Our World Today

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Bert Hielema

Our World Today

July 7 2013

Final Phase: Ultimate Message.

Looking back 2000+ years

When Israel – or what was left of it and was ready to repatriate – returned from the 70 year exile in Babylon, present day Iraq, those seven decades of absence from the holy land had proven to be a real soul searcher for them. Their time away from formal temple worship made them search their roots and gave them and us much of what is known as the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. It also instilled in them a new vision for the future. However the period of radical change was short-lived. Soon after their return, tradition triumphed over renewal. Tradition is so attractive because it keeps people from thinking, which is hard and dangerous work. Once tradition is embedded it becomes merely a matter of moving with the stream. That’s the mood Jesus encountered and caused him to engage in some subtle subversion by challenging the church laws of his days, including the sabbatical prescriptions.

After Jesus’ ascension the new era needed a new message. Slowly the Sabbath was replaced with the Sunday as the day for worship, signifying the Day of Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and baptism took the place of circumcision. Faith replaced the law.

The birth of Christianity took place at the perfect time. The then known world was unified, something like the United States of the Roman Empire. Then access to even the remotest areas was guaranteed by the Pax Romana, enforced by the legions, consisting of the always battle-ready professional soldiers who had made an art of warfare. The world too was ready for the gospel as the idols of that day were in disregard and people were open for something new.

The Jewish diaspora was a great help in spreading the Good News. It is estimated that the Judaic segment of the Roman Empire amounted to ten percent of the total population, a portion that, just as now, exercised influence far beyond their numbers. The apostles, especially Paul, an educated Jew with Roman citizenship, when arriving in a foreign city, always first approached the Jewish synagogues before venturing into the pagan world.

The later New Testament church experienced the same sort of development as the post-exile period before Jesus’ arrival. Gradually Rome became its centre. Again the church established certain rules and regulations and again tradition became Holy Writ, until again revolt resulted which was slow in coming, due to such events as the Fall of Rome, the Crusades and the Black Plague.

Going back 500 years

Around the year 1500 the church experienced severe rumblings. Another new era dawned again clamoring again for a new message. This time the catalyst was money.

In the early years of the Sixteenth Century, with Rome enjoying a religious monopoly, the mother church needed money to complete the Saint Peter’s Basilica. When authorities design grandiose structures often the cost outpaces the resources. When a few decades ago in Ottawa the Museum of Civilization took shape, the price tag of the beautiful structure ballooned from an initial estimate of approximately $80 million to more than $340 million. This too was the case with the most holy of churches, the Saint Peter Basilica in Rome. Construction on it began under Pope Julius II in 1506 and was completed in 1615 under Pope Paul V. Many famous artists worked on the “Fabbrica di San Pietro” as the complex of building operations were officially called. Michelangelo, who served as main architect for a while, designed the dome, and Bernini designed the great St. Peter’s Square. To obtain the needed funds the Vatican sold indulgences: the more people paid to the building fund the greater the forgiveness of sins, a direct offence against the gospel. Canada’s government did not have to have to resort to that method of financing the extra $260 million. For Ottawa it was just another entry on the account of future generations. However the blatant abuse by the Roman clergy to exploit an attribute that only belongs to God – the forgiveness of sins – moved Luther to question the entire church business and drove him to take a closer look at Scripture. So something good came out of this deception. The Reformation was the result: a new era with a new message.

The 16th century Reformation also occurred at a time of totally new circumstances due to the invention of the printing press which allowed access to resources previously only available in monasteries via hand-produced manuscripts. The ultimate consequence of the printing press is the World Wide Web, which, together with the secularization of society has put a stop to the influence of the Reformation. Now there’s little difference between the core message of the Roman Catholic Church and her Christian offspring in their various forms.

The Final Phase- the Ultimate Message.

For the first time in human history there is something totally new under the sun. The discovery of new energy sources and the invention of motorized movement both on the roads and in the factories have accelerated development to the point where we now have reached a crucial juncture in history. Something totally unexpected is happening: the planet we are living on is falling apart: our world is dying, withering, slowly sinking into nothingness. We are experiencing Climate change, frightening desertification and fanatical atheism hiding under the cloak of religion. All the frantic efforts to come to terms with the increasing pace of deathly disasters are failing. We have come to the point where only the Gospel of the Kingdom offers hope.

Death is always a scary matter, especially the death of the planet which involves us all. In Noah’s time people ridiculed Noah and his helpers building a gigantic ship in the centre of the desert. The ark today is the Coming of the Kingdom, also an object of derision.

Two thousand years ago Jesus’ message was accepted only by a few. It is happening again. In spite of Jesus continuously pleading  to “Seek first the Kingdom”, in spite of us praying “Your Kingdom Come” the Kingdom concept is seldom mentioned in the church, and when it is heard it usually misses the point. What the Kingdom really represents is seldom proclaimed and therefore needs constant repetition because it contains the ultimate message.

Today a most timely book is about to appear. The Kingdom: Speed Its Coming written by Johan Herman Bavinck will soon be published by the One Hundred year old publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich. Just a sample from its chapter `The Kingdom“:

The concept of the Kingdom contains a number of elements that are of the highest significance for our inquiry.

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 worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.

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.

A bit further Bavinck writes that all is not well, something we experience every day:

The Kingdom is in shatters. That is the profound tragedy con­fronting the life of the world. This goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up its cohesion: it actually means that God has surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers, whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it. The Kingdom, after all, com­prises all things, all plants, all animals, all people, all angels. The King­dom includes the sea and the land, the moun­tains and the valleys, all that was and is and is to come; and all of it is incorporated in a great and mighty whole. The Kingdom is the place where all things are in their rightful place and where everything can fulfill its function and deploy its potential in complete harmony with all that surrounds it. The Kingdom is synonymous with light, peace, joy, service to God, in harmonious vene­ra­tion. Where the Kingdom is being destroyed, where this structure comes apart at the seams, there is decomposition, brokenness, frag­men­tation, enmity, contra­diction, meaninglessness, darkness, death. The Kingdom is the smile of God’s good pleasure: “See, it was very good.”

Bavinck’s description is only a human attempt to describe the magnificence that awaits us in the New Creation, the next phase of God’s plan. To be part of that newness means that in these last days some final changes are called for, and the churches with their rich heritage of biblical thinking must now carry the Banner of renewal.

Just as the Jews formed the nucleus of the new Christian church, the Jewish impact then can somewhat be compared to the influence Dutch immigrants have had on post-war Canada with their Christian education system, from grade school to high school to Redeemer University College and the Institute for Christian Studies, as well as founding the Christian Labour Association of Canada and CPJ- Citizens for Public Justice. This reforming thinking still alive in the Dutch-dominated church has the potential to perpetuate the ultimate message of the Kingdom to come.

