JANUARY 2013
How God disappeared from Jorwerd.
The heading is the title of a book about a village in Friesland, the Netherlands. Geert Mak, the author, entitled it Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd. A son of a Reformed minister and now a celebrated writer who abandoned the church, he spent time in Friesland where he observed the fundamental changes there during the 1950’s and beyond.
Jorwerd was a typical close-knit rural community, where the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the farmer, the smith all had their respected places until cheap energy gave the farmer the milk machine, eliminating a farm hand, afforded him a tractor, retiring the horse, and was able to buy a bailer, which furloughed another farmhand. The ascent of the automobile also meant that people could live there but work and shop in the city, with cheaper prices and greater variety, so slowly the baker, the grocer, the butcher lost their clients and within a decade the village lost its soul, and with its soul gone, God too left, evident from the empty churches.
I believe that Jorwerd typifies our present world where God too has disappeared. I base this also on Deut. 32:20: “I shall hide my face from them; I shall see what their end will be”, I believe that God has withdrawn from this world, and that international capitalism has taken over: Mammon now has the final word everywhere. God left ‘to see what we, humans, make of it without his presence.’ My so-called pessimism is based on that premise.
The Jorwerd phenomenon is now a universal event. Manufacturing has gone to Asia, where labour and coal is cheap. We don’t mind the extra pollution and loss of jobs as long as we get bargains. Our personal prayers do not prevent the tragedies that are playing out all over the world with each year hundreds of textile workers burning to death, thousands of coal miners losing their lives, and cancers out of control, as long as we save money. God is gone. He is gone in government, in business, in education with the very odd exception, while still living in the hearts of a surprising scattering of people world-wide.
In the past couple of months I have been translating Dr. J. H. Bavinck’s book, now re-titled We and Our World. It has deeply affected me. Here is one reason why. “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all?wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”
I concur, and dare say that most churches fail to confess that, let alone live it, because they and their adherents have no kingdom vision. Bavinck writes about the kingdom that “Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the world of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.”
Here is another Bavinck quote: “It is impossible to visualize the immense difference between the majestic harmonious unity of creation, as it emerged from God’s hand, and the frantic, demon?dominated planet in which we, the cursed humanity, dwell after the fall into sin. The Kingdom is in shatters. That is the profound tragedy confronting the life of the world. This goes far beyond the fact that we have ripped up its cohesion: it actually means that God has surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers, whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it.” Yes, God is hiding his face.
I believe that to be true. When the Lord asks us to “Seek first the Kingdom” that simply means to seek the welfare of God’s creation, which include animals and plants, water and air, and somehow prepare ourselves for that kingdom to come.
Our efforts to have the cake and eat it too have resulted in a mammoth ‘mammon’ debt too big to be ever repaid. ‘Environmental debt’ too is totally out of control, and also beyond remedy. By our life style and lack of love for all that lives and moves and has its being, we have caused God to disappear from the world.
This is my very last column. I have decided to write a weekly column exclusively for the web where last year more than 35,000 people visited www.hielema.ca/blog, from all over the world, mostly non-Christians.
For more 30 years this paper has been tolerant enough to publish my not always uplifting writings. When you read this column I have already posted three new articles on hielema.ca. Join me there.
Bert@hielema.ca.