COMING TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU.
But first: A bit about me.
I guess I am a preacher at heart. My parents wanted me to become one ever since I was born. So, in 1941 – an unpolished 13 years old – they sent me to the ‘gymnasium’, the private 6 grades prep school for ministers and doctors, not at all ready to study academics, but near the end I caught on, almost too late.
My fiancée (we were engaged August 31 1950) told me that if I were to choose theology, she would break the engagement. I have no idea why she felt that way. Her father was a celebrated preacher, who died in 1937, at the age of 49, leaving her mother with 12 children, the last one yet to be born. Perhaps her father’s profession, his almost God-like status as minister was a factor.
Actually, in my very early youth I did have the ambition to become missionary in the Netherlands East Indies – now Indonesia – where our denomination operated a mission field on the island of Celebes. Every few years, on Mission Day, one of the two ‘zendelingen = missionaries’ there, would sail home – 6 weeks – and show off a colored convert, a rarity before 1940.
I now wonder whether my internet writing expresses the secret desire to be a missionary to the world. On a typical day – October 2 – my blog attracted 11 visitors: 1 from Ukraine, 2 from Berlin, Germany, 2 from Lebanon, 3 from Ontario, 1 from Baltimore, 2 from an unknown destination. I also send it to some 20 regulars.
When I survey the ‘religious’ scene, I see mostly sterility, near total absence of the New Creation concept, and the Kingdom to come. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J.H. Bavinck are the lone exceptions.
Cognitive Dissonance.
Despite the fact that we face an existential threat from climate change—with droughts, floods, violent storms and wildfires becoming more frequent and more violent — we’re still waiting for someone to rouse the world to real action. True, the UN leader, Antonio Guterres, has issued ever stronger warnings, but the UN lacks executive power. Soon, end November, a new COP meeting will take place: will it truly expound the consequences of our riotous living?
And we? We live the lie.
What happens elsewhere, will happen here: there are no safe places left, and for young people there’s no future anymore. The air they breathe is suspect, the soil sterile, the water contaminated. The politicians have demonstrated time and again they cannot be trusted.
It was different in my youth: I lived through five years of cruel German occupation. What kept us alive was the ‘hope’ of liberation which came in May 1945. There’s no such hope now.
Today there is no such hope.
The numbers are in. I have 13 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren, all healthy and, yes, wealthy. Yet, a child born now will experience 24 times the number of extreme climate events as one born in the 1960s. They are the wretched, damned for the sins of others, me included. The burden of that legacy is being expressed physically and mentally right now in every time zone and culture: and IT’S COMING TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU. Look at the devastation in the US South: not much different from Gaza and the West bank in the Middle East.
The root of the trouble we face is the holding of two conflicting beliefs.
The root of the trouble we face is the holding of two conflicting beliefs. To wit: We know climate change is an imminent threat, but we also continue to rely on oil—the burning of which is the primary cause of climate change. It’s called: Cognitive dissonance.
Here’s the thing, though: Burning fossil fuel is not the most economical way to generate power — not when you actually account for the costs associated with the effects of climate change, a bill that’s going to come due sooner rather than later. (Climate-related disasters have already cost the U.S. alone trillions since 1980, and they’re only getting worse.) Oil producers, however, aren’t forced to bear those costs — future generations will be. In the meantime, the oil giants will be allowed to continue selling oil even as the world quite literally burns down around them. Even now, scores of wildfires are raging across the world, only to get worse next year.
Cognitive Dissonance also affects the TRUMP tragedy. We know he is a crook, but we also see him as a smart operator; the same applies to super-processed food. We know it is a health risk, but our motto is: ‘enjoy the hour: tomorrow we die’. And then there is the ‘heaven heresy’: it is more comfortable and cozier to believe in this illusory destination than longing for a new earth, and trying to live it now.
Cognitive Dissonance: It rules our life and prevents us from living.