May 31 2015
FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.
Almost everybody knows that there is something like The Lord’s Prayer. In our church reciting it is routine, introduced as the prayer the Lord taught us. I don’t think that the Lord really appreciates the sometimes mindless mumbling that is the result, the automatic mouthing of words that is the logical outcome from a weekly routine. I think the Lord meant that we use the words as an example of how we should pray, and so develop our own style of praying rather than merely repeating words that have become too familiar.
I believe that one line sets the tone for the entire prayer. After the introduction (Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name) that line is the phrase “Your Kingdom Come.” It comes first for a definite reason. In our life every single act, every thought and idea, indeed THE goal in our life should be dominated by the coming of the Kingdom. And what is that goal? It is the new creation that Christ is preparing for us and will give us when he returns.
The Chinese have a saying: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk; if you want to be happy for a week, kill a pig; if you want to be happy for a month, get married; if you want to be happy for life, be a gardener.” I would expand it with: “If you want to be happy for eternity, for this life and the life to come, follow Jesus’ advice “Seek first the kingdom and everything else will fall into place.” That kingdom is the new creation to come. That certainly involves being a gardener, which is possible for everybody even in a high rise: now already surround yourself with plants: use the balcony for outdoor planting, grow simple lettuce plants or tomatoes in addition to flowers, of course.
But I digress. My headline is FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.
Some translations use the word DEBT. It would be nice if our debts were forgiven – and by that people assume the money they owe, which, generally, is substantial. More about that later because DEBT in the money sense is something Jesus did not have in mind at all when he gave us The Lord’s Prayer. I prefer the word ‘TRESPASSES’ because it is more in line with the original meaning.
We often see signs which say “trespassers will be persecuted.” This means that when we go beyond that sign, we enter into forbidden territory, something we do all the time. Let me start with an everyday example.
When I walk into a grocery store, smart merchandizing displays the fruit and vegetable isles first. I always look where the produce originates. If it comes from China, I never buy it, because I know that it usually is heavily polluted. If it is available I buy organic. Why? Because I don’t want my body to unnecessarily trespass into the health system. Our first duty as a human being is to treat our body as holy: prevention is better than healing. Medical healing involves the government, as least in Ontario where healthcare is financed publicly and is the largest single expense in the provincial budget. Since in my opinion the economy no longer will grow, will most likely shrink, that also means that tax revenue will go down and so will the money available for the health care system. Often bad health is the result of bad habits. I emphasize the word ‘often’ because we all know many examples where cancer strikes seemingly at random and where tumors appear in the most unlikely persons.
This week the Canadian Cancer Institute predicted that cancer would increase by 40 percent in the coming years, mainly because of an aging population. I believe that when we indulge in unhealthy practices, we are in a trespassing situation which we must avoid and for which we must pray for forgiveness.
Basically there are two types of sins: sins of commission and sins of omissions. Smoking, bad eating habits and excess drinking are sins of commission. We commit sins of omissions when we ignore matters we are supposed to do or fail to learn. I think we, as modern persons, have a gross deficit of creational knowledge. By and large we know very little which foods are good for us and which ones are bad. We are what we eat for good or ill. Our wrong living habits have caused a new situation called “metabolic syndrome.” Here is a frightening statistic: “More than a third of adults in the U.S. suffer from “metabolic syndrome,” which involves a combination of risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.” That means that in the foreseeable future the health system will be inundated with sick persons, waiting times will skyrocket and health care deteriorate. The best insurance to avoid that is acquiring a thorough knowledge of what is good and what is bad in nutrition and general living habits. Also, I believe that it is the Christian thing to know as much about creation as possible. It’s in our very own world, here exactly where we now live, where we will enjoy eternal life. Then there is:
Environmental Debt
My study Bible explains the words of FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES by commenting that this applies to our MORAL sins. That is so typical of church-talk, so anthropocentric or ‘man-centered’. There’s much more to it than that. Take Plastic which I hate with a passion. I am not referring to credit cards. I mean plastic as in bags and in wrapping. It often ends up in the world’s waterways, the oceans and rivers and so is choking our future in ways that most of us are barely aware.
Plastics are now one of the most common pollutants of ocean waters worldwide. Pushed by winds, tides and currents, plastic particles form with other debris into large swirling glutinous accumulation zones, known to oceanographers as gyres, which comprise as much as 40 percent of the planet’s ocean surface — roughly 25 percent of the entire earth.
