Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

Yes…Yes (Conclusion)

An Appeal to all Christians.

“If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a New Creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5: 17).

Isn’t that an amazing statement: those who are in Christ are new creations. What does it actually mean?

Jesus says somewhere that we should not put new wine into old wineskins, because these used containers might not be leak proof, creating the possibility that this precious drink – wine was Israel’s national beverage- could seep out and that would be a terrible waste.

Well, the same is true for being a New Creation: it just won’t do to place such a person in an environment where it simply would be out of place: a new creation can only thrive in a new environment.

Look at the world we live in. For the unskilled eye it looks in fairly good shape, but on a closer look here’s where we are now. We live in a world that is fraught with problems, burdened with debt, both monetary and environmental. We also constantly live under the shadow of nuclear war, of Global warming, of oil depletion, of unemployment, of mortgage foreclosure, even of a pandemic, which may rapidly spread when the real flu season starts in the fall. Frankly the general outlook, from whatever angle, is dismal, as deficits get bigger and hyper inflation- or worse deflation – cannot be ruled out. By all accounts we live in a different world. Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. recently remarked that “It is more and more clear that what worked in the 20^th Century will not work in the 21^st Century.” That is also true for the church, reason why Paul’s saying that “those who are in Christ are a new creation,’ means something different today than it did in his time or even a decade ago.  

That is why I started this series by saying that “Times are never better for us Christians,” because the world experiences ‘change and decay’ every where, and has no clue what to do, while there is a definite Christian solution.

The current situation is historic because we are witnessing the decline and fall of Capitalism, in spite of valiant efforts by the money-men of our times, which include most politicians, to put our Humpty Dumpty Money System together again.  

We are now in that curious in-between- time, where matters can go either way: renewal or chaos, redemption or disintegration, rebirth or death.

Uncertainty brings golden opportunities. The world is screaming for answers now that the old ways have been found wanting. Of course, as fanatics are apt to do: when matters are failing, they redouble the efforts, as can be seen in the multiple stimulus packages that will only aggravate the already precarious state of finances, as more growth leads to more pollution, faster resource depletion and quicker Climate Change. To encourage ‘growth’, environmental concerns are downplayed because our capitalistic economy is like a bicycle: once it stalls society collapses, so momentum must be maintained at all cost.
The Bible is our guide here. It is not a history book, and does not give us specific outlines how to invest money, yet it directs us in a certain way that helps us in changing circumstances, so, what was true for my Christian grandparents’ time holds no water today. Their daily code of conduct was very strict: no dancing, no card playing, no cinema attendance, no Sunday work of any kind, but twice to church, but they generated a lot of entertainment themselves: wind instrument bands, choirs, young people meets, very structured lives.  Then Christians were easily recognized by their simple, perhaps simplistic, customs. Today Christians cannot be recognized in any way. Yet we should stand out, and the way we live should provide that answer, for the simple reason that the Way of the World has become the Way of Death.

So what does the Bible tells us in this matter?

The Bible is the book of Salvation, which means that it tells us that God created the world, that we, ever since Adam and Eve, have been busy un-creating it, and that Jesus stopped that process so that we – under Jesus’ guidance- again can help God to keep creating.

Today we have reached a crucial junction where we either join the forces of destruction and so dig our own grave as well, or participate in preparing for a New World by being A New Creation. 

So what does this imply? Let me give a few examples: imagine a bird that would want to live a long life. Last week, in church, a person not known for his environmental commitment- he still smokes and does not believe in Climate Change- commented to me that he had not seen swallows this year at all and wondered why. A swallow can only operate when conditions are good: clean air, lots of good habitat. The same is true for fish, which too has seen sharp declines, or frogs, whose number have grown smaller for years now. In order to flourish again these animals need a New Creation.

The same holds true for us. “If anyone is in Christ she or he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come.” If we want to be in Christ, really be born again, then we have to become a New Creation and – here comes the clincher – have to work toward a New Creation as well: new wine in new wineskins; newly created human beings in a New Creation. Revelation in its very last chapter urges us to ‘wash our clothes – to live an environmentally clean life- so that we may have the right to the Tree of Life and go through the gate into the City, the New Jerusalem.”

