Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

November 30 2022

DOOM HAS GONE MAINSTREAM

I subscribe to the New Yorker. Each week a 90 pages issue arrives in my mailbox on the highway where I live, some 5 km – 3 miles – from the hub of the village. The November 28 issue, with a cover of an angry, gigantic wave about to overwhelm high-rise complexes, silhouetted against an ominous sky, caught the essence of its contents: Journey to Doomsday; Annals of a warning Planet; The Coming storm. Truly biblical warnings. 

I was born a down-to-earth Northern Dutchman, one of those known for the sober, even somber, outlook on life, not given to superficial banter, and empty conversations, but direct and to the point. When I look around, read behind the headlines, cast my eye on the world at large, observing the ecclesiastical rites, the lukewarmness, the lack of direction, the downright tomfoolery there, the dearth of basic knowledge of the elements of Christianity, then my prayer is, “Lord Come, what’s the use of prolonging this empty ritual”. 

It seems to me that the roles have been reversed: not the church is telling us that the end is near – even though it is her task – but the world has assumed that task. The church is preaching the half-truth message that Christ died for our sins, and repeats this ad nauseam, while the total truth includes that Christ really died to restore Creation. It is plain from John 3: 16, that God’s love for the world must be the church’s central aim. 

Yes, Creation is at the very center of the Gospel. It so happened that the first religious-conscious human pair sinned against creation when they defied God’s explicit command about the importance of the TREE. Trees are our lungs: trees can live without us, but we cannot live without trees. 

My bio.

I came to Canada in 1951, now some 71 years ago, as a young man of almost 23 years. My fiancée came a year later. Those seven decades coincided with The Great Planetary Ponzi plot, when we borrowed from the planet to enrich ourselves, we, the Christian West. The 27 UN COP meetings were intended to make restitution, but they all proved useless, assuring doom.

It all started with theft. We stole the land from the indigenous people, who had lived sustainably in tune with the rhythm of creation, killing some 56 million, about 90% of their population, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated. We paved over their land, mined their mountains, dammed their rivers, and relegated a ragged remnant out of sight and out of mind.

The punishment of these murders is now visiting us. Elizabeth Kolbert concludes her book, The Sixth Extinction, with the words, “Extinction “will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust and giant rats have – or have not – inherited the earth.”

These words were written almost 10 years ago. Today, Anno Domini 2022, in this week’s New Yorker, her final paragraph is, “Climate Change….is not going to have a happy ending….or any ending at all. Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.

I have this book: Sacred Nature, by the religious writer Karen Armstrong, who, by researching ancient religions, discovers that they all believe that nature is of divine origin. Of course, it is: it will take eternity to even glimpse what is hidden there. That’s why it is becoming increasingly clear that ‘personal salvation and salvation of creation go hand in hand.’ Jesus, in his so well-known Sermon on the Mount said that, ‘the meek shall inhabit the earth’. Another translation translates it as, ‘those who claim nothing for themselves, shall inherit the earth’. We, in our arrogance have disregarded Jesus’ advice, and have claimed everything for ourselves. When God pointed out the Tree of knowledge to the first spiritually aware couple, the text says, (Genesis 2:9), “Trees pleasing to the eye, and good for food.” In the next chapter, (Genesis 3:9), “The tree, was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” Here the order is reversed: there’s where the Ponzi problem began, and the origin and death of Capitalism. The Bible has something to say on that, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”, writes Paul. (1 Timothy 6: 10).

Today our Planetary Ponzi Problem is backfiring on us. As Elizabeth Kolbert wrote, “Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.”  

1972 was an important year in my life: two books led to my conversion: “Limits to Growth”, now visible; and “After Death, what?”, dismissing the “heaven” myth. 

The Planetary Ponzi attempt will end as Ponzi schemes always do: Planetary Collapse.

November 23 2022

SOCCER: THE SELECT FEW. 

When I was in elementary school in Groningen, an old University City, I played soccer in two ways. We played a game called, ‘putje’, where the street on which I lived, was the soccer field, the ball a bit bigger than a tennis ball, and the goals were the cast iron, four-holed drains – putjes – some 50 cm across, built into the curb of the sidewalk on each side of the paved street.

