November 30 2022
DOOM HAS GONE MAINSTREAM
I subscribe to the New Yorker. Each week a 90 pages issue arrives in my mailbox on the highway where I live, some 5 km – 3 miles – from the hub of the village. The November 28 issue, with a cover of an angry, gigantic wave about to overwhelm high-rise complexes, silhouetted against an ominous sky, caught the essence of its contents: Journey to Doomsday; Annals of a warning Planet; The Coming storm. Truly biblical warnings.
I was born a down-to-earth Northern Dutchman, one of those known for the sober, even somber, outlook on life, not given to superficial banter, and empty conversations, but direct and to the point. When I look around, read behind the headlines, cast my eye on the world at large, observing the ecclesiastical rites, the lukewarmness, the lack of direction, the downright tomfoolery there, the dearth of basic knowledge of the elements of Christianity, then my prayer is, “Lord Come, what’s the use of prolonging this empty ritual”.
It seems to me that the roles have been reversed: not the church is telling us that the end is near – even though it is her task – but the world has assumed that task. The church is preaching the half-truth message that Christ died for our sins, and repeats this ad nauseam, while the total truth includes that Christ really died to restore Creation. It is plain from John 3: 16, that God’s love for the world must be the church’s central aim.
Yes, Creation is at the very center of the Gospel. It so happened that the first religious-conscious human pair sinned against creation when they defied God’s explicit command about the importance of the TREE. Trees are our lungs: trees can live without us, but we cannot live without trees.
My bio.
I came to Canada in 1951, now some 71 years ago, as a young man of almost 23 years. My fiancée came a year later. Those seven decades coincided with The Great Planetary Ponzi plot, when we borrowed from the planet to enrich ourselves, we, the Christian West. The 27 UN COP meetings were intended to make restitution, but they all proved useless, assuring doom.
It all started with theft. We stole the land from the indigenous people, who had lived sustainably in tune with the rhythm of creation, killing some 56 million, about 90% of their population, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated. We paved over their land, mined their mountains, dammed their rivers, and relegated a ragged remnant out of sight and out of mind.
The punishment of these murders is now visiting us. Elizabeth Kolbert concludes her book, The Sixth Extinction, with the words, “Extinction “will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust and giant rats have – or have not – inherited the earth.”
These words were written almost 10 years ago. Today, Anno Domini 2022, in this week’s New Yorker, her final paragraph is, “Climate Change….is not going to have a happy ending….or any ending at all. Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.
I have this book: Sacred Nature, by the religious writer Karen Armstrong, who, by researching ancient religions, discovers that they all believe that nature is of divine origin. Of course, it is: it will take eternity to even glimpse what is hidden there. That’s why it is becoming increasingly clear that ‘personal salvation and salvation of creation go hand in hand.’ Jesus, in his so well-known Sermon on the Mount said that, ‘the meek shall inhabit the earth’. Another translation translates it as, ‘those who claim nothing for themselves, shall inherit the earth’. We, in our arrogance have disregarded Jesus’ advice, and have claimed everything for ourselves. When God pointed out the Tree of knowledge to the first spiritually aware couple, the text says, (Genesis 2:9), “Trees pleasing to the eye, and good for food.” In the next chapter, (Genesis 3:9), “The tree, was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” Here the order is reversed: there’s where the Ponzi problem began, and the origin and death of Capitalism. The Bible has something to say on that, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”, writes Paul. (1 Timothy 6: 10).
Today our Planetary Ponzi Problem is backfiring on us. As Elizabeth Kolbert wrote, “Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.”
1972 was an important year in my life: two books led to my conversion: “Limits to Growth”, now visible; and “After Death, what?”, dismissing the “heaven” myth.
The Planetary Ponzi attempt will end as Ponzi schemes always do: Planetary Collapse.