AS never before mankind are seeking dominion over their material environment. Technological progress is advancing at an ever-increasing speed. Scientific wonders and accomplishments occupy a portion of each day's news.
In the midst of this activity one naturally asks himself where it is leading. Can one really gain dominion over his environment, his experience, himself, through a vastly improved knowledge of physics, or is he to be controlled by his material environment? The Bible gives a positive and inspiring answer to this question in the very first chapter. As soon as man's identity is established, the question of individual dominion is answered. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth" (Gen. 1:26).
Since God has supreme authority over all that exists and controls it, individual dominion is the demonstration of God's control in one's own experience. One cannot achieve individual dominion on a basis of human effort in order to control other individuals and human events. One has no true basis for controlling anyone other than himself. When one is deceived into attempting to control another individual or group of individuals, a nation, or the world, he is attempting to establish dominion from a material, personal basis, and lasting dominion will elude all such efforts.
