Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

TRANSLATING HOLY WRIT

Dispute about one word.                                                                               

If I were to wake you from a deep sleep, and ask you to say the words of the prayer Jesus taught us, you would not hesitate one second, also deeply believing that every word is true to the core.

Not so.

The original Greek prayer contains a word – epiousios – that has puzzled Christians ever since theologians had a peek at the Greek version of the Lord’s Prayer. Pope Benedict, before he attained the Holy Office, was the Cardinal for Germany, Ratzinger by name, and the foremost theologian for that denomination. He looked at that word – which occurred only one once more in the New Testament – and concluded that it did not mean ‘daily’, as in ‘give us this day our ‘daily’ bread’, but something like ‘of extra substance’, or at a stretch ‘for the morrow’. Recognizing the erroneous translation, the future pope’s conclusion was to translate that mysterious word to read: “Give us this day our supersubstantial bread”, which, of course, never caught on.

Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his almost 1200 pages book CHRISTIANITY, tentatively concludes that the word ‘epiousios’ points to “the new time of the coming of the kingdom”. That resounds with me, as the Kingdom always was uppermost in Jesus’ mind, urging us to ‘seek first the Kingdom!’

The Kingdom, so misunderstood!

This leads me to Dr. J. H. Bavinck and his book “Between the Beginning and the End”, with as subtitle, A Radical Kingdom Vision. He writes (and I cannot sufficiently emphasize its importance): “The central point of the Gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering; rather, its entire focus is aimed at the unique and powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom….There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal.” The Kingdom points both to “Paradise, the Garden of Eden”, and to the New Creation to come.

Simply, Jesus central message is that, in all our actions, we must seek the welfare of God’s creation. Tell that to us 21^st Century creatures!

The Riddle of Life.

In another of his books: “The Riddle of Life”, Dr. Bavinck devotes one chapter to “The World Order”. He writes, “We are struck by the unity and order that is evident everywhere, because everything on earth is somehow harmoniously connected to everything else. The one species influences the other, and the one creature depends on the other. Plants cannot exist without the earth that feeds them. Animals, on the other hand, cannot function without the plants, as these are often the sole source for their food.”

Bavinck concludes that “The law of serving is at the heart of every creature: it is the overarching purpose for every being. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist.”

That is confirmed in Jesus’s words: Matthew 20: 28: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

A secular prophet.

Enter Dr. Barry Commoner who presented us with the four laws of Ecology, coined some 60 years ago, laws that have withstood the test of times.

The first of these informal laws: Everything is connected to everything else, indicates how ecosystems are interconnected. This

interconnectedness of nature also means that ecological systems can experience sudden, startling catastrophes if placed under extreme stress. “The system,” Commoner writes, “if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse”. To me it is a biblical concept, and thus Holy Writ.

The second law of ecology, Everything must go somewhere, restates a basic law of thermodynamics: in nature, there is no final waste, matter and energy are preserved, and the waste produced in one ecological process is recycled in another.

Nature knows best, the third law of ecology, Commoner writes that any major man-made change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system. This too, is purely biblical.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The fourth law of ecology expresses that the exploitation of nature always carries an ecological cost. It corresponds with Judgement: God/Creation has her built-in form of retribution/Judgement.

Two thoughts to ponder.

• In The Lord’s Prayer the phrase: “Hallowed be Thy name”, has nothing to do with God’s name, as God is beyond naming. Karen Armstrong in her book, “Sacred Nature”, lists 50 names for God in the Scriptures.  God is known by his creation, and “Hallowed be Thy Name”, has everything to do with the species created, on which God’s Name is embedded.
• Barry Commoner, celebrated University Professor, lived from 1917-2012, earns the distinction of Revelation 14: 13:  “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
  
  

Translating, also the Bible, is a human act, thus fallible, and so is interpreting Scriptures. That’s why both the Bible and the church will cease to be in the New Creation.

THE FINAL MARRIAGE?

“The Apostles’ Creed”, is my favorite ‘declaration of faith.’ It is compact, to the point, and devoid of dualistic notions. Its ending is simple and unambiguous: “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and Life Everlasting.” In the new Creation, I should add.

My thoughts, celebrating my 97^th birthday this past week, and thus entering my 98^th year, have centered increasingly on the end of not only my life, but equally, on the life of the current civilization, our modern ‘way of life’, rapidly showing a great element of finality, to put it cautiously.

Books, dealing with this situation, are becoming increasingly popular, witness GOLIATH’S CURSE, citing 4 immediate threats: Fiscal fragility, resulting in economic collapse, ecological overshoot, such as Climate Change, AI = computer overreach, and Political and legitimacy crises. Each of these can do us in: imagine a combination of the four!

