It is an eerie painting. Nature is personified in the form of a tree hanging sideways on a cross. In the background are havoc and destruction. The colors of the painting are dark and dull. It is a powerful image conveying death and hopelessness.
Yet, for where it hangs, the painting is appropriate. It is one of the exhibits in the Chernobyl National Museum in Kiev, Ukraine. Next to it hangs another haunting artwork. Debris from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident is shown having fallen back to earth in the form of a cross. The burning nuclear power plant forms a poignant background.
On the ceiling as one climbs the steps toward the exhibits are the names of towns and villages near the famous reactor. There are dozens and dozens of names. As one descends those stairs, one again sees the names, but this time, there is a line through each one. The towns and villages are no more. Each one was lost to the results of what happened April 26, 1986.
One photo is unforgettable. A group of workers is shown holding up a homemade sign that, roughly translated, says, “What we do today will save others for a thousand years.” The photo rests amid the pictures of those who died in the explosion or from radiation exposure while working to contain the nuclear waste that was being spewed into the atmosphere.
Nearby is a map showing where nuclear waste fell. As horrendous as the results were, they could have been much worse. The Chernobyl reactor is only a few miles north of Kiev, Ukraine’s largest city. Had the wind been blowing south instead of north that day, millions could have died. Instead most of the waste fell on farms and rural villages.
As I stood there looking at the exhibits, I could not help remembering January 1994 when I coordinated a medical team’s visit to a special hospital in Belarus that was set up to treat children suffering from radiation poisoning from Chernobyl or the clinic Missouri Baptists helped set up in Belarus to provide care for children from the contaminated areas. About 80 percent of the nuclear fallout landed in this neighboring country.
Even now, once fertile farmland lies useless for centuries. Silent poisons attack children’s thyroids. Unimaginable deformities spring forth. The rebirth of grass and flowers and trees hides the death that stalks the place.
It is hard to understand how the far side of the 40-foot-wide river near Chernobyl is considered safe for visitors while the near side is a no-go site.
Chernobyl was a first-rate disaster, but it followed two near misses. Most people no longer think of the world’s first nuclear accident, which occurred in England on Oct. 10, 1957. Along the coast of northwest England, the Windscale nuclear reactor produced plutonium for the British army. Nuclear material for the nation’s 1952 atom bomb came from this site. Now the government pushed the reactor to make material for a nuclear bomb.
But Oct. 10, the pile of material overheated and a fire broke out. It was a fire that caused the Chernobyl plant to explode, too. Thankfully engineers at Windscale succeeded in putting out the fire before the fuel situation turned critical, but radioactive material was released into the atmosphere.
And who can forget how close Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pa., came to a major catastrophe March 28, 1979, when it suffered a partial core meltdown?
All are reminders that humankind must be careful as it approaches the future. Forces that have great promise of good can suddenly become the means of mass destruction. Humanity and nature are inseparably linked. God’s gift of His image gives man the responsibility of stewardship with creation. In Genesis 2:15, Adam and all mankind were invited to work with God in the care of creation. The invitation was not to exploitation but to care of that which God called “good.”
When life was lived closer to the soil, that truth was innately grasped. The most important day on the denominational calendar in the first church I served as pastor was Soil Conservation Sunday. The members of that open country church understood that the welfare of all was tied to the stewardship of soil and water and air.
Today vegetables come from the grocery store. Milk comes from a plastic jug. Most people have forgotten, if they ever knew, the inseparable connection between man and nature. Southern Baptists no longer observe Soil Conservation Sunday or anything like it.
The nation’s farm policy is a political fight between moneyed interests rather than an opportunity to care for the land and the people who depend on it.
Today we argue over how much carbon can be put in the air before it becomes unsafe. We know what happens when water is not cared for. We have seen rivers burn and lived through the decades necessary to make them usable again.
As if the creeping deserts of Africa and Asia do not show us what happens when woodlands are leveled, we hack away at vital stands of old growth forests. Today’s desires make us mindless of tomorrow’s consequences.
The earth is warming. The ice caps are melting. And we argue about whose fault it is instead of doing that which is within our power to do. In pursuit of coins to jingle in our pockets, we court destruction.
Stewardship of creation gives way to its selfish use. The result? Every day, another nail is driven into the gifts God provided for humanity’s well-being. God forgive us.
Chernobyl was an accident but its consequences were still terrifying. Whether the environmental problems faced today have human causes or not, the results will be the same. Playing brinksmanship with nature is a losing game.
How much better to accept God’s invitation to join Him in the care of creation for the good of all than to continue manipulating it for the short-term gain of a few.
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