Yes…Yes (Conclusion)

An Appeal to all Christians.

“If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a New Creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5: 17).

Isn’t that an amazing statement: those who are in Christ are new creations. What does it actually mean?

Jesus says somewhere that we should not put new wine into old wineskins, because these used containers might not be leak proof, creating the possibility that this precious drink – wine was Israel’s national beverage- could seep out and that would be a terrible waste.

Well, the same is true for being a New Creation: it just won’t do to place such a person in an environment where it simply would be out of place: a new creation can only thrive in a new environment.

Look at the world we live in. For the unskilled eye it looks in fairly good shape, but on a closer look here’s where we are now. We live in a world that is fraught with problems, burdened with debt, both monetary and environmental. We also constantly live under the shadow of nuclear war, of Global warming, of oil depletion, of unemployment, of mortgage foreclosure, even of a pandemic, which may rapidly spread when the real flu season starts in the fall. Frankly the general outlook, from whatever angle, is dismal, as deficits get bigger and hyper inflation- or worse deflation – cannot be ruled out. By all accounts we live in a different world. Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. recently remarked that “It is more and more clear that what worked in the 20^th Century will not work in the 21^st Century.” That is also true for the church, reason why Paul’s saying that “those who are in Christ are a new creation,’ means something different today than it did in his time or even a decade ago.  

That is why I started this series by saying that “Times are never better for us Christians,” because the world experiences ‘change and decay’ every where, and has no clue what to do, while there is a definite Christian solution.

The current situation is historic because we are witnessing the decline and fall of Capitalism, in spite of valiant efforts by the money-men of our times, which include most politicians, to put our Humpty Dumpty Money System together again.  

We are now in that curious in-between- time, where matters can go either way: renewal or chaos, redemption or disintegration, rebirth or death.

Uncertainty brings golden opportunities. The world is screaming for answers now that the old ways have been found wanting. Of course, as fanatics are apt to do: when matters are failing, they redouble the efforts, as can be seen in the multiple stimulus packages that will only aggravate the already precarious state of finances, as more growth leads to more pollution, faster resource depletion and quicker Climate Change. To encourage ‘growth’, environmental concerns are downplayed because our capitalistic economy is like a bicycle: once it stalls society collapses, so momentum must be maintained at all cost.
The Bible is our guide here. It is not a history book, and does not give us specific outlines how to invest money, yet it directs us in a certain way that helps us in changing circumstances, so, what was true for my Christian grandparents’ time holds no water today. Their daily code of conduct was very strict: no dancing, no card playing, no cinema attendance, no Sunday work of any kind, but twice to church, but they generated a lot of entertainment themselves: wind instrument bands, choirs, young people meets, very structured lives.  Then Christians were easily recognized by their simple, perhaps simplistic, customs. Today Christians cannot be recognized in any way. Yet we should stand out, and the way we live should provide that answer, for the simple reason that the Way of the World has become the Way of Death.

So what does the Bible tells us in this matter?

The Bible is the book of Salvation, which means that it tells us that God created the world, that we, ever since Adam and Eve, have been busy un-creating it, and that Jesus stopped that process so that we – under Jesus’ guidance- again can help God to keep creating.

Today we have reached a crucial junction where we either join the forces of destruction and so dig our own grave as well, or participate in preparing for a New World by being A New Creation. 

So what does this imply? Let me give a few examples: imagine a bird that would want to live a long life. Last week, in church, a person not known for his environmental commitment- he still smokes and does not believe in Climate Change- commented to me that he had not seen swallows this year at all and wondered why. A swallow can only operate when conditions are good: clean air, lots of good habitat. The same is true for fish, which too has seen sharp declines, or frogs, whose number have grown smaller for years now. In order to flourish again these animals need a New Creation.