In a word: for a person to be a New Creation, to be in Christ, fully, one hundred percent, means that we must also live in a new creation, must strive to create conditions that resemble the New World to come. I realize that this goes directly against the current thinking in the North American Church. One missionary, Craig Sorley in Kenya, trying to encourage green practices there – as quoted in the June 20 2009 issue of the Canadian Globe and Mail – writes, “The deeply embedded view ( in the church) is that Christ is returning soon, so why should we care about the environment?” That is the 20^th century church speaking.

The 21^st Christian view is exactly the opposite: precisely because Christ’ return is imminent, we should deeply care about God’s earth. Martin Luther, the church reformer, once said: “If I knew that Christ would come back tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.” We can no longer call ourselves “in Christ” unless we also live our lives “In Christ”, that is in a place that resembles, as close as possible, to world that is to come, because not heaven, but a renewed earth is our final destination.

Remember we cannot do anything without Christ, but Christ will not do anything without us. After all we are “heirs of the Kingdom – the New Creation – and co-heirs with Christ.”

Yes…yes.

An appeal to all Christians 

In my book The Church in Flux – available on my blog – in Chapters 2-5 – I have outlined a possible scenario of Christ’s Return and quote Revelation – the last Bible book – to back up my thesis.

Anthony Campolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Eastern University, who founded the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, uses the same passages in Revelation to point out similar ideas regarding the current crisis in the economy. I found his article – which I quote below in its entirety – in the Jewish magazine called TIKKUN, the Hebrew word for ‘To mend, repair and transform the world,’ a word that exactly portrays my understanding of the task of the Christian in this world.

As often, the Old Testament people of God are very alert to what’s happening in this world and voice it eloquently. All Christians should practice TIKKUN so that the world is transformed.

Here is what Dr Campolo writes:

“Of all the books of the New Testament, The Revelation of St. John the Divine always struck me as the least relevant to life in today’s world-until this year. My attitude toward The Revelation has changed with this unfolding economic crisis. What I find in that book, especially in its latter chapters, now speaks to me and brings me under conviction.

When St. John wrote The Revelation, he was prescribing how Christians were supposed to understand themselves and live in the context of the ancient Roman Empire. Increasingly, they had defined themselves as a people who had their citizenship in what they believed was another kingdom, namely, the Kingdom of God. They had come to see themselves as aliens in what they more and more viewed as a sociopolitical system dominated by corrupted “principalities and powers.”

“Babylon” was the code word that St. John used for the empire, so whenever we read “Babylon” in the latter chapters of the Book of Revelation, we should substitute in our minds, “The Roman Empire.” Babylon, given this decoding, was a reference to the dominant political-economic social order wherein first-century Christians were required to live out what amounted to a countercultural lifestyle.

If we are to relate what John wrote about his Babylon 2,000 years ago to our own contemporary existential social situation, we should recognize that what he said about the Roman Empire is applicable to every societal system in which Christians are required to live out their witness. That means that in France, the French political-economic system is Babylon. In Japan, the Japanese system is Babylon. We, however, live in the United States, which means that our Babylon is the American political-economic social order. For us, what John had to say about his Babylon is relevant and revealing to what is happening in our country, especially in the face of the present economic meltdown.

First of all, we can figure out from the eighteenth chapter of The Book of Revelation that our Babylon, like all Babylons, is doomed to fall. What is especially revealing is that the Babylon of which John wrote falls because its lifestyle is marked by a consumerism that exhausts the resources necessary for it to be sustained. Everything is for sale in Babylon. John lists them in Revelation 18:12-13:

… gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves-and human lives.

There is an obvious parallel in this to the American Babylon. Ours is a consumeristic lifestyle that exhausts 42 percent of the world’s resources, even though Americans constitute just 6 percent of the world’s population. Our consumerism, like that of the Roman Empire, brings down our Babylon. Whether our political-economic system collapses in the immediate future as a result of our present crisis, or at some time in the future, is hard to predict. Frankly, it sure looks like now!

