CHANGE
Change: real change.
Fifty Years Ago, I left St. Catharines, Ontario. I left the city for the country, far from the urban area, some 45 km north of the nearest small city, Belleville.
In 1975, my family settled on 50 acres, in a passive solar, energy-efficient home, not far from a large pond created by industrious beavers, who build a huge dam in a small creek flooding hundreds of acres, resulting in a small lake, ideal for skating, and ducks: lots of them.
Now I am back in the Niagara Peninsula, with St. Catharines at its centre,
closer to doctors, specialists and hospitals, closer to the three of my children who live in Southern Ontario.
Change.
I am not quite sure why, at this time, I made the change. I believe that, somehow, the Lord wanted me to do so. In a sense I left St. Catharines 50 years ago, to avoid conflict, and to change the type of work – insurance – for which I was not quite suited. In these 5 decades of comparative solitude, I developed a radical new concept of what Christianity is all about. Dr. J. H. Diemer, who died in a German Concentration Camp in 1944-45, wrote in his book on ‘Miracles’, that God only hears a prayer when it furthers the Coming of the Kingdom.
Think about this. It begs the question, “What is the Kingdom?”
The Kingdom?
I believe that, even the best churches – and I rate them by their inclusiveness and their genuine belief in Christ – have little notion how to proclaim the reality of the Kingdom. For me, John 3: 16 “God so loves the world”, has become my life’s motto, and the beacon by which I steer my life. In my simple – and perhaps simplistic – opinion: “Creation is God’s primary and direct word”. “Seek first the Kingdom”, Jesus tells us.
It is not my aim in life to discard the Written Word – every day I write a short meditation on a text of the lectionary – but I still see the Bible as God’s secondary and indirect word, while the church, even the most orthodox – perhaps especially those – see the Bible as the church’s special and only domain to salvation.
The key word for Christians is LOVE. Tolstoy has said: “If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you are a human being.” Just add to the words ‘other people’s’ ‘all created matter’: the pain of animals – one reason why I am a vegetarian – the pain of trees, the pain of earth, especially since, basically “Earth we are and to earth we shall return”, something the Bible tells us in its very first chapters.
Pain and Suffering.
We live in a time of immense suffering. Unnatural disasters are multiplying, hitting poor and rich alike, witness the immense fires in the Los Angeles region. Today we experience the trauma of creation. Romans 8: 22 comes to mind: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
This is so true: Today we experience that intense suffering, the birth-pangs, of the New Creation: AI = Artificial Intelligence, is part of that pattern.
During World War II, the race was on for the creation of the Atom Bomb. The Allies – the USA and Great Britain – won. This time AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the world’s target.
Russia and China are already using this technology against the USA, and the US brains are tooling up to address the threat. Just as the A and N Bombs, the new technologies are dangerous. The only solution to stop AI abuse is to use AI, so the reasoning goes, no matter what the costs are, even the destruction of the entire world. It’s about a world turned upside down – a dark, fretful, more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, where principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. It’s an ugly, disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals and brazen lies. And the US president is setting the example.
An old song comes to mind.
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
If there ever was a time when change and decay prevail, it is now, Anno 2025. Are God’s people ready? Or are they, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls them: “Pious Secularists”?
Change is needed. Kingdom Change.