Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE – Part Five

COVENANTS

Recap

In Part One of How Should We Then Live?, I concluded that Francis Schaeffer’s attempt to outline a new approach to Christianity in the USA had been a colossal failure, because it was high-jacked by the Religious Right, resulting in the Tea Party and the New Republican Party, waging war of the weak, leaving the poor poorer and the rich richer. The Law of Unintended Consequences at work.

Part Two dealt with the Lost Gospel of the Earth, showing how religion in general was instrumental in speeding up Creational deterioration by preaching that the elect go to heaven, while leaving the sinners behind, the total opposite of what the Bible teaches in Matthew 24:39.

Part Three exposed the Real American Religion, a Gnostic mix of irrelevance, seeing the earth as the enemy, the body as evil.

Part Four concentrated on Prophesy, how most people ignore the signs of the times, preferring not to rock the boat, refusing the face reality and falsely assuming that all will end well, even though numerous signs point to multi-faceted collapse, confirming that American Christianity does not have the answer:  on the contrary: it is part of the problem by following a false faith.

The remaining parts will be more positive, outlining a new way of life, beginning with Covenants, an instalment which came in at about twice the length of previous ones.

What is a Covenant?

The idea of Covenant has intrigued me for a long time. As a youth I often heard the word. My parents called themselves ‘Covenant Children’. I grew up in the Netherlands where, during the war 1940-45, there was a serious theological dispute concerning the Covenant and Baptism. This ecclesiastical controversy was so severe that families split, congregations were torn apart and new denominations emerged. I had a first-class seat in all this, as in the college I attended the sons and daughters of the ministers most intimately involved in this hair splitting, were my classmates. This experience gave me an early taste of religious intolerance when teenage boys refused to be exposed to the school opening prayer of teachers who attended the church whose synod had not approved of the actions of the dissidents.

In my youth Covenant applied only to baptism. I remember that in my church, whenever a child was baptized, we would automatically sing after the ceremony Psalm 105: “Jehovah’s truth will stand forever. His covenant bonds he will not sever… The Covenant made in days of old, with Abraham he does uphold.” That covenant had significance beyond generational lines never entered into the picture.

Yet the Covenant has aspects we seldom explore just as God himself has characteristics we rarely reveal. Both God’s sense of humor and his humility are evident in the Covenant.

Frederick Buechner, in his Telling the Truth, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale gave me a lot of new ideas. Thank you. For instance: that God has a real sense of humor is not a trait that the church has discovered. If ever it does, the church might become a more saleable commodity. That’s why I call this part of my series

“The Comedy of the Covenant.”

Here’s why. God made a covenant with Abraham and the first child born under the Covenant God made with Abraham is called “Laughter.” Laughter sets the stage of the Covenant. It means that all children of the Covenant are also children of Laughter.

And we have a lot to laugh about. Suppose that Queen Elizabeth, reputedly a very rich woman, worth multiple billions, would tell your extended family, all 20 of them, including spouses, children, and grandchildren: “I will have a contract made up, a Covenant. All my possessions, my castles, my land holdings, my stocks, shares, and crown jewels, everything I own, I will share with you. One condition I will make however, you must also share all that you own with me.”

Not a bad deal, we would say and we would be utterly foolish not to take her up on it; because suddenly each one of us would have a net worth of many millions of pounds. In addition, we all would be princesses and princes and wherever we went we would travel free and others would pay our hotel bills and meals. This unlikely situation would certainly be a cause of great merriment and laughter.

Well, that is the Comedy of the Covenant. The funny part is that it is not fiction but reality. God made such a contract with us, with all of us humans. He first made it with Noah, extended it through Abraham twice, then with Moses, David, and finally renewed and sealed it in Jesus Christ. In this contract with us God promised to share with us, as rightful heirs, as his daughters and sons, this whole universe, the entire creation, the gold it contains, the diamonds, the lakes and rivers and sea front, the mountains and meadows, the houses and forests, the birds and the animals: all that the world contains, a gift much more valuable than the Royal millions. And in addition, things the Queen cannot give: perpetual peace of mind, eternal life amidst loving people, a life without disease or death, no dead lines, only life lines to pursue. The only condition on our part is that “We do justice to his creation, love mercy, honouring all creatures and walk humbly with the God Creator.”

Is that what the Covenant is all about? Read on.

As is plain from the example, a Covenant is a treaty, a contract, where two parties agree to do something together. A Covenant is thus a sort of bonding, a welding together of lives, a promise to be faithful to each other and to all aspects of creation, no matter what comes. A marriage is thus a Covenant. Ideally a marriage is a life time arrangement between a woman and a man to stay together, to share the good and not so good times, in riches and in poverty, till death part them.

Curiously, the word ‘Religion’ also means ‘binding together.’ Thus, in essence, Covenant and Religion, are one and the same thing. And is Religion like a comedy? You must be kidding! It’s more like a tragedy the way we witness it. The religion we usually experience is solemn and serious, a matter of death and sickness more than life and enjoyment.
Yes, both Covenant and Religion are like a comedy.

The place to start is with a woman laughing. She is an old woman, and, after a lifetime in the desert, her face is cracked and rutted like a six-months’ drought. What’s so funny about this?

