Happy Earth Day!

Editor:

Many indigenous people of North America told a different creation story than the ones we learned in Genesis I and 2. Creator made all the plants and animals first and told them to take care of Little Brother, a vulnerable human who needed lots of help to survive. All went well for hundreds of thousands of years, and human societies did not destroy the planet.

My ancestors descended from people who had developed a different culture, one based on the concepts of human dominance of nature and private property. Much of the land people occupied was divided and fenced. We know what happened when the two societies, the controlling and humble ones, intersected. Fortunately, the wisdom of the indigenous people survives, and we can learn both from it and from our mistakes. We can change the way we think.

Public land like Isle Royale National Park gives us the opportunity to spend some time in a place where we share ownership of the land. Freed from pride and the responsibility of caretaking, we can simply experience gratitude and praise. Looking outward together, we often have meaningful conversations with other visitors. We experience the peace that passes all understanding, that brief, gentle sense that “life is beautiful and I’m part of it.” Rachel Carson named it the “sense of wonder,” and Terry Tempest Williams called it, “ecstasy without adrenaline.”

Two thousand years ago, Jesus tried to upend our culture of private property, competition, and greed. He taught us to love God (and, by implication, His creation) and to share with our neighbors, even our enemies. The Kingdom of God, like the worldview of indigenous society, is very different from the culture that dominates our world today. Both perspectives are revolutionary, and both work with the renewing energy of nature that is pulling us all together.

Creator made us weak and vulnerable as individuals, but Creator also made us social animals. Humans who choose to work together can become a blessing to all creation. Compassion is the key, and it is our innate power. We need only to trust our spontaneous impulse to love one another. Compassion, extended broadly to include all creation, will not only bring peace, it will give us joy.

Carolyn C. Peterson

Houghton

Can the Bible Justify Everything?

Editor:

When you consider cults like the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and similar groups, why do they use unbiblical positions? Even some professing Christians hold positions like gay “marriage.” Before jumping to the “judge not” warning in Matt. 7:1-5, we need to ask, How can this be? It is done a lot by merely taking verses out of context. Some suppose the meaning was meant only for a past culture. This also happens by quoting just part of any verse.

It all boils down to how we view Scripture. I believe God’s Word, the KJV Holy Bible is infallible and inerrant. We must let the Bible speak to us in context. One example is the book of Psalms which is written in poetic language. Genesis is an historical narrative. So I try to use the grammatical/historical interpretive method.

Kentucky governor Andy Beshear has recently cited the Bible and his Christian faith to justify the policy positions on LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedoms. He frequently highlights these beliefs to explain his vetoes of Republican led legislation in his state. However, his worldview is not biblical at all.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, accused Beshear of “twisting Scripture.” Mohler argues that historic biblical Christianity is clear about the “creation order” (male and female) that Beshear’s policies reject. Numerous groups have characterized Beshear’s arguments as “theological liberalism” that ignores traditional biblical teachings on gender and morality.

If Governor Beshear truly loved people (including children), he would be doing all he could to stop the murder of children in their mothers’ wombs and would outlaw these harmful transgender procedures and “treatments.”

At the heart of this issue is a desire to see everyone, particularly young people, understand the truth regarding their identity. Children are made in the image of God, i.e., created either male or female. Their true identity is rooted in Christ, once they understand they are sinners who need the Savior. I hope that all who read this find peace and freedom that comes only through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus.

Marilyn Sager

Houghton

America’s selective memory on Iran

Editor:

U.S. officials and much of the media emphasize the Islamic Republic’s brutal repression of its own citizens, including the killing of large numbers of protesters, while rarely acknowledging Washington’s role in enabling similar abuses in Iran’s past.

Twenty-five years of horrific human rights abuses under the Shah of Iran, a close U.S. ally installed in a 1953 CIA-backed coup, have largely escaped scrutiny. The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, was created with help from the CIA and Israel’s Mossad.

Human rights organization Amnesty International’s 1974/75 Annual Report asserts: “The Shah of Iran retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.”

Time magazine’s August 15, 1976 cover story, “Torture as Policy: The Network of Evil”, documented the widespread use of torture by governments in order to suppress dissent. The article noted that the worst violators may have been Chile and Iran, where torture had become institutionalized by their police forces. Chile’s brutal military dictator General Augusto Pinochet was another U.S. ally whom the CIA helped bring into power in 1973. The Time article further reported that Iran’s torture techniques included electric shock, rape, beatings, and helmets designed to amplify victims’ screams.

In his 1982 book, The Real Terror Network, Edward S. Herman writes: “In each country, a web of myths evolves that allows the loyal citizenry to feel good about their nation, that depicts its people as generous, progressive and decent to a fault in its international behavior.” This tendency to sanitize history isn’t confined to the Cold War era.

The Trump administration’s efforts to recast national history, pressuring museums and parks over slavery, Native American dispossession and other “disparaging” material is another example of trying to control the story a nation tells about itself.

Brenda Hafera, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, leads the organization’s review of historical sites. In a March 2026 PBS NewsHour segment on divisions over U.S. history ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, she stated:

“I think any truthful commemoration of the American story will be celebratory, because that’s accurate, because this is a good country that has contributed a lot and has moved towards human freedom.”

Yet U.S. support for the Shah helped sustain a regime that denied political freedom to Iranians.

Adam Hochschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, ends with a chapter titled “The Great Forgetting.” Hochschild writes:

“And yet the world we live in–its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence–is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.”

Hochschild’s warning is fitting. What nations choose to forget affects how power is exercised in the present. For the world’s dispossessed, there are memories no empire can erase.

Terry Hansen

Grafton, WI