The church must see this final phase and its ultimate message as a marriage preparation course: we, as humanity, will be united with the earth – the Kingdom to come- as in marriage, a bond that will never be broken. It means a change from the hate-rape relationship with God’s earth we now experience to a love-embrace engagement in preparation for the final marriage. When the Christ of God appears he will unite himself with us as the true Son of Man, as Humanity personified, so that he can teach us how to live fully in the world, the well-ordered cosmos he created. It is for that very purpose, for its redemption (John 3:16) that he gave his life as a payment to buy the earth back from the Satan to whom we, cursed humanity, had surrendered it.

Today all signs point to catastrophes of cataclysmic proportions. No matter where we are in the world, nobody can guarantee whether some sort of disaster will not strike us, thanks to human-induced climate change. Repentance, Repentance, Repentance is called for continually. Hope, Hope, Hope is what the Kingdom offers.

The church in Jesus’ time did not heed his call. Jesus continually had to convince even his disciples that his Kingdom was not the liberation of Israel from the Roman yoke. Later it required a sudden conversion of the church-hater Paul to clarify the gospel in more detail, soon to be distorted again. The schism caused by Luther and Calvin resulted in a 30 year war between North and South Europe without settling much. Protestant Germany hailed a Hitler. Greek Orthodox Russia sired a Stalin, and Catholic Italy bred a Berlusconi. Today the Western world embraces Capitalism hook, line and sinker. Everywhere the church is weak and what there is has little insight. Jesus himself lamented that (Luke 18:8) “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

A change in the church’s focus is sorely needed. It will come. There is a solid core out there, aware of Jesus’ words as recorded in Luke 6: 21: “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh”.

You will laugh because God has prepared the new. Everything will become new. The opposite is true as well: “If you laugh now you will end up crying. If you celebrate life as it is today you will not enjoy what is to come. If you are deeply committed to the old world that is now ending, you won’t be there when the new world appears: his glorious kingdom.”

Next week: If you want to be part of the approaching perfection, prepare now.

Previous columns can be seen by clicking on ‘home’.

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Our World Today

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Bert Hielema

June 30 2013.

Our World today

My daily routine

Every week day I write a mini sermon -400 words- on a text of the lectionary and an equivalent of half a sermon – 800 words- on Sundays. Last week I took a closer look at Luke 9:62: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God,” an exercise that, I am afraid, has resulted in becoming a full-fledged sermon, starting with the question: “What in the world did Jesus have in mind when he said that?” As an aside: I think all sermons should appear in print prior to the service, with a question period as part of the presentation. After all we all see through a glass darkly, so communal discussion might give more light.

Just before Jesus made this mysterious statement he advised a potential adherent against joining his traveling school by warning that being a Jesus’ follower is an uncertain business because you’ll never know where you’ll have your next meal or find a bed. (Foxes have holes, but not He.) Jesus then summoned somebody else to join the Jesus’ college but this man wanted to wait till his father is dead, to which Jesus answered: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another man wanted to first inform his family before attaching himself to the Jesus camp. Jesus disapproves of that as well.

What do I make of all that? My first reaction is that going with Jesus is an all- or- nothing affair, a commitment where only the kingdom counts and where concern for family or friends or food is a secondary matter.

Jesus was a country boy and familiar with farming practices. Looking back while plowing especially when animals are pulling the plow, throws you off course. It takes a steady hand to keep a plow strait. It is like steering a canoe: only when you keep your eyes peeled to a certain landmark ahead can you keep a steady course. To work for the kingdom too requires a definite objective that needs all our concentration. Even daily worries about what to eat and drink, how to placate parents and siblings are nothing compared to the goal of being fit for the kingdom. The kingdom is the overarching preoccupation of the Jesus follower.

That Kingdom concept again

In these end-times we have a new assignment. Not an easy one. The Bible tells us that the Kingdom is the New Creation to come. Many millennia ago we sold God’s perfect creation to the Great Enemy whose only goal has always been to destroy it, something all too plain today. It is the task of a Jesus’ follower to take a different route, a very difficult path. In all our actions, 24/7, we must try to do the impossible: live as if we already are in the New Creation. I see the new task of the church to guide us in that difficult assignment. There’s much talk in the church offices about the failing church. No surprise, given the current immense confusion of its task. When I was chair of the national board of trustees of the Presbyterian Church in Canada a decade ago, an ongoing topic was what to do with surplus sanctuaries. It is no secret that going to church is no longer important, because religion by and large has made itself irrelevant. A century ago, when the world had less than 2 billion people the churches were full. Now with 7 billion of us churches are out of fashion: our religious disinterest is just another facet of the immense crisis humanity faces for which the only solution is the Coming of the Kingdom.

Of course the church – the communion of saints- will always be there, dwindling as the numbers are. In the year 325 A.D., in a time when the quickest way on land was by horse, some 300 clergy from all over the then known world met in Nicaea – present day Turkey-  where, after much deliberation they adopted the final canon of the Bible as well as the Nicene Creed, both still in use in that format. Then a great deal of unity made such a meeting possible. It helped that Constantine, the Roman Emperor of that day, put his weight behind it.  Today, in this late stage of history, what is left of the church has never been more divided. There simply is no consensus on anything. I am afraid that I only add to the confusion.

June was the month when Synods and General Assemblies met. With many ties to the Christian Reformed Church I looked at the proceedings there last month – I received daily updates – and was saddened. I know the Spirit is still active there, but it all seemed that these reverend people are fighting a losing battle. Jesus, in his remarks as recorded in Luke 9:62, where he urges us to fix our eye on the future, implies that whatever happened in the past is no longer of any importance: don’t look back because it throws you off course. In these new times history cannot guide us. I don’t mean that history is bunk. No, but it seems to me that the church’s historic documents, such as the Nicene Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession, have little or no relevance today, because newness is on the way.

I am a runner. When I race – at my age of close to 85 it’s more like a jog (10 km in 1 hour 5 minutes) – I push my old bones to the limit, concentrate on the goal and don’t look back. My mantra when running is m.a.r.a.n.a.t.h.a.l.o.r.d.c.o.m.e.q.u.i.c.k.l.y.  Every week I run a couple of times 8 km, every day some sort of exercise. That and my daily meditations have caused my thinking to take a new direction. My conversion has come about gradually, resembling the changing course of a super tanker, a very slow process, a life-long struggle that, once it started had a momentum of its own. When I look around I see that most people do not experience this and are stuck in the same old pattern, just like the Church institutions. In my 80 years of church attendance the music has undergone some changes- not always for the better – but the format has remained the same, except that sermons are much shorter.

The ancient Greeks used to say: panta rhei, oude menei which means that everything has a momentum of its own, nothing remains the same. When we try to hold on to what we call true and proven, it turns out that it is no longer true.

Change and decay

We are caught up in a whirlwind of change amid universal fraud. Not only the weather, but everything is clamoring for something different, even though nobody knows how or what. We see this all around us. The complete planet is in a panic mode, from roaring rivers everywhere to the youthful uproars in the Middle East where modernity is tackling tradition. The status quo is no longer wanted. We are speeding to the end, something the New Testament focuses upon all the time. That’s why Jesus said that “let the dead bury the dead.” There really is no time to waste in unnecessary work. The dead don’t notice who puts them away: let those who have never lived do the burying. Jesus appeals to those who have lived, who have not gone along with the idols of the day. Blessed are they who have lived before they died.