Let’s retrace our steps a few thousand years. The scene is the area of present-day Israel, or, as it was called in those days, Canaan. This woman, pushing 91, is laughing. She is laughing because she has just been told by an angel that she is going to have her first baby. Now, I must admit, today this is medically possible, but certainly not recommended for a woman pushing 100. Even though it was God’s angel who told her, she can’t control herself and her husband can’t control himself either. He keeps a straight face a few seconds longer, but he ends up cracking up, too. They are laughing at the idea that their baby will be born in a nursing home. They are laughing because the angel not only seems to believe it but seems to expect them to believe it too.

They are laughing because laughter is better than crying and may not be all that much different. They are laughing because if by some crazy chance it might just happen to be true, then they really would have something to laugh about.

Abraham, so goes one account, laughed until he fell on his face, and Sarah? She hid behind the door of the tent. Actually it was her laughter that got them all going.

According to Genesis, the Bible book which records this story, God then interrupted and asked about Sarah’s laughter. Sarah was scared stiff and denied the whole thing. But God insisted, “No, but you did laugh,” and, of course, he was right.

The most interesting part of it all was that God, far from getting angry at them for laughing, told them that when the baby was born he wanted them to name Isaac, which in Hebrew means ‘laughter.’ So you can say that God not only tolerated their laughter, but blessed it and, in a sense, joined in, which makes it a very special laughter indeed. Here we have a snapshot of God and humanity laughing together, sharing a glorious joke in which we all are involved.

What is all this laughter about? The laughter is about the Covenant. Some 25 years earlier, when Abraham was 75 year sold and Sarah, his wife, a mature 65, barren and thus childless, they were both living in Mesopotamia, the present Iraq.

God, out of the blue, called Abraham and said, “Abraham, I have something special in store for you. You see the world around you? People are doing well. They are growing rich and comfortable and somehow this causes them to forget me and go their own way. I want you to be different and treasure my way and I want you to leave your family and friends and cozy position and go to a country where I will make a great nation out of you, even though you have no son as yet. I will make your name great and will bless those who bless you and all people on earth will be blessed through you.”

God, in other words, made a contract with Abraham, a Covenant. Remember, he then was 75 years old, Sarah 65, and incapable of having children. Even for those days, when people did live long, this was a pretty advanced age for child bearing. And, I’m sure, Abraham figured that, once he had settled in Canaan, the present day Israel, matters would soon fall into place and his heir would come along.

But God’s time-scale is different to ours. So the years rolled by until finally, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90, 25 long years after God called them, the angel arrived with his shattering announcement. Then they laughed. They were going to have a baby after all. The strangers who appeared at the door turned out to be not Jehovah’s witnesses but God’s very angels. Who else could have possibly set up such a scene and arranged it to give such astonishing news? It all happened so freely, so hilariously. What could they do but laugh at the craziness of it all. So they laughed until tears ran down their cheeks.

And so the child born under the Covenant God made with Abraham is called laughter. And because we are all part of that covenant, we too are children of laughter. I think the joke is on us.

God chose us. That’s quite comical to start with. I don’t know about you, but I do know that God made a pretty foolish choice to include me as a child of the Covenant.

Marriage, of course, is a covenant. Covenant is a matter of the heart. So is marriage. In a marriage we also make vows to be faithful. Often a name change is involved as well, as was the case also when God made a covenant with Abram who became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah.

Why did God choose the Jewish people? Again God’s sense of humor. Why not the sophisticated Greeks, or the clever Egyptians, or the dominating Romans? I think he chose the Israelites because, as somebody has said, they are just like everybody else, except more so – more religious than anybody religious, and when they are secular, being secular as if they invented the concept. What applies to the Israelites then, and the Jewish people now, certainly applies to contemporary church people as well, I am sure.

Also if you look at the Christian Religion a bit more closely it really is a ridiculous affair. The Bible tells is about a king who tramps around the country side with a bunch of uneducated fishermen as his support group. The Prince of Peace, as he calls himself, looks more like a Prince of Fools, who, in spite of his miraculous powers, is not taken seriously at all, and ends up being hanged as a common criminal with only 120 followers present at his final farewell. Today it’s no wonder that people find Christianity a ridiculous affair, and I can well see their point. Just listen to these lines taken from Luke 6: “Blessed are you when you are poor.” Tell me, do you want to be poor? “Blessed are you when you weep.” Who wants to be unhappy for Pete’s sake? “Blessed are you when people hate you.” Well, don’t we all want to be liked and respected?

Yet, there is comedy in all this. Comedy is being different. We laugh not at the usual. What is common place is not funny. God makes those people part of the Covenant who are different, are not afraid to stand for justice, justice in creation, justice in the nation, who place communal interests above personal desires, all for the coming of the Kingdom. God does not want people who, in the eyes of the establishment, do the commonly accepted thing. God wants atypical people, people who are different, also by the way they live and eat and drive. Just imagine Abraham going out on a limb, leaving friends and relatives, on a promise to become a father of a great nation. People who met him 20 year later reported that he had sired a son by his wife’s slave. “Some heir!” they reported. Today, all of us would call Abraham a fool.

Talking about fools: how about Noah! There’s a crazy man. He starts to build an oceangoing ship in the middle of the prairies. Noah who did not know a rudder from an oar, who had never seen a ship or an ocean in his life, this fellow, a farmer, a wine grower who loved to imbibe of his own vintage, started to build a ship in the middle of nowhere. Hilarious. Just something you expect from a wine-bibber. He became a tourist attraction and you should hear him thundering to the people: “if you did not turn to the Lord Creator and ask for forgiveness and mend your ways, you will all drown”. There’s where everybody burst out laughing: the punch line. Best show in town! And when it all happened, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, Noah knew he had been right.

