August 18 2013
Our World Today
A Unique Experience
America is alive and well. Or so it seems. We, our entire family, spent an entire week in a Colorado resort north of Denver, in the mountains there, quite central for our widely dispersed extended clan: a unique experience. Our five children had rented an immense -10,000 square feet- mansion with everything: 10 bedrooms, 3 kitchens, 5 bathrooms, huge living room with a grand piano, two dining rooms, one table seating 16 people and another with 11 chairs, easily accommodating the 27 people from age 5 to age 85, celebrating our 60th wedding anniversary.
As is custom when we gather we have long walks, now, for the first time, daily excursions in the Rocky Mountain National Park, providing wide vistas which gave me, at times, jolts of euphoria. We also played games, ate a lot, drank modestly, talked, read: it all filled me with a great sense of gratitude. I did a bit of writing as well, hence this column.
Our universal religion
On Sunday, August 11, I read the real New York Times there, not on the computer screen this time, my usual way, but in its Sunday voluminous mass complete with magazine and book report. There is still magic in these pages, even though selling these printed versions becomes increasingly difficult. The value of newspapers in general has dropped dramatically: the Boston Globe which the New York Times had bought for $1.1 billion a bit over a decade ago was sold last week for $70 million at a loss of more than $1 billion. That same week the Washington Post went for a mere $250 million, acquired by a man who is worth $25 billion for just 1 percent of his net worth. It appears that the future is digital, reason why I have started to write a weekly blog rather than be a monthly columnist for a bi-weekly.
I often read the Friedman column in the Times. This past week’s was especially good, so good that I will quote a few sections. He- like I – takes a global view on matters.
In this column he writes about “The Commons” which has nothing to do with the House of Commons, that institution where people talk not to each other but at each other, like estranged spouses. The US Congress is the same, even more so, with the stakes there much higher and the malfunction even greater, and that at a time when immense problems scream for solution and consensus. The real “Commons” are the air, soil, forests and waters which we all share because they are the basics of all of life. Every minute of the day I try to keep their welfare in mind. It is these ‘commons’ that are under daily attack. They are in such danger because of our state of mind that is totally at odds with nature at large. A universal consciousness underlies every decision made globally. It is the only true global religion. It is a mindset, a way of thinking and a belief system all in one. It is the world’s biggest confessional doctrine. What is it? It is the religion of Economic Growth. Its followers and proponents hold that ‘economic growth’ is the only necessary element of survival, that technology is capable of solving all problems, and that the earth, nature, the living environment, is there for us to be exploited at will to achieve that growth.
The “Real Commons” are totally at odds with this world-wide belief-system that overrides any other religion, whether that is Islam or Judaism or Christianity. What really makes it a religion is that it doesn’t like to question its own assumptions, let alone have them questioned by others, and anyone who does so is immediately ostracized. I sense this often myself. It is the un-confessed faith of all the important people in the world, including all politicians of every stripe in every country, including those in China, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia, just to name the most populous countries, including, of course, our Western world. Even though Christian institutions never mention it, they too depend on this idol for the payment of the minister’s or priest’s stipend, the mortgage on the church buildings, while parents need it to afford the high tuition for their educational facilities. This never mentioned assumption prevents them from fighting this idolatry tooth and nail and makes it impossible to strive for a stable, no growth society, with continuous emphasis on preservation.
A glaring paradox
Here is a glaring paradox: just because all churches and religious bodies have gone along with this ruling religion, they have lost their most promising members: their young people. The only way to win them back is to challenge the economic growth paradigm from top to bottom, which, I am confident, will cause the aware youth to return to the church. Only when God’s Primary Word – the creation and all it contains – is given equal billing with the Scriptures – God’s Secondary Word- the problem of youth membership loss can be solved. Of course it will also cause people to leave. Perhaps it may evolve into a Gideon band situation. For those who don’t know the Hebrew bible a pointer. In the early days of Israel’s conquest of Palestine they were often occupied by their neighbours, from whom they had taken the Promised Land. For Gideon, a ruler appointed by Yahweh to reconquer the country, the victory was gained not by overwhelming numbers but by 300 men equipped with a torch and a trumpet. Jesus too was never impressed by numbers, and neither should the church. The Church must adopt this two-pronged Word to be ready for the Kingdom to come. If not they may become the victim of the monoculture Friedman mentions in his column.
Thomas L. Friedman is the celebrated columnist of the New York Times who is making a movie which touches on these matters. Here is what he writes: “I’ve spent the last few months filming a Showtime documentary about how climate and environmental stresses helped trigger the Arab awakening. It’s been a fascinating journey because it forced me to look at the Middle East through the lens of Arab environmentalists instead of politicians. When you do that, you see the problems and solutions very differently. Environmentalists always start by thinking about the health of the “commons” — the shared air, soil, forests and water — that are the basis of all life, which, if not preserved, will undermine the whole society. The notion that securing the interests of any single group — Shiite or Sunni, Christian or Muslim, secular or Islamist — over the health of the commons is nuts to them. It’s as laughable as pictures of gun-toting fighters strutting on the rubble of broken buildings in Aleppo or Benghazi, claiming “victory,” only to discover that they’ve “won” a country with eroding soil, degrading forests, scarce water, shrinking jobs — a deteriorating commons.”