The closer we are to the end, the more vulnerable everything becomes. It’s like an elastic band that has been stretched too far; it’s like a balloon with too much air in it; it’s is like a nuclear reactor that has lost its safety valves. One moment all looks well: the next instant total chaos.

Debt – forgive us our debts – is the great villain. We have lived beyond our means, both money wise and environmentally. Now slow or no growth means that governments become increasingly stressed trying to provide for the many unemployed, or welfare for the many that have dropped out, both causing tax revenue to lag. Slower economic growth has made the debt system increasingly fragile. The economy has been gradually transformed from one which provided perpetual growth, to one where citizens are becoming poorer and poorer. This has pushed the economy in the direction of collapse. Trying to solve a debt problem with more debt only creates bigger bubbles. In the end, there’s one rule that always applies: credit bubbles lead to debt collapse and the bigger the bubble, the bigger the collapse. It’s inevitable and very painful. “The wages of sin-debt- is death.”

Big Brother is watching you and me

No wonder Big Brother is watching us. We have created a super-vulnerable system, totally dependent on the most fragile of tools: the computer phenomenon, both a blessing and a curse. Thanks to the computer and its by-products my message can circulate world-wide. But also the computer has led to the universal surveying of all electronic movement. We are being told that it targets only the potential enemies of the state. That presupposes perfect humans without any prejudice and latent grudges. Fact is that nobody’s remarks are secure anymore once they appear anywhere on the web. Knowing how religion brings out both the best and the worst in a person, it is quite well possible that in super religious America some fanatic, opposed to my New Earth-Kingdom vision will target me as an enemy of the church. Jesus was targeted that way and killed. No, I don’t suffer from a persecution complex. I am not paranoid. I do have an idea how ‘religion’ works at times, and it can be cruel. Perhaps my admiration for Edward Snowden, the 30-year-old who has risked his entire future to uncover the activities of these intelligence agencies will make me too an enemy of the state.

A possible scenario

Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, there is a top-secret city. There tens of thousands of people inhabit non-stop more than 50 buildings with its own post office, fire department and police force. This town site sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards. It is protected by anti-tank barriers, and the entire area is closely monitored by sensitive motion detectors and constantly watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh. Knowing and typing this is a guarantee that this column once sent away will become a target of interest. This also applies to you reading it. Be careful: you are being watched because I am sure that the NSA – National Security Agency – targets anybody who mentions the Edward Snowden name in an e-mail to you. Perhaps you should ask me to remove your name. I am sure that somebody in that ultra-secret compound will read this to discover why I mention his name. Billions of dollars – depriving the poor and the infrastructure of much more needed funds- are being allocated to spy on you and me.

Aimed at the young

I also believe that much of the system has been put in place to protect the privileged class from the hundreds of thousands of young people who have a useless BA, a useless M.Ed. and a useless law degree, while carrying tens of thousands in debt and never a decent enough job to repay the loan. This surveying system is there also to prevent the educated young with no future from effectively organizing mass demonstrations. That’s perhaps the main reason why this system has been put into place.

Of course the Lord will protect us. What these deranged minds are concocting reminds me of Psalm 2.

“He who sits in the heavens laughs;

The Lord is laughing them to scorn.

Take warning, rulers of the earth;

Serve the Lord with awe

Lest he be angry and you perish

For suddenly his anger will blaze.

To view previous columns, click on ‘home.’

Next week “Why church reform is necessary”.

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Our World Today

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Bert Hielema

Our World Today

June 23 2013

Some General Remarks

I have about 150 visitors to my blog each day. They come from all over the world, reason why I assume that my readers have no or very little general Bible knowledge and are basically searching for answers. I also send my column to some 100 people, almost all of some sort of Christian persuasion among which there are some 20-25 members of the clergy. None of them responded to my call for a Day of Atonement even though I provided some liturgical aids. A reader sent me a notification of a service like that in the Trinity Wall Street Episcopalian Church in New York City which on June 23 hosted an interfaith panel to explore how our sacred stories influence our ability to live with one another and nature as a peaceful, creative, just, and sustainable Earth Community.

There is a growing awareness that there is more to the Christian religion than the Bible which is subject to various interpretations. During the German occupation in Holland -1940-45- I saw how religious divisions within the Reformed Church created animosity bordering on hatred. Some of that I experience now. Some whom I have known for years don’t see me anymore. I do get positive comment from the laity but so far I have only heard from three retired ministers, while the active ordained among my list of direct column receivers have never reacted. Perhaps “silence signifies assent.” Perhaps. That’s why in this week’s column I address these people in particular.

We are fully aware that religiously we live in uncertain times, one of the reasons why there is a great deal of burn-out among those who have chosen to speak in the name of the Lord. As a youngster, between 6 and 10 years old, I wanted to become a missionary in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Our church, the Christian Reformed Church, had two missionaries there, Rev. Geleynse and Rev. Bicker, who would appear on special mission days with a recent convert in tow in the days before World War II. Then the sight of an Indonesian person was a novelty. My parents too wanted me to develop that way, reason why I was sent to a prep school, where upon graduation I could directly enter either law or med school or seminary. However, after graduation I was drafted in the Dutch army from which I obtained discharge to go to Canada in 1951. There within a year I was self-employed and remained that throughout my entire working life. Yet somehow that missionary zeal never left me as you may have noticed.

In 1975 I made a radical break. I sold my business and residence in St.Catharines, Ont., bought 50 acres of land in Tweed, Ont., 200 km from Toronto and 200 km from Ottawa, basically in the middle of nowhere. I was instrumental in setting up a Christian High school in Belleville, where I also did a bit of teaching, while preparing for a new career in Commercial Real Estate Appraising. Somehow among the woods and fields, in the quietness of nature, I became more aware of God’s greatness in creation, and developed an entirely new appreciation of His Holy Word in which we daily live and move and have our being. The Lord’s blessings were definitely evident in developing a lucrative and especially an interesting new career in evaluating every kind of real estate from putting a price on the 500,000 acres of the Bruce Peninsula for a Native land claim, working out the value of river dams for the purpose of generating electricity as well as appraising a former RAF training airport near Picton, to name just a few among the great variety of businesses I appraised. I sold that business in 1983 and settled down to reading, writing, gardening, running, biking, skiing and becoming ever more self-sufficient, also in electric power.

Better get used to it.

We now live in different times. There is an abundance of evidence that everything is up for questioning, resulting in increasing levels of fear, anxiety and trauma among people everywhere. Also everything now seems to be tainted with fraud. People sense that and this increases their feeling of foreboding.