When our Babylon falls, there will be two reactions. The first will be the reaction of those whom the Bible names as “the merchants.” We read that they weep …

… and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in one hour she has been laid waste (Revelation 18:18-19).

Reading such verses brings to mind those photos on the front page of the New York Times that showed the brokers on the floor of the Stock Exchange, wringing their hands, with others shaking their heads as they watched the Dow Jones average drop as much as 500 points in one session. Like the merchants described in Revelation 18:11, they “weep and mourn, since no one buys their cargo anymore.” We can almost hear the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors wailing like the merchants described in the Bible, crying, “People aren’t buying our cars anymore!” Those merchants in shopping centers, unable to move the stocks of consumer goods, join the chorus and are heard to bemoan that even with sales of 70 percent off, they can’t find the buyers they need to move their stock and stay in business.

But there’s another reaction to the collapse of Babylon. It can be heard in the shouts of a great assembly. The shouts are coming from people who are committed to God and His Kingdom. With acclamations of praise they say, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication” (Revelation 19:1b-2a).

Babylon is called a whore because, like a whore, it has seduced people. Those whose citizenship and commitments have been in Babylon have been seduced into a comfortable “dainty” lifestyle of consumerism and now are having to face the reality that this lifestyle has come to an end. They are being forced to realize:

“The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!” … and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more; and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more; and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more; for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery (Revelation 18:14, 22-23).

As the news of the collapse of Babylon spreads, the people of God are not dismayed. This is because they were never allured by it in the first place. They were a people who had been “seeking, first and foremost, the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). These people of faith, following the instructions of their Lord, had not laid up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but had, instead, invested themselves in the Kingdom of God-a kingdom that will last forever (Matthew 6:19-20).

In the face of the collapse of our American Babylon, we have to ask how much we have been a people whose lives and resources have been invested in God’s Kingdom, so that the collapse of our political-economic system does not threaten us. In the context of the collapse, with whom will we stand? Will we be with the merchants, and weep because our lives and resources have been invested in Babylon; or will we be able to join with those who shout “Hallelujah” because the seductive Babylon and all of the evils that go with her seduction are no more?

As our economic system collapses, I am coming to realize for the first time in my life that Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount are the most sensible words ever spoken. He said:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

I must confess that I had previously thought these words were for the likes of saints such as St. Francis or Mother Theresa. As I read these words, I understood why the Darbyites, with their Scofield Reference Bibles, tried to assign this way of life to some future dispensation and not viable for this present age. But now, as my retirement funds evaporate while the stock market plummets, I wish I had taken Jesus’ words seriously and “taken no thought for the future” as to what I would eat and how I would live. Living more by faith and trusting less on Mammon now seems like the wisest course of action, and the one I should have taken.

I increasingly feel a regretful kinship to that man I read about in the Bible, who built a barn and filled it with those things that would provide for his retirement (Luke 12:16-20). He then reflects, perhaps in light of inflation, that he ought to tear down that barn and build a bigger barn to provide even more security for his future. As he is about to launch into a life of leisure, the Lord says, “Thou fool.” Having worked hard to set up 401Ks and IRAs, I can hear the Lord saying the same thing to me as I watch these funds evaporating daily. Over the years, I thought I had been a generous giver to the poor. Now I wish I had given far more!

There is some good news that comes from the Bible, and that is that it’s never too late to repent. Jonah was surprised that the last-minute repentance of the people of Nineveh led to that city being delivered from destruction. Perhaps our repentance, and that of others around us, could save our Babylon. But even if our socioeconomic system cannot be rescued, those of us who repent of the destructive, selfish, consumerist lifestyles that have brought our Babylon to the brink of collapse might be able to live through the hard days that lie ahead knowing that what is of ultimate significance in our lives will endure.”

So far Dr Campolo. In the following segment I will post my concluding remarks.

Yes…Yes (7)

An appeal to all Christians.

