Bugs.

Bugs.

When I was a kid I remember going on long drives with my family.  We always had a lot of bugs get smashed on the windshield.  Sometimes we even had to stop at a gas station to squeegee them off.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

I didn’t even notice it until I was told about a study from Britain that actually uses windshield counts to measure the insect population.  In fact, apparently the number of insects on the planet is crashing.  40% of species are in serious decline.  [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/]

While this may not bother many of us — indeed, some may feel it is a benefit — the fact is that insects do have a role in the global ecosystem, from pollination to feeding birds.

This caused me to pay attention to my own practice regarding bugs.  Like just about everyone in this culture, I think nothing of killing insects.  Indeed, the more I could slaughter, the better.  Especially in the house.  I might leave them alone outside, but the house is my domain and will not be infected with bugs.

But as I become, however slowly and incrementally, more woke, I am coming to appreciate and respect life.  All of life.  Over the past few months I have grown more tolerant of insects to the point that I will only rarely kill one intentionally.  If I find one in the house I seek a way to either ignore it or release it outdoors.  (Mostly the latter: ignoring insects in the house can lead to them becoming much less ignorable.)    

God creates insects In Genesis 1:20-23, on the Fifth Day.  They are called “swarming creatures.”  They are an integral and essential part of creation.  Biologists know this.  Without some pollinators humanity basically perishes.

The other day I saw an atheist cartoon.  It depicted God talking to someone, who asks whether God made mosquitoes.  When God says yes, the other person lists the devastating effect of mosquitoes on humans, including the fact that mosquitoes have, by transmitting Malaria, caused the death of more people than anything else in history, by far.  He concludes by remarking to God, “You must really hate those people.”

From the point of view of an atheist, that is a radically anthropocentric perspective in which everything is valued by its relationship to humans, or more precisely, me today, God does look like an evil monster for creating mosquitoes.  

At a recent church picnic someone asked me why a good God would create such a pernicious life form as mosquitoes.  My response at the time was to ask, “Perhaps you’d rather live on a planet with an atmosphere made of ammonia or sulfuric acid?  With crushing gravity or baking heat or sub-zero temperatures?  You live in the most beautiful and abundant place in the universe!  Deal with the bugs already!”

The acquisition of the Holy Spirit gives us an increasingly heavenly — which is to say broad, inclusive, and universal — perspective.  We realize that it’s not all about me or even us.  The humans are not the be-all-and-end-all of creation.  The presence of mosquitoes should help us get a grip on this and develop some humility and respect.  This is not our house, it’s the Creator’s.  And if the Creator has determined that mosquitoes have a place in it, who are we to whine about it?

Now I do not underestimate the deadly nuisance that some bugs can be.  I have had Lyme disease.  I have been in places where I had to wear netting to prevent being eaten by Black Flies.  I have had to have my home “bombed” to get rid of cockroaches.  I understand the problems caused by fleas and ticks, and so on.  

But we are seeing that humans have been far, far more destructive to the garden than mosquitoes ever were or will be.  They may have killed a lot of us.  But no species has ever gone extinct because of mosquitoes.  Our ravaging, predatory exploitation of this planet is on a scale beyond the entomological imagination.  

The existence of mosquitoes tells us that God cares much more about the well-being of this whole place and everything in it than God cares about one particularly noxious and destructive species, no matter how smart they think they are.

Anyway, trying not to kill insects has opened my eyes to the value of all life.  

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