Both Abraham and Noah possessed a curious thing, a thing we all have, but not in the same way. Noah had faith in God’s promises. All people have faith, but usually in finite things, such as science or money or their own sense of superiority. Because Noah believed in God, his family was chosen to make a new start in creation. For that purpose God made a Covenant with him.

Basically this Covenant, as related in Genesis 9, is a Covenant with Creation. Six times in this short passage God repeats that the Covenant made here with Noah, is with every living creature and with the earth. In essence God says here: “People of the earth, I am the Creator. Here I now pledge to form a triad, a Covenant with three parties (1) With the Earth, (2) With you as my image bearers, and (3) With me, as the Head of the Covenant.”

“Remember,” God said, “the line of the Covenant is not vertical: first me, then you, then the earth, with the earth not really in touch with Me. No, no, the earth, the trees, the rocks, the bees and buffaloes, all are my creatures, the works of my hands.”

Picture a triangle: God occupies the top and on the other two corners are we and the earth, with lines both extending to and from each corner as we all are inter- dependent. The Earth gives life to humans, but also receives input from them. We are dependent on the earth, but can also enhance it. God gives life to us and the earth and all praise God in return. Read Psalm 19, a beautiful hymn of praise.
In other words, if we look after the earth and after ourselves and our fellow creatures, caring for the crocodiles in the jungle and our neighbours next door, then God will look after us.

This Covenant, said God to Noah, will endure throughout eternity. God, People, the Land: an inseparable Triad. To seal it all, God sent his Son, as the New Head of the New Covenant. Jesus, God’s Son, Jesus, the heart of our religion, the Head of the Covenant.

The Covenant sealed with blood

Covenant. Some people call it the Blood Covenant, because in the old days a Covenant between people was always sealed with blood. Here is a Davidic example. In 1 Samuel 18 we read that David and Jonathan made a covenant. As a sign of the Covenant Jonathan, the crown prince, took off his clothes and gave them to David. He also surrendered his sword and other weapons, even more personal and valuable than clothes. And David did the same. They completely exchanged their personal belongings, as a sign and symbol that they were one. They also did something else, not related in the Bible, but part of the general rule of personal Covenant. This ritual required an incision in their wrists. Both parties would then raise their wrists to heaven and let the blood mingle. In the incision they would rub dirt to leave a scar as a permanent sign of their mutual allegiance. They then would sit down, make a list of their possessions and exchange those lists with the promise that whatever the one part owned would become the rightful property of the other. In order to seal all this they would walk in the figure of an 8 around two altars as a sign of eternity. Then the two parties to the covenant would eat a special Covenant meal, a lamb and unleavened bread, with each party bringing his own bread and offering it to the other. They did the same with wine, pouring the wine of the one into the goblet of the other. Jesus, as Head of he Covenant, did the very same thing. His blood flowed for us. His wounds are still visible as an eternal sign of the Covenant, an everlasting scar on the God of the Trinity, that whatever is God’s, is also ours. The Lord of Creation gave it all to us. He is the God of the Universe. He signed over the ownership of this cosmos to the people of the Covenant, those who confess Jesus to be their Lord.

What a comedy! The comedy is that through Christ, God and God’s people – you and I – come together, become equals. The comedy is that God shares God’s Infinity with our finite being. There is an unfathomable even greater contrast between God and ourselves and between the Queen of England and us.

Yet God and we have become one in Jesus Christ. Look at the Lord Supper. There Jesus says the familiar words: “This is my body, given for you, and this cup is the New Covenant in my blood poured for you”: now not God but Jesus us the party of the Covenant. God has disappeared from the scene and Jesus is now at the centre. Paul tells us to clothe ourselves with the cloak of righteousness, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so become a new creation, for God has reconciled the cosmos to himself in Christ’s full-bodied Covenant language.

So the Covenant idea is woven throughout the entire bible. In essence the Bible is the Covenant story. God made a covenant with us and with all creation. The covenant between God- Jesus- and humanity, all of us men and women, is therefore the intimate foundation, the meaning and purpose of creation. Creation is the visible basis of the Covenant, its ultimate realization. Creation is there because God in Jesus desires to enter into a Covenant with humanity. We, as human beings, exist because God continuously calls us to the Covenant. God makes us discover our existence more and more as the daily experience of living in the Covenant, in his creation. All this is derived from the loaded expression of “created in God’s image and likeness.” Our day-to-day life refers to God. Our life resembles God because we, as men and women, as conscious persons, experience our living as participants in the Covenant. We realize the meaning of God’s self-revelation in creation through the Covenant. In the created world, we are the visible representatives of the invisible God.

Christ is the First born of creation. He was the first human being: the perfect creature, after whom we have been fashioned. Yes, physically we look like Christ. The Image is real. Colossians 1 relates how all things exist in him.

Jesus is the original human pattern, the prototype of all human existence. God, in his plan of salvation, revealed himself fully in Jesus, who represents humanity for us and in this way completed creation and attained the perfect life in God.

We are created after the pattern of Christ. Through the Covenant we experience that likeness to God in a personal response of love. As Children of God, as his heirs, through the Covenant with God we share our humanity with the Son, who is the Lord of all that exists, and through whom the universe was made. The entire creation is there because it is permanently willed in Christ by the Father, because the Father loves it as the Christ.

