Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

November 4 2023

THE CASE FOR CAUTION.

My father was a successful businessman and entrepreneur, until he wasn’t. He failed to detect a radical change in his market, at the very time when he took on debt to finance an extensive home renovation. 

His clientele were the small bakers, of which every village in North Netherlands had a number, and every street corner in the city also. Almost overnight, with the advent of automobile ownership, and the growth of supermarkets, this scenario drastically altered, and with it his market. 

Geert Mak, one of the most celebrated authors in the Netherlands, pinpointed this event in his book, “How God disappeared from Jorwerd”, Jorwerd being a village in central Friesland, a location that could just as well have been any small settlement in rural Netherlands. It is the story of their retail merchants and the overpowering city influence, and also the overnight vanishing of the church and the loss of ‘faith’. 

My youngest brother lived in such a place – he worked in the city. Once there, I counted 5 abandoned churches: no retail stores or active faith-community at all. 

An identical phenomenon happened in Tweed, where I have lived since 1975. When I came, there were 4 hardware stores, a butcher, a baker, and a clothing store: nothing now. We do have one hardware store, large, on the South edge of town, too far out to walk to. 

This year the Salvation Army revived its Thrift Shop, now thriving: its church closed, and so is the Anglican while my Presbyterian Church is fading slowly. 

So, what holds the future? Will the automobile prevail? Will ‘faith’ return?

The automobile was not the only cause that killed both retail and church:  The dying faith in community and in God, kept alive during the economic depression, 1929-39, and also endured during the 1939-45 World War II, collapsed soon after peace came, replaced by faith in technology.  

Now that God vacuum, somewhat filled by the advent of the freedom-generating vehicle, is facing a major test: that idol, now our new deity, has become the very threat to our physical and spiritual survival. The latest Arctic News warns caused, ironically, by our so adored automobile and technology, that: “The climate is an angry beast and we are poking at it with sticks”. Can we tame that beast? That is the multi-trillion dollar question today.

The case for caution.

My father got burned when he failed to detect the onset of the new culture that killed his business. Now our entire self-driving mode is under attack, with the distinct possibility that a sudden and drastic rise in Global Heating will force governments to curtail the total use of gasoline-powered vehicles, while, replacing them with all-electric substitutes, will prove difficult, due to bottlenecks in material and affordability.

There is an additional case for caution because the Middle East holds the key to the oil supply and peace. A wrong turn there and the OPEC – the Oil Producing Exporting Countries – might close the tap, as they have a choke hold on our economies. 

My father failed to read the signs of the times, and so lost his business. 

The question today is much more complicated and all-consuming. Through my father’s failure I personally have learned a lesson, which has haunted me all my adult life. 

I have learned one additional lesson: the church, as an organization, no longer has an answer, even though I still attend. Bonhoeffer taught me that a church, existing only for itself, is a failure: it HAS to be there for others. Miraculously, my dwindling church is as good as it gets, even though our Sunday services are, by and large, useless, because, in my experience, sermons are a waste of time, making preachers redundant. What I see as important, is the singing, the coffee hour and fellowship there. What I see as important is our Monday-noon free hot meal, attended by some 20-25 people. What I see as important is our church initiated communal Christmas Cantata. What I see as important is the Wednesday morning Coffee Hour. What I see as very important is the use of the churchyard to grow greens for the local food bank, demonstrating that “The Earth is the Lord’s and all it contains”, as Psalm 24 attests. What we do miss is a communal prayer gathering.

Fortunately, our church building is right across the Beer Store and the only Food store.

The Belgic Confession is very explicit, which, when asking, “How do we know God?” answers: “First of all through his creation, which, as a wonderful book, tells us about him through his miraculous works”. That Word is shouting today.

Unless a church community emphasizes deeds, including environmental ones  – see the book of James – it will fail, as today so many churches already do.

October 28 2023

My BACK IS SORE. 

