Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

IS CHURCH REFORMATION STILL POSSIBLE?

A look back.

In the 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to Union Theological Seminary in New York, looking for fellow believers. What he found instead disturbed, angered, and perplexed him. There is no theology here, he wrote to a German colleague. The New York churches, if possible, were even worse: They preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed… namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life. 

What Bonhoeffer is today and was for American Protestantism, Alexis de Tocqueville is today and was for Democracy in America, a cultural and political analysis of the new republic, which appeared a century earlier. But what the German theologian found was, if possible, more significant than the observations of the French aristocrat: Protestantism in America was a Protestantism without Reformation.

Is a Reformation at this late hour, still possible?

In 1987 – now almost 40 years ago – my oldest son gave me a book by Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament Scholar, published in 1978, entitled, The Prophetic Imagination. Dr. Brueggemann was then – 47 years ago – at the start of his long career. Now, at 91, he is still active, still writing books and essays. 

On the very first page of this significant book, Brueggemann wrote – confirming Bonhoeffer’s observation – “The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act… That enculturation is true not only of the institution of the church but also of us as persons.

On the very last page of this slender book – 113 pages – he points to a  concept dear to my heart: “Jesus’ concern was finally, for the joy of the Kingdom. That is what he promised and to that he invited people.”

Books galore: who will inherit them?

I also have this book of 1,100 pages by the Oxford Professor, Dr. Diarmaid MacCulloch,“CHRISTIANITY, The First Three Thousand Years. This learned man points out that the church has seen ‘the Kingdom concept’ as too controversial and too difficult for the person in the pew, to understand. He cites the Lord’s Prayer, where the phase “Give us this day our daily bread”, appear mistranslated, based on a wrong interpretation of the Greek word epiousios which does not translate as ‘daily bread’ at all. He states that it may point to the new time of the coming Kingdom. 

Dr. MacCulloch writes on page 89: in The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus “moves straight from addressing the Father in heaven to the plea ‘Thy Kingdom Come’,” adding that apparently, Jesus sees THE KINGDOM and its coming, as the most pressing of all present and future events. 

Another scholar, Dr. Herman Ridderbos, wrote The Coming of the Kingdom, in which he asserts that the entire Bible has been written with THE KINGDOM as its central message.

My question: “have you ever heard a sermon on the meaning of THE KINGDOM? Have you ever heard an explanation of this? Matthew 6: 33 urges us to “Seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness.” J.H. Bavinck, in his book Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Version, devotes an entire chapter to THE KINGDOM. 

Here is how he starts this chapter: “The concept of the Kingdom of God resounds like a majestic chorale through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.” He summarises the chapter by stating: “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. And a sentence later comes this hammer blow: “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal”.

All salvation universal?

Yes: That indicates that personal redemption and the redemption of Creation, go hand in hand. That’s why our task in life is to LIVE for the welfare of Creation!

That is the radical gospel.

“Is a church Reformation still possible?” I asked. 

That is an important question, but the church has painted itself in a corner, prioritizing the Bible over Creation, in defiance of John 3: 16-17, where it states – and I will say it again – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save the world.

Jesus’ death and resurrection took place to restore creation so that, when he returns – now more imminent by the day – a New Creation awaits us. That old creation – the one we daily experiencing – is worn out and in danger of becoming a threat rather than a refuge. We have abused it – and still are – to the point of imminent collapse. Jesus came not to save souls – whatever than means – but to bring LIFE as John 10: 10 testifies: “I have come to bring LIFE and that to the full. 

That’s the Reformation we need, because: Christianity is not a religion: It is a way of life! It no longer is Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda, no longer a church always reforming. Now it is Homo Reformatus, Semper Reformandus, meaning, A Reformed Person, Always Reforming. The Bible disappears: a new Creation dawns, while the meek – those who claim little – will inherit the earth. (Psalm 37: 11).

 

WE DIE: THEN WHAT?

 

We all die. The rich, the super-rich, hate death, hate to become like those in the grave, of which there is no escape. Apparently, many of these billionaires don’t believe the Apostles’ Creed, which ends with the words: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and Life Everlasting.”

My real topic is exploring the connection between body and soul. Since nobody has come back from death – except Jesus and Lazarus – and he is not telling – I rely on what the Bible says. I remember that, as a youth, I questioned Lazarus’ resurrection because, spoon-fed on the glories of heaven, I wondered why Lazarus was pulled away from that beautiful place, to face this ‘vale of tears’ again. 