And what would happen if the Covenant was broken? Genesis 15 gives an illustration of what happens then. There it is related how God and Abraham covenanted. Abraham is asked to cut animals in two and both God, in the form of fire, and Abraham in person, pass through these severed animals. The cutting of these beasts illustrates that if the covenant is not kept the bodies of the parties concerned would be cut in half as punishment. Later when the Israelites abandoned the agreement, the 10 tribes were banished from the earth never to be heard from again. In essence the people of Israel were broken up for ever.

So the Covenant is not for all. Those who abide by its terms will, when Christ returns, share in his glory and complete the work of creation: an eternal assignment, because Creation is Infinite as God is Infinite.

Next week: Celtic Christianity: How should we then live in creation? Part Six.

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 20^th 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-20^th 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.

JANUARY 19 2014

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? (Part Three)

THE REAL AMERICAN RELIGION

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.

Caution: some of you may not like this Part Three.

“Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah” is quite a common Christian hymn: it also is quite unabashedly unchristian. The melody is majestic but the words are pure pagan because it preaches nothing but Gnosticism, that age-old heresy clearly condemned by the early Christian Church, but now so prevalent in Christian North America that we no longer recognize its heretical content: it is indeed a perfect example of the Real American Religion. Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer, after a visit to the USA in the late 1930’s, pinpointed the cause. He lamented that “God has granted American Christianity no Reformation.”

Harold Bloom agrees. This foremost literary critic in his book The American Religion writes “The United States of America is a religion-mad and religion-soaked country. We think we are Christian. But we are not. So creedless is the American Religion that it needs to be tracked by particles rather than by principles. The American Religion is post-Christian, despite its protestations, and even that it has begun to abandon Protestant modes of thought and feeling.”

Bloom argues in his book that the American Religion, which is so prevalent among us, masks itself as Protestant Christianity, yet has ceased to be Christian. It has kept the figure of Jesus, a very solitary and personal American Jesus, who is also the resurrected Jesus rather than the crucified Jesus or the Jesus who ascended again to the Father. He quotes President Eisenhower notorious for remarking that the United States was and had to be a religious nation, and that he didn’t care what religious it had, as long as it had one. Bloom takes a sadder view: “we are, alas, the most religious of countries, and finally only varieties of the American Religion will flourish among us, whether its devotees call it Mormonism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, or what-ever-you-will. And the American Religion, for its two centuries of existence, seems to me irretrievably Gnostic. It is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the-self, and the knowledge (gnosis) leads to freedom, a dangerous and doom-eager freedom, from nature, time, history, and community.”

Bloom shakes his head in unhappy wonderment at the politically correct younger intellectuals, who hope to subvert what they cannot begin to understand, an obsessed society wholly in the grip of a dominant Gnosticism, typified by Fundamentalism. “Fundamentalists are everywhere where learning is too heavy a burden for mortal minds to carry,” observed one American scholar. Writes Bloom: “Fundamentalists, as unwitting Gnostics, do not believe that God made them. Their deepest knowledge is that they are no part of the Creation, but existed as spirits before it, and are as old as God himself.” The most treasured emblems of these people are the flag and the fetus. The paradox is that the fetus must not be aborted, but whether the infant starves or not seems a secondary matter.

Political Power, the Poor and the Bible

This past week Paul Krugman, in his column in the New York Times, wrote: “It’s much more difficult for Republicans, who are having a hard time shaking their reputation for reverse Robin-Hoodism, for being the party that takes from the poor and gives to the rich. And the reason that reputation is so hard to shake is that it’s justified. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast additional harm if they had won the 2012 election. Moreover, G.O.P. harshness toward the less fortunate isn’t just a matter of spite (although that’s part of it); it’s deeply rooted in the party’s ideology, which is why recent speeches by leading Republicans declaring that they do too care about the poor have been almost completely devoid of policy specifics.”

Yet the Bible and especially the Psalms constantly tell us to protect the poor and look after those who have trouble managing their lives. But, writes Ellen M. Rosenberg in The Southern Baptists:  “The Bible is less read than preached less interpreted than brandished…The Book has become a talisman.” This notion of the Bible is not so much Christian as Muslim, and has resulted in a disastrous anti-intellectualism rejecting most of Western intellectual history in favour of an inerrant icon, the limp leather Bible, hardly ever read as Scripture and understood what it really conveys: that God created, that we uncreated and that Jesus rectified the wrong by dying on the cross. Gnosticism’s knowledge is not knowledge in the usual sense. The early church father Irenaeus called it ‘pseudo knowledge’, an aberration of knowledge. Nowhere is this more evident than in American ‘gnosis’, for the end-product of that gnosis is the profound and relentless anti-intellectualism that has plagued and continues to plague American Religion and American Life as a whole.

Why is Gnosticism so wrong?

My NIV study Bible, in its introduction to the letters of John, has this to say: “One of the most dangerous heresies of the first two centuries was Gnosticism. Its central teaching is that spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil. From this unbiblical dualism flow the five errors of which the three most important are: (1) Man’s body is evil. (2) Salvation is escape from the body, achieved by special knowledge (gnosis). (3) Christ’s true humanity is denied in two ways: Christ only seemed to have a body, and/or the divine Christ joined the man Jesus at baptism and left him before he died.”