The same holds true for us. “If anyone is in Christ she or he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come.” If we want to be in Christ, really be born again, then we have to become a New Creation and – here comes the clincher – have to work toward a New Creation as well: new wine in new wineskins; newly created human beings in a New Creation. Revelation in its very last chapter urges us to ‘wash our clothes – to live an environmentally clean life- so that we may have the right to the Tree of Life and go through the gate into the City, the New Jerusalem.”

In a word: for a person to be a New Creation, to be in Christ, fully, one hundred percent, means that we must also live in a new creation, must strive to create conditions that resemble the New World to come. I realize that this goes directly against the current thinking in the North American Church. One missionary, Craig Sorley in Kenya, trying to encourage green practices there – as quoted in the June 20 2009 issue of the Canadian Globe and Mail – writes, “The deeply embedded view ( in the church) is that Christ is returning soon, so why should we care about the environment?” That is the 20^th century church speaking.

The 21^st Christian view is exactly the opposite: precisely because Christ’ return is imminent, we should deeply care about God’s earth. Martin Luther, the church reformer, once said: “If I knew that Christ would come back tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.” We can no longer call ourselves “in Christ” unless we also live our lives “In Christ”, that is in a place that resembles, as close as possible, to world that is to come, because not heaven, but a renewed earth is our final destination.

Remember we cannot do anything without Christ, but Christ will not do anything without us. After all we are “heirs of the Kingdom – the New Creation – and co-heirs with Christ.”

Yes…yes.

An appeal to all Christians 

In my book The Church in Flux – available on my blog – in Chapters 2-5 – I have outlined a possible scenario of Christ’s Return and quote Revelation – the last Bible book – to back up my thesis.

Anthony Campolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Eastern University, who founded the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, uses the same passages in Revelation to point out similar ideas regarding the current crisis in the economy. I found his article – which I quote below in its entirety – in the Jewish magazine called TIKKUN, the Hebrew word for ‘To mend, repair and transform the world,’ a word that exactly portrays my understanding of the task of the Christian in this world.

As often, the Old Testament people of God are very alert to what’s happening in this world and voice it eloquently. All Christians should practice TIKKUN so that the world is transformed.

Here is what Dr Campolo writes:

“Of all the books of the New Testament, The Revelation of St. John the Divine always struck me as the least relevant to life in today’s world-until this year. My attitude toward The Revelation has changed with this unfolding economic crisis. What I find in that book, especially in its latter chapters, now speaks to me and brings me under conviction.

When St. John wrote The Revelation, he was prescribing how Christians were supposed to understand themselves and live in the context of the ancient Roman Empire. Increasingly, they had defined themselves as a people who had their citizenship in what they believed was another kingdom, namely, the Kingdom of God. They had come to see themselves as aliens in what they more and more viewed as a sociopolitical system dominated by corrupted “principalities and powers.”

“Babylon” was the code word that St. John used for the empire, so whenever we read “Babylon” in the latter chapters of the Book of Revelation, we should substitute in our minds, “The Roman Empire.” Babylon, given this decoding, was a reference to the dominant political-economic social order wherein first-century Christians were required to live out what amounted to a countercultural lifestyle.

If we are to relate what John wrote about his Babylon 2,000 years ago to our own contemporary existential social situation, we should recognize that what he said about the Roman Empire is applicable to every societal system in which Christians are required to live out their witness. That means that in France, the French political-economic system is Babylon. In Japan, the Japanese system is Babylon. We, however, live in the United States, which means that our Babylon is the American political-economic social order. For us, what John had to say about his Babylon is relevant and revealing to what is happening in our country, especially in the face of the present economic meltdown.

First of all, we can figure out from the eighteenth chapter of The Book of Revelation that our Babylon, like all Babylons, is doomed to fall. What is especially revealing is that the Babylon of which John wrote falls because its lifestyle is marked by a consumerism that exhausts the resources necessary for it to be sustained. Everything is for sale in Babylon. John lists them in Revelation 18:12-13:

… gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves-and human lives.