Can Christians really make a difference in this world? They should, of course. A little leaven does the trick in bread. Will a small band of Christians do the same in society? It should be able, but only when their message finds resonance in others. It is no secret that this is not the case today. This was the case when Paul went around the then known world and set it ablaze for Christ. Why was his mission successful where now the Message only serves to turn people off, at least in the Western world? The reason is that times have changed, but not the sermons, the official mouth of the church. What we need today is a Paul who understands today’s world and speaks the message of real hope, something everybody yearns for.

That we are in trouble on all fronts is no secret. That the world is grasping for solutions is also no secret. It is also plain to all that our troubles are our own doing. We are there for the simple reason that we like the status quo: people just don’t change, because change is simply too difficult. Most of us like to float with the flow and hate to go against the stream of public opinion, believing that the crowd knows best.

There are various examples in history where ample warnings were given, but people ignored them. The prophets in the Old Testament kept on telling the people to turn back to God or they would be exiled or even be wiped out altogether. The Ten tribes of Israel disappeared for ever, while Judah and Benjamin suffered 70 years of banishment. More recently the same sort of calamity happened again to the Jewish people, this time in Germany, in 1933, when Hitler came to power. He too had completely outlined his future plans for them in his book “Mein Kampf.” So the Jews in Germany, all 523,000 of them, could have known what was in store.  But they stayed put and that included Jewish bankers, all of whom could have left. They thought they could deal with Hitler; they thought that their money would do the trick, that their allegiance to the German Reich would help them, so they ignored the threats Hitler had outlined in his auto biography. Only about 7% did leave early: 38,000 out of 523,000, while more left after 1938.

At some inconvenience almost all could have left, but for most the immediate cost was too great, involving leaving business, homes, friends, making it necessary to learn a new language, and resettle in a strange land, where they would have arrived in poverty, would have to start from scratch again, but then Jews had faced those options ever since the Assyrian captivity in the eighth century B.C, that 70 year exile, so well described in the Hebrew bible, and also in Spain in the 16^th Century when many were forced to move to Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and other countries.  

Of course not all of them would have escaped the Nazis. Those who lived in, or had fled to the Netherlands almost all died, and the same was true for those who migrated to other European countries that were overrun by Germany after 1939. But the majority could have tried to get away, but they stayed: they refused to read the signals or heeded such events as the Crystal Night happening. They reasoned that “It can’t be that bad.” It was worse.

Jews are like us. Just as they, we too hate to take signs seriously. We too say or think: “No problem. We can handle it.” Just like the Armenians who went through the same thing. The Turkish massacres of 1895 were a foretaste, but most of them remained behind. Then came the genocide of 1915 when millions were killed.

So what has this to do with today? People don’t change, but circumstances do. Look back at the economy in October 2007, not even 2 years ago. The Dow was at 14,000, the banks were booming, real estate was down a little, but the experts said not to worry and so gave no warning. They were wrong, all of them. Today the Dow and real estate is down by 40 percent. The experts were wrong, all of them.

Today the U.S. government is running a $1.8 trillion deficit, while Federal tax receipts are down 34%, which means that the deficit will go above $2 trillion, but nobody cares. No one says, “This is the end. The American economy will never again be what it was.”

Go back less than 20 months. Would you have believed that Chrysler and GM were both headed for bankruptcy? In October 2007 GM shares were at $43. Now they are at $1. Then there was an industry called investment banking, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, who were not part of the commercial banking system. They are gone. So is Merrill Lynch. Bank of America and Citigroup were bailed out by the government. They would have gone under. They sell for a fraction of what they did in 2007. And what do most people say? “No problem.”

Where are we today? Today in the USA the ‘per family’ debt stands at $546.668 (US), an increase of $55,000 in just one year, but the general feeling is that “there is no problem.” With so much debt Medicare will go bust and so will Social Security there. Again, “No problem, why worry.”

The unemployment rate keeps rising, is approaching 10 percent. Again “No problem, why worry.”

