Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

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 abandoned 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.

March 4 2023 

WHY ARE WE HERE? 

Good question: why are we here on earth?

Let me, from the outset, make plain, that, when we die – and we all will – there is no heaven to go to. John 3: 13 is quite clear: “No one has ever gone to heaven, except the one who came from there”. Selling the heaven-heresy to Christianity has been Satan’s greatest achievement, has led to the earth’s exploitation, and lies at the basis of our Global Heating predicament.

From the very beginning, the Bible tells us – Genesis 3: 19 – Earth we are and to earth we shall return. So, ban all heaven thoughts: there’s no escape. God created the earth as his kingdom, as ‘the smile of God’s good pleasure’. When creation was ready for habitation, God called it good seven times. What God calls ‘good’ is good indeed: that’s why it is exactly there where we are heading for eternity.

So, what happened with creation, a long, long time ago? An educated guess.

I am of the opinion that, some 10,000 years ago, when there were few humanoids, people who more or less looked like us, God selected a man and woman from the primitive tribes then existing, and infused them with his Spirit. God also gave them a special place, an oasis, between two sparkling rivers, a region full of fruit trees and beautiful flowers and marvelous animals: ‘paradise’ in the full sense. He also told them to be one with all these creatures, regard them as equals in all ways, all being God’s handiwork in whatever form, all functioning as partners in serving God’s totality.

Influenced by two theologians.

I owe Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian, and Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic priest and esteemed paleontologist, for greater insight in these matters. Bonhoeffer suggested that God and creation are complementary, just as Bach and his music are synonymous. Teilhard was forbidden by his superiors in the church to publish his findings on evolution, yet was an outstanding Christian and celebrated scientist.

We are on earth for a purpose.

We are here to discover who we are and why God placed us here. The selected human pair, recognized in the Older Testament as Adam and Eve, were charged with developing creation to its full potential in an organic and symbiotic way. In it they failed, perhaps not quite cured from the old ways of treating God’s work of art. Typical is how their view on trees “beautiful to behold and good for food” (Genesis 2: 9) changed when its utility was seen as primary “good for food” rather than its beauty aspect. (Genesis 3: 6).

Something happened.

That seemingly innocent reversal, switching from beauty to utility, meant that the harmonious, majestic unity of creation as it emerged from God’s hand, became the frantic, demon-dominated planet in which we now, 2023, dwell as cursed humanity. This simple switch goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up creation’s cohesion. It really meant that God surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it. 

“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. (Deuteronomy 32:20). That’s us.

Get used to it: in this world God no longer calls the shots. The result is that 

God’s kingdom is at tatters. The kingdom is, after all, made up of all plants, all animals, all people, all angels: all things. When, in the later Ten Commandments God asked us to ‘hallow his name’, the Israelites knew that it had nothing to do with a designation of God’ name: God is a ‘no name’ entity, cannot be described. My name, Egbert Drewes, points to an old guy, now sporting a newfangled goatee, but God is beyond name and appearance. When we keep his name holy, it means seeing creation as sanctified, with the purpose of not only keeping it from harm, but improving upon it. 

Yet.

Nevertheless, we still have to rectify what has gone wrong. Our task is to “Seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness”, as Christ urged us to do in Matthew 6: 33. That requirement is still first and foremost our task, even though the entire economic enterprise which has granted us temporary luxury and extravagance at the expense of God’s Holy Creation, is now backfiring on us with leaps and bounds. There is no stopping, because ‘it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrew 10:31). Here ‘creation’ is analogous to God!

Why are we here?

Good question. We are here to prepare ourselves for THE KINGDOM TO COME, the new creation where God is all and in all.

February 25 2023

AWAITING ‘THE DAY’.

Frankly, I am completely captured by the prospect of eternity, that’s why I call myself an “Anthropos Teleios”, a human being always having the TELOS in mind, the very END of our civilization. Once there, in the New Creation, we will apply the lessons learned from studying 10,000 years of human development, avoiding errors while pursuing the good outcomes we have achieved, as per Revelation 14:13. Today, 2023, we are in our final trial phase: the millennia-long experimental episode is about to end.

I know: many are uncomfortable with what is unfolding in the world, but   most believe that we will muddle through somehow. Forget it: we won’t. The world is descending into a “climate doom loop”, a thinktank reported last week.

Cassandra times.

In Greek drama, Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, was given the gift of prophesy by Apollo, but when she spurned his advances, he ordained that her prophecies would not be believed. Today we live in Cassandra times, where the many warnings are simply ignored.

