April 15 2023

IS HALF A TRUTH, A LIE?

All writing is biographical. So…..

In my younger years I sat twice through church-services often lasting close to 2 hours. Then, in those pre-TV days, as a teenager, after the evening customary Catechism sermon, I would attend a young men’s meeting, discussing topics of interest from a biblical perspective, kindling a life-long interest in matters Christian, especially education and politics. 

Today this sounds so old-fashioned and even odd. Yet it gave me a critical and well-founded opinion on church and Christianity.                

A bit more background.

In the Netherlands, before and during the war 1940-45, thanks to such influential leaders as Abraham Kuyper, politics and education became the focus of Christian thinking, resulting in Christian schools from kindergarten to university, first entirely financed by parents. 

My grandparents, born in the 1870’s, sacrificed a portion of their meagre money to make this possible. Thanks to consistent political action, the Dutch government relented and paid for confession-based schooling, starting in the early 1920’s.

In Canada.

I came to Canada in 1951, married my fiancée in 1953, and our first child was born in 1954, with 5 more to follow (one died shortly after birth). They all went to parent-financed Christian schools, just as my grandparents did. Fortunately, from 1952 till today, thanks to carbon-fuels, increasing industrialization engendered ever greater affluence, making the financing of private Christian education possible. 

And the churches?

In the late 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to Union Theological Seminary looking for a “cloud of witnesses.” What he found instead disturbed, angered, and perplexed him. “There is no theology here,” he wrote to a German colleague: “They preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed… namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.” 

Bonhoeffer did for American Protestantism what Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, did a century prior in his cultural and political analysis of the USA. What Bonhoeffer discovered was, if possible, more significant than the observations of the French aristocrat: Protestantism in America was a “Protestantism without Reformation.”

“Protestantism without Reformation”. 

Pope Francis is a pious and sincere person, who tries to carefully reform his church, but is imprisoned by tradition, a power equally important as the Bible. The same is true for Protestant churches. Their basic message is: God saves our souls and then we go to Heaven. 

But that is a half-truth, which constitutes a lie.

Jesus came to save us as total persons: He taught us how to live in the cosmos which he created and called good SEVEN times. John 3: 16 tells us that, ”God so loved the cosmos, that he sacrificed his Son to buy it back from the Satan”. Believing THAT gives us eternal life, right here on earth.

Revelation 11: 18 is quite explicit. We now experience God’s wrath, evident in the revenge of creation, which God has so structured that harming it carries its own punishment. That text tells us that God will “destroy the destroyers of the earth”, and, I believe, will “reward those who fear God’s name”, those who see Creation as holy, evident from Psalm 24: “The Earth is the Lord’s and all it contains: the trees, the seas, all creatures great and small.”

Psalm 146:7 has words that have long been a mystery to me: “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free”, especially that final phrase, “He sets prisoners free.”

I believe that we, in the wealthy West, are prisoners, both of the food system and of carbon energy. For the sake of shelf-life, food is super-refined, robbing it of much of its essential nutrition. Our North American cities, with its suburban layout, can never have a functioning mass transit, so their inhabitants have become slaves to carbon energy.

IS HALF A TRUTH, A LIE?

Often in my long business career people asked me whether I was born again, meaning that Jesus was my Lord and Savior. I simply said yes, but my answer implied Romans 1: 20:

“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”.

Salvation includes creation which is God’s Direct and Primary Word, while the Scriptures are God’s Secondary and Indirect Word. Creation is eternal: the Bible is temporary.

“Brother/Sister are you saved?”, is an all- inclusive affair. I believe that God in his mercy will admit to his holy eternal creation those who by their lives have shown it to be of divine origin, expanding the concept of salvation, to include the redemption of the person and of creation: you can’t have one without the other.

April 8 2023

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI), THE BABEL TOWER, AND THE FATE OF HUMANITY.

“If as one people speaking the same language…”

Genesis 11: 6.