When people refuse to face reality, because reality is going to be more painful than anything they have experienced, they look for signs that the problems they cannot avoid without changing are really not that bad. They look for offsetting good news, so they assume that the status quo will return. They cling to the hope that the U.S. government will spend another $30 billion to buy the ‘dead on arrival’ General Motors on which the US treasury already had spent $20 billion. “No problem,” Obama knows best. The government in Washington penalized GM’s bondholders for $27 billion in exchange for 10% of the company, 72% owned by the government and 17% by the United Auto Workers medical insurance fund. “No problem.”

Remember Wilson’s famous quote in the 1950’s, “What is good for General Motors is good for the USA?”  He then was the head of General Motors when it had 50 percent of North American auto sales. Now the reverse is equally true: what is bad for GM is worse for the US.  The company will never return to what it was, and neither will the USA, with no savings and trillions in debt, and disappearing jobs, people will not buy as many cars as before from a company run by the government and the United Auto Workers, but again the same refrain, “No problem.”

But there are big problems: Oldsmobile is gone; Pontiac is going; Hummer is now a Chinese company; Saturn is sold; Opel bought by Magna; Saab is on the block. Yet the mass believes that there are “No problems.” Readers look at the reports, and the reports look awful: falling home prices, rising unemployment, an astronomical Federal deficit. But the media say we are close to a bottom – the bottom of a crash that none of them forecasted. Optimists speak of a slow, weak recovery. Pessimists speak of hyperinflation and depression simultaneously. But as the chorus proclaims “No problem,” the public mindlessly picks up this refrain.

Here is the harsh truth: what we now are experiencing is composed of two interlocking phenomena: (1) a quickly progressing financial catastrophe caused by ever expanding globalization, which  has fermented growing instability and increasing disparity and (2) a continously progressing environmental disintegration which, unless there is a radical change in living habits, will lead to an inevitable creational crash, effected primarily by our lifestyle that knows no limits, based as it is on our blind exploitation of finite natural resources.

Our governments – by offering stimulus packages – encourage such unreal behavior, yet their actions are nothing less than the preservation of employment opportunities on the Titanic’.

People usually calculate the costs of making a change. This is wise. Jesus taught: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, every one who sees it will ridicule him saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish it.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one who comes with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:28-32).

In short, count the costs, especially the environmental one. This is what we have refused to do. Now the cost of doing something radical has become too high, so we prefer doing nothing, doing nothing about Climate Change; doing nothing about the inevitable day when Oil is gone; doing nothing about growing disparity; doing nothing about jobs disappearing; doing nothing about mass transit or urbanization, let alone the growing debt load.

Now is the time for Christians to show the world that we must live so that God’s creation is enhanced, is made better. Talking will not help. Sermons are passé. Only example will serve as a model. Christians need not fear ridicule. Paul already wrote to the Corinthians that “The Message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” (1 Corinthians 1:18). That’s exactly the message we have to bring: foolishness.

Now is the time to plan ahead. Now is the time to prepare for an unfolding disaster: Global warming, resource depletion, rising government ownership, massive deficits, rising unemployment, falling house prices, busted retirement pensions, rising interest rates (falling corporate bonds), and Federal Reserve inflation on a scale never seen in North American history.

The beauty of living within the means of ecological and financial  limits is that not only will we be prepared for bad times, but by doing so we conform more to the will of God and prepare ourselves for the Kingdom to Come. As always, doing the will of God is the answer: always.

So what does the Bible say about the current economic conditions?

Yes…Yes (6)

An Appeal to all Christians

Who am I that I make an appeal to all Christians, as if I have the authority and know-how to make definitive statements concerning such issues as theology and economics and how they relate. Even though I come through sometimes as a ‘know-it-all’ I too see matters through a glass dimly. But in my long life – I am in my 81^st year – I have always been an ardent student of the connection between faith and life, how religion relates to what we do in business, learning, eating and recreation, just to name the most relevant.