Global Heating is the key to our demise: “we have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up,” wrote the late Dr James Lovelock in his book The Revenge of Gaia, Earth’s climate in crisis and the fate of humanity. Curiously, Lovelock, who was not a Christian, started his book with a quote from Jesus: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24). The Ukraine War alone offsets all carbon sinks, all electric transport, windmills, and solar panels.

In essence, Lovelock was saying what Peter writes in 2 Peter 3, describing The Day of the Lord, “Since the elements will be destroyed by fire, (Think Global Heating) you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of the Lord and speed its coming.” In that sense James Lovelock was a true prophet.

But, being a Prophet is unpopular.

Prophets are unpopular because they question the status quo; prophets are unpopular because people hate change; prophets are unpopular because people are comfortable; prophets are unpopular because politicians hate to be bringers of bad news; prophets are unpopular even in the church as is plain from reading the Old Testament. And not much has changed in the after Christ institutions.  

I perceive prophets to be visionaries, not because they can see into the future, but because they can see the truth, can understand the deeper meaning of life and have a holistic view on events.

Thus, prophets are not extraordinary gifted persons who know the unknown. No, prophets are first and foremost believers who openly and unabashedly dare to look at what is happening ‘out there’ and fully embrace responsibility for the immense challenges evident in our quickly changing society.  

Prophets are foremost believers who by seeing Scripture as a lamp for their feet and a light for their path in God’s wonderful creation, know that Christ, as the Son of Man, as the Ben-Adam, the Son of the Soil, will return to make all things new. That’s why a prophet, in spite of all the sin and evil in this world, looks to the future with full confidence.

Matthew 24: some excerpts.

Jesus saw what was coming. He knew because he died to restore creation.  His words were truly prophetic. Look at these applicable passages: 

 6. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. 

 7. and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes;

 10. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.  

12. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. 

15. Therefore, when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of trough Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.  

21. For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. 

22. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. 

My comments.

Jesus’ words directly apply to today. The phrase, ‘Let the reader understand’, means that this can only be grasped when they occur, now, 2023: our world-wide pollution, climate change, IS the Abomination of Desolation. Just as in Noah’s days, when ‘the sinners were taken away’ (no Rapture!), these warnings too, will be ignored, and even ridiculed. 

Please note: 

THE DAY will come like a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5:2), while Revelation 18 points to a time of economic prosperity, just like ours.

February 18 2023

THE OLD TIME RELIGION: STILL GOOD ENOUGH?

You may know that ‘old time religion’ song:

Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
It’s good enough for me.

It was good for Paul and Silas,
It was good for Paul and Silas,
It was good for Paul and Silas, 
It’s good enough for me. 

Of course, that ‘old time religion’ was never defined, because Christianity is not a religion, and cannot be defined. When Paul spoke to the philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens, he started by saying that he proclaimed ‘the unknown God’. Just as we cannot ‘know’ creation – our Global Heating predicament is proof of that – we cannot know God. Both creation and God remain the unknown, even when God and Creation reveal themselves to us. Strictly speaking, theology, the doctrine of God, is also an impossibility. Yet God permits it, as long as we know that it is not possible, only permitted. 

Creation is alive and holy.

I increasingly like Bonhoeffer’s suggestion that we perceive God and creation as complementary. Just as we acknowledge that God lives, be it in inapproachable Light, we hold that creation is alive as well. It is James Lovelock’s lasting legacy when he stated that planet Earth is a ‘living’ reality. We also owe Karen Armstrong, when in Sacred Nature she argued that we need to think and feel differently about the natural world by rekindling our spiritual bond with creation.

A long time ago: 75-80 years

When I attended the City of Groningen Christian Gymnasium, during WWII and beyond, (100 students over 6 grades, almost all male, whose diploma gained unconditional entry to either the Law or Medical faculties or a Theological school), I was a bystander in a theological dispute on ‘child baptism’, splitting not only the local Reformed churches, but also families and communities. It caused tremendous stress in my school as well, among staff and students, as the fanatic children of the ministers at the heart of the controversy attended the school. 

My church, even more orthodox, stood beyond the fray. In retrospect that theological conflict may have contributed to a total realignment and decline of Protestant Netherlands. 

What now strikes me is that theologians then knew exactly what God had in mind concerning the Christian faith. Augustine, who, 1600 years ago, founded Christianity as we now practise it, wrote once – in Latin of course – Si comprehendis, non est Deus, which means, “If you think that you understand, it isn’t God you’re talking about”.

Another ‘theological’ battle.

Today another schism is looming in connection with the same-sex issue. Here too, across all denominations, the words “we know what God has ordained”, are banded about. This same-sex issue too may lead to a realignment and decline of Christian North America. 

