Theoblogy
Today symbolically marks the day that our global population reaches seven billion. Just how big is that number? CNN has some details:
— Seven billion seconds ago, the year was 1789. That was the year George Washington was inaugurated as the first U.S. president and Congress met for the very first time.
— If you took 7 billion steps along the Earth’s equator — at 2 feet per step — you could walk around the world at least 106 times.
— Suppose an average thimble holds 2 milliliters of water. Seven billion of those thimbles would fill at least five Olympic-sized swimming pools.
— Let’s say the average human is about 5 feet tall, accounting for children. If you stack those 7 billion people end to end, they would reach about 1/14th of the way to the sun — or 27 times the distance to the moon, Volpert said.
— Seven billion ants, at an average size of 3 milligrams each, would weigh at least 23 tons (46,297 pounds).
This is, of course, symbolic. But it does raise some complicated theological issues — and I don’t mean about the barcodes that all new babies will have tattooed on their foreheads. More significantly, I think, is this question: If human beings are indeed created in the image of God (imago Dei), how does our unmitigated numeric increase reflect the nature of God?
In other words, is God increasing at the same rate that we are?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In