Two more books.

First, there is Paul Kingsnorth’s new book, a birthday gift from my oldest son, AGAINST THE MACHINE, with as subtitle, On the Unmaking of Humanity. In it, Kingsnorth describes how the Machine, in the name of progress is destroying the earth itself, and reshaping us in its image, in the process causing us to lose our humanity.

And then there is Eliezer Yudkowsky, American computer scientist, who released a new book, co-written with Nate Soares, called “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” referring to AI.

In it, he’s trying to make this argument to the public — a last-ditch effort, at least in his view, to rouse us to save ourselves before it is too late.

Back to Jacques Ellul.

These books remind me of Jacques Ellul, the former professor of law, in Bordeaux France, and his prophetic book: “The Meaning of the City”. In it he describes how, “The City is the world of man: the City is his creation (made in his image) and has become his pride because it reflects his culture and his civilization. The City is also a place of absurdity, of chaos, and of man’s power over Nature, a place of slavery par excellence.”

Ellul recounts how, through the course of the Bible, the birth of the city opposes God’s Paradise: that’s why Esau founded ‘the City’.

However, God has placed us in a garden because this is our natural place, the place to which we are best adapted. But we, the new Esau humanity, want to separate us from God/Creation and determine our own destiny, now all too obvious.

Much of aboriginal thinking heralds a return to nature, a return to the original Paradise state, looking forward, as the Bible anticipates, to the perfect city, the New Jerusalem, as attested in Revelation 21: 2:  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

Yes, the New Creation is the Bride! And we, the New Humanity, are the Groom! With Jesus being among us as ‘the First among Equals!’

That text affirms Isaiah 62:4: “And the land will be married.”

That new marriage will be between ‘the land’ and humanity! That is what the Bible teaches us! “The Land which God called ‘good’ seven times.

The city is precisely the place created by man. It is the affirmation of man taking his life into his own hands, independently of God; it is the expression of man’s rebellion against God. God has placed humanity at the garden, a place adapted to him. But we refuse the life for which God has destined us,  and have gathered and organized ourselves to depend no longer on nature.

Each morning I start with reading the applicable Bible Readings for the day. Lately Jeremiah’s prophecies of the Looming 70 years exile, are daily among its passages. God’s warnings then were ridiculed by the ‘pious’ in Jerusalem, just as today the avalanche of warnings is ignored as ‘nonsense’, lack of faith in technology.

Ellul presents the Christian hope, which leads from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem foretold in Revelation. But before that happens, before the new era arrives, we must listen to what the land is telling us. And what is the land is telling us? We’re definitely in the ‘pyrocene’ — the time when fire dominates Earth.

Michael Wara, who studies wildfire at Stanford, says, “It’s so tempting for people to think that the cause of these enormous catastrophes is the person who drops the match, who drops the cigarette.” But, he says, “that’s just wrong.” What holdover fires teach us more than anything else is that the ignition doesn’t matter nearly as much as the buildup of fuel does. “What can burn will burn.”

Well, on good authority – both on the Bible – the written Word – and on Creation – the Created Word, I can, in confidence, write, that we must, joyfully, prepare ourselves for the New Marriage to come: The Groom being the New Humanity, headed by Christ, and the Bride being The New Earth. Rejoice: A marriage made in heaven!

“As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” Daniel 12: 13.

CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGION

We know that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

1 John 5: 19.

Today evil has the upper hand.                                                            

Oh, me, the Calvinist, spoon-fed on “conceived and born into sin, and therefore a child of wrath”, quoting Psalm 51: 5.

Just as ‘good’ generates more of the kind, so too evil enhances evil. There definitely is a strong connection between our evil conduct and our entire world running on ‘evil’ fuel, our polluting poisonous petrol, initially seen as a godsend, but, now, after untold zillions of explosions in our beloved automobiles, revealing the dire consequences of our greed for speed. We, head over heels, are rushing toward Armageddon, spearheaded by our ‘evil’ leaders.

 The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of a dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a confirmed autocrat.

The Church in the World: Christianity and Religion.

That brings me to the problem of ‘the church’, and in particular, the relationship between ‘Religion and Christianity’.

How do I see ‘religion’?

I see ‘religion’ as a cultural matter, inextricably bound up with the history, art, lifestyle, and shared values of a group of people or even a nation, leading us to label the USA a Christian nation, where ‘religion’ merges with Christianity, with their way of life and the prevailing culture. Religion makes us include some and excludes others, Jesus, among them.

