September 7 2022
WHY I DON’T CALL MYSELF A CHRISTIAN ANYMORE.
We have to revise the word “Christian”, or drop it altogether. Why this radical move? The concept has been coopted and become meaningless. Brazilian President, Bolsonaro, destroyer of the Amazon, calls himself a Christian. No Thanks. “Earth we are and to earth we shall return,” instructs Genesis 3: 19. That’s why I now call myself an EARTHER.
When I, for the last time, visited Groningen, the city I was born in, a relative, upon leaving, said, “See you again in heaven.”
I had no reply.
Most “Christians” believe they go to heaven, even though the Bible repeatedly says that “Nobody has gone to heaven, except the One who came from there” (John 3:13). To me ‘heaven’ is a pagan Greek concept! To me heaven is the place where God lives in ‘inapproachable Light, whom nobody has seen or can see’. (1 Timothy 6: 16). To me Jesus died to restore Creation, but the so ingrained ‘heaven heresy’ makes it easy to be a “Christian”: then we don’t have to give a hoot about the earth. And Climate Change? Of course, a myth, a capitalistic invention to allow more government control.
But God and Creation is one. “Oh no. That is devil worship”, these deniers say. But we cannot deny that God is what he does, that’s why Creation personifies God, and makes it holy, that’s why I call myself an “Earther”. That’s also why Bonhoeffer tentatively introduced a new term, “Religion-less Christianity”.
Here’s why.
In the 1930’s, with the rise of Hitler in Germany, the church was placed for a choice: approve of the Nazi doctrine or lose the state subsidy. Almost the entire church opted for Hitler. The same happened in much of American Christianity, when it endorsed Trump, and today in Russia where the Orthodox Church is in full agreement with Putin, because he financially supports the reigning religion.
Bonhoeffer, initially, was very active in the German Lutheran Church, serving as pastor in London and Barcelona, and a leader in the ecumenical European scene in the early 1930’s. In that capacity he also visited the USA where he, in 1939, was offered a teaching position at Union Seminary, but when the war broke out in September 1939, he returned to Germany to be with his community there, well aware that it would lead to his death, which occurred on April 9 1945, just before the war ended.
His experiences with the religious scene in his home country made him rethink his attitude toward organized religion. He concluded that “specific to the Christian Faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”
Co-suffering with God.
Co-suffering with God, means a radically new perception of Christianity. Bonhoeffer writes that, “When Jesus was in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, he chided his disciples for not keeping watch with him for even one hour”. Yes, God expects us to suffer too, as Jesus did. When Jesus sees his creation go up in flames, with smoke and floods and drought, we, as eternal earthers, we too must mourn. Deeply. It’s purely our earth: we inherit it!
Yes, as Earthers, we are called to suffer together with God whose very creation – his very being – is being devastated by us.
Bonhoeffer also writes, “It is precisely here that the chance for our liberation from all religious preconceptions and distortions lie. By allowing ourselves to be taken up into God’s passion, a passion in the world and occasioned by it, we discover the world – and our own life – anew, becoming completely human, without religious schizophrenia.”
Christian existence does not mean being religious in any specific manner…. It means being a true human being! Jesus did not bring a religion: he is the End of religion, he is above Christianity and non-Christianity, above religion and irreligion.
I believe now that we must differentiate religion from faith. Jesus does not call us to a new religion, but to LIFE, and that to the FULL. (John 10: 10). Augustine, the early church father, coined it correctly, “Many whom God has, the Church does not have; many whom the Church has, God does not have”.
Today the emphasis has shifted.
Today God is the target. Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. (Proverbs 29:18).
All this makes John 3: 16 today the text to live by: “God loved the world, the cosmos, the earth and all it contains, SO much, that he gave his Son as payment to buy it back: believing this, He grants us eternal life.”
We have to drop the word “Christian”: the word has become meaningless. Live for the Earth. Become an EARTHER.