I know that I am correct that no church has a claim to the truth, negligent as all of them have been, and still are, in giving God the glory whose glory is revealed in creation. Whenever I go to church – which I do every Sunday – I often am promptly turned off by the pomp and elaborate vestments and historical rituals, and usually by the sermon as well, which frequently caters more to public acceptance than divine approval. The church in general, especially the Roman Catholic, the high Anglican-Episcopalian, and the Greek Orthodox churches, with their Old Testament approach to worship, is especially out of touch with the reality of life. That does not mean that denominations such as Southern Baptist and Pentecostal denominations make the grade: they don’t because of their rapture approach to eternity, which has done more harm to God’s beloved creation than any other dogma, as it has given both them and industry in general a church-sanctioned license to pollute.

Just as ecclesiastical Christianity has separated God from creation, so also ecclesiastical Capitalism has separated Capital from the environment, with the result that we now face immense natural challenges as well as tremendous resource constraints. Just as the economists had no clue that what they were doing to the economy would lead to a financial meltdown and the depletion of the most basic ingredients on which development depends, such as all carbon products, so the theologians too have led us astray in matters of God and creation.

Basically the old answers do not work anymore, because we live in different times. That’s why Christians now have a golden opportunity to take the lead in fashioning a society that embraces God’s justice, which is captured in John 3:16 “God so loved the cosmos” which means that we must do the same. It’s as simple as that. Jesus, in that same chapter also says that he came not to ‘condemn the world, the cosmos, but to save it’. When the church preaches that its members go to heaven, then, in essence it ‘condemns’ the world, in total opposition to the sacrifice Jesus made. The church generally has interpreted that passage to apply to ‘humans’ only, yet if Jesus had meant that, he would have used the Greek word ‘anthropos’ which means a ‘human being’. Instead he consistently points to the ‘cosmos’ which means the entire universe, that well-ordered entity, as opposed to ‘chaos’ the state we, under Satan’s guidance, have caused it to become. Our ‘heaven’ orientation is a perfect compliance with Satan’s aim to destroy God’s world, a direct violation of Jesus’ intent. He came to ‘save’ the world from the clutches of Satan, who now rules it. He saved it because it was lost. The French bible uses the word ‘racheter’, which literally means ‘to buy back’, the same meaning as the English ‘redeem.’ That is just one instance where the church has misread the gospel, under the influence of Gnosticism – which sees the world as an object of condemnation – and Greek philosophy which has separated Nature- the cosmos – from Grace – God.

Another striking example of misreading the Bible is in Jesus’ explicit call that when we “Seek the Kingdom, everything else will fall in place.” Seeking that kingdom where Jesus is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, refers to God’s beloved ‘cosmos’ and means pursuing its welfare.

That is the first and foremost task of the Christian and the church should give leadership there, but has failed to do so and, since ecclesiastical ways are so fundamentally ingrained, the leadership that churches should provide, will not be forthcoming, hence my appeal is not directed that institute, but to Christians at large.

In short, the system that our ecclesiastical and political leaders are trying to keep going or revive is spiritually bankrupt and also environmentally dangerous. I also have no illusion that my call to all Christians to re-examine our basic assumptions, will be heeded, so I see myself as a voice crying in the wilderness, where my whispers whirling through the world-wide-web may reach a person here and there, but whether it will have an impact, only the Lord knows, who also will, I believe, steer these words where they have to go.

I am convinced that any attempt to return to those good old days, are no longer possible. Society can no longer function that way for a number of reasons, the foremost being Oil depletion, Climate Change and the precarious state of the US dollar and the English pound, due to the great indebtedness of those nations.

The Bottom Line is no longer a ruthless pursuit of profit at all costs, at the expense of the environment. We all, rich and poor, young and old, are subject to the laws of nature, those four laws of ecology, which we have disregarded at our own peril. They are “nature knows best, nothing disappears, everything is connected to everything else and there is no free lunch.” When we observe these ecological guidelines, when we love all of creation as ourselves, then we express directly the great commandment: “Love God above everything else, and our neighbor as ourselves.”

