NOVEMBER 20 2016
FOR WHAT IS TRUE FOREVER, IS PRECISELY UNTRUE TODAY
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
That saying is vexing: it made me scratch my head; what does it really mean? Why did Bonhoeffer write this some 70 years ago in Hitler dominated Germany?
Let me guess. Bonhoeffer experienced a totally new situation in his life-time when a cultured and civilized society overnight was ruled by a cruel force, when evil became the rule of law, when stating opinions became tantamount to a death penalty.
Is that what is in store for the USA? I am afraid. Honestly, I am suffering from PTSD – Post TRUMPatic Stress Disorder. Hitler’s sudden rise in power was a true Black Swan. The same is true for the Trump victory.
These last few weeks I felt depressed because of what the next US president has in store for creation and the Mexican and Muslim people within his own country. I repeat, I am especially afflicted by what our earth will suffer because of the rise of Trump and his acolytes. Yes, I am often close to tears.
Trump’s ascendency is truly a BLACK SWAN event. I have a book by that name which I was re-reading even before November 8. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author, subtitled the book THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE. A Black Swan event is an occurrence that is thought to be impossible, but when it does it has immense consequences: it breaks the pattern: what was true forever is suddenly found wanting. Bonhoeffer said it a bit differently: FOR WHAT IS TRUE FOREVER, IS PRECISELY UNTRUE TODAY.
I can still picture how, in the debates with Hillary, Trump said: “Only I can fix it. Believe me!” which reminds me of Matthew 24:4, where Jesus said: “Watch out that no one deceives you”. Trump is the great deceiver, who cannot be trusted.
I lived in Nazi-occupied The Netherlands from 1940-45 as a teenager. Not the Dutch churches – they were thriving during the occupation – but the German Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches swallowed the Nazi propaganda, just as the American ecclesiastical scene has eagerly absorbed the gospel as preached by the Trump clan.
I disliked Trump even before he entered the political scene and his elevation to the presidency. Now I have stopped looking at TV, not wanting to see his phony features on the screen. Sounds silly, doesn’t it. The Bible says that we must love all people, but that does not mean that we have to like them.
For what is true forever is precisely not true today.
This saying by Bonhoeffer, and all of what he said as a theologian, is based on the Bible. Isaiah 43: 18, 19 says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing!”
Jesus’ Second coming, when nobody, I repeat nobody expects him, is the ultimate Black Swan. Yes, believe the Bible: he comes when we least expect him. That’s why I keep on hammering at this theme, however unpopular it is.
The new is the real end of the old. It is not the extension of the old: it is completely new, totally different: the old has stopped: basta, finished: the new starts. The end is like the beginning, which also was radically new. Today, now that the End is in sight, we have to start thinking – and acting – how to live the New. We have to imagine – that is what the Bible tells us – what it is really like when Jesus has returned.
That return is the NEW that is in Christ. What does that mean? Christ died to start the new. We have to imagine the end of the old, the end of marriage, the end of the bible, the end of the church, the end of the OIL AGE, the end of carbon-saturated agriculture, the end of the automobile society, all instances of intense pollution: all this is forever banned in the really forever New Creation.
Unlikely as it seems, the church should speak within the old world of the new world. It is the church’s task to prepare its parishioners for the NEW WORLD, where Christ is All and in All. It has no other task today. But we cannot completely delegate this to the church, which, by all indications is not prepared to do so anyway. It may be willing, it may want to, but, by and large has never really thought this through. So now, as a VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO, a voice crying in the wilderness (because perhaps very few will really heed the call) it nevertheless must be true to its mission: to prepare its members for ‘the resurrection of the body and life everlasting’, a confession composed some 1700 years ago and now more true than ever.
This has implication for our life today, which is preparation for the new world to come.
So what do I regard as true forever and is precisely untrue today?
Let me continue with the church, still a dominant feature in my life. I sincerely believe that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”, that there is “no salvation outside the church”. Of course, I do not believe that being a member of a church guarantees eternal life. I often think we are saved in spite of the church. Jesus still went to the temple even though he knew that institutional religion in his days would kill him. The apostles, even after Jesus had died, still did their religious duties there. Paul, that amazing man, was a fanatic church adherent, until his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus. Paradoxically he was arrested when he was persuaded to go to the temple.
Why do I still go to church?
I still go to church because God’s people are there. I have to associate with them for the simple reason that only there is “the communion of saints”, which, as a rule, is not found outside the church. Also “Tradition, tradition” is a big part of it, but so is the singing, the prayers, the routine coffee hour. I would feel very uncomfortable not going to church on a Sunday morning.
