Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

October 21 2023

CHAOS CAUSES CHAOS, BECAUSE…..

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.

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

Why such wide-spread Chaos? 

Because everything is connected to everything else! 

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

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

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

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

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

The Matthew 24 scenario.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 14 2023

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

                                                                                 Anonymous

Here is a foolish example:

We live in times of deepest gloom, 

With covid, wars and climate doom, 

the future looks so dire and grim, 

our only hope now comes from Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Become like children.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A song celebrating the laws of Ecology.

(Everything is connected)

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

(Creation knows best)

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

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

(Nothing disappears)

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

(No free lunch)

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

We robbed them, left them in the lurch

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

Sing it! Now!

October 7 2023.

Do we need another ‘religious’ revolution?

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

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

Guess work.

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

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

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

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

Yes, all denominations are in trouble. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do we need another ‘religious’ revolution?

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

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

September 30 2023

WHERE IS GOD?  Some theological musings.

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

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

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

So, where is God in all this? 

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

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

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

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

Where is God basically?

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

We are earthbound, forever. 

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

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

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

Where is God?

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

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

September 23 2023

COLLAPSE COMING

We’ve just had the hottest summer on recorded history, with runaway wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, ruinous floods from Slovenia, Sudan and Hong Kong to Vermont and South Americaand Libya. We’ve seen nearly half of the world’s ocean waters in a heat wave, having absorbed almost all of the heat produced by our greenhouse gas emissions. Even the Arctic has become almost tropical in temperature. The number of Hurricanes so far in the Atlantic is unprecedented for an El Nino year. And it will also affect you, and you, and me too, sooner than later: prepare for it.

The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said that “humanity has opened the gates of hell” by unleashing worsening heatwaves, floods and wildfires seen around the world. He echoes Matthew 24.

Collapse is in the cards

Collapse first come gradually, and then, all at once. People say that I am an alarmist because I expect collapse. I admit: I am a Collapsetarian. I see emission of greenhouse gases increase; I see how new fossil fuel projects are subsidized; I see how global warming accelerates, how bushfires and floods engulf the planet; I see climate science ignored, climate change projections kept away from the public eye; I see nations invest in killer submarines rather than water spraying aircraft and other fire-fighting equipment. Yes, I am a Collapsetarian. 

ARCTIC NEWS.

Almost every day I have a look at the ARCTIC NEWS website. I sincerely believe that our future lies buried there, or, better, the lack of our future. Especially its September 15 issue is frightening. It states, based on NASA observations, that the Arctic is heating up beyond any other region in the world. The ice that used to reflect the sunlight is now absorbing the solar heat and temperatures there are heating up with the Gulf Stream pushing hot water toward the Arctic Ocean. As the temperature of the Arctic Ocean keeps rising, more heat can reach sediments located at the seafloor, since much of the Arctic Ocean is very shallow and sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean contain vast amounts of methane. The danger is that additional heat will destabilize hydrates in these sediments, leading to explosive eruptions of methane, as the compressed volume of methane increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrates. 

This will result in huge eruptions of methane both from the destabilizing hydrates and from methane that is present in the form of free gas underneath the hydrates. The scientists studying this phenomenon fear that a tipping point may be reached within months, causing a sudden spike in the world’s temperature beyond the limits of human endurances.

COLLAPSE

I have this book, 575 pages, COLLAPSE, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, written by (Dr.) Jared Diamond. He discusses the tragedy of Easter Island, discovered by Jacob Roggeveen, and his Dutch crew, in 1722 on Easter Sunday, hence the name. Not a living soul remained, only gigantic statues. All trees gone. Dr. Diamond wonders, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: Technology will serve our problems”?…. The parallels to today are chillingly obvious.

Looking around in the world, thanks to ‘The Internet’, everybody should be a “Collapsetarian”. Faith in the rulers of this world is fading. Look at the USA and the politics there: the Republicans seeking the presidency, don’t believe in Climate Change, ridicule science and scientists. For them Collapse will come as a total surprise.

Before COLLAPSE happens, all sorts of little collapses will take place, just as what happened in ungovernable Libya where civic strife prevented regular maintenance of the dams that collapsed and took away thousands of lives in a matter of minutes. I think it is a metaphor depicting our sudden demise, also due to human indulgence. 