 

Jesus consistently called death ‘sleep’, indicating a temporary condition from which people will be awakened, to face ‘judgement. Being clinically dead, does not mean death of consciousness. 

 

I have this book, given me by my brother Drewes, in the Netherlands, written by Dr. Pim van Lommel, entitled “Eindeloos Bewustzijn” = Endless Consciousness. In it, this medical doctor, a cardiologist, describes how he has witnessed scores of “Near Death Experiences”. I, too, had one: My father, about to die, said to me: “I hear music: is the radio on”.

Van Lommel, in his 400 pages book, writes that – and I translate – “In the end, it is difficult not to conclude that endless consciousness always has existed independent from our body, and always will continue to exist. There is no beginning and there never will be an end to our consciousness.”

 

The Apostles’ Creed says that Jesus, in clinical death ‘descended’ into hell’. That speaks volumes: his spirit was still alive, and, while dead, he experienced hell, so that we need not go through hell. Hell being ‘God’s absence.

We, humans, are more than a mere body: we are body and soul. The body dies, the soul lives on. 

Where does the soul go? It is not, as Greek Philosophy proclaims, that death frees us from a sinful body, from which the pure spirit can, finally, come into perfection. That’s what Socrates believed. He gladly drank the poison that killed his body, seeing it as a release from a sinful entity, his body. This view has been adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, and by many Protestants as well: they see heaven as the refuge for the soul, contrary to Scripture which categorically states that nobody has gone to heaven, except Jesus who came from there. (John 3: 13} 

 

So, what is soul?

 

The soul is not the spirit that, after death, goes to heaven or hell, but the soul is our deepest being, the nucleus of what we are, the real ‘me’, our very essence. The soul is our true self, shorn of all personal embellishments, devoid of any vanity, completely naked before God. In that intermediate state, between death and resurrection, we see ourselves either in our lostness – perhaps called hell – or our salvation, perhaps called heaven, that blessed state, when our souls will be united with our bodies upon Christ’ return in all his glory.

 

My dreams.

 

I have had, in my dreams, indirect contacts with my wife, who died more than 4 years ago. In my first dream I saw her, confused and somewhat at a loss. Her father, a minister in a large – 1,300 members – church in the Netherlands, died when she was 9 years old, the eighth child, with the twelfth yet to be born. It left a mark on her, I believe, especially in the first two decades of our marriage, which also saw one child, a boy, die within 24 hours of birth. 

We were married for 67 years, of which the first 20 years had their rocky moments. She really wanted to study. Her intellectual gifts, fortunately, were transferred to our five children. She did become a talented grapho-analyst – a handwriting professional, and public speaker.  

 

So, she lives on in my dreams. Just last week, I had a dream in which she, relaxed and happy, swam in a large waterbody while I was walking on the shore. She loved swimming.

 

I believe we will be re-united in eternity, not as a married couple, but as friends. Jesus is quite clear that in eternity there will be no marriage, and complete equality. Whether there will be sex in eternity is doubtful, citing Jesus’ words that “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven,” (Mark 12: 25.).

 

In my book, Day without End, available on the web, I reason differently. There I pose the possibility that, rather than we become like the angels, angels want to become like us. 

Well…..

IS LOVE THE ANSWER, THE ONLY ANSWER?

 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.³³ Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. (Mark 13: 32-33). 

I have a good friend, a professor emeritus at several prestigious universities, who faces his own mortality. He asked me to explain ‘Christianity’ to him. Well, here it is. Somewhat.

I am a man of habits. One of them is to write a few hundred words each morning on a text of the lectionary – the prescribed daily Bible readings. Last Monday morning I selected the above text, as it puzzled me that the Father had not shared the date of THE END with the Son, in spite of Jesus’ words: “I and the Father are one.”  

The text suggested to me that Creation is a force that works independently from the Son and the angels, and indicates, that God and Creation are identical or complementary, and that Creation, has a tipping point, only it knows. 

The unity of God with Creation, is a concept new to me, and changed my concept of Christianity. If God is out there, in the air and water and soil, in you and me: shouldn’t we be a bit more careful how we live? 

About God, the Great Unknown.

Knowledge about Scripture is very important. Paul writes – 1 Timothy 6: 16 – God alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. God is the great Unknown. Just as the famous author of King Lear and Hamlet, God too, is the Great Unknown, only knowable through his creation. The Belgic Confession hits it right.