In our world we have opted for comfort and ease: it’s easy to prepare meals, it’s easy to be entertained, it’s easy to move from one place to another, it’s easy to provide light, coolness and heat.

That easiness, however, comes at a steep price. C. S. Lewis dictum comes to mind: “The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”  That’s the road we have taken.

So, why is my back sore? It’s not only my age, although that plays a role. It is because last week I and my oldest son – who did most of the work – dug up the potatoes that I seeded in the spring, making true Genesis 3: 17: Through painful toil you will eat. I didn’t dig just to fulfill the words of Scripture: I dug because I shun mechanical tools and prefer homegrown produce to lessen my ‘carbon footprints’. 

I had a good growing year: stored in my two small freezers, 50 meals of green beans, 50 meals of red beets and kale; cherry tomatoes. Now in my root cellar, in addition to the potatoes, there are also a large quantity of onions and apples. Ever since I read, almost 50 years ago, Diet for a small planet by Frances Moore Lappé, my wife and I have been vegetarian.

Yes, it’s a struggle out there.

My back is sore, and my psyche suffers too. In my weekly blog, my fusion of contemporary news and biblical references from a somewhat unorthodox point of view, makes me an outcast among the conservatives and thorn in the flesh among the liberal believers who pick and choose the Bible passages that fit their notion. 

Food in the news.

This week food is very much in the news, not food, the genuine, back-breaking stuff, but industrial ingredients that are pseudo-foods.

In two respectable newspapers – The UK Guardian and the Toronto Globe and Mail – alarming studies have shown that “ultra-processed foods” (UPFs) are becoming the main source of ‘nutrition’ for a majority of people. Ultra-processed foods contain ingredients you won’t find in your own kitchen. They’re formulations of substances derived from foods along with additives used to flavour, sweeten, bleach, colour, emulsify, texturize and preserve: they contain little, if any, real food. They include chicken nuggets, snack bars, cake mixes, ice cream, breakfast cereals – yes, your morning meal! – sliced breads, frozen waffles, pretzels, soft drinks, processed meats, instant noodles, frozen French fries, frozen pizza and many more. They are high in calories, added sugars, unhealthy fats and/or sodium, but stripped of gut-friendly fibre, protective phytochemicals and naturally occurring vitamins and minerals. They also are dumbing down our brains.

 

Recommendation.

Replace highly processed snacks with whole fruit, unsweetened yogurt, nuts and seeds, homemade trail mix, homemade muffins and raw vegetables, for example. 

Felice Jacka, a leading researcher of nutritional psychiatry, the co-director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University, Australia, and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, has discovered that Ultra Processed Foods affect our metabolism, our blood glucose, our body weight, and profoundly influences our immune system.

Here’s what Michael Pollan, professor in California, recommends:

1. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
2. Eating healthy is common sense. Don’t make it complicated.
3. Avoid processed foods and ingredients you don’t recognize.
4. Use meat for flavor, not the main course.
5. Pay more, eat less

My farming grandparents had quite a simple diet: potatoes, laced with pure fat followed by buttermilk porridge. The pure fat was worked away in their perpetual strenuous farm labor without the aid of mechanical tools. My maternal grandfather died at the age of 70, when, retired, he continued this regime without the heavy manual exercise: a sudden heart attack. My paternal grandfather, a grocer, lived till 90 because his diet was more varied.

The Food Industry.

We live in dangerous times: dangerous because deceit and lies are everywhere, including in the food industry.

Beware:

Just as the tobacco industry, for a long time, tried to confuse people by saying there was no direct link between smoking and health hazards, just as the powerful oil companies play down the cosmic catastrophe connected to the use of their products, so now the Corporate Food Industry is using the same deceptive tactics. Just think of the billions of dollars that are generated in profits through the industrialised food system every year, and the power of those industries to get people, including scientists, to muddy the waters. 

Keep Matthew 10: 16 in mind, the wise counsel Jesus gave there:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves,”  worth the occasional stab in the back.