Rev. (Presbyterian) Philip J. Lee wrote Against the Protestant Gnostics. In it he quotes the great Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber: “The perpetual enemy of faith in the true God is not atheism (the claim that there is no God), but rather Gnosticism (the claim that God is known).” The fundamental problem between biblical faith and gnostic faith begins with two different world views. Biblical faith insists that the Creation is well made. Gnosticism denies that there is any direct link between the Creation and God. No wonder (Christian) Stephen Harper, Canada’s P.M., a fanatic adherent of Gnosticism, doesn’t care for Climate Change and pursues Economic Growth at all costs.

Yes, that full-throated- belt- it out- tune of which the opening line is Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land, is the unadulterated Gnostic gospel. Some versions have replaced Jehovah – which has ‘Witness’ connotations – with Redeemer, but since Gnosticism has no use of redemption (their adherents are pure spirits) this does not make the hymn any better. The song, in a very personal, individualistic way, asks for guidance on the way to heaven, but the Bible is no guide-book to heaven. It always appeals to the corporate body of believers. Faith is the opposite of finding ourselves; it is being found by God. Rev. Lee quotes 1 Cor. 1:9: “God is faithful, by whom you (plural) were called into the fellowship (koinonia) of his Son.” Koinonia is the Greek word Paul used to describe the particular form of participation with one another by which Christians are bound together. The form of the Lord’s Supper also uses koinonia: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation (koinonia) in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break is it not a participation (koinonia) in the body of Christ? In 2 Cor. 13 this is again used: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

The Kingdom = the Coming of the New Creation

Johan Herman Bavinck, in his forth-coming book, simply called The Kingdom, writes that “the central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering, but its entire focus is aimed at that unique, that powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom. It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. 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.”

Those are revolutionary words in North America bypassed by the Reformation.

So much for the “me” in Guide me. The rest of the line also goes against everything the Bible stands for. Pilgrim through this barren land agitates directly against the Genesis creation story where God, after each phase calls his act of creation ‘good’ and when our cosmos was completed, looked back to see what he had done, called the world and they who dwell there in ‘very good’. Pilgrims? No way. We are ‘adam’: of the earth, forever.

Rev. Lee makes an interesting observation regarding faith healing and speaking in tongues. He writes: “the purpose of such healing is obvious: it is to prove that although nature is evil, is crippling, blinding, deafening, deforming, killing, super-nature is healing, restorative and saving. ….A similar concept is involved in speaking in tongues: (at work is) the breaking of natural language barriers, the refusal to be bound by the linguistic rules of an earthly community.”

Gnosticism sees the function of religion as escape. Moody – after which a Bible Institute is named – in a sermon, told his audience: “I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, ’Moody, save all you can.’”

It is apparent to me that no denomination is free of Gnosticism. Where some confessions state it differently, almost all church members see Heaven as the believers’ final destination which is nothing else than a form of escapism, an integral part of Gnosticism.

Let me conclude with a quote from Johan Herman Bavinck taken from his magisterial chapter on the Kingdom where God’s Kingdom – the New Creation- is the believer’s final destination.

“In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the world of animals and all plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.

This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis­so­nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies have their orderly trajectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice, and so, in their course they sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water?satu­rated earth, their summits piercing the clouds; they stand there in proud loftiness but even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation lies only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.”

Yes, not heaven, but this renewed earth, God’s Kingdom, so well described by Bavinck, is the Christian’s final ‘resting’ place. The refusal by the Church (even those denominations that treasure J. H. Bavink’s words) to even consider calling God’s Creation holy, is a direct result of gnostic influences.

The church is almost totally preoccupied with the written Word, the Scriptures, which are indeed called Holy. Father, Son and Holy Spirit form a unity. God’s direct Primary Word, Creation and the Written Word also form a unity. Reluctance and refusal to see the two Words as One is a typical characteristic of Gnosticism: we can’t have one without the other.

No wonder Gnosticism is the Real American Religion.

Next week: Part Four: Prophets

JANUARY 12 2014

I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you (meaning you and me) and with every living creature that was with you – the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the Ark with you – every living creature on earth.”

                                                                     Genesis 9: 9-10

Even the Pope now tells us that the world lives under the global dictatorship of Capitalism. This is the cover from Pope Francis’ first important speech:

APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION

EVANGELII GAUDIUM

OF THE HOLY FATHER

FRANCIS

TO THE BISHOPS, CLERGY,

CONSECRATED PERSONS

AND THE LAY FAITHFUL

                                                 ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL

IN TODAY’S WORLD

He started his exhortation as follows:

“The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and an­guish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spir­it which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.”

Has the Pope’s with his courageous words on poverty – which already have upset the billionaires – identified the real enemy? Doesn’t the covenant between God, us and creation have priority?

The Creation Covenant

In this second installment I will outline how religion in general and Christianity in particular has failed to abide by the most basic of covenants, that between God, the human race and all that lives and moves and has being. Not only have religious institutions chosen to downplay that creation is from God and thus holy, but large segments of Christian church outright condemn those who try to obey the laws of creation. Instead most church goers defend the actions of polluters, claiming that they are protected by the mandates of Genesis 1: 28-29, giving them dominion over the earth. At the heart of this argument is the failure to understand what “The Kingdom of God” stands for. There, in the Kingdom of God, the first shall be the last, the least shall be the greatest and ‘dominion’ means ‘serving’.

Why is creation not considered holy?