We know God by two means: 

First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book 

in which all creatures, great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:

God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: 20: 

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Second, God makes himself known through the Scripture.

Want to know about God? 

Look at Creation! Creation is God’s Primary, God’s Holy Revelation! Yes, Creation is HOLY!

And the Scriptures? 

The Scriptures are like a mining light attached to our foreheads, to make it possible to navigate inerrantly through creation: Psalm 119: 105 teaches us that “God’s Word is a lamp for our feet, and a light for our path in Creation”. 

We, however, keep on staring into the light of Scripture, God’s secondary Word, and have become blinded to the reality of God’s Primary Word, and, in the process have become oblivious to the plight of the Planet.

The Scriptures are indispensable.  

John 3: 16-17 tells us that God loves Creation so much that his Son’s life was used to buy it back. Loving Creation as God does, gives us ‘eternal LIFE’ there”. (At one point in early human history we gave our Creation’s ownership to God’s adversary, just as American ‘Christianity’ surrendered itself to Trump as the new savior). Also, the Heaven Heresy so prevalent still, has made much of the current church structure irrelevant. That’s why in Revelation 21: 22, describing the New Creation, specific mention is made of the absence of Temple and Church and Bible. 

Bonhoeffer and Richard Elliott Friedman.

Dr. Sabine Dramm, in her analysis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings, concluded that Bonhoeffer presented as specific to the Christian Faith the perception of God and the world – cosmos – as one. Professor of Hebrew and Bible translator, Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman, in his “The Hidden Face of God”, concludes, after 284 pages of delightful reading: “There is some likelihood that the universe is the hidden face of God. (Emphasis in the original).

 “God so loved the world”, as recorded in John 3: 16,17, spoken to a Reform-minded cleric in Jesus’ time, stands out as one of the most poignant sayings of Jesus, who then already knew that he would offer his life for Creation’s redemption. By sacrificing his very body as payment for its perfect restitution, he made it possible for us to have eternal life there.

A church community that does not make this fact its cardinal centre, does not represent the Body of Christ. 

Simple faith in the New Creation is seldom mentioned in the church. To be part and parcel of God’s work of art, is seldom mentioned in the church. To call oneself a daughter or brother of the trees and birds, of the lion and the lamb, is seldom mentioned in the church. “To love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind”, is left hanging as an empty slogan, without connecting this love to the creation in which God placed us as responsible creatures. 

My dear friend. Christianity has only one key word: “LOVE”. 

EVIL.

Nature is cruel: food for some is the death for others. There the law of the strongest rules. This past week I saw tracks in the snow, the typical rabbit foursome paw-pattern; the next day I also saw coyote marks there; the day after, no more of these distinctive, easily recognized rabbit tracks. 

I believe that all carnivore animals will be changed in the New Creation, from meat-eating to herbivore creatures, as Isaiah 65: 25 suggests: The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD. And that applies to us humans, as well: no more killing of animals, reason to now become vegetarian. Also, the way animals in poultry slaughter places and abattoirs are killed, is evil. 

Still: “Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Remember that, Trump!

But for now, in the USA the law of the richest rules: Musk, the money man, spent 250 million dollars to get Trump elected. The new cabinet consists of billionaires. Paul, the apostle, God’s instrument for bringing the Good News to the Western World, wrote to his protégé Timothy, as recorded in 1 Timothy 6: 10, “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”. 

Trump loves money.

Trump loves money, and loves those who have it. He’s entering office as the most powerful president in American history. He is the American Caesar, unrestrained. Trump has made a threat and said, “I’m coming after people”, and he’s appointed people that will do what he wants without him having to tell them to do it.

And then there is the weather.

Through our evil, heatwaves will be worse; through our evil, floods, fires, drought, hurricanes and other extreme weather events will be worse. CO?, methane and other greenhouse gasses will rise faster than expected. The loss of coral and the die-off of the Amazon will be worse than expected. Through our evil, global temperatures will be hotter than expected, except in those places where they are much colder than expected.

Melting of glaciers and polar ice will be greater than expected. The spread of diseases like dengue and H5N1 will be much worse than expected. Through our evil, the extinction of species and loss of biodiversity will be much worse than expected. Multi simultaneous breadbasket crop failures will be much worse than expected, due to storms, floods, drought, heat and loss of pollinators.