October 21 2023

CHAOS CAUSES CHAOS, BECAUSE…..

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.

Chaos in US congress. Chaos in the world’s weather. Chaos in Ukraine. Chaos in the Middle East. Chaos in many families. Chaos in the most church denominations. Chaos in people’s minds. Chaos in education. Chaos in office towers. Chaos in the Trump’s mind. Chaos in the Amazon and Canada’s boreal forests, both turning from a ‘carbon sink’, to a carbon emitter. Chaos in both the Arctic and Antarctic. 

Why such wide-spread Chaos? 

Because everything is connected to everything else! 

There used to be self-contained communities, minimally touched by outside happenings. Now everything is connected to everything else, thanks to TV, Internet, world-wide trade, global money flows, last minute supply lines. 

Now all this is on the cusp of unraveling, because Middle East tensions will soon affect the world’s blood supply: OIL.

Chaos, derived from the Greek khaos, means ‘vast chasm, void’.

There is a tremendous ‘void’ in the world’s vocabulary: the “God” factor is missing, yet the Middle East is consumed with ‘religion’. Religion kills, as we saw in the World Trade Centre now two decades ago. Religion kills as we see everyday in our world, especially around the Israel region. Islam always has been a violent religion, forcing people to adhere to its vision of religion. 

Christianity is based on love, love for God, and, as Romans 11: 36 attests: “From God and through God and to God are all things”, with “God’s fulness now dwelling in Jesus Christ”, as Paul writes to believers.

The Matthew 24 scenario.

Today we are living the words of Matthew 24: “²¹ For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again, because “Escalation begets escalation”. 

The US says its decision to dispatch a second aircraft carrier group in the eastern Mediterranean is intended to bolster Israel’s security and “deter any state or non-state actor” from widening the conflict. That vague wording conceals a world of anxiety about a possible head-on collision with Iran.

Iran is the “state actor” that controls and coordinates the “non-state actors” – Hamas and the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza; Tehran-affiliated militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; and the most powerful of them all, Lebanon’s Hezbollah (the “Party of God”). This is what Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls the “axis of resistance”.

Iran undoubtedly views the additional deployment as an American escalation. It appears to be placing its militias on notice that new war fronts may soon open up. Israel is already fending off daily, limited Hezbollah cross-border attacks in the north, and is warning of the “destruction of Lebanon” if the militia joins Hamas’s war.

That same chapter, Matthew 24, warns us about false prophets, now evident everywhere, including the church, where the ‘heaven heresy’ is still dominant. Oh, yes, people are ‘spiritual’, a booming industry.

A recent study found that nearly nine out of 10 Americans hold one belief that can be described as “new-age spiritualism”, whether that’s reincarnation, telepathy, or astrology. However, the biblical given, captured in John 3, explicitly states that, “nobody has ever gone to heaven, except Jesus who came from there”, (verse 13), and especially verse 16, which captures more than any other text, the essence of the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

We are called to love God, and to love what he loves. That simple directive, quite explicit, beyond theological jargon and doctrine, states that, to gain eternal life, in God’s new creation, is to ‘love God through loving creation’. 

I repeat: the entire “Christian” faith can be summarized by sincerely believing that God, by sacrificing his Son, as payment for buying back Creation, will grant us eternal life, not, not, in heaven, but here on ‘terra firma’, God’s own earth. Romans 1: 20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse”. 

In my mind, the corollary, the direct and natural consequence of this text, is that those who see creation as divine and holy, and live that belief, will find grace in God’s eyes.

Look at the world realistically: Already the current El Niño is strengthening; already there are further reasons why the temperature can be expected to keep rising beyond today, causing increasing chaos, increasing wars, increasing search for water, for grain, for oil, with people moving to more moderate climates, away from tropical countries, and dangers from heat, floods and earthquakes. 

Remember: “Like a thief in the night…..”