Let me start with that Babel structure, related in Genesis, the first Bible book. An interesting and instructive tale, supposedly having happened during the early stages of modern humanity. Then, apparently, the construction techniques were already so well advanced, that they remind me of the pyramids in Egypt, whose stone building expertise too was so unbelievable, that current experts still scratch their heads, wondering how they managed to hoist those big blocks of stone so high without our modern mechanical aids. Perhaps these people had retained some original wisdom, still simmering from the Paradise days, or who knows, they had been infused with the Devil’s urgings, whose celestial knowledge still lingered on, purposely imparted to these humans, with the intent to thwart God. At any rate these unbelievable advances in building techniques, had God worried, so worried, that God prevented them from finishing it. His words,

“The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” (Genesis 11).

And today, Anno 2023?

Well, think again. Today we have a similar situation in the form of AI = Artificial Intelligence, ‘one people speaking the same language!” This time it is not God who is worried. He, who surveys developments from earth’s very infancy to the current earth’s old-age ‘over-maturity’, shakes his head. He already predicted in Deuteronomy 32: 20, “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.”

Solomon, too, in his wisdom, saw through human folly: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun”. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) 

Modern day Jacques Ellul, in his The Technological Society, had this to say, 70 years ago:

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man’s very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” 

Where are we now?

“The danger”, the researchers claim in the “The Future of Life Institute”, a non-profit think tank with offices in California and Brussels, is “ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict or control.” It added: “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.”

My question: God did not allow that famous tower to be finished. Will he do the same with AI? Will God intervene before it becomes totally pervasive? 

One thing is sure: we live in interesting times, which also happens to be a Chinese curse. In addition to Climate Change and monetary collapse, the challenge with Artificial Intelligence is more extreme than the Babel Power. T. S. Eliot, about a century ago, wondered, “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Yes, we have lost The Fear of the Lord, we have bent God/Creation to our will, and in the process have surrendered our humanity to the machine, as Jacques Ellul posited. Essentially, we have ceased to be human: we no longer resemble ‘the image of God’.

Just as God saw human progress at the Babel building, and feared being challenged in his hegemony, so today ‘progress’ has advanced beyond the human mind to absorb. That could well mean that today the only alternative left for God, is to make a new start with a new people, people who have learned their lesson.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGNCE (AI),

THE BABEL TOWER

AND THE FATE OF HUMANITY.

We have a choice. Ruled by a machine, reduced to robots.

OR

“On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”  Revelation 22, where the New City is described.

The choice is yours.

April 1 2023

DARE TO LIVE.       

In Canada, where I live, life expectancy for females is 83.9 years, for males, like me, it is 79.7. In my neighbor to the South, mighty USA, it is 74.5 for the male, supposedly, stronger sex, and 80.2 for females. My wife died in 2020, at the age of 92.7 years, while I, now at 94.4, am still alive, and, according to mortality tables, still have almost 3 years to live. 

Senior life comes with surprises: A few years ago, I suddenly peed blood. Fortunately, after a day it stopped. A specimen analysis showed no infection, but since then a urologist checks me every 6 months, finding nothing, fortunately. It did give me a scare. At each visit, seeing my age, and my general good fitness, he always asks me, “what is the secret to your longevity”, and I tell him: “There is not one secret: there are scores of secrets”, without elaborating.

One of the secrets I found in the Scriptures: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 1 Corinthians 6: 19.

Yes, that rattled me: My body is God’s personal gift to me; it is holy. I have to treat is as such, because I am not my own. Just as not being who we are is a sin, so is failing to seek the best for our corporeal condition, is a sin as well. Hmmm. 

I take great comfort in John 10: 10: There Jesus tells us that he has come to “To have life and have it to the full”. With these words, He asks us to live life 100%.

I once was asked to say the blessing at a non-church wedding meal, where a ‘justice for the peace’ had performed the ceremony. I had memorized my prayer, and when the time came, the words rolled out of my mouth, totally by themselves, a completely new experience. I prayed: “Lord Jesus: your enemies called you a glutton and a winebibber, indicating to me that you took great delight in enjoying food and wine, so why not follow his example.”

Rule One.

That’s why my rule One is: enjoy life; celebrate it; drink life in; make food and drink a priority, preferably with friends and relatives.  

Rule Two.

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That’s Michael Pollan’s advice in his book.

Of course, since the body is holy, we have a duty to preserve and enhance it. The old adage, “Mens Sana in Corpore Sano”, a sound mind in a sound body, is today more valid than ever. The corporate food industry is out to beguile us with fancy colors and false claims. Don’t get fooled: avoid food that comes from a factory, which is made to last and look inviting. Instead eat green: literally, and red, and orange: make your menu colorful and fresh.

