EVERYTHING IN OUR WORLD IS FAKE.
Everything in our Western world is fake. Nothing is real. It’s different elsewhere. My wife and I spent some time in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Some 30 years ago, our youngest son worked there for 2 years as a lawyer, representing the Canadian Presbyterian Church, helping its transition to democracy.
There I met genuine people sharing the little they had with others, nothing fake about it. They reminded me of my grandparents, born in 1870, some 155 years ago, when they lived simple lives, fulfilling lives, pleasing to God and his creation.
Now everything in our world is fake: nothing is real. Take my car. When I bought it new – a 2002 Jetta diesel – it was advertised by the Volkswagen designers as the most climate friendly automobile: least polluting, highest mileage. Since then, this claim has proved to be false.
Actually, what is true for my car is true for all cars, even the total electric ones: all the world’s billion plus ‘auto’ = self – ‘mobiles’ = moving, vehicles, harm God’s creation, to the point where ‘global heating’ increases unabated. Yes, even the word automobile = ‘Self-moving’, is fake: There is nothing ‘self-moving’ about them: trillions of tiny explosions propel them, causing global poisoning and drought, affecting especially poor nations like Malawi.
Today all machine-operated apparatuses, without any exceptions, in the final analysis are harmful and destroy, and thus – yes – are sinful. SINFUL!.
That really means that things in this world are really not what they are in the final analysis. Everything in our world is fake, carries a mask, is disguised; everything is different than it is advertised. All the political pledges to reduce climate change, are bogus, false, lies, fraud. Why? Once again, we find ourselves enacting a tragedy of the commons: short-term economic self-interest encourages using ‘free’ air, until it heats up beyond human endurance. We experience it daily. Everywhere. Just as the air, even the immense oceans covering most of our globe, have become liabilities, impure, toxic, a source of evil.
The same applies to A.I. content where we maximize clicks and views, which in turn pollutes our culture and even weakens our grasp on reality. Yes, yes, yes.
Revelation.
We find all this in that mysterious Bible Book, Revelation. Revelation means Revealing. Revelation means ripping off all veneer! Revelation means going naked, shedding all pretensions.
In the book of Revelation, that very Last Bible Book, the name so familiar, the message so obscure, John paints the progress of the grand happenings of OUR time, today, 2024.
There he starts with the premise that, at last, matters will become what they are, that masks will be torn off. In its very last chapter of Revelation, he sounds the alarm bell: “Let those who do wrong can only keep on doing wrong, and those who do right must continue to do so, and let those who are holy continue to be holy”. That means that the time for going back to simpler times, is over, that it’s too late to make amends. Still, I persist in trying: My holy duty!
Why try?
Because, out of all the chaos and collapse at long last the truth emerges, when all camouflage vanishes and everything, at last, shows its true character. That is the melody that vibrates through the entire book of Revelation and makes it so engaging and vibrating.
The Good News!
Yes, there is good news: “Our good deeds”, says Revelation 14: 13, “will follow us”. What we do today in preserving God’s creation, in providing meals for the destitute, in loving others as ourselves, in doing everything in our power to live God-honoring, creation-enhancing, neighbor loving, acts: all these will follow us into the new world to come.
Still evil expands: everywhere.
Now the universal use of social media products – every kid now has a mobile phone – designed for compulsive use, are rewiring the way children think, behave, and learn, harming the wellbeing of students, and leaving educators and schools to manage the fallout. Here again: under the cloak of education, the minds of young people are enslaved to social media.
The Western World, in its entirety is again engaged in a Civic war conflict: our Industrialized World versus Creation, or more correctly: The West against God, in spite of some pious postulations. COP 1 through 28, 28 years in succession, have only seen climatic conditions worsen: all our pledges and promises are false and lies.
On this EASTER weekend, we celebrate Christ conquering death forever, bringing the TRUTH and making everything NEW.