JANUARY 26 2014
HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE (Part Four)
PROPHETS
CASSANDRA TIMES
Over the last five years, almost every advance in climate science has painted a more disturbing picture of the future. The reluctant conclusion of the most eminent climate scientists is that the world is now on the path to a very unpleasant future and it is too late to stop it. Behind the facade of scientific detachment, the climate scientists themselves now evince a mood of barely suppressed panic. No one is willing to say publicly what the climate science is telling us: that we can no longer prevent global warming that will this century bring about a radically transformed world that is much more hostile to the survival and flourishing of life. This is no longer an expectation of what might happen if we do not act soon; this will happen, even if the most optimistic assessment of how the world might respond to the climate disruption is validated.
This section is taken from Professor Clive Hamilton’s new book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change.
In The New York Times, the Thomas Friedman column, January 22 I found this quote: “In the future, who will help a country like Syria when it gets devastated by its next drought if we are in a world where everyone is dealing with something like a Superstorm Sandy,” which alone cost the U.S. $60 billion to clean up?”
In line with these assessments, should we act as if nothing is the matter?
I have given this Part Four the title of PROPHETS, subtitled: Cassandra Times. What’s that? In Greek drama, Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, was given the gift of prophesy by Apollo, but when she spurned his advances, he ordained that her prophecies would not be believed.
Why are warnings not heeded? Al Gore’s documentary and book The Inconvenient Truth were well received by the public, but since implementing its recommendations involved measures that would inconvenience peoples’ life styles, they are not acknowledged. The key reason that Hurricane Sandy came with a colossal bill for the taxpayer was simply optimistic inertia: it will never happen on the New York-Jersey coast. The financial meltdown in 2008 was predicted by many, but The Market was seen as infallible. Of course the same is the case with the two substances on which we have built our life: not faith in the Infinite God – that too for some- but faith in an infinite supply of oil and faith in Infinite Growth.
“We have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up,” wrote the over 90 year old Dr. James Lovelock in his book The Revenge of Gaia, Earth’s climate in crisis and the fate of humanity. Curiously Lovelock, who is not a Christian, starts his book with a quote from Jesus: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24). A gnat is the tiniest of unclean animals. He refers here to political and environmental measures that are for appearances only but really have no substance. In essence he is saying what Peter writes in 2 Peter 3: “Since everything will be destroyed in this way – the elements destroyed by fire – you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of the Lord and speed its coming.” Yes, an unbeliever can be a true prophet.
Why Prophets are unpopular
Prophets are unpopular because they question the status quo.
Prophets are unpopular because people hate change.
Prophets are unpopular because people are comfortable.
Prophets are unpopular because politicians avoid controversy at all cost, hate to be bringers of bad news, even though they know better.
Prophets are unpopular even in the church as it plain from even a cursory reading of the Old Testament prophets, where both the major and minor ones reveal that organized religion in the days before Christ resembled today’s rulers: they want to please everybody. And not much has changed in the ‘after Christ’ institutions.
What is a prophet?
The average human thinks that a prophet is a special person who speaks for God or one who foretells the future, at least that’s what my dictionary tells me, but I take issue with that explanation, because it would limit the office of prophet to crackpots, since nobody can predict the future.
Let me go back a more than few years when I attended the Young People Society in my home-city Groningen, where our Sunday-evening meetings were geared to students, and chaired by a university graduate. There some 20 young men, after having attended two church services of at least 90 minutes in duration, debated topics of general Christian interest, introduced by one of the members. There I learned that we as Christians have a three-fold office: that of Prophet, Priest and King. These weekly 2 hour Sunday- evening gatherings in the early and mid- 1940’s, shaped my outlook on life.
So I am a Prophet, Priest and King? That’s a core Calvinistic declaration, but one that I don’t hear much about anymore. I am even chided when I say that I am a prophet. Perhaps the words of God to Ezekiel (chapter 2: 2-5) apply to today as well: “I am sending you to a rebellious nation that is obstinate and stubborn. And whether they listen or not they will know that a prophet has been among them”.
After this introduction, I better clarify what I perceive as a prophet’s profile. A prophet is a visionary, a seer. In the Bible they were called ‘seers’, not because they could see into the future, but because they could see the truth, could understand the deeper meaning of life and have a holistic view on events, not staring what’s going on in isolation, but grasping the true consequences of the day’s happenings, and the deeper spiritual message of the current moment. A prophet sheds unblinking light on the pain and injustices of the present. By doing so he or she links heeding to hearing and action to understanding. A prophet casts his/her eye on what’s going on and connects the dots.
