NOTHING IS SURE, ANYMORE.
Everything is up for grabs. Yes, it includes the church. There have never been more people in the world than today. In the Western world there have never been fewer people going to church. There has never been more need for divine intervention in the world than today, yet fewer prayers rise up to heaven asking for forgiveness how we have ruined God’s creation.
This makes me wonder whether there still is a need for the church.
Is there still a need? Yes, an unambiguous ‘yes’. But I hastily add: not the church as it functions in its present form and expression. The church today, too, is at odds with itself. Its major part, especially outside Europe, is strictly ‘spiritually’ inclined, not at all interested in Creation, the cosmos God loves beyond anything else.
But a change is coming: a radical change, now challenging the church’s teaching.
In the Netherlands, Dr. Stefan Paas, professor of Missions at a Christian University, relying on sources world-wide, advocates a new approach where the emphasis changes from personal piety to communal and environmental action, with God’s creation as the focus, an element my readers recognize as my long-time objective as well. But is has thrown ecclesiastical enterprise there into total confusion. The question arises – hinted at in his book, PEACE ON EARTH (The translation of the Dutch title, VREDE OP AARDE) – whether the customary Sunday sermon should be replaced with an occasional ‘walk in the woods’, under the guidance of a ‘nature’ expert. Most certainly more conducive to physical health, spiritual wellbeing and essential knowledge. After all, God’s people are destined to spend eternity here on this very earth, so a bit of exposure to ‘nature’ is eminently necessary, I believe.
Has the church become an obstacle to salvation?
I may be wrong, but slowly I see the church becoming a hindrance to the coming of the Lord, an obstacle on the way to eternity, an impediment to reaching the truth, a pious diversion away from creation, contrary to the aim of Christ, who, in John 10: 10, unambiguously tells his followers that he came to bring earthly LIFE and that to the FULL. After all, Jesus did not start ‘religion’ of any kind: he taught us how to live, in a world for whose redemption he gave his life. Jesus’ life shows that. The pious Pharisees accused him of being a glutton and a winebibber: they saw how he loved being alive and relished in its fruits.
The church is a mirror of today, as we are entering the unknown.
I believe the confusion in the church mirrors the confusion in the world at large. The entire world waddles in uncertainty. AI – Artificial Intelligence – has placed the world’s working population on an edge: “Which jobs will be eliminated?” The war in Ukraine is testing Western resolve. Can it both wage a war against the Russia-China-India axis, and still support the welfare state by paying for Old Age pensions and healthcare? How will the weather play a role, as the entire world brazes for severe storms, hellish heat, melting Poles, failing crops, rising inflation?
Let me emphasize these last two points: we are in a new period of global history, with everyone casting around for new bearings, where there are none. I haven’t even mentioned a probable Trump tragedy.
A look back.
The postwar period (after 1945) was followed by the post-Wall period, but that lasted only from 9 November 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall) until 24 February 2022 (Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine). In history, as in love, beginnings matter. What was done in the five years after 1945 shaped the international order for the next 40 years, such as the structure of the UN, to this day.
For 80 years, ever since 1945, when World War Two ended, we have gradually, then ever more rapidly, treated the earth as our inexhaustible source of riches, now reaching the ‘limits to growth’.
Two colossal choices.
We now confront two major questions: Are we willing and still able to sacrifice our present unprecedented standard of living to
- Help the people in Ukraine to withstand the Russian threat, risking World War, and
- exchange our current state of wellbeing at the expense of the totality of nature/creation, for a sustainable tomorrow, in order to save ourselves and the future of our children?
No past generation has ever been required to make such mind-dumbing moves, trading a world pampered, spoiled, unhealthy, having lost all notion of divine guidance, saturated with nuclear weapons, for a state of peace and balance.
My bet is prayer: Maranatha, Lord, Come.