There is an obvious parallel in this to the American Babylon. Ours is a consumeristic lifestyle that exhausts 42 percent of the world’s resources, even though Americans constitute just 6 percent of the world’s population. Our consumerism, like that of the Roman Empire, brings down our Babylon. Whether our political-economic system collapses in the immediate future as a result of our present crisis, or at some time in the future, is hard to predict. Frankly, it sure looks like now!

When our Babylon falls, there will be two reactions. The first will be the reaction of those whom the Bible names as “the merchants.” We read that they weep …

… and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in one hour she has been laid waste (Revelation 18:18-19).

Reading such verses brings to mind those photos on the front page of the New York Times that showed the brokers on the floor of the Stock Exchange, wringing their hands, with others shaking their heads as they watched the Dow Jones average drop as much as 500 points in one session. Like the merchants described in Revelation 18:11, they “weep and mourn, since no one buys their cargo anymore.” We can almost hear the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors wailing like the merchants described in the Bible, crying, “People aren’t buying our cars anymore!” Those merchants in shopping centers, unable to move the stocks of consumer goods, join the chorus and are heard to bemoan that even with sales of 70 percent off, they can’t find the buyers they need to move their stock and stay in business.

But there’s another reaction to the collapse of Babylon. It can be heard in the shouts of a great assembly. The shouts are coming from people who are committed to God and His Kingdom. With acclamations of praise they say, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication” (Revelation 19:1b-2a).

Babylon is called a whore because, like a whore, it has seduced people. Those whose citizenship and commitments have been in Babylon have been seduced into a comfortable “dainty” lifestyle of consumerism and now are having to face the reality that this lifestyle has come to an end. They are being forced to realize:

“The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!” … and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more; and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more; and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more; for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery (Revelation 18:14, 22-23).

As the news of the collapse of Babylon spreads, the people of God are not dismayed. This is because they were never allured by it in the first place. They were a people who had been “seeking, first and foremost, the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). These people of faith, following the instructions of their Lord, had not laid up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but had, instead, invested themselves in the Kingdom of God-a kingdom that will last forever (Matthew 6:19-20).

In the face of the collapse of our American Babylon, we have to ask how much we have been a people whose lives and resources have been invested in God’s Kingdom, so that the collapse of our political-economic system does not threaten us. In the context of the collapse, with whom will we stand? Will we be with the merchants, and weep because our lives and resources have been invested in Babylon; or will we be able to join with those who shout “Hallelujah” because the seductive Babylon and all of the evils that go with her seduction are no more?

As our economic system collapses, I am coming to realize for the first time in my life that Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount are the most sensible words ever spoken. He said:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

I must confess that I had previously thought these words were for the likes of saints such as St. Francis or Mother Theresa. As I read these words, I understood why the Darbyites, with their Scofield Reference Bibles, tried to assign this way of life to some future dispensation and not viable for this present age. But now, as my retirement funds evaporate while the stock market plummets, I wish I had taken Jesus’ words seriously and “taken no thought for the future” as to what I would eat and how I would live. Living more by faith and trusting less on Mammon now seems like the wisest course of action, and the one I should have taken.

I increasingly feel a regretful kinship to that man I read about in the Bible, who built a barn and filled it with those things that would provide for his retirement (Luke 12:16-20). He then reflects, perhaps in light of inflation, that he ought to tear down that barn and build a bigger barn to provide even more security for his future. As he is about to launch into a life of leisure, the Lord says, “Thou fool.” Having worked hard to set up 401Ks and IRAs, I can hear the Lord saying the same thing to me as I watch these funds evaporating daily. Over the years, I thought I had been a generous giver to the poor. Now I wish I had given far more!

There is some good news that comes from the Bible, and that is that it’s never too late to repent. Jonah was surprised that the last-minute repentance of the people of Nineveh led to that city being delivered from destruction. Perhaps our repentance, and that of others around us, could save our Babylon. But even if our socioeconomic system cannot be rescued, those of us who repent of the destructive, selfish, consumerist lifestyles that have brought our Babylon to the brink of collapse might be able to live through the hard days that lie ahead knowing that what is of ultimate significance in our lives will endure.”