I have no illusions that we ever will create a society in which people routinely act in altruistic and generous ways toward others, or see Creation as God’s precious gift to us. Our carbon-rich diet has made life too easy for us. Now that this slave-rich era is coming to an end -finite energy has given us North American the equivalent of 120 personal servants 24/7/365 – we have gone too far down the road to revert to physical self-sufficiency, while our television-honed existence has been an additional tool to mentally rob us of the ability to think for ourselves. Psalm 115 has a line which applies to us and the idols we worship: “those who fashion these idols will resemble them” says this psalm. Now that these idols are disappearing, we will go that same way unless we obey God’s rules for life.

Tinkering at the edges is not enough. Buying a Prius will not do it.  A total new approach is needed. It looks increasingly likely that capitalism is indeed beginning to consume itself, the same way it devoured the minds, bodies, and labor of countless human and nonhuman beings over the course of centuries. For the first time in generations, perhaps ever, we may have a brief opening in which to imagine something else and to set the terms for a new way of organizing human society and economy.

But we cannot wait too long. The dangers are incalculable. Should we squander this historical moment through inaction or despair, it may soon be too late for Christians to do anything, except to see world events spiral out of control. 

More about human nature in the next segment.

Yes…Yes (5)

                                                                                         An Appeal to All Christians.      

The rich will always be with us…. That phrase fits our society better than the more familiar one from Matthew 26 when Jesus reminded us that the ‘poor’ would be our constant companions, perhaps referring to Jesus himself who also was among the poor, lived on welfare, depended on others, mostly well-off women, for room and board.

The Bible often tells us that it’s the rich who exploit us, who never have enough, who always want more. Capitalism is so unchristian because it solely exists for the benefit of the wealthy. The government helps them, based on the mistaken notion that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. That’s why those in the top income bracket are bailed out, and receive the bulk of the trillions of tax-payers dollars, which will eventually be bounced back to the backs of the poor, especially the current crop of young people, already loaded with study debt, credit card debt, environmental debt, and now the bail-out debt.

Somehow the current economic crisis can be traced back to the many of us who always hoped to wade in money. To be really well-off is the true American dream. We do anything to get our hands at money. That’s why the current money meltdown is such a tragedy, because this dream has now become a nightmare. The American dream, in which everybody can reach the top, has been exposed as a pipedream, an impossibility. The pursuit of money for its own sake has proved to be a fallacy, the wrong thing to do, because it excluded the pursuit of what really counts: to seek the Kingdom of God. You may wonder what religion has to do with money. Well, the pursuit of money is a religious quest, an object of worship that now is showing its true nature: a branch of hell.

First an assessment of what the future looks like. I have in front of me a bank note from Zimbabwe. The face value of that money unit is 100 billion dollars, issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The signature on that piece of paper is from Dr.G. Gono, Governor.  It features a pair of giraffes and underneath the description of the SPECIAL AGRO-CHEQUE is a picture of a row of some 17 large grain silos, suggesting that a lot of food is stored there. I paid $1.00 for that One Hundred Billion Dollars bill, probably not even enough to buy one loaf of bread in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.

Dr Marc Faber, an economist born in Switzerland, believes that this is also what is in store for us: hyper inflation. Our relentless pursuit of money and the Western governments relentless efforts to revive a moribund economy has already resulted in burdening every one of the 80 million plus American families with a debt that stood on June 1 2009 at $546,668, an increase of $55,000 in 2008 alone. Only hyper inflation will make these awesome figures disappear.

Mr. Posner agrees. He is a federal circuit judge and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and in his just-published “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression” (Harvard University Press), he writes: “A commitment of such magnitude (referring to the $12 trillion bail-out) — stacked on top of enormous budget deficits enlarged by sharply falling federal-tax revenues — could lead to high inflation, greatly increased interest costs on a greatly increased national debt, much heavier taxes, the restructuring of major industries, and the redrawing of the line that separates business from government.”

He also states that the key to understanding a capitalist economy is that, even though it is immensely dynamic and productive, it’s also inherently unstable. At its heart is a system that depends on large-scale borrowing and lending, needed to bridge the gap between input costs and expected revenues and allowing consumers to buy their toys. When the banking system breaks down and credit stops, economic activity plummets, which has happened recently.