Jesus hated religion, a factor in his killing.

His very last act, just before he died, was a direct signal: The ripping of the Jerusalem Temple curtain, from top to bottom, symbolized the end of the old covenant and the opening of direct access to God for all through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, removing the need for human mediators and human institutions, and signifying that Jesus is the new, true temple. 

This divine action marked a new era of grace, where access to God replaced physical rituals and human effort, demonstrating that only God could provide the way to enter His presence. The fact that the curtain was torn from “top to bottom” indicates the tearing was a divine act, not a human one, highlighting that the way to God was opened by God’s initiative. 

It marked the transition from the Old Covenant, with its laws and rituals, to a New Covenant based on grace and direct access to God through faith in Christ. Paul Tillich wrote: “We call Jesus the Christ not because he brought a new religion but because he is the end of religion.”

Jesus had a continuous battle with the ‘religious’ leaders of his day – read Matthew 23. His criticism of the super-religious leaders was fundamentally against the hardening into dogma of ritual and moral code, which made these the rules to live by, day by day. The church does the same when seeing women as inferior, not worthy of official functions, and excluding homosexuals from equality.

And then there is Amos.

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!  Amos 5.

And Christianity?

Jesus’ last miracle signified ‘the END of Religion’, and the beginning of LIFE in Creation: John 10:10: “I have come to bring you LIFE, and that to the full”. Simply: Christianity is a total way of life, preparing us for the New Earth to come.

Prevailing view in the church.

Here is a quote by a Presbyterian minister, as recorded this week on the front page of the New York Times. “I believe that there are many Roman Catholics who are saved and going to heaven. I also believe there are many Presbyterians who aren’t.”

That HEAVEN HERESY is today at the very root of the Christian Religion. Yet, John 3: 13 explicitly proclaims: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man.” A few verses later, verse 16, in that important dialogue with the theologian Nicodemus, Jesus emphasized that his death would be for the restitution of the ‘cosmos’, the world, created by God for his glory.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of John 3: 16: In a few words it explains the sole purpose of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection: Jesus came to redeem creation: His blood bought back God’s work of art, all that lives and moves and has a being. That’s why we will inherit the earth.

Here’s a song I made this week.

Can be sung on the tune: “By the Sea of Crystal”

IN THE NEW CREATION

In the new creation,

New humanity stands,

Robed in brand-new garments

Reflecting many lands.

Red and black: all colours

White and other strands

Ready to develop

The new creation stance.

Jesus is among us

First among us all,

First among us equals,

Whether tall or small.

Great is new earth’s beauty

Holding us in thrall,

Gripping us forever

Never more to fall.

All the world renewing

Never fails God’s plan:

Blessed with God’s own spirit,

Filled with pure elan.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

Sing: humans, female, man,

Holy, holy, holy,

Is Christ’ Royal clan.

For now: We know that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

1 John 5: 19.

But: Renewal is at hand. Soon.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!                                      Revelation 3: 16

I once had a book, a Dutch book, with the title – in Dutch of course – “Letters from Heaven” directed to the 7 churches in Asia Minor, roughly the area of Turkey today.

The last one was sent to ‘lukewarm’, ‘Lackadaisical’ Laodicea: ‘Lackadaisical’ fittingly indicating lack of enthusiasm and determination, neither hot nor cold.

The footnote, in my study bible, gives an interesting comment: “Laodicea was the wealthiest city (in the area) during Roman times. It was widely known for its banking establishment, medical school and textile industry. Its greatest weakness was the lack of an adequate water supply.”

The writer of that letter could be talking of us today, 2025: Even the climatic conditions are similar: Laodicea was an advanced society, much like ours, including a threatening lack of natural resources, and failure of genuine faith, because prosperity pushes prayer away, and propels passivity. That’s why we must “Pray without ceasing” because we too suffer from lukewarmness.

“Pray without ceasing” is found in 1 Thessalonians 5: 17. Prayer usually means having a dialogue with God. To me it has become a more direct activity, encouraged by Bonhoeffer’s Life. Dr. Sabine Dramm, in her book:  ”Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to his thoughts”, summarizes Bonhoeffer’s belief as, “Specific to the Christian Faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”

That makes sense to me, echoing the Belgic Confession, which says: “We know God first of all through his creation”, just as we know Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, by their works: therefore “Pray without ceasing” to me really means that we constantly must have the welfare of creation in mind: No ‘lukewarmness’ allowed! Harming God’s ‘work of art’, constitutes lèse majesté, the insulting of a monarch, in this case the Creator.

Goliath’s Curse.