I am always puzzled how fundamentalist people can call the Scriptures inerrant and infallible with not a word out of place, yet its canon was fixed by majority vote of some 300 people at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, making it God’s Secondary Word. At the same time the church refuses to call Creation holy, even though it is God’s direct act, his Primary Everlasting Word. The Bible will disappear: the cosmos is forever. I can be critical of the church because I love the church and daily search the Scriptures. It is my considerate opinion that the church needs a new creation-centered focus: a theology of the earth. Next week I will pose a possible answer to this ‘creation is holy’ question.

Dr. Lynn White was right. Who? This history professor went back to trace “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”. His essay was published in the journal Science. In it he suggests that the mentality of contemporary Christendom to regard the earth as a resource for human consumption was much older than Industrial Revolution, and had its roots in medieval Christianity and attitudes towards nature. …Citing the Genesis creation story he argued that Judeo-Christian theology have always believed and still is of the opinion that we can exploit the natural world because the Bible asserts man’s dominion over nature and establishes a trend of anthropocentrism, where we, as human, are at the centre of the universe, because we make a distinction between man (formed in God’s image) and the rest of creation, which has no “soul” or “reason” and is thus inferior.

Dr. White stated that these beliefs have led to an indifference towards nature which continues to impact an industrial, “post-Christian” world, and concludes that applying more science and technology to the problem won’t help, that our fundamental ideas about nature must change; we must abandon “superior, contemptuous” attitudes that make us “willing to use it [the earth] for our slightest whim.” He suggests adopting St. Francis of Assisi as a model in imagining a “democracy” of creation in which all creatures are respected and man’s rule over creation is delimited.

Now that the current pope has assumed the name of Francis will this dualism also disappear? No. The view that God is good and nature is evil still dominates the world’s churches. At the root of this gnostic heresy lies the common belief that, upon death, we go to heaven to be with God, pushing the earth away as irrelevant and disposable. The church’s body language, its hymns which never identify the earth as the human’s future home, almost always refer to heaven as the final destination, portray a different future. Many see the pursuit of ecology is a pagan practice, believing that technology is the solution.

The Lost Gospel of the Earth

In The Lost Gospel of the Earth Tom Hayden writes: “The 700-page Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity includes less than one page on environmental issues. In a chapter called ‘The Future of Christianity’ it notes that problems of population growth and resource decline lie ahead, but we are reassured that ‘it seems likely that new discoveries may provide the means for averting the cumulative threats of population explosion and diminishing food resources.’ There is no sense of a moral dimension of urgency in this Christian hope for a technological fix.”

Hayden continues: “The 1991 edition of Judaism by Arthur Hertzberg is advertised as an ‘anthology of the key spiritual writings of the Jewish tradition.’ This edition was revised to take into account the new questions which have been debated in Judaism in recent decades. But in 310 pages, there is not a single reference to the environmental crisis.”

I have several books by Roman Catholic theologians. I truly admire their concern for the environment. In 2000 I had a long discussion with Dr. Herman Fiolet, a former professor at the R. C. University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands who holds a double doctorate in both Reformed Theology and Roman Catholic doctrine. When I met him in his apartment in Hilversum our long discussion finally stranded on our conflicting views on eternity and sin. I see polluting a sin, see driving a car a sin. We need a new definition of sin, emphasizing our sins against creation. This past week I read an Anglican statement that “Without an acute awareness of sin, the entire ecclesiastical enterprise becomes redundant”. My Roman Catholic friend believed that, mostly based on the teachings of Teilhard de Chardin, ultimately the human race will attain perfection. The well-known priest Thomas Berry expressed this also in his The Dream of the Earth. Both Dr. Fiolet and Berry say that “This earth is already now capable of being heaven”. No word on Christ making all things new, including the New Earth, after we, as humans, have run it into the ground.

There is much that I agree with in Teilhard’s reasoning, such as “Until the human is understood as a dimension of the earth, we have no secure basis for understanding any aspect of the human.”

The traditional view of Catholics was expressed by New York’s Cardinal John O’Conner when on Earth Day 1990 he admonished his flock that “the earth exists for the human person and not vice-versa.” No Gospel of the Earth for this cardinal.

Is Sin against Creation a sin against the Holy Spirit?

Increasingly I see sin against creation as the original sin, and would even venture to suggest that it constitutes the sin against the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit of God that hovered over the waters ‘in the beginning.’(Gen. 1:2). I see the original sin as the human failure to ask permission from the tree in the Garden of Eden to take the apple, and thus placing itself above the tree, upon which we depend for our oxygen: trees can live without us but we can’t live without trees. The tree signifies life.

I realize that this is a controversial statement and therefore I write it with a great measure of hesitation. Suffice it to say that overall there is little or no concern by the church for the cosmos which the Lord created. I just does not seem to register with the church people that God loved the cosmos more than he loved his son, offering up Jesus, his only Son in order to buy back the cosmos, his work of unsurpassed art, that treasure with its ultimate complexity yet totally harmonious, a world which we take for granted and refuse to call holy.

I was greatly surprised to find that even Reformed thinking is deeply influenced by the prevailing notion that we can redeem the earth. The book that asserts this is the 1980 Earth Keeping, Christian Stewardship and Natural Resources, written primarily by Calvin College people, a post- secondary institution owned by the Christian Reformed Church. Frankly the scenario painted by the team of authors is no different from that offered by the Teilhard de Chardin adherents. Here is a quote looking ahead to 2025, where people who left the earth in 1980 by space ship, return. “After landing safely, we were greeted by a crowd of healthy, happy-looking people – much excited at our having set down in their area…..The leader of that welcoming group began to describe to us the changes that had taken place since our departure forty-five years ago. (They find that) the concept of stewardship and the ideal of justice it entails have been incorporated into the general mentality of twenty-first century people…..we act in light of that planetary vision, a sense of the delicate balance of the inter-relating parts of Earth and the wish to care for all creation.”