Earlier this month we went to the graduation of one of our grandsons. He told me that most of his fellow graduates had no jobs, no notion of what they were going to do now that they had finished their B.A. My grandson was an exception. Fortunately he has no debts and thus could let go off his regular summer job as foreman of a landscaping crew to work at greatly reduced pay as an organic vegetable grower. He had gauged the future correctly: a world dependent on fossil fuel is no longer viable. He now works with horses and learns to grow a great variety of food products the way my own grandfather also did two generations ago. He loves it. As a history major he has seen that the old systems and solutions are totally inadequate for the times to come and is preparing for a different world.

What is happening in our world?

Something entirely new is taking place. It is the same story everywhere. Impersonal Big Government, impersonal Big Business, impersonal Big Institutions are slowly choking off the little people: big money buys everything, including political offices, especially in the USA. This is happening as job security is disappearing, as wages are at best stagnant, as debt is acting as a brake on development. The people in power helped the big banks and are loading their debt on future generations in an underhanded and secretive way, endangering the future of generations to come, just as we all have offloaded our environmental debt to our children and grandchildren.

All this is occurring while Climate Change is accelerating, while weather patterns are becoming increasingly erratic, while water- air – soil quality is both diminishing and its availability decreasing. As a result poverty is becoming a reality for many more millions. About a decade ago I was a member of a pension board of a corporation. At that time the interest rates were still reasonable, at least 2-3 percentage points above the inflation rate. Now the return of money is well below the cost of living, which itself is doctored to come in much lower than the actual increase. Fraud is endemic there too. All this makes it much harder for people to retire, keeping them in the work force while young people scream for jobs. The future looks bleak for tens of millions of people, a fact that has produced an epidemic of fear and anxiety, and that while the safety nets have big holes in them.

The symptoms are all around us.

Suicide rates are soaring, as are depression, drug use, abuse and addiction. While governments curtail access to medical treatments, stress makes people not only more susceptible to serious illness but also can play a role in the progression of cancer.

We no longer must hide the obvious. We must name the beast. We must admit that we are witnessing collapse, collapse of morality, collapse of the environment, collapse indeed of the capitalistic system. That is no exaggeration.  We are in the process of witnessing “The Four Horsemen of our Apocalypse”, portrayed in the last Bible book as Conquest, War, Famine and Death, now revealing themselves in the form of Privatization, Financialization, Militarization and Criminalization, combined with a continuously growing Police-state, evident in the overarching surveillance methods exposed by Snowden. The lust for money is at its root. We see a society favouring the rich, rather than the common good, also visible in the increasing use of toll roads, privatization of parks and charter schools. It is also evident in the destruction of nature to benefit the already well-to-do and especially in the creation of money out of thin air and loading the debt off to the poor, the 99 percent.

What to do? How to prepare? What is the Christian response?

I believe we slowly must prepare ourselves for a different type of worship, incorporating a new approach to God’s world. For the last 2000 years the Bible was sufficient as a source of inspiration. The Bible tells us that (Psalm 115:16) “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, and the earth he has given to us.” It may sound like a terrible heresy to you but I believe that the way we treat the earth and its creatures-people, animals, plants, etc.- determines our eternity. That same Bible also tells us that in the New Creation there is no temple (Revelation 21: 22), thus no church, no ministers, no bible, as God’s law is written on our hearts. We now are in a state of transition which means that we must slowly but purposely make the Bible more and more a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (Psalm 119) to guide us into the way eternal, that is God’s Holy Created Word, the New Creation. That I see as the message for today.

I’d wish that we could start a dialogue on this matter. Why are you ministers so reluctant? Just recently I read passages of a book with the telling title of Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, written by Edwin H. Friedman.

Friedman wrote this book before Climate Change became an issue, before the political scene, especially in the USA, deteriorated to the point of ridicule, and before Obama revealed himself as a gutless leader. Friedman attacked how churches too primarily adapt themselves to their most dependent, recalcitrant, and anxious members, rather than to ‘the energetic, the visionary, the imaginative, and the motivated’. Political leaders depend more on their ‘expertise’ than on their capacity to be decisive. Friedman believes that problems are not solved when we rely on what is reasonable, or when we appeal to love, insight, role-modeling, inculcation of values, and strive for consensus, usually the way the church operates. Strong, perhaps very unpopular, leadership is needed. We need leaders not followers.

I do a lot of my thinking while running or biking. Last week I was working through this Friedman book and thinking about Jesus’ forthrightness in forcefully addressing the Pharisees. Jesus always urged others to speak out, let their feeling be evident. He chastised people for not mourning with the mourners or rejoicing with the happy. I was struck, when translating J. H. Bavinck’s book, which I gave the title of The Kingdom: Speed Its Coming,that Bavinck goes directly against the grain of the church today, against its very purpose almost, by stating that the goal of the Christian is not personal salvation but is the seeking of the Kingdom, promoting the welfare of the Kingdom of Heaven to come, the New Creation. Did you as preacher ever say that? Writes Friedman: “Any renaissance, anywhere, whether in a marriage or a business, depends primarily not only on new data and techniques, but on the capacity of leaders to separate themselves from the surrounding emotional climate so that they can break through the barriers that are keeping everyone from “going the other way.” Jesus took a stand radically different from what the church of his day proclaimed. He advocated a totally new way, the way of the Kingdom of God. “Seek first the Kingdom, the welfare of God’s earth and everything else will fall into place.” We must not seek new answers to old questions, but we must reframe the questions. We must no longer ask what the purpose is of the church, but rephrase it in terms of the Kingdom: What is the Kingdom? What speeds its coming? Will there be a church in the Kingdom to come? Will there be a Bible in the Kingdom to come? What must we do to be members of the Kingdom? Will God be part of the Kingdom or will he disappear? Will the Trinity still be a viable concept?

We need another Martin Luther, a different Abraham Kuyper, a modern-day Bonhoeffer, persons who challenged the holy cows of their day. We need people who build on the past to formulate questions relevant to our end-times.

Will I get some response? Or……..

Next week I will try to formulate what will be the leading issues in these last days and what the Bible tells us of these matters.

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Our World Today

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Bert Hielema

June 9 2013

What moves me to write my Columns? (Part 3)

My and your Sacrilege has caused Climate Change.

Matthew 24, the first book of the New Testament, is an interesting chapter. The heading tells why: Signs of the End of the Age. If you don’t have a Bible, go to Google. Verse 14 says that before Jesus returns, the gospel of the Kingdom will go world-wide. The WWW is the perfect medium to do that, with the Internet the miraculous tool for making the Gospel of the Kingdom known everywhere as a prelude to Jesus’ return. The Kingdom refers to the brand-new earth to come: brand-new is the proper term because a cosmic conflagration will completely cleanse it.

The next verse gives an indication that we are at the beginning of the end. Verse 15 simply says: “So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, let the reader understand.” The holy place is God’s creation, his holy direct word, the artistic expression of the Sovereign Creator. The Scriptures are God’s holy secondary word, compiled by humans under the direction of God’s Spirit.

