June 17, AD 2010
Frankly Speaking
Current Events Commentaries from a Biblical Perspective
by Frank Allnutt

The Gulf Oil Spill and Worldly Wisdom

British Petroleum (BP) says it has successfully placed a cap on the damaged mile-deep pipe that has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon well blew out on April 20. However, oil continues to leak—and at a greater rate (35-60 million barrels a day) than earlier reported.

I don’t want to belittle the seriousness of the Gulf Oil Spill disaster—the loss of lives, livelihood, wildlife and ecologies, and ominous political fallout. But I must confess that the oil leak has reminded me of the Hans Brinker story about a 19th Century Dutch boy who saves his country by using his finger to plug the hole in a leaking dike. The boy does that all night, in spite of the cold, until the adults of the village find him and make the necessary repairs.

Though I am an intensely serious Bible student, I sometimes lapse into the mental state of a quirky novelist (I’ve written two books of fiction). And so I’ve been wondering how the leak in the dike story would unfold in today’s world. The central character is the ageing Dutch president. I wanted to title the book "The Old Man and the Sea," but was told someone else already used it. Anyway, here’s my synopsis:

The Dutch Dike and Desalinization Company (DDD) discovers a serious leak in one of the dikes it built and maintains under contract with the government. The large pipe that carries sea water through the earthen dike and onto the desalinization plant has sprung a leak. And that is worrisome because, if the leak is not quickly stopped, it could create a national disaster. The dike would break and seawater would flood into the low lands, killing people and animals, and destroying homes, towns, farms and other businesses. And, of course, DDD would have less fresh water to sell.

The leaking dike and its potential threat quickly becomes breaking headline news. DDD first downplays the seriousness of the incident, then must defend itself against accusations of shoddy dike-building. DDD's stock goes down even though the price of its water goes up.

Bowing to calls for the government to take action, the Dutch president launches a series of assessment meetings—first with his political advisors, then with cabinet members, agency heads, and experts from the private sector. Strangely, the president doesn't want to talk with DDD execs, and they don't want to talk with the president. The whole affair drags out to become a weeks-long process. Water continues to leak through the dike. Finally, the president announces on national TV his plan to combat the problem: he will use the power and authority of the Presidency to force DDD to “Plug the hole!"

But DDD says that approach is precluded by technical problems: The leak apparently is from a ruptured pipe, deep in the bowels of the very wide earthen dike. Leaking water is saturating the earth, destabilizing the structural integrity of the dike, and any attempt to dig down to the leak and fix it would further weaken the dike.

Finally, after several weeks of no contact, the president summons DDD execs to a meeting. They mutually develop a new plan to deal with the leaking dike: the government will lift its moratorium on new desalinization plants to allow DDD to build two new ones. By tunneling through stable locations in the dike and installing two new water lines from the sea to the plants, the sea’s water level will be lowered, eventually falling below the level of the intake of the damaged pipe.

How long it would take to lower the sea level is anyone’s guess. DDD says it could take up to a few months. Outside experts are not that optimistic.

Not wanting a good crisis to go to waste, the president announces yet another plan: raise taxes to build better dikes and educate people to conserve fresh water and become less dependant on seawater.

And the dike continues to leak.

Meanwhile, the Dutch president’s approval ratings have improved slightly because he says he is personally in control and will restore flooded areas and make them better than ever.

As the dike continues to leak, the legislature rushes ahead with the president's new "Save Us From The Sea" initiative. And DDD is about to break ground for two new desalinization plants. The government's coffers will soon be flooded with fresh new tax revenue, and DDD's fresh water sales are projected to at least double!

People are beginning to think something's rotten in Denmark—er, Amsterdam.

Now, back to the Gulf Oil Spill disaster, the plan to stop the leak has reportedly ignited the imagination of a high governmental official in Iceland. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano there has been spewing lava for weeks and gigantic clouds of ash and dust have wreaked havoc on international air travel to and from Europe. The Icelandic official, being quick to make political hay, responds by floating a novel idea: BP’s plan for stopping the Gulf Oil Spill sounds so promising that a similar approach might be considered to stop the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. I guess the idea is to drill two deep holes in the earth near the volcano and siphon up the molten lava in order to reduce the deep pressure far below that is causing the volcano to erupt. But that's just my guess. Details remain to be worked out—such as what to do with all that siphoned molten lava.

The Icelandic official was only joking. Wasn’t he?

So far, I haven’t decided how to end my contemporary tale of a leaking Dutch dike. The more I think about it, the premise is ridiculous and unbelievable. On one hand, a similar premise has been unfolding over the very real Gulf oil spill for two months. So, why buy my novel when everyday you can watch the real thing on TV and read about it in the print media?

I’m beginning to think that people are so over-saturated and uptight over the real thing that my novel wouldn’t attract much of anything but contempt.

I’ll probably scrap the whole idea.

But if it’s a ridiculous, unbelievable storyline, what are we to make of all that's going on over the Gulf Oil Spill?

Were the Apostle Paul to write an analysis, I suspect he would address the broader context and quote himself from his first letter to the church in Corinth:

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, “He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless.” So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God (1 Corinthians 3:18-23).

Those of us who belong to Christ are charged with being good stewards of God’s creation. But good stewardship is not impervious to apathy, misuse and abuse...and opposition. In this age and its worldly wisdom to which Paul refers, God’s creation could be likened to an experimental laboratory for the Dr. Frankensteins of the world.

Referring again to the writings of Paul, the day is coming when “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom and glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:21-23).

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