Rule 3.

One of the best means to keep fit, is walking or running.

For about 15 years – from 1946 to 1960 – I was a heavy smoker, at a time when one of the slogans for manhood was, “You’re not a man, when you don’t smoke” (Je bent geen man als je niet roken kan). When one of my clients died of lung cancer, a horrible death, I quit and started running. Saved my life.  Two of my brothers and three of my sisters who smoked  died young.

Now the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate activity, such as vigorous walking. I quit running a few years ago, and now walk every day for 45-50 minutes. When it is too hot or too cold, I exercise on my three mechanical aids: treadmill, stationary bike and rowing machine. Whenever possible, I walk in forested areas as well, having learned that walking in nature really helps with stress and burnout.

Walking is the worst-kept secret I know. Its rewards hide under every step. Hippocrates proclaimed that “walking is man’s best medicine.” The good doctor also knew that walking provided more than mere physical benefits when he suggested: “If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.” He was alluding to what so many who came after, would attest, that walking not only nourishes the body but also soothes the mind while it burns off tension and turn our troubles into elation. 

DARE TO LIVE.

Start thinking about life in terms of eternity: ‘we are temples of the Holy Spirit”, that’s why the only solution to today’s environmental endgame, is Jesus’ promise of a new creation. Dare to joyfully live that life now.

March 25 2023

Know Thyself.

“It is a sin not to become what we are.”

The oracle in Delph, the most important religious sanctuary in ancient Greece, had above its entrance the slogan, Gnoothi Seauton, Know Thyself.

It reminds me of a quote by a Jewish sage, “It is a sin not to become what we are.” Only when we are who we are, we are alive and blessed. 

Both quotes made me think of my favorite Psalm, 139, which focuses on self-examination: 

Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer also made some comments: “Personal interpretation is one of the most difficult of all problems; but it still accompanies all of our thinking; we must have our own interpretations: we must give meaning if we live and think at all.”

How, then, do I view the world, the cosmos where we live? Is it our habitat for ever? Does it reveal God to us? 

Stephen William Hawking is famous for his views. Wheelchair bound and unable to speak, he lived from 8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018.  An English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, just before he died, he wrote: “the idea that the universe is a machine governed by unconditional laws with a prior existence is incorrect. I now view the universe as a kind of self-organising entity in which all sorts of emergent patterns appear, the most general of which we call the laws of physics.” 

Dr. James Lovelock, another famous scientist, called the earth GAIA, and also saw it as a living entity. Bonhoeffer, decades before either Hawking or Lovelock granted the earth a self-sustaining status, he presented as specific to the Christian faith the perception that God and the world are one. He also saw life having its origin and wellspring in this world in God, proceeding from this world back to God. Makes sense: Bach is exclusively known through his music.

All these observations have given me a novel perspective on life. If, in essence God and creation are synonymous, then my life must be lived totally reflecting that status.

My views have changed. 

Back, some 50 years, 1972, I was ‘born again’, an expression that has religious overtones, smelling of Pentecostal impulses and heaven orientation. Influenced by a Dutch book, given me by an employee, dealing with death and its consequences, I was persuaded that my ultimate destination was not heaven – as weekly sermons proclaimed in the church I faithfully attended – but the very earth in which I lived. 

That made me a new person, having a genuine re-birth. It took me a further few decades to fully grasp, what Psalm 24 so openly states, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything with it,” of which my obvious conclusion is that God’s earth is HOLY.

Unless we acknowledge this tremendous truth, and do so with ‘fear and trembling’ we cannot be true to ourselves. 

 “It is a sin not to become what we are.”

Most of us have heard about Climate Change. For more than 30 years the INTERNATIONAL PANEL sponsored by the UN, has been warning us that, unless we drastically cut and even eliminate the use of carbon fuels, we are doomed. We continue to ignore these warnings, sealing our demise. 

Contrary to what churches in general proclaim, our future is and always will be lived on this earth. We cannot fully live the life God intends us to live, unless we change our complete outlook on life, and clothe us in a mode of existence that embraces eternity right here on earth. Only then can we be truly human.

