Insight on the News
Atomic Site Restored
● Recently the people of Enewetak atoll, site of U.S. nuclear bomb testing from 1948 to 1958, began to return to their home islands. U.S. government agencies are clearing away radioactive soil and debris to help to restore the environment for the islanders. Already, however, scientists are marveling at the amazing resilience of the land after twenty years without bombs. “Today fish and corals thrive in the [atomic] craters, which attests to the capacity of nature to recover from nearly any kind of disturbance,” writes one marine biologist.
A government official marvels: “We see no mutations of marine life or vegetation. We just don’t see any of the two-headed monsters that science fiction suggests would be the case after prolonged radiation.”
Certainly, then, whatever humans do to ruin our environment before God brings about his promised “new earth,” the damage will not be permanent. In time, his creation’s amazing capacity for recovery, with his blessing, will restore earth to the gardenlike condition he originally purposed for it.—Rev. 11:18; 21:1-4.
Indian Insight
● “National Geographic” magazine recently reported on the unusual Huichol Indians of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in western Mexico. Speaking of the missionaries who worked among these fire-and-sun-worshiping Indians, the writer remarks: “I felt [they] had to soft-pedal their evangelistic role.” To illustrate, he observes that “in the tiny chapel I noticed that the [Catholic] altar faced the Huichols’ sacred east: on each side of the altar there was a shaman’s [witch doctor’s] ceremonial chair, also facing east.” He notes that “the Christian saints and the ancient native deities are honored in the church as well as in Huichol temples.”
“National Geographic” also quotes an Indian’s remark to an explorer some years earlier: “If Christians pray to saints that are made by the carpenters, why should not the Huichols pray to the sun, which is so much better made?”—June 1977, p. 850.
Many centuries before, a similar observation was made about wood in the hands of an ancient carver, as recorded by the Catholic “Jerusalem Bible”: “Half of it he burns in the fire, on the live embers he roasts meat, eats it and is replete. He warms himself too. . . . With the rest he makes his god, his idol; he bows down before it and worships it and prays to it. ‘Save me,’ he says ‘because you are my god.’” Such a person, it continues, will never admit that “What I have in my hand is nothing but a lie!”—Isa. 44:16, 17, 20.
Modern Mobbing
● Most Americans probably believe that religious mob actions are a thing of the past in their country. However, the New York “Times” reports that “Jehovah’s Witnesses, seeking to preach their gospel mission” in Brooklyn, were confronted by “as many as 40 young [Hasidic (ultra-orthodox)] Jews” who demanded that the Witnesses “leave the largely Jewish area centered on 47th Street and 14th Avenue.”
The mob backed up their demands with metal rods, bricks and stones. “Seven Witnesses reported that they had been assaulted,” says the “Times.” One, treated for a shoulder injury at Maimonides Medical Center, was later found also to have suffered a concussion.—May 30, 1977, p. 19.
Eyewitnesses report that Hasidim (“the pious ones”) of all ages assaulted even elderly people, including a woman in her 60’s. Automobiles were vandalized, Bibles and Bible literature destroyed. A list of people in the local Witness congregation was stolen and those listed on it began to receive threatening telephone calls.
No doubt the majority of ethnic Jews, though they may disagree with Witness religious views, do not approve of this violence against peaceful people motivated only by a desire to help. Yet it is tragic to see such intolerance displayed by some of those who themselves formerly suffered terrible persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Surely these former victims of intolerance should hate intolerance most of all.