My Greek dictionary tells me that the Greek word here translated as ‘abomination’ can also be rendered as ‘sacrilege’, which is more fitting in this context, as sacrilege is an offence against something holy – his creation. The annotation ‘let the reader understand’ means that this text can only be understood when this sacrilege is actually happening as is the case now, purely the result of your and my sin.

This rest of the chapter provides us with a few hints of what is in store for us in our last days: pretty frightening. Verse 39 gives a perfect example how the “Rapture” enthusiasts misread the Bible. It plainly says that God’s people stay put while the sinners are swept away, the direct opposite of what the Rapture crowd have been proclaiming. My distant relative Harold Egbert Camping should have known better than to pick a specific day for the Lord’s return because this chapter also clearly states that the day and hour cannot be predicted. The Day of the Lord is like a pregnancy: we know that the approximate time of birth – after about nine months – but we can’t pinpoint the day and hour.

My battle with the church

I have a constant battle with the church about what comprises God’s WORD. The church sees the Scriptures as the most important source of God’s greatness. When God’s Creation is equally seen as His Holy Word then a complete redirecting of life is called for. Then strictly speaking driving to church in a polluting car would be a sin, as well as heating or cooling a church auditorium: mega churches, mega sins. Perhaps that’s why Jesus said that “Where two or three are together there I will be”, making small beautiful. With Luther I affirm that “we must sin bravely” here. I believe that the Bible and Creation together constitute God’s Holy Word. A French saying comes to mind: A bon entendeur demi mot suffit, which means that for a good listener only half a word is enough. An understanding listener also hears (Romans 8: 22) the groaning of creation. When we listen to what the Bible says- one half of The Word – and also have compassion with creation – the other half of The Word, then we get the complete picture.

“Let the reader understand.” Those who do understand both Words are, naturally, feeling very fretful about life on a stressed-out planet, because life as we know it is almost over. Most people avoid mentioning ‘apocalypse’. That’s a normal human reaction: we are conditioned to ignore unpleasant experiences. Also secular society has a vested interest in us believing that infinite growth in a finite world is perfectly acceptable even though it is astonishingly absurd.

Should I once again point out that we are staring down multiple cascading ecological crises, struggling with political and economic institutions that are unable even to acknowledge, let alone cope with, the threats to the human family and the larger living world? Should I once again repeat that we are intensifying our assault on the ecosystems, undermining the ability of that living world to sustain a large-scale human presence into the future? Should I once again emphasize that when the entire world darkens, looking on the bright side is not a virtue but a sign of irrationality?

Romans 8: 22-23 tell us that our planet is in deep pain. The bible plainly points out that our world is in torment and that we too, if we have any feeling left, if we have any love for God’s word, must make that torment our own. If we really believe the Bible then anxiety and anguish are the logical reaction: they are not signs of weakness but evidence of Christian courage. A deep grief over what we are losing—and have already lost – is needed. Jesus, when he saw that his friend Lazarus was dead “He wept” even though he knew that a few minutes later his friend would walk out of the grave alive and well. It is only fitting that we too cry our heart out. Weeping for the dying state of creation is a prerequisite for entering the new one. No crown – no entrance into the New Creation – without a cross, without groaning with creation subjected to such torture. After that, says Roman 8, “we eagerly anticipate becoming part of the New Creation.” Jesus wept. We must follow his example of weeping for a dying planet. Instead of repressing our emotions we must confront them, especially collectively, as church, as the Body of Believers. That’s why I suggested a Day of Repentance. Failing to do so is lining up with the world in false optimism.

The world is desperate

I find it fascinating how the likes of Bernanke and Carney, to name two major financials players, desperately try to rescue the system: they fail to see that the financial world is inseparable from the total which involves groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species, and reduction of biodiversity, just to name a few symptoms. The real question is: Where are the answers? The simple answer is that there are no answers because there are no solutions to our problems if we insist on maintaining the high-energy/high-technology structure of the industrialized world.

You better get used to it: we do live in end-times. The Bible tells us so. Jesus loves us so much that he will teach us all a lesson: in order to drill into us some common sense he will let the human race go ahead to destroy the world. Then, once this is almost done he will re-appear and straighten matters out.

That’s what I believe and here is how I picture it to play out. Let me be clear: it is not going to be a picnic. Never in human history have potential catastrophes been so global; never have social and ecological crises of this scale threatened at the same time; never have we had so much information about the threats we must come to terms with. Don’t expect the people in power to issue official warnings. Politicians will always protect their own privileged position, and capital will always continue to maximize profits and most people will always act as if times are normal. That’s why Jesus mentions that his re-appearance will be like ‘a thief in the night,’ that’s why in Revelation 18: 11 we read that the merchants will weep because they are stuck with their Gucci purses and Rolex watches and luxury cars. Never think that the Bible is not relevant.

An old man dreams dreams

Let me do a bit of dreaming about how and when our world will come crashing down. I was praying for wisdom in this matter and the Lord directed me to Revelation 11: 2. There it says that “they will trample on the holy city for 42 months,” the holy city being our world, of course. Revelation 13: 5 elaborates: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise authority for 42 months.”
Satan, God’s great Adversary, is the beast whose aim has been from the beginning – starting in Eden – to destroy God’s beloved cosmos. (John 3: 16).
The timespan of 42 months is 3.5 years, exactly half of that perfect number ‘7’. Matthew 24: 21-22 says that “For there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened,” so, not 7 years of agony but half that number.
Here is a riddle that illustrates the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles – two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the four, and so on. “If the pond is full on the thirtieth day,” the question goes, “at what point is it half full?” Answer: “On the twenty-ninth day.” There you have the Three years and Six months, rather than the full Seven years: it could quite well be that the Lord will appear at your doorstep and knock: are you ready for my return? And will you say “Hey Lord, wait a minute, the glass is still half-full.” No wonder the Bible mentions the “like a thief in the night”.

You probably have never heard of Primary Productivity which is the present net primary production in terrestrial ecosystems being co-opted by human beings each year. In plain words: the total percentage we mortals exploit of the earth’s treasures for our exclusive benefit. In 1980 two efforts were made to calculate Primary Productivity, one by a group at Stanford University, the other by biologist Stuart L. Pimm, professor of biology at Duke University in Durham N.C. They both concluded that we consume about 40 percent of Earth Primary Productivity: 40 percent of soil, water, air. In other words we humans have claimed for our greedy use at least 40 percent of all land, water and air, depriving all other creatures of their rightful share, which explains why the current extinction rate is 1,000 times higher than which existed before human domination of the planet. Jeffrey Bolster in his book The Mortal Sea shows that every year we withdraw from the seas 160 million tons of fish but deposit there 7 million tons of garbage. Poisonous chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico have formed a pool of dead water equivalent in size to the state of New Jersey; among the several hundred dead zones elsewhere in the world, one encircles the Chinese coastline. You get the idea. We use up so much oil that we have come to a point where we no longer eat food but oil as it takes at least 10 calories of oil to produce one food calorie. Primary Productivity now stands between 40 and 50, meaning that almost half of the world’s basic energy, vested in plants, trees, animals, is being used for our benefit in such a way that once it is consumed, it cannot be restored. Depleted oceans, soil degradation, disappeared species, cannot be re-created by human technology.
Due to the scramble for more oil to keep our economic system lubricated, and also the increasing pace of Global Warming, environmental destruction is greatly accelerating, rapidly approaching the 50 percent mark, the tipping point, which is the half- way to total chaos, just as 3.5 years is halfway to 7, the number of fullness.
I believe that the Lord in his grace will not return on Day 30, but Day 29, when, seemingly, the glass is still half full. Then the trumpet will sound and, all will be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of the eye.