So far Dr Campolo. In the following segment I will post my concluding remarks.

Yes…Yes (7)

An appeal to all Christians.

Can Christians really make a difference in this world? They should, of course. A little leaven does the trick in bread. Will a small band of Christians do the same in society? It should be able, but only when their message finds resonance in others. It is no secret that this is not the case today. This was the case when Paul went around the then known world and set it ablaze for Christ. Why was his mission successful where now the Message only serves to turn people off, at least in the Western world? The reason is that times have changed, but not the sermons, the official mouth of the church. What we need today is a Paul who understands today’s world and speaks the message of real hope, something everybody yearns for.

That we are in trouble on all fronts is no secret. That the world is grasping for solutions is also no secret. It is also plain to all that our troubles are our own doing. We are there for the simple reason that we like the status quo: people just don’t change, because change is simply too difficult. Most of us like to float with the flow and hate to go against the stream of public opinion, believing that the crowd knows best.

There are various examples in history where ample warnings were given, but people ignored them. The prophets in the Old Testament kept on telling the people to turn back to God or they would be exiled or even be wiped out altogether. The Ten tribes of Israel disappeared for ever, while Judah and Benjamin suffered 70 years of banishment. More recently the same sort of calamity happened again to the Jewish people, this time in Germany, in 1933, when Hitler came to power. He too had completely outlined his future plans for them in his book “Mein Kampf.” So the Jews in Germany, all 523,000 of them, could have known what was in store.  But they stayed put and that included Jewish bankers, all of whom could have left. They thought they could deal with Hitler; they thought that their money would do the trick, that their allegiance to the German Reich would help them, so they ignored the threats Hitler had outlined in his auto biography. Only about 7% did leave early: 38,000 out of 523,000, while more left after 1938.

At some inconvenience almost all could have left, but for most the immediate cost was too great, involving leaving business, homes, friends, making it necessary to learn a new language, and resettle in a strange land, where they would have arrived in poverty, would have to start from scratch again, but then Jews had faced those options ever since the Assyrian captivity in the eighth century B.C, that 70 year exile, so well described in the Hebrew bible, and also in Spain in the 16^th Century when many were forced to move to Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and other countries.  

Of course not all of them would have escaped the Nazis. Those who lived in, or had fled to the Netherlands almost all died, and the same was true for those who migrated to other European countries that were overrun by Germany after 1939. But the majority could have tried to get away, but they stayed: they refused to read the signals or heeded such events as the Crystal Night happening. They reasoned that “It can’t be that bad.” It was worse.

Jews are like us. Just as they, we too hate to take signs seriously. We too say or think: “No problem. We can handle it.” Just like the Armenians who went through the same thing. The Turkish massacres of 1895 were a foretaste, but most of them remained behind. Then came the genocide of 1915 when millions were killed.

So what has this to do with today? People don’t change, but circumstances do. Look back at the economy in October 2007, not even 2 years ago. The Dow was at 14,000, the banks were booming, real estate was down a little, but the experts said not to worry and so gave no warning. They were wrong, all of them. Today the Dow and real estate is down by 40 percent. The experts were wrong, all of them.

Today the U.S. government is running a $1.8 trillion deficit, while Federal tax receipts are down 34%, which means that the deficit will go above $2 trillion, but nobody cares. No one says, “This is the end. The American economy will never again be what it was.”

Go back less than 20 months. Would you have believed that Chrysler and GM were both headed for bankruptcy? In October 2007 GM shares were at $43. Now they are at $1. Then there was an industry called investment banking, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, who were not part of the commercial banking system. They are gone. So is Merrill Lynch. Bank of America and Citigroup were bailed out by the government. They would have gone under. They sell for a fraction of what they did in 2007. And what do most people say? “No problem.”