Now, Thirty Five years later, we know that this sort of utopian talk is just that: the raw reality of fallen humanity is becoming more and more evident. I find it highly disturbing that not even the segment of society which calls itself Reformed Christian has the correct view of the future.

So what about the secular crowd, those who have no heaven to go to?

In 1974 I bought a book by Robert Heilbroner, an eminent economist and author of many books, including a text book on Economics. In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect Heilbroner writes: “Nor is it easy to foresee a willing acquiescence of humankind individually or through its existing social organizations, in the alterations of life-ways that foresight would dictate. If then, by the question “Is there hope for man?” we ask whether it is possible to meet the challenge of the future without the payment of a fearful price, the answer must be: No there is no such hope.”

At least that is straightforward. No hope. He continues: “The death sentence is therefore better viewed as a contingent life sentence – one that will permit the continuance of human society, but only on the basis very different from that of the present, and probably only after much suffering during the period of transition………..the long-term solution requires nothing less than the gradual abandonment of the lethal techniques, the uncongenial life-ways, and the dangerous mentality of industrial civilization itself.” Linus Pauling who twice won a Nobel Prize in two different fields, expressed similar views, and so did Jane Jacobs in her Dark Age Ahead.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “The churches are interested in fighting only a rearguard action for survival and preservation of their privileges and perquisites.” Based the Genesis 9 covenant, Bonhoeffer also wrote that God, the human race and the earth belong together. Isn’t time for the churches to proclaim and practice that truth?

Next week part 3: The real American Religion.

JANUARY 5 2014

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?

(Part 1)

Introduction

I intend to write a series on the above theme. So far it looks like it will have at least 5 instalments, possible as many as 10. Perhaps it will become a book: just kidding. It’s easy to write a book: it’s publishing that’s the hard part. So, no book.

Back to my topic. Francis Schaeffer (1912-84) posed the question of How Should we then Live? in which he traced Western history from Ancient Rome until the time of writing (1976) along three lines: the philosophic, scientific, and religious.

Both in his book and in the later film series he advocated a return to biblical living, believing that in this way we would be able to fashion a faithful way of life and be an example for a just society. As we all know, the Bible can be explained in different ways. The segment of society that read the book and saw the videos followed the interpretation of Jerry Falwell. His conservative movement subsequently degenerated into the Tea Party poopers, the Christian Right, the Prosperity Gospel crowd and lately the Republican Party which cut off unemployed aid and food stamps to needy recipients. Oh yes, these people also deny Climate Change. Where New York City is building dikes to protect it from rising waters, North Carolina, a Republican stronghold, a state very much subject to hurricanes and storm surges, refuses point-blank to erect protecting walls, instead relying on God to save them from drowning. In short Schaeffer’s book suffered from the Law of Unintended Consequences, resulting in the total opposite of what the Bible teaches on ‘loving one’s neighbour’.

The title How Should we then Live? is taken from Ezekiel 33: 10, the King James Version. This text in the NRSV reads in full: Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said: “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?”

Paul D. Hanson, a Harvard professor, in his book The People Called starts out to say that “There is no life that is not community. And no community not lived in praise of God.” Commenting on Ezekiel he states that this entire bible book is structured around a series of visions that portray Yahweh’s response to the sacral impurity of the land, an element that Schaeffer and his later followers neglect to mention, a situation that finds its New Testament equivalent in Romans 8: 22: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pain of childbirth right up to the present time”. If that was true in Paul’s time in around the year 50 A.D., how much more is this the case in the year of the Lord 2014.

It is with this all-encompassing groaning in the background that I will start this series, and begin with outlining where we are on the time-line of history.

We live in ‘ending’ times.

Geert Mak in his study of a Frisian village a few decades ago traced the development of that tiny town from an integrated self-sufficient economy to a place where its spirit was killed and God disappeared.

There, in Friesland, in that unique Dutch province, Geert Mak’s story is about farmers and money, about the small merchants and the encroaching city, about the new people who were and remained strangers. It’s all about the years in which everything was sacrificed on the altar of progress, how machinery eliminated the farmhands, how the automobile killed the small independent stores, how commuting to the city resulted in a village full of outsiders. That’s how God died there. All this made true Paul D. Hanson’s thesis that “There is no life that is not community. And no community not lived in praise of God.”

Everywhere in the world this process is repeating itself thanks to the automobile, not only killing community, but also killing the planet. Gone is the agrarian era, the period when life was determined by tradition and parental authority, by stable norms, by a quiet pace of life and certain standard of attitudes.

Yes, we live in ‘ending’ times. Here’s why.

In the first few centuries Anno Domini the church was a tiny persecuted minority. Emperor Constantin gave the church in the year 313 the freedom of religion and a short time after, church membership was a ticket to promotion. In the following centuries –during the entire Middle Ages – everybody was automatically a member of the church and there was a strong connection between church and state.

Now we have entered the godless era: God has left the public scene as the church has ceased to be an influence in society. Ninety nine percent of children in public school have never been in church and know nothing about God and even less about Christ who often is an unknown among the church members as well. Jesus’ wondering (Luke 18: 8) “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” is close to fulfillment.