“It is a sin not to become what we are,” said a Jewish Rabbi. In John 5: 29 Jesus tells us that at his return: “those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”

I believe that this implies that those having lived before, and now live on the earth pursuing permanence, will be resurrected as eternal earth-dwellers. About the others, we must leave them to God’s mercy.

We can only become ‘who’ we are, when we acknowledge ‘what’ we are: Genesis 3: 19 reminds us, “earth we are and to earth we shall return.”

We must never forget that Jesus gave his life, not only to pay for our sins, that too, but especially to restore creation, by wresting it from the clutches of The Great Enemy.

March 18 2023

PURE EVIL

Tucker Carlson: pure evil. Netanyahu: pure evil. Putin: pure evil. Trump: pure evil. 

 

Tucker Carlson 

He was the most popular TV host on American cable news. No longer. Now he is at the center of a firestorm threatening to engulf Fox News and especially downgrade Donald Trump’s image. 

Why his sudden demise? 

He privately admitted that echoing Trump’s claim that Biden’s election was gained by fraud, while Trump was the real winner, was not based on facts. He actually confessed that he passionately hated the former president.

Why then did he do it? He fed these lies to a public, mostly conservative Christians, because it would enhance the ratings, draw more advertisers, and boost earnings, affirming once again that “The lust for money is the root of all evil.” A pure evil man, promoting a pure evil plot.

Russia’s President, Putin.

If anybody personifies Satan, it is this man. He willingly sacrifices hundreds of thousands of Russians, to conquer Ukraine because it was part of the Russian Empire in ages past. In the process he also is killing thousands of Ukrainians, destroying their habitat, depriving millions of the grains that feed the world, and enhancing inflation everywhere. Pure evil, yet the Russian Orthodox Church backs him fully.

Netanyahu.

Israel’s Prime Minister gained his powerful position by courting the most conservative Jewish political parties, who claim all of Palestine as Israel’s legitimate possession, robbing Palestinians of their legitimacy. Why? If Netanyahu loses his premiership, he would face jail, because he currently is on trial on multiple corruption charges. Pure Evil, backed by Old Testament Religion. A man, rotten to the core.

Trump.

“Stop the steal”. A clever slogan, but a pure lie, referring to the supposedly fraudulent Biden election. Trump and lies are synonymous, feeding a fertile feast of falsehoods into a gullible mass, which, the late Dr. Harold Bloom called, ‘the know-nothing Christians’, clutching their Bibles, whose contents are a total mystery to them, using the Scriptures as if it were a talisman paving the road to heaven.

These evil men can only function because an evil society allows them.

Enter Pastor Cahn, a Messianic Jew.

Thank you, Dr. Naomi Wolf, who brought the following to my attention.

In The Return of the Gods, Cahn’s improbable, and yet somehow hauntingly plausible thesis is that ancient dark and metaphysically organized forces, “the idol Gods” of antiquity, have “returned” to our presumably advanced, secular post-Christian civilization. 

Pastor Cahn’s theme is that, because we have turned away from our covenant with YHWH — particularly we in the West, and especially since the 1960s — therefore, the ancient “idol Gods”, or rather, ancient pagan energies, that had been vanquished by monotheism and exiled to the margins of civilization and human activity — have seen an “open door”, and thus a ready home to re-occupy, in us. 

Pastor Cahn makes use of a parable in the New Testament to make this case. He cites Matthew 12: 43-45, in which Jesus tells a story about evil spirits that leave and then return and take seven more wicked ones with them. Verse 45 concludes, “And the final condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will be with this wicked generation”, pointing to today.

Pastor Cahn then writes how the old adversaries in the Hebrew Bible — YHWH’s blatant enemies: Baal, Moloch, and Astarta are re-emerging.

Who are they?

Those are “the idol Gods” that lured, hounded, bedeviled, and seduced Yahweh’s people — again and again. 

Those are “the idol Gods” about whom the monotheistic God/Creator of all, continually and specifically warns us today, and the Children of Israel in the Older Testament. 

Those are “the idol Gods”, the pure evil deities, to whom the Children of Israel constantly stray, disappointing and enraging our Creator. 

Those are “the idol Gods,” with their child sacrifice and their graven images, against whom our father Abraham rebelled and taught his descendants to rebel. 