Just imagine, playing on the thoroughfare, where then – this was 1930’s – the traveled road was basically free of automobiles, and the only traffic was the baker’s three-wheeled ‘bakfiets”, a carrier-tricycle, and the horse-drawn-wagons of the fruit-vegetable vendor and milkman. No fast-driving cars or trucks. Lots of bikes and pedestrians, of course. The streets were safe, the air, well? There were the street cleaners, scooping up the horse manure.

No TV, outdoors all the time: inventing games, annoying neighbours, playing hooky. No worried parents, always at some sort of game, and, of course soccer, always soccer. 

We were very fortunate: a very talented fellow lived just around the corner: a teenager, who started a real soccer club, on a real field, with a real soccer ball and real goalposts in a nearby recreational park: he was so good that later in life he became the goalie for the Dutch National team. My younger brother and I became member of that neighbourhood club. So, yes, of course, soccer is in my blood, even though I never became a good player. Broke my right-foot big toe, maybe that’s why. It still hurts when a kick a ball.

QATAR, the world-wide soccer host.

Some $300 Billions have been spent in getting Qatar ready for the soccer tournament: new roads, shopping malls and subway stations, six stupendous stadiums of course, all built by workers mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, toiling for up to 16 hours a day in intense desert heat; often no rest or days off; living conditions usually shantytowns without air conditioning or even the most basic of services. Reliable sources suggest that thousands died on the altar of religious soccer. A tournament built on blood.

Soccer and Church.

When I see the turnout for soccer/football games on television – where else? – the tens of thousands of people, mostly male, and younger, and then look around in my church, the few there, mostly female and seniors, then I wonder: “What is more important, momentary thrills or eternal destiny?”

I know, it’s not a fair comparison. Soccer games are a work of art, an endless enterprise in human physical skill, a cluster of cooperation, a summum of intense training and tactical expertise and tenacious teamwork, fascinating to watch. 

Comparing it to ‘religious routine’ is grossly unfair. Or is it? 

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize”, writes Paul to his people in Corinth. (1 Corinthians 9: 24).

Hey! Am I engaged in a race? The apostle Paul thinks so. A race? Yes. Christians are in a competitive battle that requires much more than physical agility. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, Ephesians 6:12 tells us.

That is a comprehensive battle. It seems to me that this text foresees the evils of TV, “the spiritual forces we pull out of the air around us”, including the soccer games, financed by the advertisers who have no regard for air quality and cause climatic deterioration. It is ironic that COP 27 almost overlapped the Holy Grail of soccer, both only possible through oil-based flying and oil-based climate control. An economy built on blood.

The struggle Paul had, converting from being a Pharisee, living by the ‘law’, to becoming a participant in the freedom in Christ, was common to all converts. Just imagine the transformation, from a worshiper of idols to living as a Christ follower, alienating family, community, friends, losing one’s livelihood, customers, business associates, changing one’s diet, persecution. A church built on blood.

Being a ‘Christian’ is a 24/7 affair: we love God through the world, and we love the world as a function of God, the creator of all things. With that same intensity we love our neighbor as we treasure our own wellbeing, evident in eating real food and doing everything possible to ‘live’.

Playing world-class soccer involves total training and the utmost of devotion. Out of millions of players, less than 900 were selected, to go to Qatar. “Many are called, few are selected”, tells Jesus (Matthew 22: 14). That also applies to those who call themselves Christians. 

November 16 2022

SAVE OUR SOULS

The concept of S.O.S is well known. This disaster signal certainly applies to our world today, as COP 27 shows, where it is actually, more a S.O.B affair: Save Our Bodies, while ‘Save Our Souls’ is allotted to the church, which separates the Body from the Soul, dispatching it to heaven. Today that Soul business is in dire disarray, with the future of the church as institute very much in doubt. The church, by proclaiming for centuries the ‘gnostic doctrine’ of separating spirit from matter, has created the impression that exploiting the earth, is permissible. I believe that the church’s ‘soul and heaven’ emphasis, implying ‘leaving the earth’, has abetted Climate Change.