Thus a prophet is not an extraordinary gifted person who knows the unknown, a sort of fortune-teller who magically foretells what is to come. No, a prophet is first and foremost a person who is convinced that a new present requires new thinking and different approaches.
A prophet is first and foremost a person who openly and unabashedly dares to look to what is happening ‘out there’ and, as a consequence, fully embraces his or her responsibility for the immense challenges evident in our quickly changing society.
A prophet is first and foremost a person who has the courage to critically look at past decisions, including those involving political and ecclesiastical policies, to test them on their relevance for today and tomorrow.
A prophet is first and foremost a person who from his or her perspective on contemporary life dares to look to the future to keep creation viable for our children and grandchildren and also strives for a society in which young people feel at home.
A prophet is especially a believer who sees Scripture as a lamp for their feet and a light for their path in God’s wonderful creation and believes that Christ, as the Son of Man, the Ben-Adam, the Son of the Soil, will return to make all things new. That’s why a believing prophet, in spite of all the sin and evil in this world, looks to the future with full confidence.
A prophet is first and foremost a Christian believer who now already can visualize what this future will be like and thus can critically evaluate the present in the light of the glorious future that is coming.
A daring step?
If I may be so bold to cast myself in the role that I have described above, will I be condemned for doing so? Probably.
Looking back how we have arrived at the circumstances we are in today then I detect that the economic boom that made America in the 20th century the globe’s largest economy and the envy of the world, can be traced to some fortunate circumstances: where Europe and the rest of the world suffered ruinous wars, North American industrial hinterlands were not only spared destruction, but benefited immensely as producers of war materials and the providers of the black gold in Texas and elsewhere in its territory: the United States at the mid-20th century produced more petroleum than all the other countries on earth put together. The oceans of oil on which the US floated to victory in two world wars made it the economic super power of the by-gone era. That domestic oil-flow has now been reduced, even with ‘fracking’ boosting the output for a few years. Fact is that global supplies are shrinking at exactly the same time when expectations of billions of destitute people are rising, thanks to ubiquitous television.
With the inevitable approach in our finite world of Peak Oil, stagnant growth, ever higher mountains of debt and dangerous weather it is not difficult to predict for those who have ears to hear, eyes to see and minds to embrace, that the big challenge facing today’s industrial societies is managing the end of abundance, rather than the onset of greater wealth for the Rest of the World.
It is foolish to believe otherwise: the brief period of cheap and plentiful energy, now ending, which, for an all too short a period was in itself an exceptional occurrence in historical terms, has been nothing else but a tremendous acceleration of human history- of which the more than tripling of the number of humans in my life time is just one example – so that the Coming of Christ would be sooner.
Does the End of Growth mean War?
A realistic look at what’s happening makes plain that the period of unprecedented prosperity, extraordinary extravagance and gigantic growth, is ending, perhaps even suddenly. That means that society has to relearn the lessons of more normal and less unusual times, times where we have the opportunity to again truly and purposely honor creation. Perhaps even wartime conditions. 2014 is exactly 100 years after the onset of WWI. Many informed people see scary parallels between 2014 and 1914. The last thing our aging planet needs is another destructive war. Do cynical politicians and eager generals see war as the solution to global youth unemployment? China has 116 males for every 100 females!
Keep eyes on the Kingdom
We assume that at least The Lord’s Prayer is well translated. Think again. There is a line there, repeated every week by millions of church-goers: “Give us this day our daily bread.” In a classic book I have: A History of Christianity, The first 3000 years, I read (page 89) that “The Greek word epiousios, translated as ‘daily’ does not mean ‘daily.’ The most likely learned guess seems to be that it refers to a special bread that will be needed the next day if the kingdom should happen to come overnight. Dr. Herman Ridderbos, in his The Coming of the Kingdom, also says that ‘daily’ is most likely incorrect, and leans to “belonging to the coming kingdom.” This, in my totally layman’s opinion, fits in with the general apocalyptic nature of the prayer (Thy Kingdom Come) and thus the request to “Give us this day our daily bread” could well read “Give us the wherewithal to prepare ourselves for the Coming of the Kingdom.” By the way that also is the principal task of the church. The coming Kingdom is The New Creation. Get ready. All over the developed world politicians and economists are doing everything in their power to enhance economic growth, even though perpetual growth is impossible. When it does happen, as in cancer, it ends in death. Efforts to maintain an inflated standard of living in the face of a contracting real economy have only caused mountains of debts. Today’s policy makers are driven by a two-pronged faith commitment: (1) that policies that failed last year will succeed next year, and (2) that the pursuit of ever newer and ever more expensive technological tools will assure an even grander future.
However, collapse is in the cards. The Kingdom is coming.
Next week: How should we then live? Part Five: Covenants.