HOPE
In the beginning,” that’s how the Bible starts. Whatever has a beginning, also has an End. I am afraid and also delighted it’s the End that we are witnessing today. We all know that the last Bible book reveals, to some extent, what’s going to happen before the END. Revelation 18is a typical example That chapter deals with ECONOMICS, the religion that has dominated our world for centuries, and now threatens our very existence. Here’s a line from an Oxford economist I found in last week’s Guardian, “The world is being put at “extreme risk” by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world and to find new measures of success to avoid a catastrophic breakdown.”
Revelation 18 very much applies to today: And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because there is no one left to buy their cargo— cargo of gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls; of fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet; of all kinds of citron wood and every article of ivory, precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; of cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, and frankincense; of wine, olive oil, fine flour, and wheat; of cattle, sheep, horses, and chariots; of slaves and souls of men.
How do I translate this in today’s economic environment? It points to deflation: the peddlers of luxury items are stuck with their inventory and longingly lament the good times, never to return, because even the affluent are no longer in the market for their merchandize.
Why do the rich buy expensive stuff? They want to show them off, want to be seen as rich, able to indulge in such useless, but expensive expenditures as precious stones, pearls, famous brand wines, horses and pricy cars, and especially have poor, unregistered immigrants at their bidding. This time around all this is no longer possible because multi-millionaires too have become victims, catch the VIRUS, and so they too are housebound, confined to their monster dwellings. Even personal aircraft cannot help, because in a pandemic, there’s no safe place to fly.
And, curiously, Revelation also mentions inflation: food inflation, especially as heat waves, cold spells, spoiled soil, polluted water all reach extremes. Remember the four horses, those ominous beasts that herald the Apocalypse? The footnote on Revelation 6 mentions that famine had inflated food prices to at least ten times their normal level: “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages.” Both that scale and these words signify poverty, hunger and inflation. Money loses its value and the costs of the normal daily needs goes higher and higher: deflation of what we own; inflation of what we need.
Suicide or adoration.
I am re-reading Teilhard de Chardin this week, that Jesuit priest-scientist, who, some 100 years ago, wrote, “You are on a testing ground where God can judge whether you are capable of being translated into his presence. He also prophesied that, “The day is not far distant when humanity will realize that biologically it is faced with the choice between suicide and adoration”.
Well, that day has come: the most outspoken part of churchy Christianity is engaged not in adoration, but in an aberration, a Trump Religion. True adoration focuses on the Creator-God, but today Americanism, the world’s dominant Religious System, centers on suicidal, meaningless Bible prattle that condones or even promotes nature-destroying actions. The sad truth is that the world is going through hell for the sake of economic growth: there’s no turning back, the choice has been made, and global suicide is the only option left: the die has been cast
Witness the facts.
It’s easy to forget that last year gave us not just the pandemic, but also the West Coast’s worst fire season, as well as the most Atlantic hurricanes ever. And, as ARCTIC NEWS repeatedly told us, 2020 also was the year that the sea ice there retreated at near record pace, and gave numerous hints that significant methane releases from Arctic permafrost and the Arctic Ocean are happening, while high temperatures in both Canada’s and Siberian north, shattered heat record, even now as I look.
We are now facing positive feedback, with exponential capacity: never mind the Paris Accord; never mind America going on a Climate Change binge; never mind the electric cars: we have passed beyond the point of no return.
True, I commend President Biden, who has recommitted the United States to the Paris Agreement, which is great except that it doesn’t really mean much, since the agreement’s commitments are voluntary. All indications are that it has become a fruitless exercise because, even if the countries fully abide by the pledges, the cutbacks are not nearly enough to keep global warming below the two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. According to the Arctic News website we already are 2.5 Degrees Celsius above pre-agricultural level, some 12,000 years ago. Methane is the real big factor. The Arctic Sea is quite shallow: some 50-100 meters deep. There on its bottom are buried trillions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times stronger than the stuff that comes from the exhausts of our diesel and gasoline powered trucks, cars and farm machinery.
Meanwhile, the earth’s climate seems to be changing faster than expected. Last week I read that, “We are 50 years to 100 years ahead of schedule with the slowdown of this ocean circulation pattern, relative to what the models predict … The more observations we get, the more sophisticated our models become, the more we’re learning that things are happening faster, and with a greater magnitude, than we predicted just years ago. Last year the Greenland ice sheet briefly reached daily melt rates predicted in what were once considered worst case scenarios for 2060 to 2080.” The same applies to the thawing of the permafrost.
Going back to normal now means returning to a course that will destabilize the conditions for all human life, everywhere on earth. Normal means more fires, more category 5 hurricanes, more flooding, more drought, millions upon millions more migrants fleeing famine and civil war, more crop failures, more storms, more extinctions, more record-breaking heat. Normal means the increasing likelihood of civil unrest and state collapse, of widespread agricultural failure and collapsing fisheries, of millions of people dying from thirst and hunger, of new diseases, old diseases spreading to new places and the havoc of war. Normal could well mean the end of global civilization as we know it.
So, where is the HOPE?
The world does not offer hope. We are past the point of no return. Only Christianity offers hope. Jesus died, not only to save sinners, but to restore creation. We have learned an expensive lesson with God’s earth in the balance and, through trial and error, have realized that loving God means loving his creation. John 3: 16 spells it out.
Where do I find my hope? I believe the Revelation 21 text: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
Who is the bride? Who is the husband?
Isaiah 62 spells it out. The land is the Bride. We, the redeemed of the Lord, the new human race, wise and mature, are the groom, with Jesus as the PRIMUS INTER PARES, the First among equals.
“for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be His bride.”
That is our HOPE