October 14 2023

Poems are made by fools like me. But only God can make a tree.

                                                                                 Anonymous

Here is a foolish example:

We live in times of deepest gloom, 

With covid, wars and climate doom, 

the future looks so dire and grim, 

our only hope now comes from Him.

I call this foolish writing, because today nothing will prevent collapse anymore, yet we ignore all signs.

I am re-reading a book bought on March 26 2002. In the introduction to The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore, a former professor of Religion and Psychology, I read: “In a disenchanted world, for all its concern for moral and social action, religion separates itself from everyday life and becomes obsessed with its own brand of belief and moral purity. In this kind of setting, the people who pollute our rivers and oceans and exploit workers and families may go to church and profess strong moral values, and yet they don’t have any conscience about the water, the earth, or the human community.”

The author, a fine Catholic, a monk for 12 years – now married with 2 children – states that these persons, including us, are committing heinous sins, not acknowledged as such. 

His words echo those of Karen Armstrong, also a former ‘spiritual’, who wrote Sacred Nature, about 20 years after Thomas Moore implied the holiness of our earth, seas and skies. 

Of course, the earth is holy. Of course, the church, emphasizing ‘belief’ and confessional statements and pious behavior, will never ‘proclaim’ that state of ‘holiness’. Even now it has great problems with equality for women, basically because the Bible, written 3,000-2,000 years ago, saw women as subservient to men. The same is true for different sex orientations, even though in the animal world, this is quite common. 

The church should follow Karl Barth’s life rule: look at the world with the Bible in one hand, and a respectable newspaper or weekly in the other.

Become like children.

We must become like children, and dream, dream of faraway countries, dream of the future new world as I visualized it in my book, DAY WITHOUT END.

When I was 10 years old, I got a bladder infection, now simply cured with antibiotics. Then, in 1938, the doctor prescribed 6 weeks of bedrest! Also, some diet restrictions. The doctor, whose father lived next door, visited me a couple of times each week, while my grade 4 teacher came once a week, assigning homework. My bed was next to a picture window, three stories high, allowing me full view of the busy street, always different bakers, always vegetable merchants, milkmen doing deliveries, continually something to watch. Cars? No. I also read 100 books. 

In 1940, my 6^th grade of the school just around the corner from where we lived, occupied the third floor of our school building, overlooking the entire neighbourhood to the northerly sky where often thick clouds would resemble giant mountains, and I would dream of climbing them. 

I remember standing in front of Lake Louise, with the glaziers in the background, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with emotion. 

I now live on the edge of a large forest. Between the highway and my abode – a 2 storey dwelling, passive solar, with 4 large windows facing south and super insulated – I planted 4,000 trees, a monoculture I am afraid, of pine, the same uniformity that burned – is still burning! – in British Columbia, the opposite of a cure for Climate Change. Well, it proves the common saying: The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now, 85 years later -my 95^th birthday is TODAY! – I enjoy my solitude, my kids visiting faithfully. I love reading and writing, love hear myself chuckle, love follow my strict regime from dawn to bedtime. It gives me stability and predictability, still love foolishness: here’s another example.

A song celebrating the laws of Ecology.

(Everything is connected)

All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord, his ways foretell.
Remember earth, air, sea and tree
Are all a part of you and me.

(Creation knows best)

Creation knows the ways to go
God bred it in its natural know,

We therefore must inquire of her
To see where we go right or err.

(Nothing disappears)

Nothing will ever disappear
It lingers on, it is now clear
The oil we burn creates much ill
And causes universal kill.       

(No free lunch)

There is no free lunch to be had
The bills are due: they will be bad
Our children must pay this very great debt
We robbed them of their safety net.

We robbed them, left them in the lurch

No wonder they have left the church
We wasted, stole, their future need
Please Lord, forgive us our great greed.

Sing it! Now!

October 7 2023.

Do we need another ‘religious’ revolution?

