ANOTHER SIGN: THE FINAL REFORMATION.
Years, no, decades ago, in the late fifties and early sixties of the previous century, when our family lived in St. Catharines, Ontario, there was an air of spiritual renewal hanging under the skies in what was called, The Garden City. People there, a good core, adhered to the slogan, then well understood, Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda, now needing translation: The Reformed Church, Always Reforming. There were these ICS conferences, attended by enthusiastic crowds of young people. ICS standing for Institute for Christian Studies.
In 1965 I was the chairman of a 5 days Youth Conference there, where 3,000 Christian Reformed Young People from all over North America met – centering on Niagara Falls – filling a large arena there repeatedly. Their gathering slogan was Alive for Christ in ’65.
I was then 60 years younger. These participants too are now gray and dying off. Their children and grandchildren? Where are they? Not in the church, not at young people societies!
I now believe that the church has failed them. Instead of ‘Semper Reformanda’ it remained ‘Nunquam Reformanda’, never reforming.
How have times changed! Churches are graying.
But now there is a glimmering of HOPE!
Peace – Shalom – On Earth.
Remember that Christmas song, the song the angels choir introduced to us when Christ was born? Luke 2: 14, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people on whom his favor rests.
Well, there is a new book published, in the Netherlands, with this title: Peace On Earth. This book, some 400 pages, was written by Stefan Paas, a professor of Missions, occupying the J. H. Bavinck chair of Mission at the Free University in Amsterdam.
This timely and ground-breaking book has sent a shockwave through the Protestant Churches in the Netherlands, as it questions the entire approach of the church there, still based on ‘soul salvation’ at the expense of the earth. Since its publication in September 2023, it has gone through 3 more printings, suggesting the impact the book is having in the post-Christian world of my birth, by questioning the dominating pietistic approach to Christianity centering on religious soul experiences, with the emphasis on heaven as the goal.
As a professor of religion, teaching students how to be ‘missionaries’, Dr. Paas writes that “the traditional ‘redemption dogma’, the teaching of salvation, now plays a ‘damaging’ role, because it quite easily leads to the subjecting and dominating of nature.”
He also writes, and I translate again “That sort of teaching of salvation places itself constantly over against or above creation instead of uniting itself with the earth”.
Somewhat later he continues, “Nevertheless, it is for many modern people who no longer have the same ties to the earth as their ancestors had, difficult to develop an approach to salvation, that enables them to feel at home in creation and establish connections with their fellow-creatures (pointing to the non-human entities)”.
Dr. Paas continues: “I want to show that the way to experience God, is through meeting with other living beings and through a close unity with the earth. That concretely means that we must go out into nature with binoculars and illustrated books to identify trees and plants, and so develop an awareness where our foodstuff originates, and how we can prayerfully engage with the soil, enlarge our knowledge concerning creation, stop to admire a flower, even the so common dandelion. We also should more often view nature films, and read more about ecology. We must learn to value the slow pace of nature, and exercise patience by observing and listening to God’s handiwork. We must learn to mourn when gigantic trees are felled and when birds and insects and fish experience mass die-offs.”
All of us are now part of this new mortality mode.
I conclude from this book that: The increasing threat to all living creation today dramatically indicates that all creatures, including us, are imperiled, no exception, as the cancers in the British Royalty indicate.
“Everything becomes what it is!”
This book by Stefan Paas, so well-written and persuasive, shows that ‘peace’ or ‘shalom’ can be realized. We must thank the author to expose the errancy of our ways. His loving and timely critique regarding the church and our Western ways of death and Christian practises, emphasizes God’s ultimate care for his creation and thus fills us with hope and greater understanding of the prospect what awaits us in the renewed creation to come.
ANOTHER SIGN: THE FINAL REFORMATION?
Is this the long-awaited church reformation? Yes. The basic message of the last Bible Book, Revelation, is that, in the end, everything becomes what it is. Dr. Paas has shown in his book, “SHALOM ON EARTH, that salvation is totally comprehensive, involving ALL created matter.
Thank you Stefan Paas.