Those are “the idol Gods” whose acceptance of child sacrifice – a real thing, a barbaric, culture-wide practice that continued for centuries in the tribes and civilizations surrounding the Children of Israel — was supplanted by animal sacrifice; this was an evolution in human civilization that is represented by the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac, when the child on the altar is replaced miraculously by a ram provided, at the last moment, by the Lord God.

The ‘Pure Evil’ is us.

Today everything we do, leads to greater evil: turning on a light, starting a car engine, these simple, seemingly innocent actions, have brought us the Satan-inspired evil of Climate Change of which we now face the calamitous consequences. We breathe evil, so not surprisingly, we also breed evil, pure evil, now, everywhere.

Christ’s return, will end this Satan’s rule. Pray for Christ’s coming.

March 11 2023

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

We know about the Church today: fragile, divided, aging, pious perhaps. We also have Jesus’ words that the Church will endure until the end. And then there is Augustine proclaiming, “Many whom God has, the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have.” 

What does all this entail?

When Jesus made his remarks about the Church, he did not have today’s structured organization in mind. His manifesto emphasized ‘doing’, rather than ‘listening’, in perfect line with Jesus’ mission, ‘how to live as human beings in God’s Holy Creation’. 

Jesus appealed to the whole person, more in line with secular humanity, those engaged in green policies. It was Dr. Barry Commoner, a biologist who formulated the ‘Four Laws of Ecology’: 

(1) Everything is connected to everything else; 

(2) Nature knows best; 

(3) Nothing comes free; 

(4) Nothing disappears. 

We now face the consequences of disregarding these rules. Here Augustine returns: I believe that ‘religiously’ abiding by these ecological rules, points to being on God’s list of those chosen to live in the new creation, even though they never attend church.

Romans 1: 20 comes to mind and the Belgic Confession asking: “How do we know God?” It says:

“First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book

in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:

God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.”

Of course, the Bible plays an important role, as well.

Yes, there is a hidden church.

The hidden church became visible when a depressed Elijah saw very little evidence of ‘godliness’. In 1 Kings 19:18 God says: Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” 

Today the hidden church is among those who see God’s Creation as Holy.

The church today.

The Western church is thoroughly Middle Class, which is both good and bad. Good, in that it is well positioned to share its wealth; bad, because her very comfort makes it complacent, and, perhaps smug, mostly self-centered. 

As the needs in society increase, and as governments, on all levels cannot cope with the increasing demands for assistance, churches will have to re-orient from being self-centered to living for others, letting go of the paid help – the clergy, expensive and mostly ineffective – providing for the truly needy in society, offering meals, coffee hours, companionship and emotional support. 

In our aging society loneliness abounds, as deadly as alcoholism and tobacco use. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to LIFE, and that to the full. That the church today gathers for a pious moment on Sunday, reminds me of my parents and grandparents. They had a room, the best room, that had nothing to do with life. Only on special occasions was this room opened. That’s how religion has become: sugar-coated faith for Sunday services. Writes Bonhoeffer, “The religion of Jesus Christ is not the desert that comes after the meal but it is rather the bread itself, nothing else.”

Away with religion.

The fact is that Christ has become an affair of the church alone, nothing to do with LIFE. Christ has been banned completely from daily activities, and confined to the temple and the church. We have to abandon that sort of religion, and must integrate Christ in all our doings, steeped in his creation: there is where our future lies!

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

The first Christians, wanting to eradicate all traces of the Roman idols, demolished their temples, because they believed that God lived not in a building, but in their hearts. Then they constructed churches and cathedrals, rooting them forever in Sunday religion!  Did pagan influences infiltrate early Christianity through seeing edifices as sacred, as ‘God’s House’? Look at the Notre Dame de Paris: to restore it, after the fire, immediately attracted a Billion Dollar in donations, while hunger relief always lacks funds. 

The last Bible book, Revelation, tells us that everything becomes what it is. Revelation 21: 22 notes that ‘there is no temple in the city!”. That indicates the end of the church, and the end of religion, now happening!

In a religion-less world people can become aware of themselves, and realize Christ’s reality – “I have come to bring LIFE and that to the full” (John 10:10). That, writes Bonhoeffer, can have a greater impact on a world come of age than a world wearing the disguise of religion.