It is with that in mind that I write my columns. Click on ‘home’ to see previous columns.

I will skip a week. Next weekend is our 60th wedding anniversary. We will celebrate it in style with family and friends. There is a lot to celebrate: five children, all in wonderful marriages; 13 grandchildren, all well-adjusted and successful.

We started our marriage a bit hesitantly. We were married in First Christian Reformed Church in Hamilton on June 17 1953. We both were quite new to the country and the language. When Rev. T.C. van Kooten, with his American accent, married us, we had no prior rehearsal, so the old-fashioned form sounded quite incomprehensible. I did not know whether I should say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the questions, so I whispered ‘no’ and my wife did the same. That’s how our married life started. Sixty years later it has been a resounding ‘yes’.

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Posted on June 2, 2013 by Bert Hielema

June 2 2013

What moves me to write my columns? (part 2)

Since I cannot buy all the new books that booksellers have trouble selling, I read a lot of reviews just in case there’s one that will entice me to hand over my credit card and add one more volume to my already overflowing library. In the Globe and Mail of May 25 I read about a possible acquisition: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How humans will survive a Mass Extinction. She – Annalee Newitz, a San Francisco-based science journalist – believes that a mass extinction is inevitable and considers moving to another planet –“we need a long-term plan to get humanity off Earth “. She also writes: “My point is that regardless whether humans are responsible for the sixth mass extinction on Earth, it is going to happen.” Writes the reviewer “The real solution to climate change is not terraforming the moons of Saturn or turning the skies white with miniscule mirrors. The real solution to climate change is both blindingly obvious and currently, politically impossible: an immediate and complete transition away from a carbon economy.” He concludes: “we rather live in fantasy than begin the difficult work of saving ourselves from ourselves.”

No, not a book I’d buy.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that we are carboholics. Just as alcoholics create a lot of problems for themselves and their families, carboholics cause truly frightening fallacies for everybody: groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, plenty of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity. Did I mention climate change? It is becoming more obvious every day that our lifestyle leads to a dead end, also financially as in an oil-based world the cheap and easily accessible crude is quickly disappearing. That’s why we are employing ever more dangerous and destructive technologies such as hydro-fracturing, deep-water drilling, mountain-top removal, and tar sands extraction to get at the remaining hydrocarbons. No wonder the voices are becoming louder and louder: we are approaching the end of life as we know it: mass extinction.

We more and more hear talk about tipping points and planetary boundaries, about how human activity is pushing the planet beyond its limits. Recently 22 top scientists in the prestigious journal Nature warned that humans likely are forcing a planetary-scale critical transition “with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience.” That means that “the biological resources we take for granted at present may be subject to rapid and unpredictable transformations within a few human generations.”

We are in real trouble. Living in the country-side as I do might stave off the worst for a few weeks, but there is no long-term escape from the dislocations that will come with such changes. Money and power might insulate some from the most wrenching consequences of these shifts, but there is no permanent escape for anybody. We do not live in stable societies and no longer live on a stable planet. We may feel safe and secure in specific places at specific times, but it’s hard to believe in any safety and security in a collective sense.

In short, we live in apocalyptic times.

Apocalypse

The heading of this column, of the previous one and of my next June 9 column is, was and will be: What moves me to write my columns?

I know that I have been very critical of church and society. I had one person cancel my column for that reason. Yes, I am controversial. Sorry. Not really. I am convinced that from here on in matters will only get worse. The Book of Revelation, also known as The Apocalypse of John, the final book of the New Testament gives some indications of what is in store for us. Given the situation today and the potential for enormous disasters, the scenes depicted in that Bible book look all too real. Both terms ‘Revelation’ and ‘Apocalypse’ are synonymous in their original meaning; “Revelation” from the Latin ‘revelo= unveil, uncover, lay bare’ and “Apocalypse” from Greek also meaning a lifting of the veil, a disclosure of something hidden from most people, a coming to clarity.

Revelation is all around us. There are too many signs to ignore. Thomas L. Friedman, columnist of the New York Times visited Syria a few weeks ago and relates how he met three men: two had 10 children, one had 16. There is no or little education opportunity for them as the schools are reduced to rubble. The water level is approaching zero; the soil totally depleted. With robots now doing the menial work, software eliminating much of the brainwork, the only future there is fighting and facing a glorious death. Welcome to a suicidal world.

In 1959 one of my clients was dying of lung cancer. Even in his last days, when he could not swallow food, he still smoked. Then and there I – then a pack a day man – vowed to quit smoking. I took up running and I still do that. We, citizens of the world, are that addicted person: we are unable to shake that carbon habit and it will kill us as surely as that middle-age man. To quit smoking is extremely hard. It took me a few months to completely rid myself of these cigarettes and for years I dreamed about it. The world will not even attempt to change: given our total dependence on carbon fuels it has become impossible, making demise a certainty.

That’s why we somewhere, somehow must start thinking apocalyptically, must acquire first and foremost a deepening of our understanding of the world, seeing through the falsehoods of the people in power. In our advertisement-soaked society, saturated incessantly with marketing ploys, it is difficult to see through the phoniness of it all and come to some sort of clarity about the nature of the evil forces at work in our day and age. That’s why an understanding of revelation is more crucial than ever.

Thinking apocalyptically, living ‘revelation’, will force us to squarely face the curses that come with the concentration of wealth and power and the inevitability of collapse. Imagining the future gives us the opportunity to gauge our role in these systems, and pray for forgiveness. Our prayers are heard when we ourselves change our thinking and actions. More about that next week. The Syria situation, referred to above, is just one small instance of the harshness of the human assault on God’s creation. Thomas Homer-Dixon has discovered that pollution of the earth also results in mind pollution. No wonder we and the earth are one. Increasingly we see that suffering and strife within the human race points to apocalyptic thinking – revealing the true human mind- as the only explanation of what is happening in the world and to those who live there. We increasingly are discovering that people are bad, that systems are failing and that the status quo can easily tip into chaos. Thinking apocalyptically, realizing that mass extinction is on the horizon, is a step in the right direction and will give us no answers but will help us to identify new directions. The shift from the prophetic to the apocalyptic can tell us that hope in the effectiveness of existing systems is futile and we must start thinking in dramatically new ways. By thinking of ‘Apocalypse’ as the end of the old we can start the beginning of something new. The word ‘metanoia’ (the Greek word for ‘conversion’ actually taking a totally different direction) comes to mind. It’s not ‘rapture’ but a ‘rupture’ drastic enough to change life.