This brings me to a new book whose summary appeared in the (British) The Guardian a few weeks ago. It was published in the USA on September 23, and I ordered it right away.

Here are some of my initial impressions:

Cambridge professor, Dr. Luke Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 15,000 years. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, taking advantage of general apathy and lukewarmness.

He writes, “Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and will lead to the worst possible societal collapse. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.”

He cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events.

“First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons.

“Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.”

Kemp says his argument that Goliaths require rulers who are strong in the triad of dark traits is borne out today. “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a confirmed autocrat.”

What will happen?

“The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity”, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

He believes the first outcome is the most likely, but says escaping global collapse could be achieved. “First and foremost, we need to create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths.”

“That means running societies through citizen assemblies and juries, aided by digital technologies to enable direct democracy at large scales. History shows that more democratic societies tend to be more resilient”.

Is that believable?

The short answer is “No”, confirmed by the events described in Revelation 21, the last Bible book. Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

Thank you, Jesus, for vanquishing the Goliath’s Curse!

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IS MY ANALYSIS CORRECT?

“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

                                                               Jeremiah 20: 8

So, how do I explain this text from Jeremiah, the prophet famous as the ‘bringer of doom’. He enriched our modern parlor through ‘Jeremiads’, those long, mournful complaints or lamentations.

In this text, what is this man, Jeremiah, commonly known as a major prophet, trying to say? Is there anything applicable for today, 2025, now 2500 years later?

Yes, I sincerely believe that the Bible speaks to us now, even after many, many centuries. Why? Because human nature has not changed at all, thus the message brought to us after some millennia, remains relevant, and so do the prophecies.

Take Isaiah 24:

For the LORD has spoken this word.

4The earth mourns and withers; 

the world languishes and fades; 

the exalted of the earth waste away.

5The earth is defiled by its people; 

they have transgressed the laws; 

they have overstepped the decrees 

and broken the everlasting covenant.

6Therefore a curse has consumed the earth, 

and its inhabitants must bear the guilt; 

the earth’s dwellers have been burned, 

and only a few survive.

True then, true now.

So, let me refresh your memory, and repeat the words of the original text: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

As the quote from Isaiah 24 shows, human destructive nature remained constant during the past 2,500 years: then as now the earth is under attack by us, sinful creatures, while God/Creation fights back.

While I am writing this, my eyes are fixed on the semi-tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean, and also on the Pacific: Both huge waterbodies are given birth to immensely destructive natural phenomena, known as Hurricanes and Typhoons. They now increasingly are the direct products of our enslavement to fossil fuels that – unimaginable until now, I should add – we have heated these immense waterbodies covering 70% of the globe, to the point of generating aquatic super-monsters, capable of nuclear-size calamities. Should I mention earthquakes? Revelation 11: 13 does, and so does Jesus in Matthew 24. Expect them too!

Back to the original question again: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

We have harvested the earth, have taken out her easy treasures, the low-hanging fruit, and now the glorious days of summer are gone, and we face the unpredictable days of depletion, pollution, storms, rain, snow and ice, procuring a plethora of poisonous by-products in the process. New dangers loom. By exceeding 420+ parts per million of CO? in the atmosphere, we have crossed an unprecedented threshold for our species, forcing our bodies, our lungs, to operate in a chemical environment for which it was not designed. This planetary experiment is already showing its effects, and the price could include our own mental acuity, in addition to the perils, hitherto unknown in human history. New reports show that Carbon Dioxide dilutes the human intellect to think properly, and thwarts our reasoning powers, prevents or obstructs our judgement and hampers the drawing of the rightful conclusions for altering our destructive behavior. Just as the disciples did not believe that Jesus would die, neither do we believe that Creation shares that fate, also.

Blame CO2. Inhalong CO2 plays havoc with the very features that makes us human, while our being created in God’s image is reduced, and so is our ability to absorb the Good News.

“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

What does this mean for you and me?

The harvest is past. This means that no more revelations are in the offing. We have heard and experienced all the possible Good News that was available. Now with the harvest past, and the summer ended, preaching has become difficult. The ears that are capable to hear, are shut, our sermons fail to reach the intended targets: the summer of solace and security for gospel proclamation, has come to an end, and, by and large, salvation is no longer possible, humanly speaking.

For the church this new situation means securing what has been learned, throwing overboard denominational structures, in the process, negating theological, that is human devised doctrines, while emotionally, spiritually, yes, also physically, preparing for the Parousia, the ‘sudden and unexpected appearance of the Lord in all his glory’.

