wise words

Writing on the environment in A Voice for the Wilderness, Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe quotes President Eisenhower:

As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

It's called selfishness. The theological term is idolatry. By giving up any thought or regard for the future, we become focused only on the present. And in such a narrow focus, where only 'now' matters, we become focused only on our limited worldview, limited entirely to our self. As such, we have placed our self at the center of the universe. Nothing else matters except what's in it for me: I have supplanted God. Living for today is to give up on the future and it is to give up on God. Living for today is sinful, and the wages of sin is death. We can only hope that the death that this way of living imposes is not spread too wide.