September 14 2022
EARTH AND CHURCH: EARTHER AND CHURCHER.
One of my readers – and a good friend – sent me this question:
“My question to you is how do you see Earthers moving forward. How do you see Earthers learning from each other, gathering, where, when, and what do you see as the purpose of being together – if you see one at all. I am asking that you go further in your explanation, beyond the statements of how bad things are, what happened and get on to what we do next, how do we establish ourselves and how do we demonstrate our values and beliefs.”
Here is my view on LIFE, my world-view if you like.
- I see my life as a prelude to eternity. Yes, a trial period, after which I am judged – oh, that terrible word! – whether I am fit to enter the perfect world to come.
- That condition colors my life. It has made me an ‘earther’. I deeply believe that I will spend eternity right here, on Terra Firma, the earth God created and called good seven times.
- I also believe that at some point God deeded this earth to humanity, giving us full authority to act according to our wisdom. Our cultural mandate is found in Genesis 2:9, where the TREE was described as “Pleasing to the eye, and good for food.” This indicates that we are charged to retain and enhance creation’s beauty, its purity, its pristine state, its perfection, its immense richness, simply so astounding with its abundance of various creatures. A closer look shows how everything on earth is somehow harmoniously connected to everything else, how 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 plants. And so on…
- However, in Genesis 3: 6 there is a sudden change, something very different, a complete reversal: “The Tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” Food before beauty, economics before aesthetics: greed emerged, and wealth acquisition gained priority. Beautification was pushed back, and personal gain achieved dominance.
That first attempt to commercialize the world, ended in the Flood, with only Noah’s family and the fauna surviving.
- But God did not give up: he made a new beginning with Noah, and sealed that in a new Covenant. Genesis 9 relates how God specifically singled out Creation, with the totality of living species. Miraculously, God made a covenant with the very cosmos he had created, and acknowledged that from now on Creation would be equal to his divinity and operate as such independently from the deity. Yes, God made Creation equal to himself: that’s what Covenant means, like in marriage! Now venerating creation, the cosmos, loving it, takes the place next to worshipping God, who is invisible: yes, loving Creation has become the entrance to God’s favor.
- However, humanity did not want this sort of thing. Even though another Covenant was made, this time with God choosing a particular tribe as his own, that too was to no avail, and God resigned to the human lot. Among God’s last words to Moses were: “I shall hide my face from them to see what their end will be. (Deuteronomy 31: 17, 18). We are experiencing this today.
- Still God did not give up. Again, God relented, and sent the Son, Jesus Christ, God become human, and affirmed in John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son as payment to buy back Creation. Believing the Son’s sacrifice gives us eternal life.”
- Jesus taught us how to live, but religion killed him.
EARTH AND CHURCH: EARTHER AND CHURCHER.
This confronts us with a choice in this late hour of human history. Both the earth and the church are on life-support. Both are destined to die, and only the Earth, will be revived.
The church, as all ‘man’-made organisms will totally fade away. Revelation 21: 22 specifically mentions that in the New Earth there will be no temple, for God’s law will be embedded in the hearts of his people: that means ‘no bible, no church’.
Jesus was killed by religion, by the church of his day, therefore we must be very conscious of the dangers of religion. The earth is God’s primary, direct and ever-lasting Word; the Bible, pointing us to Christ and his sacrifice, is, nevertheless, God’s secondary, indirect, and disappearing Word, necessary, as Psalm 119: 105 tells us, to be: A lamp for our feet and a light for our path (in creation). We have to be careful that staring in that light does not blind us to experiencing the real Word.
Kathryn, does that answer your question?