Expect more Evil.

Expect evil to be dominant during Trump’s 4-year term, which, I predict, will be disastrous, with major setbacks in weather conditions, with economic turmoil, with rising unemployment and financial hardship, analogous to the infamous Dirty Thirties, from 1929-39. 

Then World-War II – 1939-45- brought an end to unemployment, and unleashed a manufacture bonanza. That cure is no longer feasible because of environmental constraints. Also reduced economic activity will cause ‘global dimming’ to disappear, now restraining the full impact of sunshine to warm the earth. With that haze gone, global warming will gallop and intensify the effects of Climate Change. 

O, yes, those trillions of debts, made in prosperous times, due when tough economic conditions make repayment impossible, will lead to the long overdue economic collapse. 

To parody Charles Dickens:

“It was the test of times, it was the most trying of times, the age of Trump, the age of foolishness, the epoch of errors, the instances of incredulity, the season of stupidity, the dawn of darkness, the fall of fables, the duration of despair.” 

The task of the Government.

It is the task of all governments is to protect those whom lack the capacity to look after themselves, whether that is through physical impairments, or willful actions. The rich think that the poor are poor because they are lazy and clamor for charity. So, let them be. The ruling cabinet in Washington – whose members are worth a total of 250 Billion – will see to it that they, and their fellow billionaires, will get richer. Proverbs 22: 7 affirms that the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, mused: “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know, my personality changed or something”. Those are dangerous words, coming from an ego-maniac, out to punish those who defied him.

“It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says God, as recorded in Hebrew 10: 30.

All signs signal closure: irreversible weather; increasing extinction. Evil reigns. Remember, even though the LIE is fast, in race with TRUTH it comes in last.

Pray for the Lord’s return.

MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES.

“Man proposes, but God disposes” is a translation of the Latin:  “Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit”.

This well-known proverb played in my mind, when I read an article about AI, Artificial Intelligence, outlining the energy requirements powering this new phenomenon. Now Google and Microsoft are seeking to revive the Three Mile Nuclear Power Station – shut down in 1979 after a nuclear meltdown – to provide for AI’s immense electricity needs. 

Coal, too, is making a comeback: consumption of this ultra-polluting fossil fuel is now on track to rise to a new peak of 8.77bn tonnes by the end of the year – and could remain at near-record levels for years to come: we need electricity to power our toys!

How about Climate Change?

Suddenly, it seems, that Climate Change and Global Heating have been placed on the back burner, even as warming trends and unnatural weather conditions multiply. The fossil fuel industry also has their eyes on roughly three billion people, whose annual energy consumption is equal to only the yearly power use of my refrigerator. There’s a huge market out there, both for electricity use and modern conveniences, such as refrigeration and transportation. That’s how people in the energy industry calculate: they propose, but God, through his creation, has the final Word. Because…..

El Niño comes calling.

El Niño is a complex weather pattern that occurs when surface water in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean becomes warmer than average and easterly winds blow weaker than normal. These events, usually occurring every few years, can cause unusual and sometimes dangerous weather conditions worldwide, including droughts, floods and severe storms. El Niño is an important climatic happening, recognized as a factor of weather change responsible for large and varied detrimental effects. 

Now studies show that for the first time, significant loss of sea ice in the Arctic directly affects global climate extremes, including the increase in the frequency of severe El Niño occurrences. Make it a habit to regularly check ARCTIC NEWS, where climatologists post their weather warnings. It is well-known that temperatures at the Northern and Southern tips have skyrocketed in the past decade, boding ill for all of us, the 8 billion earth dwellers.

For us, even for us, the prosperous few, the news is bad.

Instead of eating a steady diet of high-quality food, we are being fed an endless stream of heavily-processed packaged foods that are loaded with extremely unhealthy filler ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup.

Sadly, many of us are also financially stressed, because the heavily-processed packaged foods are all that many of us can afford, even though, there too, prices have increased significantly.

Humanity, both rich and poor, faces a very dangerous time, exacerbated by the incoming TRUMP rule, blind to the ‘signs of the Times’. God, through his creation is speaking loud and clear, actually, is screaming to us: “Change your ways, live within the means and limits of my world, the cosmos, my first and foremost Love.”

