October 5 2022
BOMBS.
Some commentators, Tocqueville and Fukuyama among them, tell us that society needs religion, because, they say, its absence advances anarchy and despotism. Religion, supposedly, teaches us direction and purpose and pursues aims beyond personal gain.
There is truth in this, but also danger. The Russian Orthodox Church wholeheartedly supports Putin. Bolsonaro’s and Trump’s most ardent supporters are Church members. Nothing is more insidious than distorted religion, seeing Creation, God’s precious handiwork, as an enemy to be exploited to enrich oneself. It now is clear that Putin’s religion has brought this world, God’s world, to the edge of nuclear annihilation.
The Fall of Babylon: OUR WORLD!
Dr. J. H. Bavinck, professor of Missions, in his book on Revelation, written 60 years ago, claims, in Chapter 18, that Babylon – our world TODAY – will be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
He writes: “Babel – our current civilization – bombs itself into oblivion, destroys what it has built, commits suicide. World history is a self-killing enterprise; world history is a leap into the abyss. That is what humanity does without prompting: God does not have a hand in all this.”
It reminds me of Deuteronomy 32: 20, “I will hide my face to see what their end will be.” Well….
Bavinck continues, “John – the author of the last Bible Book – sees this quite clearly. This verdict erupts from the bottom up. It is pure self- decomposition, pure self-destruction. Humanity causes its own downfall. We really have no idea that, behind all this, behind our foolish thinking, stands God. That same God whom humanity has scorned, has forgotten; yes, this same God allows humanity to destroy itself.”
The apostle Peter, in his letter, expecting Jesus’ return, tells us to live holy lives, lives that tell us to be in tune with creation, so that our transition is smooth.
What does holy living entail?
I am not a psychologist, a word which contains two Greek words, Psyche = soul, and Logos = word/science/God. Neither am I a biologist – bios=life – a person concerned about ‘all that lives’, mostly plants and animals. I am also not a humanist. Humanists are defined as persons who use their intellect to explain their lives, rather than relying on religious belief. I am not a humanist, because my ‘Christian faith’ dominates my life.
What does my faith tell me?
I believe that at a certain point in history, some 12,000 years ago perhaps, God selected out of the existing humanoid race, 2 persons who had great promise, and infused them with God’s Spirit.
Psalm 82: 6 affirms that we all are ‘gods’, children of the “Most High”. God wants us to investigate the Earth’s potential and grow in wisdom and knowledge by studying the Infinite that resides in God’s Creation.
Being ‘human’ means searching, probing, trying, crying, investigating, learning, failing, marveling, praying, lamenting, singing, and the list goes on. Oh, yes, I should include ‘laughing’. I ‘laugh’ a lot at myself: my thoughts can be so foolish and absurd: laughing at my ineptness and stupidity is part of me being human.
In final analysis, being human really means getting ready for the New Creation.
So, what IS happening TODAY?
Let me take a look at our times. If there ever was a society under stress, it is ours. In our stupidity we have passed all the limits of survival: destroyed the old-growth forests, killed off large numbers of species, poisoned the atmosphere, depleted our mineral resources, eroded the fertile soil, polluted water and the atmosphere, set the planet on a path to irreversible warming, and a few more little things, including having deployed a sufficient number of nuclear warheads to wreck the ecosystem and kill everybody. And we haven’t renounced our beloved habit of making war against each other. Repair has become impossible: a New Earth is needed, and is coming!
I just finished reading David Wallace-Wells book, “The Uninhabitable Earth, Life after warming”. Somewhere toward the end, he writes, Pleasure districts like Miami Beach, built just decades ago, will disappear.
This prophecy has already become reality. In an eyewink, billions of Real Estate in that region, have been destroyed by a man-made bomb: the weather, now an unending story, identical to the nuclear danger, where one bomb brings another, brings another. MAD we are: Mutual Assured Destruction guaranteed. Our bombs obliterate us.
John 3: 16 – God so loved the world – clearly indicates that the express purpose of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, is to restore the Garden of Eden. He taught us how to live! He came to bring us a new earth and a new humanity: all our efforts to remedy the present plight, will fail.
Sorry to say: as humanity, we have really bombed.