Some 3200 years ago, a mere 120 generations, the first God/Creator-monotheistic revolutionary religion was born, when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. 600 years later, Zarathustra, on whom Nietzsche later based his hero, became the founder of Zoroastrianism. In that same period Confucius (551-479) appeared in China, and Buddha (563-483) in India.

Then, in the first century, Jesus was born, and I presume you know the rest of that revolution, still playing out, somehow. In the Seventh Century came the revolutionary Mohammed (570-632), founder of Islam, who died almost exactly six hundred years after Jesus.

Guess work.

So far, so good. What about the lack of new religious development in the 13^th and 14^thCentury? Blame it on the disastrous Black Plague, which set back development in Europe for centuries – half the population died! – so, I skip aheaf to the Reformation, which started with Luther in 1517. Luther’s revolutionary act, released a plethora of innovations and artistic expressions, as well as religious strife of immense cruelty.  

Also, during that period, America was discovered, at a time when Europe became too crowded, and wood fuel was running out.

Now another 600 years have elapsed: does this signal another major change?

Is a new religious revolution at hand? Are the current systems really in line with God’s intent? Would Jesus approve of an organizational clerical system that resembles the Old Testament setup? Wasn’t Jesus’ most vehement critique directed toward the church leaders of his day? Isn’t it plain that Christianity in its present form, is a failing enterprise?

Yes, all denominations are in trouble. 

In the Catholic Church Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has accused the pope of undermining the Catholic Faith, has suggested that other Vatican officials have veered so far from church teaching that they are no longer Catholic, and has warned that a landmark global gathering that opens this week at the Vatican could threaten “basic truths” of Catholic doctrine. 

The Protestant wing is no better off. It is also deeply divided over sexual orientation, while, in religion-soaked USA, a large segment of the church has become Nationalistic rather than Christian, seeing Trump as a Christ-like figure, unjustly suffering. The famous Dr. Harold Bloom in his The American Religion wrote that The American Religion masks itself as Protestant Christianity yet has ceased to be Christian.

Yes, the church in general has become purely Gnostic, separating body from soul. Dr. C. A. van Peursen, professor at the Netherlands’ most prestigious University, Leiden, in his Body, Soul, Spirit, writes that “the soul is a presence which makes the body what it is.”  However, religion has seen the body as being on an inferior plane, influenced by Descartes separating soul from body, even regarding body as evil, while Plato’s priority of soul over body, proclaiming death as a happy escape from the body, has also deeply influenced the Christian religion. 

The church resembles Greek pagan thinking, I need of a final revolution.

In my opinion, the Christian Church has inadvertently adopted the pagan Greek philosophy of Plato and Socrates, evident in the ‘heaven heresy’, separating soul from body. This teaching has given ‘the world’ the go-ahead to see creation as evil, exploiting her natural resources to the point where now all of life is imperiled, the very LIFE Jesus lived (John 10:10), by  becoming himself fully human.

J.H. Bavinck and Bonhoeffer, both highly respected Biblical scholars, have, indeed, revolutionary views. Dr. Bavinck, in his, Between the Beginning and the End, a radical Kingdom vision, makes the astonishing statement: “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal”, which means that salvation of the person and salvation of creation go hand in hand: you can’t have one without the other. 

That puts a stop to most church preaching, and calls for a life fully integrated with God’s Holy Creation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his essay, Your Kingdom Come, writes: We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism, I mean pious Christian, secularism. Not the godliness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth. The function of the church is to witness to the resurrection of Christ from the dead… and to the power of God in the new creation.

Do we need another ‘religious’ revolution?

Yes, a revolution that is no longer religious: a revolution that implements LIFE, and that to the full, that prepares for eternal life here, where we now love and move and have our being: All our actions, thoughts and desires must be geared toward that purpose.

However, beware, and be ready, for “the day of the Lord will come like a thief”. (2 Peter 3: 10)

September 30 2023

WHERE IS GOD?  Some theological musings.

