II Peter 3:9-15a – Random Commentary on the Preferred Method of Waste Disposal

⁹[The] Lord is not being slow of promise as some are reckoning slowness, but [He] is being patient into you, not purposing that any perish but [purposing] all to have room into repentance;

¹⁰but [the] Day of [the] Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens shall vanish with a roar and [the] elements will be dissolved burning intensely and [the] earth and the works in it shall be burned up.

¹¹Thus all these things being dissolved, what sort [of persons] ought you be in holy livings and godlinesses;

¹²looking for and eagerly desiring the coming of the Day of the God, through which [the] heavens will be dissolved burning and [the] elements are melting burning intensely?

¹³But, according to the promise of Him, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

¹⁴Wherefore, beloved, looking for these things, be diligent to be found by Him to be spotless ones and blameless ones in peace,

 ¹⁵and reckon the patience of the Lord of us [to be] salvation …

Here’s a random thought from an environmental engineer as he ponders the meaning of this passage of Scripture: What is God’s preferred method of waste disposal? Incineration. While being perhaps a little facetious, I think the observation is at least interesting. What did people do with their wastes for centuries? Burn them. What does God do with wastes? Burn them. It’s only been in the current scientifically “enlightened” age that we implemented the glorious notion of landfills. I feel a rant coming on, but suffice it to say, in my humble opinion, landfills are perhaps one of the most idiotic, environmentally offensive, and cost prohibitive ways we could possibly “dispose” of our waste. People don’t want municipal incinerators because it might pollute the air with one ten billionth of a milligram of mercury. So instead they create Mount Trash, an incredibly unsightly eye sore that invariably pollutes the area’s groundwater and will exist throughout the millennia as an environmental cleanup site constantly bleeding public tax dollars. If every city had an incinerator, they could today attach to it some form of energy recovery and derive at least some recovered revenues, producing in the end nothing but a relatively tiny amount of  ash which could be land applied (not land-filled). It’s too bad our world hasn’t noticed that God does occasionally come up with some good ideas. If I could be king for a day, I would decree (and fund) every city (and perhaps localities for rural areas) to install an energy recovering incinerator and I would immediately begin the process of running the existing landfills through incinerators until every single one of them is completely gone and their acreage restored to some useful function.

Purely random and perhaps conceived entirely of my own personal preferences and predudices. But I can’t pass up the opportunity to say it. Someone wise once said, “Fools delight in airing their own opinion …” Perhaps I’m a fool, but to my grave I’ll loathe the existence of landills. There’s got to be a better way … and I think there is.