HOLY LAUGHTER AT OUR FOLLY.
The One in heaven, laughs. Psalm 2: 4
“2026 is just the beginning. It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse to the point where I’m afraid, we’ll be passing the limits of adaptation.”
“This is not just about the climate, but civilisation buckling under the weight of its own complexity. Given worsening inequality, political polarisation, falling fertility, resource shortages and global conflicts, Wilson argues that we are hurtling towards the same end as ancient Rome, the Mayan civilisation and every other sophisticated society before us.”
RELUCTANT.
This week I was reluctant to start a new post. Something held me back. When I left rural Tweed, now some 17 months ago, I took along about 100 books, almost all non-fiction, as I knew that at Martindale an extensive library would provide me with lots of fiction to choose from.
Why reluctant?
I was waiting for a sign. It came. This past week, my mind – forever a Bonhoeffer friend – was guided to take Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison.” I started to read it, thinking that we too are prisoners as well, locked into a system that makes as slaves to technology, now exacerbated by the unrelenting advance of AI.
The editors of this Bonhoeffer book chose as an opening statement his prologue to the year 1943 (he was hanged in 1945) in which they selected as introduction his foray entitled Of Folly. I was struck by this, because it is exactly ‘Folly” that dominates our time, exemplified by Donald Trump.
Here follow some excerpts of Bonhoeffer’s words.
“Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, but against folly we have no defence. We shall nevetry to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous. This much is certain, that it- foolishness – is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. The fool will be capable of any evil and, at the same time, incapable of seeing that it is evil. We may as well abandon all attempts to convince the fool. The Bible’s words that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Psalm 111: 10) tell us that a person’s inward liberation to live a responsible life before God is the only real cure for folly.” So far Bonhoeffer.
Our folly.
Donald Trump is not the only person afflicted with folly. We also have been fools. We have been warned. Repeatedly. Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) was a famous Swedish scientist and a founder of physical chemistry. He won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the first to explain how carbon dioxide warms the Earth. That was more than a century ago.
James E. Hansen is an American climate scientist and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In 2006, Hansen was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. Now Hansen works as Director of Climate Science in Columbia University. In his keynote at ATLAS25 James Hansen warns of the dangerous feedback loops of Earth Systems Tipping Points (ESTP). Hansen’s research and statements have been a controversial talking point among the science community, the media and even some of IPCC lead authors. Hansen’s message is clear – We’re running out of time.
El Niño.
The developing strong-to-super El Niño event will significantly disrupt global environmental conditions by raising global temperatures, shifting rainfall paths, and causing widespread ecological stress through intense droughts, floods, and marine disruptions. The situation is dire and unacceptably dangerous.
And then there is AI, the modern equivalent of the ancient Tower of Babel.
Now, mid 2026.
Today we see the result of our fight against the earth, which, actually, is a fight against God. Bonhoeffer was dead-on when his conclusion in his Ethics, was that God is synonymous with his creation, just as Shakespeare and J.S. Bach, are known to us through their legacies, their artistic output, their inspired creations. That also applies to God: The entire Bible emphasizes God as the Creator of the earth, God’s cherished work of art, fashioned to sustain and enrich and amaze humankind into eternity, forever and ever.
We, the human race, the so gifted creatures of God, the crown of creation, the summum of artistry and the culmination of God’s shaping capacity, we, resembling God in many ways, created in his image, capable of miracles, now extremely exampled in AI, we have gone the way of all human effort: Self-delusion, self-glorification, self-deification, and our Fall, our suicidal self-immolation, is now all too evident. Fools, we are. Already there are voices of idolatry. AI ethicist Eleanor Drage believes that to thrive alongside artificial intelligence, humans need to recognise AI’s “humanity”, and by that she means AI’s deification.
Laughter in Heaven.
“The One in Heaven laughs”. What do we think? Where are we going? Take on God? Challenge Him? Try out who is superior? Maranatha, Lord, Show them. What is wisdom? The fear of the Lord. Love God, love creation.