All this makes me question whether we can still speak clearly about the essence of Christianity. It is by now obvious that Christianity is not a religion. Karl Barth, early in his career as a pastor in Switzerland, said that, “The message of the Bible is that God hates religion”, quoting Amos 5: “I despise, I hate your festivals, I take no delight I your solemn assemblies”. 

May be Greenpeace is a better representation of the church, more in line with the ancient song “Like a mighty army moves the church of God”. At least they do something about God’s creation, by attacking corporate power. Yes, I support them financially! 

The church is good at religion.

The church is good at ‘religion’. Soon King Charles III will be crowned: he also is head of the Church of England, and ‘religion’ will be front and centre at that ceremony. Soon Pope Francis will die or resign. Again ‘religion’, the ‘old time religion’, fashioned on Old Testament decorum, will be on display for the world to see when a new Pope is elected. Compare it to Jesus’ birth, life and death:  “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58).

The church in turmoil.

The church is in turmoil: it always has been. It slowly is being fashioned to reflect the Life of Jesus, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief. And there is a lot of grief out there: long Covid, mental anguish, weather disasters, wars. And we are only at the beginning. 

The “Old Time Religion” is not good enough. Rituals and colorful vestments, tradition and liturgies, carefully staged ceremonies may be entertaining to watch, but ‘religion’ will not save us. 

Micah 6: 8 comes to mind: “To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Love your neighbor as yourself, including Creation, love all animals, walk humbly, act justly.

February 11 2023 

IMPOSSIBLE: YET…..

Last Sunday I was the reader in our struggling Presbyterian Church, built 135 years ago, with 250+ pews. I counted the attendees: 25, mostly older folk! My reading concluded with Matthew 5: 20, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The preacher did not comment on that passage, so it remained a mystery to me, even though my most ardent aim in life is to be part of that kingdom, and enjoy eternity there. 

What sort of righteousness Jesus refers to? 

Jesus abhors the Pharisaic legalism. In Matthew 23 he curses the church- rulers so violently that they later kill him. However, Jesus had the last word: his final miracle, just before he died on the cross, was something extraordinary: at the precise moment when He said, “It is finished”, the curtain in the temple was torn into two, from top to bottom, signifying the end of religion, rejecting it forever.

What then does Jesus want us to do? 

He came to bring LIFE. (John 10:10). That’s why I do believe that the Christian teaching is all-inclusive: it’s essentially a ‘way of life’, a 24/7 affair. That’s what Jesus really is saying when he stated that ‘our righteousness’ must exceed the utterly regimented religion prescribed and practised by the Pharisees, a regimen ridiculed by Jesus who openly defied their prescriptions, yet He wants us to go beyond that!

Augustine, the celebrated church father, was right when he said 1600 years ago, “Many who God has, the church does not have; and many who the church has, God does not have. 

Think about that!

Going to church does not guarantee salvation, even though some churches still maintain that: “There is no salvation outside the church”.

What is Jesus really after?

I owe it to Bonhoeffer who perceived God and Creation as one. Creation is forever, is God’s most precious gift, for which he sacrificed his Son.  Revelation 22 categorically states that “There is no altar in the New Creation”, indicating that both the church and the Bible will not be part of eternal life with Christ: God’s law will be written on our hearts. 

That situation is already evident today: the church is disappearing, and the Bible has become a closed book The Belgic Confession, when asking how we know God, points to Creation as God’s primary revelation.

Jesus has creation in mind, when he stated that “our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees”. In our day-to-day life we face the IMPOSSIBLE task that the welfare of creation must ‘always’ – 24/7 – be our aim, goal, and desire. Always. With every undertaking, eat, sleep, think, act, we must ask ourselves: “does it promote or hinder God’s Creation?” No wonder we are saved through grace! We prayerfully and in community must perpetually pursue the welfare of God’s creation.

When Adam and Eve were selected out of the then human race, God endowed them with his breath, so that their body/soul/mind became a unity in and with the Holy Spirit. Their sin was that they failed to see God’s Creation as Holy, also our collective sin.

Can we still find our way?

Now our structures are breaking down. We now are continually searching without maps, playing around in half-belief: deploying, against what remains of Christianity, symbols that invoke multiple spiritualities at once. As Amos has written, “People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.”

J. H. Bavinck, taught me that “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal”. That means that our salvation and the salvation of creation go hand in hand.

I adapted a song for this purpose. Yes, you can sing it in church! Or in the kitchen!

Look, what has happened to the Earth.

Where are the birds that sing in tall-tree-towers?

Why are the woodlands now full-soaked in ash?

Why do our eyes see only fire-showers?

Where are the tears when deer no longer dash?