“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

Call it the warning before the door closes, the door to salvation. The 10 tribes of Israel, refusing to repent, disappeared from the world scene. We, as the human race, have remade God’s creation in our image, have poisoned every cubic millimeter on earth, water and air, have made sane life, have made obedient life, impossible.

Pray for Parousia. Now.

Is my analysis correct? Remember that Jesus comes as ‘the thief in the night’!

CHRISTIANISM

Many whom God has, the church does not have, and many whom the church has, God does not have.

                                                                        Augustine.                            

Somehow the above quote reminds me of, “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant” (“Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you”).

These words were shouted by the gladiators, condemned to die, while entering the Colosseum, the immense arena in Rome, still today a tourist attraction. Their fighting to death provided entertainment for the masses, including the emperor. Any connection here to today?

Perhaps.

Some discouraging words of Jesus come to mind, such as ‘Many are called, and few are chosen’ (Mathew 22:14), and another one of Jesus’ pessimistic utterances, “Will I find faith on earth when I return?” (Luke 18: 38).

As a person not far from one hundred years old, born in 1928, my vivid recollection of my grandparents, born in 1870, 155 years ago, fills me with a kind of longing, the days before our carbon-powered society, living during a full century of world peace – 1815-1914. My grandparents, I know, were at peace with the earth, and humble before God. Today we, like the gladiators, are condemned to die, because of our Carbon Addiction. 2 Peter 3 comes to mind.

Now, 50 years after the appearance of Limits of Growth, in which the Club of Rome publication forecasted today’s turmoil, due to disappearing resources, the world is afraid: governments don’t longer want to hear about pollution and Global Heating anymore, hiding behind a cheap Christianity: no longer ‘the meek -those who claim nothing for themselves – will inherit the earth’, but the bold, those possessing nuclear bombs.

This time around, Anno 2025, the original Christian confession: Creation being God’s WORD, the belief that God and the earth are intimately connected – see the Belgic Confession – is regarded as nonsense. The New Testament text: “God so loved the cosmos, to the point of sacrificing his Son to buy it back from the powers of Darkness”, has been replaced with exploitation, a heresy which has given us Christianism, the false religion that separates God from his cosmos, and us from the all-knowing Lord.

Both Bonhoeffer and J. H. Bavinck are both boldly blunt: Salvation of the person, and salvation of the earth, are two sides of the same coin. No wonder the church father Augustine wrote: “Many whom God has, the church does not have, and many whom the church has, God does not have.”

The Trump cohorts abuse the Bible-teaching to justify their actions, and, by and large, Organized Christianity has failed to counter their claims, failed to openly, loudly, convincingly defy these heresies, degenerating Christianity into Christianism.

All this confirms Matthew 24:24: “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Think AI!

By and large Christianity has become an ideology, abused by the Right-wing adherents to herald their heresies, has become a sterile story: Christianism, just as Communism and Capitalism

Warnings Galore.

This past week, Arctic News suggested that next year, with an El Nino expected, the world temperature may exceed 3 Degrees C. – have a look at Arctic News– high enough to cause universal death. Another paper – see Ugo Bardi – established that the rise in CO2, from 280 to 420 will universally affect the cognitive capacity of all humanity: making us more stupid and unable to grasp the consequences of our sins against creation, against God’s Majesty, against the very existence of our being. 

Almost everywhere you look, the spike of climate alarm that followed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, has given way to something its supporters might describe as climate moderation but which critics would call complacency or indifference.

Complacency or quiet piety?

I live in a Christian Retirement Home, in St. Catharines, On., a small city in the Niagara Peninsula, where I and my immediate family lived before, from 1955 – 1975. Then, tired of sterile dogmatic indoctrination, we moved away to be involved in a religious experiment, that soon faltered, and became intimately involved in the Tweed, (On) Presbyterian Church for close to a half century.

Now, after 50 years of absence, I came back to the Dutch Reformed church scene, and discovered that there are almost as many little denominations as there are people living in this area, all offshoots of the original church, Christian Reformed. The situation reminds me of a suburb of Los Angeles, Beverly Heights, when my middle daughter lived there. There I counted 10 different Jewish synagogues along its main street.

Christ did not bring religion: He brought us LIFE: John 10:10 shouts: “I have come to bring you LIFE, and that to the full”. Churches, through their doctrinal pronouncements, foster Christianism, cold, human, dogmatic, sterile, ideological teaching, a far cry from Jesus’ teachings.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11: 28)

When creation suffers, God suffers. We suffer. Maranatha. Beware of Christianism. Love God’s earth with all your heart, soul and mind. Its your eternal habitat!