The calamitous consequences of humanity’s “plastic footprint” are many, some known and some yet to be discovered. We know that plastics biodegrade exceptionally slowly, breaking into tiny fragments in a centuries-long process. We know that plastic debris entangles and slowly kills millions of sea creatures; that hundreds of species mistake plastics for their natural food, ingesting toxicants that cause liver and stomach abnormalities in fish and birds, often choking or starving them to death. We know that one of the main bait fish in the ocean, the lantern fish, eats copious quantities of plastic fragments, threatening their future as a nutritious food source to the tuna, salmon, and other pelagic fish we consume, adding to the increasing amount of synthetic chemicals unknown before 1950 that we now carry in our bodies. By using plastic we are trespassing into the territories where the sea life is, which we killing by the billions: 90 percent of large sea animals are gone!! Simply frightful. Forgive us for trespassing into areas where we have no business. When I recycle my plastic- even I cannot avoid using it because it is everywhere- where will it end up? In the ocean?
The problem is compounded by the aquaculture industry, which uses enormous amounts of plastic in its floats, nets, lines and tubes. Think about that when you eat fish. The best way to combat the use of plastic is to grow your own food which eliminates packaging, the major source of plastic, or by going to farmers markets.
Primary Productivity
There is such a thing as Primary Productivity. It points to the original natural resources available to the human race. In the very early human stage when only a few million people roamed the earth and their diet was gathered from the existing fruits and wild animals, the so-called hunter-gathering stage, Primary Productivity was 100 percent. Nothing of the earth was disturbed. The seas were in a pristine state, the air was sweet aroma and, as Genesis, the first Bible book, tells us, some people lived almost One Thousand years: Methuselah clocked in at 969 years, thanks to pure air, food and water. Today cancers are proliferating, soon shortening the overall life span, while general poor health sets the stage for a devastating pandemic. Now Primary Productivity is approaching 50 percent, meaning that we humans have deprived all other creatures of almost half their habitat. No wonder species disappear in droves.
Forgive us our environmental trespasses, in the same way that we forgive those who trespass against us. We all are in the same boat. There is not a person in the Western world that can plead innocence here. We have allowed ourselves to be sucked into such a dangerous situation that there is no longer a safe exit.
Thanks to us trespassing into the space of the large animals, we have almost eliminated them all. Thanks to the use of pesticides, especially eonicotinoid, we have managed to kill half the honey bees that pollinate our fruit trees. The paradox is that by using that particular poison which is supposed to kill bad insects only (so that our factory farms are can prevent flies and other pests from harming the Monsanto seeds) we are well on the way of committing global suicide. Those are the unintended consequences of promoting a life that is supposed to be free of intrusions by nature.
There is a lot of truth in the saying “Trespassers will be persecuted.” This past week those US states that deny Climate Change are being persecuted with storms, tornadoes, deadly floods. I don’t know why India must suffer from lethal heat with thousands dying: that poor country, among the poorest in the world.
So what will be the after effect of
Monetary debt.
Right now, we’re living in a make believe world as debt is the main source of growth. Without a pick-up in final demand a lot of bad debts are never going to be repaid. Thanks to excess capacity in the commodity production bad loans will proliferate throughout the system. That means that governments must keep on issuing new loans to cover old loans. Look at all the money that Chinese banks have invested in real estate: there’s no way that they are going to be repaid. China is bankrupt.
You want to see real growth in the U.S. economy? Forget about real estate, technology or manufacturing: The real American and Canadian growth industry is debt. While gross domestic product has lingered in the 2 to 2.5% growth range for years, the level of debt as measured through credit market instruments has exploded. As the nation entered the 1980s, there was comparatively little debt—just about $4.3 trillion. That was only about 1.5 times the size of gross GDP. Then a funny thing happened. The gap began to widen during the decade, and then became basically parabolic through the ’90s and into the early part of the 21st century.
Though debt took a brief decline in 2009 as the countries limped their way out of the financial crisis, it has climbed again and is now, at $58.7 trillion, 3.3 times the size of GDP and about 13 times what it was in 1980, according to data from the Federal Reserve’s St. Louis branch.
Forgive us our trespasses which are much more than moral matters. By trespassing on the life of animals we have killed almost half of all living; by trespassing in the air we have killed almost half of all bees and birds as well as poisoned the very air we breathe; by trespassing on the seas we have soiled the seas beyond repair and killed the animals there in unprecedented numbers.
We are heading for Armageddon not only economically but ecologically as well as spiritually, as by and large the church and whatever is left of the Christian press fail to see the signs of the times.
Our fervent prayer should be FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES. Lord have mercy. Maranatha, Lord come quickly.