Good Earth Friday

It's quite unusual for this to happen but, thanks to the rare late Easter we have this year, Earth Day and Good Friday (marking the date of Christ's Crucifixion) have fallen on the same day.

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.

— Job 12:7-10

I've read the Bible from cover to cover, and many parts multiple times, and I have always found it head-scratchingly baffling that purported Christians would be so antagonistic toward protective stewardship of God's creation (i.e., the environment). I also find it perplexing that so many Christians are so married to the idea of unfettered capitalism, when so many parts of the Bible run counter to its values and dictates, but that's another post for another time. Maybe on Adam Smith's birthday. Or Karl Marx's. Or Jesus's, since He and His Dad were quite the socialists.

Good Friday, by the way, is a state holiday in Hawaii (!). Never sure how that passed muster Constitutionally, but if the birthers are right, we don't really care about that kind of thing anyway.

UPDATE:
Speaking of socialists and environmentalism, the People's Daily in China, according to North Korea's KCNA news agency (朝鮮語):

The DPRK government has attached importance to environment protection, the article said, adding:

Pyongyang is taking the lead in it. It is taking a series of measures to improve the urban environment.

It is giving priority to preventing the environmental pollution and tree planting and afforestation are brisk at all institutions and industrial establishments and in different parts of the city.

Big successes have been gained in environmental protection of the city and the city was spruced up.

The green foliage in all places of the city, the blue sky and the clean river add to its landscape.

That, of course, is what's happening in Pyongyang. Outside the capital where the elite live (and are held hostage in order to guarantee loyalty to the regime), there is massive deforestation thanks to a lack of fuel and food (trees don't always survive so well when starving people are stripping away their bark for food).