Additional Apocalyptic Affirmation

Mass extinction is the topic du jour. The May 23d issue of the London Review of Books deals with three books relevant to the matter at hand: (1) The Carbon Crunch: How We’re getting Climate Change Wrong- and How to Fix it; (2) Earthmasters: the Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering; and (3) The City and the Coming Climate: Climate Change in the Places we Live. The reviewer concludes: “We’ll muddle through……but only if we slow climate change to a rate that we can adapt to. If we don’t we may indeed be doomed.”

It is all but certain that ‘we are doomed,’ which requires apocalyptic anticipation.

Dr. Robert Jensen cites Fred Guterl, the executive editor of Scientific American, who wrote The Fate of the Specie. In it he does not shy away from a blunt discussion of the challenges humans face. He writes: “There’s no going back on our reliance on computers and high-tech medicine, agriculture, power generation, and so forth without causing vast human suffering—unless you want to contemplate reducing the world population by many billions of people. We have climbed out on a technological limb, and turning back is a disturbing option. We are dependent on our technology, yet our technology now presents the seeds of our own destruction. It’s a dilemma. I don’t pretend to have a way out. We should start by being aware of the problem.”

James Lovelock, a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose work led to the detection of the widespread presence CFCs in the atmosphere, is also quite forthright in his assessment. He is most famous for his “Gaia hypothesis” that understands both the living and non-living parts of the earth as a complex system that can be thought of as a single organism. In the foreword to The Revenge of Gaia, Earth’s Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, I read that “we are dangerously ignorant of our own ignorance.” He starts his book with a text (KJV) from Matthew 23:24 “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” A gnat is the smallest of insects. It makes me think how many people violently agitate against gay-marriage – affecting a fraction of 1 percent of the population –while 50 percent of Americans deny Climate Change – that will damage everybody’s wellbeing. A typical quote: “Our future is like that of the passengers of a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.”

I write my columns to alert people to face reality. Most people will completely ignore it; others will ridicule it; some will admit that there is a case to be made and leave it at that. A few, a very few, will take it seriously.  What we are doing to the planet is lethal for all. To borrow from one of 20th century America’s most honest writers, James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

The Bible talks about The State of the World as well. Let me quote a passage from J. H. Bavinck’s book The Kingdom- Speed Its Coming soon to be published by Eerdmans.

“It needs no argument that this sundering of creational harmony has had the most ominous results. We can well imagine that the rupturing of the kingdom automatically entailed a host of disastrous consequences. “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). The apostle Paul elab­­o­rated on this when he wrote, “For the creation was subject to frus­tration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (Rom. 8:20). Indeed a curse came over the world when creation was sub­jected to damnation. Once sin affected just one portion of that beau­tifully holistic order, it infected its totality, ruined the entire realm. Now its melodious consonance is no longer a living reality. God himself sur­ren­dered his world to the powers of vanity, allowed it to be sub­ject to destruction. God himself took this fateful step because we, humans, we wanted to be kings, because we refused to live in a world, even in God’s marvelous Kingdom that wants to be subject to him alone.

“We are now faced with a development in creation that we cannot understand and control, but of which we daily exper­i­ence the terrifying consequences. We now see God’s work of art embroiled in the power of demons. Satanic forces have thrown themselves onto nature, onto us humans, onto the entire radiant creation.”

Yes, there is a solution to this. Yes, there is hope. Yes, all is well that ends well. More about that next week. In the meantime think apocalyptically, that is, look into your own mind, turn yourself inside out, try to discover where your real commitment lies.

Next week Part 3 “What moves me to write my columns?

Click on ‘home’ to view previous columns.

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Our World Today

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Bert Hielema

May 23 2013

WHAT MOVES ME TO WRITE MY COLUMNS? (Part 1)

Last week I went back to one of my older books, a book our oldest son gave to me in 1987. It was Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.

I met this well-known professor of Old Testament on three occasions: the first time at an environmental conference in Madison, Wisconsin in late 1988, again at a debate between him and Stanley Hauerwas in a church in Durham N.C. when our youngest daughter lived in Raleigh, and the last time at an ICS –Institute for Christian Studies – gathering in Toronto.

On the very first page of The Prophetic Imagination he writes “The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act……true both of the church and also of us as persons.” That pretty well sets the tone of the book.

Brueggemann states that the task of prophetic ministry – the church and its members – is to create a climate of nurturing, nourishing, and evoking a state of mind, a consciousness, and a new understanding, an alternative to the consciousness and perception of the culture that surrounds us. He writes that we must live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give: the Kingdom to come in the new creation, in other words. But he also sees our culture as so tired that it is almost impossible for us to have sufficient energy to embrace the promises of renewal that God will bring.

Our basic problem is that we find ourselves in an economy of affluence in which we are so well off that pain is not noticed, that the cries of the marginal are not heard or are dismissed as the noises of kooks and traitors. Brueggemann says that the religion we adhere to is one where God’s message to openly confront the world is completely neglected as we practise a religion of optimism which believes that God has no business other than to maintain our standard of living.

So what is the place of a prophet today?

During the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940-45) we had no radio – they were all confiscated. Possession posed prison, but we had one anyway to listen to the BBC’s Dutch broadcast. My main entertainment as a teenager was a church-sponsored young men society, where some 20 young men met each week for a couple of hours plus preparation time, and dealt with “The Bible and the Life of the Christian.” Each teenager in turn had to present an essay followed by discussions. There I got my initial training thinking critically about issues such as the Christian’s obligation to be ‘prophet, priest and king.’ How old-fashioned this all sounds 70 years later, yet it shaped my life.

What then is a prophet? A prophet is not a person with special gifts who can foretell the future. A prophet is a believer who with open mind and shorn off preconceived notions observes what’s happening in society and has the courage to squarely name the challenges that present themselves in our quickly changing society.

Observing what goes on today a prophet looks ahead to determine whether our children have a viable future, considering the present state of the economy and the universal environmental destruction.

Why do I write my blogs?

The reason I keep on writing my blog week in week out is that neither the church, Christian press nor the secular ones are prophetic: they fail to tell what really goes on in society: they are dutiful lackeys of the establishment whether that is ecclesiastical or secular. They depend on advertising and the support of conservative elements and must present a cheerful and optimistic outlook, even though there is little or nothing to be optimistic about. The religious journals, of whatever stripe, are a reflection of the churches, are captives of consumerism and very loath to allow pessimism to disturb their deadly tranquility, preferring instead to have sweet pietism carry the day.

On the day the Blue Jays became world champions I was driving from Toronto to Tweed, coming from a meeting, listening to the game on the radio. I picked up a hitchhiker who lived in Toronto, had never heard of the Blue Jays and was totally ignorant about any current happening. It seems to me that the majority of people, including most Christians have a self-induced ignorance of the plight of the planet, pushing the frightening reality from their minds because they feel too powerless to do anything about it.