“The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind”, says Psalm 115:16, yet, as Psalm 24 attests: The earth is the Lord and all that it contains. A contradiction? No. Compare it to that famous Rembrandt painting, The Night Watch, forever prescribed to him, but owned by the Dutch Government. There also is a saying that possession constitutes 90 percent of ownership. Yes, as owners of the earth – not stewards – we are on our own: God help us.

Another misconception: Jesus did not die to bear the load of our sins – that too – but, as John 3: 16 unequivocally tells us: Jesus died to buy back the ‘cosmos’ (all created matter) which we had acquired in a deal with the Devil. To connect Christ’s sacrifice solely with human ‘sin’, is, I believe, the ultimate cause of Climate Change. Which needs a further explanation! 

Had the church seen creation as ‘holy’, as ultimately divine – because Christ’ death restored divine ownership – and acted accordingly, the current cosmic crisis, only to get worse, would not have happened. 

So, where is God in all this? 

Deuteronomy 32: 20 provides the answer: “I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.” That’s us, you, me, everybody.

Have a close look at the older Testament. In it, God slowly disengages himself from us. Look at the sequence: In the Eden Garden, God walks and talks with Adam and Eve. With the Ark, God personally instructs Noah. Abraham argues with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses is called God’s friend, and after that, except for some ‘voice-mails’, God basically disappears from the earthly scene: God separates himself from us and our actions, though not on a personal level.

Yes, God appears to Elijah: first causing a hurricane, but no God there; then via an earthquake, but no God there; then in an enormous fire, but no God there either; then, surprisingly, in the sound of silence: yes, complete quiet, there’s where God appears. 

These three natural phenomena remind me of today: earthquakes: caused by fracking and other human actions; hurricanes increasing in strength and frequency, all human actions; forest-fires everywhere, all caused by human actions: God is absent there, but we are! Our evil actions have consequences! God is so different: He is in ‘the sound of silence’, in quiet contemplation, in personal piety, in prayer and peace.

Where is God basically?

God dwells, “in unapproachable light, whom nobody has seen or can see”. (1 Timothy 6: 16). The still influential Billy Graham, that Bible pounding-evangelist, quoted the book, little knowing what it contained. In a final interview with Larry King on CNN in 1991, Larry asked Billy, “What will happen when you die?”. The celebrated preacher answered, “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God”, in direct conflict with the above text, as well as John 3: 13, Nobody has ever gone to heaven, except the one who came from there, the Son of Man. 

We are earthbound, forever. 

Jesus, explicitly told us: The humble will inherit the earth. J. B. Phillips translates this as: ‘those who claim little for themselves will be the earth-dwellers’. 

It seems to me that, in the Hebrew part of the Scriptures, God, somehow, is different than in the Newer Testament. In the Old Testament, dominated by ‘the 10 commandments’, God is the stern judge, chastising his children. In the New Testament Jesus’ law of ‘love’, dominates: God becomes accessible only through the Son. Basically, God disappears, cedes authority. And we? We quietly mature in faith and grow in understanding, shedding our infancy because we cannot remain children forever: we simply have to grow up. Bonhoeffer, 80 years ago, mentioned “coming of age”. Curiously, this clashes with Jesus’ words, naming ‘the most important in the kingdom are those who become like children’ (Matthew 18:1-5). 

“Coming of Age”, could well mean being worthy to meet Christ, who wants us to grow up, and see how we will end up. The word ‘end’ here points to being a “Teleios” person, one who keeps ‘the New Creation’ in mind, the concept Jesus mentions in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect -teleios – as my heavenly Father is perfect”.

Where is God?

Where is God? Where is Bach? Where is Shakespeare? We know them, we love them, we see them through their legacy!

That’s also why we find God in the universe, the place God called ‘good’ seven times. Jesus did not bring religion: the church does. Jesus brought LIFE: John 10: 10: I have come that we may have life, and have it to the full.