Where are we today? Today in the USA the ‘per family’ debt stands at $546.668 (US), an increase of $55,000 in just one year, but the general feeling is that “there is no problem.” With so much debt Medicare will go bust and so will Social Security there. Again, “No problem, why worry.”

The unemployment rate keeps rising, is approaching 10 percent. Again “No problem, why worry.”

When people refuse to face reality, because reality is going to be more painful than anything they have experienced, they look for signs that the problems they cannot avoid without changing are really not that bad. They look for offsetting good news, so they assume that the status quo will return. They cling to the hope that the U.S. government will spend another $30 billion to buy the ‘dead on arrival’ General Motors on which the US treasury already had spent $20 billion. “No problem,” Obama knows best. The government in Washington penalized GM’s bondholders for $27 billion in exchange for 10% of the company, 72% owned by the government and 17% by the United Auto Workers medical insurance fund. “No problem.”

Remember Wilson’s famous quote in the 1950′s, “What is good for General Motors is good for the USA?”  He then was the head of General Motors when it had 50 percent of North American auto sales. Now the reverse is equally true: what is bad for GM is worse for the US.  The company will never return to what it was, and neither will the USA, with no savings and trillions in debt, and disappearing jobs, people will not buy as many cars as before from a company run by the government and the United Auto Workers, but again the same refrain, “No problem.”

But there are big problems: Oldsmobile is gone; Pontiac is going; Hummer is now a Chinese company; Saturn is sold; Opel bought by Magna; Saab is on the block. Yet the mass believes that there are “No problems.” Readers look at the reports, and the reports look awful: falling home prices, rising unemployment, an astronomical Federal deficit. But the media say we are close to a bottom – the bottom of a crash that none of them forecasted. Optimists speak of a slow, weak recovery. Pessimists speak of hyperinflation and depression simultaneously. But as the chorus proclaims “No problem,” the public mindlessly picks up this refrain.

Here is the harsh truth: what we now are experiencing is composed of two interlocking phenomena: (1) a quickly progressing financial catastrophe caused by ever expanding globalization, which  has fermented growing instability and increasing disparity and (2) a continously progressing environmental disintegration which, unless there is a radical change in living habits, will lead to an inevitable creational crash, effected primarily by our lifestyle that knows no limits, based as it is on our blind exploitation of finite natural resources.

Our governments – by offering stimulus packages – encourage such unreal behavior, yet their actions are nothing less than the preservation of employment opportunities on the Titanic’.

People usually calculate the costs of making a change. This is wise. Jesus taught: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, every one who sees it will ridicule him saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish it.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one who comes with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:28-32).

In short, count the costs, especially the environmental one. This is what we have refused to do. Now the cost of doing something radical has become too high, so we prefer doing nothing, doing nothing about Climate Change; doing nothing about the inevitable day when Oil is gone; doing nothing about growing disparity; doing nothing about jobs disappearing; doing nothing about mass transit or urbanization, let alone the growing debt load.

Now is the time for Christians to show the world that we must live so that God’s creation is enhanced, is made better. Talking will not help. Sermons are passé. Only example will serve as a model. Christians need not fear ridicule. Paul already wrote to the Corinthians that “The Message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” (1 Corinthians 1:18). That’s exactly the message we have to bring: foolishness.

Now is the time to plan ahead. Now is the time to prepare for an unfolding disaster: Global warming, resource depletion, rising government ownership, massive deficits, rising unemployment, falling house prices, busted retirement pensions, rising interest rates (falling corporate bonds), and Federal Reserve inflation on a scale never seen in North American history.

The beauty of living within the means of ecological and financial  limits is that not only will we be prepared for bad times, but by doing so we conform more to the will of God and prepare ourselves for the Kingdom to Come. As always, doing the will of God is the answer: always.

So what does the Bible say about the current economic conditions?