Just imagine: a sudden spike in the overall world temperature beyond the THREE DEGREES Celsius wherever you are in the world, will make life impossible for all that has a being. Do have a second look at the ARCTIC NEWS website. If its observations are correct – for their information they rely on NASA’s satellites regarding ice formation and water and air temperatures – then it is very possible that life on earth may cease as rapidly as the sudden deluge that occurred in strife-torn Libya.

Jesus had a unique insight into the future. Matthew 24 offers a glimpse of what is to come: for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

We do well to take stock and consider what it means when sudden Collapse, ultimate death and destruction, overwhelms all and everything. Be aware.

September 16 2023

Dreams 

Your old men will dream dreams. Joel 2: 28.

Count me among the old men. Count me among those who dream. Count me among those who see dreams as wrestling with oneself. Count me among those who see dreams as cleansing the mind so that I can enter eternity a bit closer to my true me. Count me among those who see dreams as often inexplicable because they deal with the unconscious. Count me among those who believe there is no one dominant explanation for dreams. 

Carl Jung stated that dreams are a way for the unconscious mind to communicate with the conscious mind. He also be asserted that dreams are symbolic and can have multiple meanings. 

My unconscious mind caused me trouble at night.

Looking back, as far back as the day of my birth, has been a liberating experience. I’ll tell you why. For many decades I’ve had nightmares, fighting off an attacker, thrashing my sheets and blankets but never able to catch the bugger. 

Then something dawned on me. When I have born, I weighed 5 kg, or 11 lbs. I also was circumcised right at birth. As a youngster I was called ‘dikkop’, ’fathead’, indicating that my head was larger than normal. Combining all these factors, I concluded, that my delivery was a difficult one, struggling to get out, while, once safe in my mother’s arms, I experienced the pain of penis plight. Once this had become plain to me, my nightmares ceased.

Several Dreams.

In the last year or so I have had different dreams. In one of them, I became quite agitated and worried: “how, in the world, I, as an unskilled, impractical, green immigrant, 23 years old, brought up in a better than average middleclass home, never having worked a day in my life, suddenly landing in Canada, engaged already to the love of my life, how would I ever be able to earn a decent income to support a family?”

Well?

Somehow, by the grace of God, I managed, reinventing myself three times: from starting an insurance business, then adding by becoming a real estate broker, and finally, relocating from the Niagara Peninsula to Eastern Ontario, where I reschooled to become a commercial Real Estate Appraiser. All good enough to earn a decent living, saw five children become professionals and managed to save enough for retirement.

Alone in an unending desert.

Last week I had a dream in which I stood in a stark, unending desert: a Sahara-like situation with sand dunes everywhere, and I the solitary person there. That was my dream. 

I immediately connected my dream to my life prior to 1972, when, raised in an orthodox Christian family, committed to everything Christian, activist, promoting Christian education zealously, but having a faith more historic and traditional than progressive and vibrant. 

That all changed when, in 1972 two books came my way, thanks to two friends: one a Dutch one, “Sterven… en dan” (After death… what) and another by Dr. Donella Meadows, the lead author of Limits to Growth. 

After death, what?

The first book changed everything in my life that I had automatically assumed to be the true faith: “we live, go to church, have a decent life, die and go to heaven”. My dream of standing in a barren desert portrayed to me that sort of existence: sterile, unquestioning, stagnant. Through that book, I suddenly saw Christianity in a new light: not heaven as goal, but the earth, God’s precious gift to humanity; God’s infinite work of art; God’s marvelous, majestic, wonderful miracle, where all creatures, great and small testify to God’s greatness. 

Then in 1972, now more than 50 years ago, faith became real for me, expressed in John 3: 16: “God so loved the ‘world’, that he offered his Son as a sacrifice to buy the cosmos back from the Devil”. I then saw for the first time in my life that Christ died not merely for our sins, but primarily to ‘redeem = buy back’ God’s precious creation. The church, exclusively focusing on ‘sin’, has turned Christianity into the desert, where it still is languishing and dying.

The Finite Earth.

The second book, Limits to Growth, suddenly saw me living in the world, a different world, a world dying by a thousand cuts. I then saw that I lived in a World that God called ‘good’ seven times, a world created to support us fully and gloriously when we practise symbiosis. I finally, by the grace of God, saw how we must truly see the world as ‘holy’ as God’s expression of what is good and wise and infinite, a true symbol of his majestic creativity. 

Yes, old men do dream dreams.