Of course, bankers are not the only ones to blame. A large portion of this disaster can be traced to the influential economists who assured us that there could never be another depression. They argued that in the face of a recession the Federal Reserve had only to reduce interest rates and flood the banks with money and all would be well.

As the situation now stands, it is very likely that foreign investors will suddenly pull their money out of the United States, making the dollar worthless and presenting us with a replay of the Deutsche Mark in 1923, when ordinary Germans paid for loaves of bread with wheelbarrows of money. Either way, the structural contradictions in the world system are profound, and they are not going to go away any time soon.  

Unlike in the 1930s, when the Western world nations spent themselves out of depression, first through massive state investment in public works, coupled with a new social compact with labor (as in the United States, with the New Deal), and, more effectively through a massive arms buildup and military expansionism, aided by the onset of World War II, this time no such cruel remedies are available, unless we start a nuclear war, bringing about the Final Solution: nobody left to live. 

As matters stand today, the state sector already accounts for a large portion of the national economies of the United States, Japan, and Europe. In the 1920s, the U.S. national debt (relative to GDP) was flat and even declined, while GDP per capita grew at an extraordinary rate, ushering in higher wages, improvements in agricultural productivity, and vast improvements in quality of life for millions of Americans, including electricity in the home, increasing availability of rail travel, and the introduction of automobiles into everyday life. During the latest economic expansion, by contrast, debts public and private soared at every level of society. The national deficit grew, banks and corporations assumed mind-boggling amounts of risk (often in the form of obscure financial instruments like derivatives), and ordinary working people piled up trillions of dollars of debt in the form of home and car loans and credit card debt. At the same time, wages and quality of life fell. It is therefore difficult to see how the United States and other nations will be able to spend their way out of the present crisis, when, even before the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year, the population was already tapped out, and government expenditures hovered near record highs. In other words: spending more borrowed money is not possible: debts are too high already. More debt will cause more inflation.

Then there is something new under the sun: pollution: capitalism has savaged the earth, leaving billions of people without a decent livelihood, and the ecosystem in tatters. But the social and ecological costs of “doing business” are about to grow exponentially greater. Even without a world-wide financial crisis, we can anticipate more, and more devastating, natural disasters, which in turn will mean disruptions in agricultural production, flooding of cities and entire countries, mass starvation, increasing migration pressures, and so on. All of this will in turn exact an increasing toll on the legitimacy of the liberal nation state. Now with the state, both in Washington and Ottawa, and in Europe as well, becoming more and more the lender and owner ( GM, banks) of last resort, and agreeing to protect us from harm, we, in exchange, consent to be obedient subjects. Another, now much more likely scenario, is that even the “last resort= government ownership” will proves inadequate, resulting in total chaos.

What will come then? America had a taste of dictatorship under Bush and Cheney. Will Barack Obama be able to navigate the ship of state in the face of a full-blown economic hurricane, without it capsizing? Given the people he chose – all Wall Street veterans – to steer his economy through the current fiscal turmoil, his chances look dismal.

I read the New York Times every day. This spring, its columnist, the liberal economist and writer Paul Krugman criticized the administration for continuing to “believe in the magic of the financial marketplace and in the prowess of the wizards who perform that magic.” Citing “the failure of a whole model of banking,” Krugman faulted the administration in particular for trying to preserve a model of “securitization”-i.e., the process by which banks have essentially made risk a commodity by carving up loans and debts and selling them as obscure instruments on the market. “I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life,” Krugman wrote, “and I don’t believe it should try.” 

What Krugman and others fear is that the administration’s temporizing maneuvers may only end up creating the conditions for an even bigger economic collapse later on. 

Just as the Reagan Administration’s monetary policies sowed the seeds for the storm we are reaping today, the Obama administration’s failure to grapple with the structural contradictions of capitalism may be sowing the seeds for an even more cataclysmic day of reckoning in the future.