Friedman goes on to say that his team looked at the connection between the drought in Kansas and the rise in global food prices that helped to fuel the Arab uprisings, and discovered that there was the parallel between how fossil fuels are being used to power monoculture farms in the Middle West and how fossil fuels are being used to power wars to create monoculture societies in the Middle East. And why both are really unhealthy for their commons.
My comments
For decades I have been writing about the dangers of going against the grain of creation. I remember visiting a small town in Iowa where, when the wind was from the North, the entire town was engulfed in a manure smell so strong that people had to shut themselves up in their homes. This was when I had just read how less than 200 years ago the prairies there fed millions of buffaloes which flourished on the natural grasses there, now almost completely plowed under to grow corn to feed its very cousins, the beef cattle or produce fuel for the minor idols of our age: the automobile and all combustion engines.
The buffalo, the prairies’ natural friend, was eliminated to make place to support an equal amount of cattle which are fed a diet with the help of pesticides and Monsanto genetically modified seed- a creational enemy. Two centuries ago the prairie was a balanced eco-friendly wilderness which supported all kinds of wildlife, not to mention American Indians — until the Europeans arrived, plowed it up and covered it with single-species crop farms, mostly wheat, corn, or soybeans. Thanks to what politicians and farmers alike are calling progress, top soil is disappearing at a frightening rate. Where the original ground cover could tolerate and withstand long period of drought, the present “man-made improvement” not only has depleted the underground water supply, but also is endangering the availability of the very soil itself.
Friedman, in his column points out that “Annual monocultures are much more susceptible to disease and require much more fossil fuel energy — plows, fertilizer, pesticides — to maintain…. During the Dust Bowl years of the ’30s, the crops died, but the prairie survived.”
Of course with the price of acre of farmland skyrocketing as food producing land becomes a precious commodity, nobody in his right capitalistic mind would buy land with the very purpose to cultivate prairie grass – a decade long process – and so restore it to its natural state.
It is wishful thinking to suppose that the prairies had remained in their virgin state and the pursuit of growth at any cost would never have taken place. It is wishful thinking to suppose that the Arab/Muslim mix had remained in its ‘Golden Age” from the 8th to the 13th Century, of which the amazing Wikipedia says, “During this period the Arab world became an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education. …” It was “a collection of cultures, which put together, synthesized and significantly advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Byzantine and Phoenician civilizations.”
Friedman writes that, “What is going on in the Arab world today is a relentless push, also funded by fossil fuels, for more monocultures. It’s Al Qaeda trying to “purify” the Arabian Peninsula. It’s Shiites and Sunnis, funded by oil money, trying to purge each other in Iraq and Syria. It’s Alexandria, Egypt, once a great melting pot of Greeks, Italians, Jews, Christians, Arabs and Muslims, now a city dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, with most non-Muslims gone. It makes these societies much less able to spark new ideas and much more susceptible to diseased conspiracy theories and extreme ideologies. To be blunt, this evolution of Arab/Muslim poly-cultures into monocultures is a disaster. Pluralism, diversity and tolerance were once native plants in the Middle East — the way the poly-culture prairie was in the Middle West. Neither ecosystem will be healthy without restoring its diversity.”
When I survey the church scene then, in general –there are exceptions- I see a church which has remained stagnant in a world that is rapidly changing. I see a monoculture religion that overrides all religions in the world including Christianity. I also see fundamental churches which have become victims of another monoculture based on the bible only with even a more devastating outcome.
America is alive and well. Or so it seems. The area where we were breathed money. Or was it debt? It’s hard to say. Last week I read that 80 percent of Americans are one paycheque away from being broke.
Behind the scenes our Western world is desperate. So far the high priests of finance at their Washington Holy of Holies have offered $3 Trillion of borrowed money to revive the economy, to no avail. It reminds me of 1 Kings 18 where it is related how Elijah teased the Baal priests to ignite their sacrifice and how these false priests failed of course. Read the chapter: highly hilarious. Baal is the god of fertility, the god of Economic Growth, the god that failed. Similarly the false priests of finance are failing to revive the false god of Economic Growth with equally disastrous results. The Baal priests were all killed. The same will happen to the false prophets of the god of Economic Growth.
“The Commons” will always triumph because they are of true divine origin. Our planet has her built-in defense mechanisms that ensure eternal life on earth, thanks to John 3:16, where it says that God loves this world. His love endures forever. Be part of that lasting love.