Refrain: How clean the water, how tall the grain

             How green the forest: can the earth renew again?

When will the deserts stop their massive spreading?

Where will we plant so food can freely grow?

Where do we go, where is our planet heading?

Why do we cause but misery and woe?    

Refrain

When will the sea be free from human binging?

Safe for the whales that frolic in the deep.

Who will arise and send alarm bells ringing?

Now is the time for our voice to weep.

Refrain       

Tune: TIDINGS 11.10.11.10 with refrain.

“Who will arise and send alarm bells ringing?

Will we? Try to live the life of the new creation. Pray for Christ’s return!

February 4 2023

DREAMS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

When I was a toddler, my neighbourhood buddies called me a ‘dikkop’, a youngster whose head was too large. When I grew up, that ‘big-head’ anomaly disappeared. 

Why this curious fact?

Well, it relates to my dreams. In 1992 I bought: “The Turning Point”, by Fritjof Capra, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He was well ahead of his time when, in 1982, he foresaw the conditions we face today, how in all fields, in healthcare, economics, ecology, our methods and theories are leading to our own demise.

I was especially intrigued by his analyses of the various schools of thought in psychoanalysis, by such men as Freud, Jung, Rogers, and others. He clearly exposed the Cartesian split between mind and body, and Descartes’ failure to integrate the various components of life. He also touched upon cosmic consciousness, including the ‘perinatal’ experiences involving the process of birth, ‘peri’ indicating the Greek ‘round about’ and ‘natal’ from the Latin ‘natus’ meaning ‘birth’

I was really struck when he mentioned something that applied to me: “in perinatal experiences the sensations and feelings may be relived in direct and realistic way….for example the experiences of enormous tensions characteristic of the struggles in the birth canal often accompanied by visions of titanic fights, destruction and self-destruction.”

That directly applies to me. It so happens that about 5-6 times a year I have violent dreams in which I physically fight enemies trying to destroy me, sometimes causing me to fall out of bed. I now know why I have these nightmares: they started at my birth. 

There my weight was 5 kilogram, or 11 pounds, well above average.  With an abnormally big head, my delivery from the womb was a real battle, a frantic struggle to be born. 

That’s how I started my life: a desperate fight to live, now often re-enacted in my dreams. My unconscious mind at work, an experience that has put a stamp on my personality, always fighting injustice and perceived wrongs, such as ecclesiastical lethargy, climate indifference, capitalistic dominance, unhealthy eating habits.

O, yes. Another complication: the doctor at the home-birth, a friend of the family, noticed that my foreskin was too tight: so, since I was a robust boy, he immediately circumcised me, which, later in life, resulted in a pretty high pain-tolerance.

Body, Soul, Spirit.

All this brought me back to re-read Dr. C.A. van Peursen’s book, Body, Soul, Spirit, a survey of the body-mind problem. One of his conclusions was that, “One thing is clear. If the person is anything, he/she is above all a mystery which no amount of philosophizing, in itself, can ever exhaustively define.”

In the end, as a true philosopher, he concludes that, “Human existence is never lived out in the absence of intermediate factors: we ‘turn things over’, we hesitate, emphatize, evaluate – in short, we are conscious. All this means that the human as mind is the human as body.” 

The medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) goes even further. He wrote that ‘the soul is not in the body: the body is in the soul.”  A true mystical statement.

Since my wife of 67 years died more than 2 years ago, my thoughts have repeatedly returned to our marriage, our 3 years of engagement – on August 31 1950 – and knowing her years before that as a family friend. She often appears in my dreams, mostly as a non-active personage. I frequently wonder how our relationship will be in eternity: no more marriage, Jesus told us.

I tend to think, in relationship to body/spirit, that, even though our bodies are asleep – Jesus never mentions death, always sleep – our ‘spirits’ are still alive. 

I have given this a lot of thought, as for the first time I was directly confronted with death/spirit. My tentative conclusion, purely my own speculation, is that the period between physical ‘death’ (sleep, as Jesus put it) and the resurrection, however long or short this time is, allows the spirit to either prepare a person for eternal life in the new creation, or become a sort of hell, where the ‘deliberate sins’ are rehashed and revisited when life has been a direct refusal to honor the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

I constantly read that we are ‘religious’ persons. Romans 1: 20, clearly states that, examining creation can only lead to one conclusion: it is a miraculous, divine act of God. Bonhoeffer sees that, specific to the Christian faith, is the perception that God and creation are one. I concur.

I sincerely believe that Jesus died to restore Paradise, of which John 3: 16 gives the explanation: “God so loved the world that he offered his beloved Son to buy it back from the Evil one.” Promising eternity!