear-by that time not of population explosion but of annihilation-while those
who do believe will have a hope and an assurance from God to proclaim to all
unbelievers: He wants to save us all (I
Tim 2:3-4).
And
no one can stop God.
As a
postscript, no one was able to stop God from making Australia's population grow
from 8 million to 22 million in a little over 50 years.
Those
fellows on my first job in 1954 were right when they said to me: "populate
or perish" and "that's why they are bringing blokes like you out
here."
As
for my wife and me, we have not let them down. We did our share with five
children, sixteen grandchildren and-so far-three great-grandsons.
Come
to think of it, I wouldn't mind catching up with those old workmates of mine
one day, if just to say to them: "What do you reckon, fellers, look at us
now."
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On 16 Dec 2009, 14:02.