Here is the Truth: we are hitting physical limits; we cannot expect to maintain contemporary levels of consumption that draw down the ecological capital of the planet at rates dramatically beyond replacement levels. It is unrealistic to imagine that we can go on treating the planet as nothing more than a mine from which we extract and a landfill into which we dump.

It’s long overdue for preachers, writers, teachers and all those who influence opinion to realize that multiple, cascading ecological crises must change preachers’ mission, Christian writers’ messages and teachers’ lesson plans in ever more dramatic fashion. We are living in apocalyptic times: it is high time for apocalyptic sermons and articles. Apocalypse means ‘revelation’ as in 2 Peter 3:10 which speaks of ‘laying things bare,’ of revealing what really goes on today. Every day brings new ‘revelations’, be that political, criminal, environmental or financial. That’s why I write my blog because neither the preachers nor the pundits nor the teachers seem to be getting the message.

Preachers must be willing to critique not only specific people – politicians especially and their policies – but also the systems out of which they emerge. Most people sense what goes on, but would welcome honest affirmation. That also means that the church must continuously explain what the Bible really teaches about the coming of the Kingdom, something that is not done now because we all are daily brainwashed by the media, especially by television which is funded through advertising by the large corporations and their bosses who really control the political process. Perhaps a good start is to throw out TV and give the money saved to Greenpeace.

Royal Journalism

(Some of the following I owe to Robert Jensen, a professor of Journalism at the University of Texas.)

Back to Brueggemann.

He uses the term “royal” not to describe a specific form of executive power but as a description of a system that really pulls the strings in society and marginalizes the needs of ordinary people. The term starts with Solomon. Brueggemann quotes George Mendenhall who wrote that the Solomon achievement is rightly characterised as ‘the paganization of Israel.” Walter Brueggemann points out that this royal consciousness took hold after ancient theocratic Israel chose a secular king. Solomon overturned Moses and replaced a God of liberation with one used to serve an empire, offering affluence for some and oppressive social policy for most, all under the cloak of static religion, the kind we have now. Brueggemann labels this a false consciousness: “The royal consciousness leads people to numbness, especially to numbness about death.” This royal tradition applied to ancient Israel, the Roman empire, European monarchs, and today to North America, where our societies have concentrated wealth and power in a few hands, and ignore the needs of the bulk of the population, situations where the wealthy and powerful offer platitudes about their well-intended purposes for the masses, while pursuing  policies to enrich themselves.

It is plain to most of us that we in North America suffer under such a regime: economic inequality and the resulting suffering have dramatically deepened over the past four decades. Climate change denial has increased even as the evidence of the threat becomes undeniable. Brueggemann describes such a culture as one that is “competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.” I might add that our culture also knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Today almost all mainstream corporate-commercial journalism is royal journalism: journalism without the imagination needed to move outside the framework created by the dominant systems of power. CNN, MSNBC, CBC, CTV all practice royal journalism. The Globe and Mail, the New York Times both are ground zero for royal journalism. I read both papers every day. Christianity Today, the Christian Reformed Banner, the Presbyterian Record, to name the ones I am familiar with, and almost all other church periodicals are in that same category.  Marking these institutions as royalist doesn’t mean that no good journalism ever emerges from them, or that they employ no writers or columnists who are capable of challenging royal arrangements. Instead, the term recognizes that these institutions lack the imagination necessary to step outside of the royal consciousness on a regular basis. Over time, they add to the numbness rather than jolt people out of it.

The royal consciousness I am talking about is completely intertwined with a high-energy/high-technology worldview, an intimate part of a hierarchical economy, run by an imperial nation-state. Fundamental to this faith in our technological, economic, and national basis is the belief that we can have anything we want without obligations to other peoples or other living things and creation in general, and that we deserve this. It presupposes that we are ‘a city upon the hill, God’s chosen people’ which warrants our prodigious pursuit of commodities in the name of freedom, at the expense of the neighbor. That is the lie we live. That’s why a different journalism is necessary.

Prophetic Journalism

Given the multiple crises that existing political, economic, and social systems have generated, the ideals of journalism call for a prophetic journalism. The first step in defending that claim is to reiterate what real prophets are not: they are not people who predict the future or demand that others follow in their footsteps. To act as a prophet requires only honesty and courage. To speak prophetically means to squarely face the fact that our world is structured by systems that create unjust and unsustainable conditions, and that we who live in the privileged parts of the world are implicated in those systems. We, in North America, with six percent of the world’s population, claim more than 25 percent of the world’s resources. Our responsibility for the world’s mess is in direct proportion to the pollution we generate.

Don’t think that my call to action is a new phenomenon. The Old Testament is full of instances of similar situations. Amos and Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah all rejected the pursuit of wealth or power and argued for the centrality of kindness and justice. Micah 6:8 comes to mind: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” In his analysis of these prophets, the scholar and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel concluded: “Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Brueggemann argues that the task of those speaking prophetically is to “penetrate the numbness in order to face the body of death in which we are caught” and “penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us.” There is an appalling lack of understanding in the Christian community of the future Christ has promised with the coming of the Kingdom. The imminent publication of The Kingdom: Speed Its Coming is extremely opportune. Both Walter Brueggemann and J. H. Bavinck  encourage preachers to think of themselves as “handler[s] of the prophetic tradition,” a job description that also applies to other intellectual professions, including teaching and journalism.

Prophetic preaching names the crisis and causes a situation to emerge that is already clamoring for our attention almost every day. We can no longer hide behind platitudes. We have to put a label on the defining sins among us: the sins of environmental abuse, of neighborly disregard, of long-term racism, of self-indulgent consumerism, the very issues the prophets of old called to the attention of their contemporaries and our attention here and now.

Ecological Realties

Contrary to what Ecclesiastes writes, “There is something new under the sun,” and that something new is terribly frightening. People who live in tornado prone areas usually have a cellar where they can take refuge when the sirens sound. Today the sirens sound for the entire world and we have no safe haven anywhere: historical conditions have changed, and that means facing tough questions about ecological sustainability. On Climate Change the increase in concentration of CO2 has been dramatic. In 1958, it was 315 ppm (parts per million), and this rose to about 375ppm in 2000 before jumping to 400ppm now. At this rate, we are on track not for a 2 degree Celsius but for a 3 to 5 degree increase in temperature by the end of the century – a catastrophe. An honest evaluation of that evidence leads to a disturbing conclusion: Life as we know it is almost over. That is, the high-energy/high-technology life that we in the affluent societies live is a dead-end. There is a growing realization that we have disrupted planetary forces in ways we cannot control and do not fully understand. We cannot predict the specific times and places where dramatic breakdowns will occur, but we can know that the living system on which we depend is breaking down. We live in apocalyptic times.

To be continued next week: giving time to reflect.

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