Isaiah 11: 9 comes to mind: the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Listen to creation’s cries! Make the 4 laws of ecology a staple of life, remembering that:

1. Everything is connected to everything else.

2. Nothing ever disappears.

3. Nature- creation – knows best.

4. Nothing comes free.

Dr. Barry Commoner coined these laws some 60 years ago, and they have stood the test of times. 

Nature is like a human body: a defect there affects our total wellbeing. We live in a closed system, from which there is no escape: carbon fuels, when ignited through our beloved transportation systems, cause GHG – Green House Gases – which heat up the atmosphere. Loving God – a direct command – entails loving his creation. It’s as simple as that. 

We now are faced with paying the ultimate price for our luxurious life. Trump’s Christians – a blasphemy if there ever is one – have so distorted “The Good News”, that total annihilation is facing us.

We have made a choice. 

We have taken the restlessness road to ruin. We have enslaved God for our (temporary) conveniences. We have subjected God’s precious possession – bought back with the Life-blood of his beloved Son (see John 3: 16-17) – to the point where Hell on EARTH has become the only remaining option. 

But God has different plans. The Bible points to the way God disposes: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. (2 Peter 3:10).

Yes, “Man proposes, but God disposes”.

OF COURSE, YOU WILL IGNORE THIS. 

DISARRAY EVERYWHERE.

When I, from my perch somewhere in the Western World, with increasing concern and compassion, survey the global scene, then I see disintegration, confusion, turmoil, uncertainty, indecision, restlessness everywhere. 

Examples aplenty. The USA and Trump, his boasts and threats, his egomaniacal character, his disregard for Climate Change, his appointments of deeply controversial people to key positions, assuring only more unease and anarchy, then I know that such global threats as heat, poverty, hunger, drought, will not be on his agenda. In Trump’s cabinet billionaires set the tone: immediate tax relief for them, while deficits soar.

Looking elsewhere, I see Germany politically and economically on the ropes; 

France is no better. I see the Middle East in a momentous muddle, its danger quotient enhanced by the sudden Syria turnover. Who is next? Iran? Saudi Arabia?  The world, vested on regularity and financial order, has been abandoned to hit-and-miss policies, is at a loss what to do, with environmental dangers and threats multiplying, while gold has a ride into the stratosphere. 

Of course, you will ignore this, even though…..

What really disturbed me was a headline on the ARCTIC NEWS website. Have a look. Here’s what you will see:

Did a Terminal Temperature Acceleration event start in December 2024?

Please note “Terminal”. The people who contribute to this website, are trained scientists: they have access to the latest sources and weather statistics. They carefully weigh which words to use.

Well, ‘terminal’ is defined as a condition, signaling the end of something: it also applies todiseases that lead to death, incurable. 

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, something often done near the end of a year, it is generally assumed that 2024 was the hottest ever recorded. With signs of increased sunspots activities, with a new El Nino on the way, with polar ice rapidly disappearing, and thus no albedo effect – less ice reflecting sunrays back – the sun heat will be absorbed by the Polar seas, dislodging the methane there, speeding – yes speeding – Global Heat.

Of course, you will ignore this, even though……

Welcome to the new World Disorder.

Welcome to the new World Disorder, and my claim is that this state of affairs while lead to ever greater chaos and an unheard state of unwinding of law and order.

Of course, you will ignore this, because ‘There is no alternative.’

“There is no alternative” (TINA) is a political slogan originally coined by Margaret Thatcher, the PM of UK some 35 years ago.

She claimed that liberal capitalism is the only viable system. Politicians used TINA to justify policies of fiscal conservatism and austerity. 

Now ‘There is no alternative’ to our ‘energy-dependent’ society, so the ‘telos’ the ‘END’ can be predicted with the utmost accuracy.

And then there is another reason: We are losing our reasoning capacity. 

In recent years, an abundance of academic research from institutions including Harvard medical school, the University of Oxford and King’s College London found evidence that the internet is shrinking our grey matter, shortening our attention spans, weakening memory and distorting our cognitive processes. The areas of the brain found to be affected included “attentional capacities, as the constantly evolving stream of online information encourages our divided attention across multiple media sources”, “memory processes” and “social cognition”.

All this brings me to “The Second Coming”, a poem written by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919, influenced by the carnage of World War I (1914-18) and the Spanish Flu, which killed some 30 million people, often the young adults.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Of course, you will ignore this, because ‘There is no alternative.’

John the Baptizer comes to mind: “Prepare the way of the Lord”. Are we doing that, willy-nilly?