There are also multiple other endings, some good. In the past few decades we have seen the end of white supremacy. This period started in the 16^th Century with mostly European nations colonizing almost all of Africa and a good part of Asia, and has now effectively ended. But also, just as small villages within a country lost their soul, the same is now true for entire countries, where capitalistic domination rules, where the world has become more uniform by stifling religious expressions and losing colourful traditional hallmarks.

Endings also are taking place on a sociological plane. Fortunately male supremacy is gone. But also the typical male trades and jobs are vanishing rapidly, and in many ways men are at a distinct disadvantage in an economy where the service industry is expanding while factory jobs are disappearing quickly. The End of Work is approaching, with robots taking over everywhere even in low wage countries. With women achieving financial independence and with birth control eliminating the matter of child-bearing, with artificial insemination becoming more acceptable, the need for marriage and men is being questioned.

Especially on the ecological scenery the endings are endless. A few years ago Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature in which he lamented that Climate Change would completely alter our natural make-up, create impossible challenges for trees to cope with higher temperatures and cause animals unable to adapt soon enough to changed climatic conditions. Already birds are far fewer in number while frogs, snakes, honey bees and butterflies are threatened everywhere. The same holds true for fish.

There is the growing awareness that the End of Oil is near. That’s the title of another book I have. Right now we are consuming crude oil at the rate of around 30 billion barrels per year or 85 million barrels per day. For a global civilization that is based almost entirely on a plentiful supply of cheap fuel this is going to present some considerable challenges. If we look over a 40 year period, from 1965 to 2005, we see that by the end of it, humanity was using two and a half times as much oil, twice as much coal and three times as much natural gas as at the start, and overall, around three times as much energy: this for a population that had “only” doubled. This simply means that our average carbon footprint had increased substantially, mainly because China and India have come on stream in the global consumption race.

Not only are we entirely dependent on crude oil for all our fuel and materials, but without cheap crude oil, and natural gas to make nitrogen fertilizers, we could grow no food. Take soya beans grown in Brazil. These beans are not consumed locally but are transported around Brazil and around the world. Oil-derived fuels are necessary not only to run the tractors and combine harvesters, but the trucks, ships and planes to move the crop onto the world markets. In addition, we see the vast clouds of dust being thrown up behind the marching army of mighty machines which represents the loss of top-soil, which means that we not only face The End of Oil, but also The End of Soil, because even if we could solve all our energy problems, we are consuming the living and fragile portion of the earth’s surface that is our ‘adam’, our soil, and upon which we are utterly dependent to grow any food at all. We have “lost” around one third of our soil in the past half century – much of this through unsound and unsustainable agricultural practices – which does not bode well for the survival of a surging human population.

Another feature is that this land was once rain forest, which has been cleared to use the land for farming: trees needed to absorb our CO2. That same soil becomes unproductive within only a few years and so it is necessary to move on and do the same land-rape again and again.

There also are increasingly signs that Climate Change – warmer temperatures and more volatile weather – will decrease crop yields, exactly at a time when more people eat a beef-based- grain-fed diet, which brings me to the question of potable water. It takes 1000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain. This is especially a crucial question in China with 1.3 billion people to feed, and the lowest per capita amount of water available in the developed world. Already 3.3 million hectares – 8 million acres- of agricultural land – almost the size of the entire country of the Netherlands – is totally unfit for growing, due to pollution, and much more land only marginally so. Cancers is now the main cause of death.

There are many more ‘endings’, such as ‘the end of pensions’ since longer lives and bottom-feeding yields play havoc with actuarial calculations. With more people unemployed, or disabled, or worried sick, or simply living longer, all feeding at the federal pay- trough and lower tax revenues, public assistance may also become a perk of the past. Who knows: the way money is being created out of nothing, we soon may see The End of Money as well. It also is becoming apparent that we are witnessing The End of Privacy thanks to the NSA, the US- operated National Snooping Authority. Another nightmare is the End of Stable Weather. Insurance companies have an immense problem on their hands: How to calculate adequate premiums for the Great Unknown: the future weather? Should I mention the End of Sexual Discrimination? That too is a sign of the End .

Does all this signify “The End?”

With so many endings at work it is legitimate to wonder whether indeed we are at what Francis Fukuyama wrote in his 1992 book “The End of History?” His words: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

How wrong he was. In the 22 years since he made this statement we are experiencing the end of democracy, being replaced by a dictatorial regime in Russia, by plutocracy of the financial institutions and North America and by the rule of bureaucracy in Europe.

I am afraid that there is no happy ending. The momentum of ‘endings’ is unstoppable. There is no way back: there only is a going forward to the inevitable “End”, because we can no longer restore what has been lost; we can’t even re-imagine a natural way of life because we have burned all bridges to the past.

Since we can only minimally revamp the way we live, what we can do and must do is to take bearings where we are, change our expectations for the future and mentally and if possible physically adopt a fundamentally different way in which we move and have our being.

Never before in the history of the human race have we been confronted with such challenges and never have we been more ill-prepared to cope with these problems. There is a saying: The future belongs to those who prepare for it. That is especially true for those who believe in the New Creation to come. The time of transition is passed. We are now in the future which will dominate the 21^st Century.

Next week part 2: how all major religions have failed to take the ‘Gospel of the Earth’ into account.