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Eden is long gone. A land of milk and honey turned out to be a land also with hostile neighbors and less than a homeland where all would be well.

Paradise is a myth. All appearances of Paradise have been at best momentary or illusionary. Therefore wherever humans live, whatever locale is their “paradise” the challenges posed by their imperfect surroundings must be dealt with. Those living near rivers must accommodate for occasional flooding. Those living on earth-quake prone turf must build and live in ways to reduce the damage caused by earthquakes, those in cold places need heat while those in warm climes need cooling and those in tornado allies need a windowless room for retreat.

Author, professor, Jared Diamond wrote a book titled “Collapse”. Professor Diamond visited and researched many places where entire societies once lived, but collapsed, even disappeared. He studied the abandoned Norse settlements in Greenland and various Anasazi settlements in the Southwest where a whole people seemed to disappear. Many other societies from the Roman Empire to Easter Island were researched for this book.

What Professor Diamond discovered is that all of these societies that collapsed, many, across the centuries, had a few things in common. Typically one reason is often given for a society’s collapse, say barbarians sacking Rome, or climate change affecting the Anasazi. Diamond’s research revealed instead a combination of factors at play in the culture’s demise.

The second factor these cultures had in common was their failure to adapt to change. The Norse tried to live in Greenland just as they did in their homeland. Dairy cattle, and farm methods from home, for example, just did not cut it in snow covered, frigid Greenland.

I have seen this with churches, with my hometown area’s economy, and much more. When any group large or small moves forward assuming things will always be the same, their time becomes limited. I have seen this with ideologies as well.

New realities must always be acknowledged and dealt with. Adaptations are a necessity for survival. I marvel, for example, at those opposing electric vehicles who say, “Electric cars will not be the future.” In one sense they are correct. Electric cars actually are the present. Look around. Tesla now sells more cars than Chevrolet. But don’t get too hooked on electric vehicles. Something else will be around technology’s and history’s corners to someday replace them.

Much reluctance to change and a willingness to adapt can stem from a poor theology. God did not create us to be a static creature. Evolution has been the pattern of life since the very first life form began to adapt and evolve. This, apparently, is how God intended God’s creation to be, to survive. It is a very natural condition for humans and for all life forms.

Climate change is a frightening scenario. Yet climate change of one type or another has been with the earth since its beginning. We humans are still here because our predecessors were able to adapt. And so must we.

Adaptation is more than reducing emissions and our carbon footprint. Large companies are here to stay at least for now it would appear. They have contributed much to ecological harm. In some places, however, they have behaved well. We must work with them to incentivize the good behavior while holding them accountable for bad. That is, we must adapt, we need to change our behavior.

It is not only geographic locations that fail to be paradise. It is those in them who fail to be a people worthy of paradise. Human history is, in many ways, a living out, a constant adaptation, of dealing with this very imperfect reality. The Constitution of the United States was written as it was because, “Men are not angels” according to one of its authors, James Madison.

The question with which we must struggle as we move into all futures, is not “Should we change and adapt?” Instead the question is, “How must we change and adapt?”
We must assume life will never be one particular way, however ideal we find life at some moment.