In earlier days when creation was not so ostensibly under attack, some 50-70 years ago, the church brought the message of comfort and joy, and, in days of hardship and need, as during the war time, it helped the destitute within their ranks, and brought a message of hope.
The realization of the new earth to come has changed my attitude to the church, which at best is silent on that score, afraid to upset the heaven-crowd. Fortunately the idea of a New Earth under a New Heaven is slowly gaining acceptance. Its emphatic and enthusiastic embracing would, I believe, revitalize the church. For what is true forever –the heaven idea- is precisely not true today.
I believe that the church stands and falls with John 3: 16: God so loved the COSMOS. The church has to wean itself off the heaven heresy and start embracing God’s first love: the earth as God’s Primary WORD.
Then there is the Economy.
Let me go to the theme that Trump and all politicians are trumpeting: economic –infinite – growth. His term will stand and fall on that score. His handicap is that we live in a finite earth, becoming more finite every day with each new crop year, with each water source depleted, with each river become polluted, with each air molecule filled with more unwanted CO2. The basic theme, that growth can go on forever, is precisely not true today, that’s why the world economy will soon collapse, and that’s why the world is becoming increasingly ungovernable.
Look around.
Great Britain lives in an “after Brexit” period; the USA enters a Trump reign where Ecclesiastes 10:16 gives the right description: “Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child!”; Greece and Italy have constant debt crises; Europe is top-heavy with bureaucracy and high social costs; China still increases its dangerous debt level; India is choking on foul air and filled with its polluted cities and waterways; Africa suffers from drought and a looming famine.
We are on a collision course with reality.
Our old order has run stuck. Renewal is no longer possible because we have gone too far on the road to nowhere. There simply is no turning back: our momentum is too great. We are like a supertanker heading toward an unmovable, unavoidable obstacle. All efforts to change course are doomed to fail, because we are stuck with the carbon-based system we have come to depend on, and now has proven fatal for the earth. Reports may say that GHG – Green House Gases – have leveled off, but that is not true: forest fires everywhere have a double edge: they deprive us of trees which absorb CO2 and they cause a lot of gases in the process of burning.
And then there is the Arctic: the North Pole warmer than Washington! In November! A Topsy-Turvy World! Even there! What was true forever – ice at the North Pole in November – is precisely Untrue Today! Even in Nature!
All this, by the grace of God, is happening, now, this instant, this very moment when we also are gaining insight to combat Climate Change, but it is too late to fully rely on renewables.
We should start with admitting that we have erred. That is the first step. I repeat; there’s where the churches should come in. After all they are supposed to deal with the HOLY, including the earth, and Jesus’ words: “Behold I make everything new.”
The problem with Jesus’ words is that he right away bounces these words back to us, suggesting: “with my help and guided by my Spirit, YOU make everything new!” How else can we fit in the kingdom that is imminent, when we don’t have a clue what new means?
So we had a surprise two weeks ago: Trump triumphed against all odds: a true BLACK SWAN event. That should wake us up! Suddenly here is a man, supposedly in the highest position a person can attain in the world, president of the richest nation on earth who denies that the earth is finite, who says that the earth can absorb any and all poisons we spout into her air and water and soil, and no harm will come to us.
That should start us thinking. If Trump can happen so suddenly then too the Second Coming should not surprise us. Like the true Devil he is, Trump will start shaping the world in his image. Brace yourself for a lot of new things, the complete opposite of what Christ has in mind for us.
Trump is right in one regard: the old is dying.
The political systems no longer work. The welfare state is waning, a state where the young are deprived while the old people enjoy luxurious boat cruises and universal health care. I don’t know what Trump and his buddies – if he has any – have in mind, but I am sure it will not benefit the people who voted for him.
Narcissist that he is, he probably already has thought about hiring artists to sculpture his image next to the other presidents on the face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest, the site of gigantic carved faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. To come: the greatest of them all: President Donald J. Trump.
Brace yourselves for drastic changes in social welfare, now all financed by debt, scores of Trillions of debt.
From all indications: we are in for interesting times. Praise the Lord if you live in Canada, where, for now, matters are peaceful.
We, as people of the earth, are there to serve. Being at the top of the pyramid of natural life, our primary task is to serve everything below us, starting with creation. We are not there to enhance our image, to better ourselves at the expense of other people and natural matters.
Christ, as always, is our example: he did not come to be served, but to serve. Matthew 20: 28.