The first law of Ecology is that “Everything is connected to everything else”. 

Climate heating is more than a mere temperature increase: it is harming people’s health and causing weather disasters, affecting infrastructure and food production all over the planet. It also distorts people’s mind, as lower growth and bigger inequalities, intensify ideological extremism. And that extremism is making it harder to build national and international consensus around cutting greenhouse gas emissions, allowing the heating problem to steadily worsen. 

Body, Soul and Spirit.

Yes, the first law of Ecology is that “Everything is connected to everything else”. This also applies to ‘body, soul and spirit’.

I have been reading a book written by the late Dutch Philosopher, Dr. C. A. van Peursen, professor at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands most prestigious school of higher learning. Its title: Body, Soul, Spirit: A Survey of the Body-Mind Problem. 

I am interested in this topic because I struggle with this concept. Jesus refused to label ‘death’ as death. He called ‘death’ a state of sleep. My direct contact with ‘death’ is my wife who ‘died’ two years ago. According to Jesus she is asleep. I am inclined to believe that her ‘soul-spirit-mind’ is still active, even though her body is not. But, since we are a unity, something van Peursen affirms, if any part of the body/soul entity is still alive, then the total body is still alive.  If that is true then we die only after the Judgement has taken place, when we either have eternal LIFE or eternal DEATH. I did not read that in van Peursen’s book, and neither did I find it in Dr. Telder’s book, “After Death, what?” It is merely my own reasoning, based on my reflections.  

COP 27

It seems to me that the moment is at hand when Kairos and Chronos coincide, when human destruction and God’s healing merge, when God’s time and the Human hour melt away into eternity, when universal death becomes a transition to the fulness of God’s love.

Life and death are at stake at COP27 in Egypt, where 30,000 delegates try to iron out the problems caused by the steam engine, invented some 200 years ago, which made abnormality normal. They have come to make the current ‘normal’ abnormal again, an impossibility, of course, just as impossible for me, a 94 years old male, to rejuvenate myself and become a teenager again. 

This past Sunday the congregation of the church I belong to, sang a song I had written:

Tune: All people that on earth do dwell.

The Twenty Seventh UN COP 
Meets to avoid another flop

Meets to discuss world’s final choice

Meets to become earth’s healing voice.

Now every day new records break 

Too hot, too dry, for heaven’s sake

We must reduce right now and here

Or lose whatever we hold dear.

The wheat crops failed in many a’land

So, food stuff is in high demand

The rice too is in short supply 

Will we be able to get by?

War looms all over our great earth

Do pray to God for all our worth

War killing people, land and trees,

Do pray with force to bring his peace.

After this, I commented: “The Apostles’ Creed affirms: “The resurrection of the body, and Life Everlasting. That requires a new earth. That’s why we can sing with gusto”:

All people that on earth do dwell

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

Serve him with joy, his praises tell,

Come now before him and rejoice.

Serving the Lord means serving creation. “It is specific to the Christian faith that God and his world are one, that life has its wellspring in this world in God, and in turn proceeds from this world back again to God”, to quote Bonhoeffer. The S.O.S is for our body/soul, for our earthly wellbeing. It entails the entire human being, body, soul, mind, spirit. The SOB in Egypt, the Saving of Our Bodies is, indeed, a ‘sob’ story: it is an exercise in futility, even though it must be pursued.

November 9 2022

DARKNESS AT NOON

“Since the invention of the steam engine, the world has been permanently in an abnormal state”. 

That’s what Arthur Koestler wrote in his depressing book, Darkness at Noon, in 1940. He also wrote, “The capitalist system will collapse before the masses have understood it”.

I bought the book on August 30 1985, and never read it until this past week, at the very moment when the abnormality wrought by the use of carbon fuels, such as coal and oil, is becoming evident, and also the planetary political scene is poised to play out perilously, causing the dimming of both the ecological and the economic prospects. Indeed: Darkness at Noon.

What is “Christian”?

The word “Christian” is banded about by the Republican Party. Koestler observes that, “Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? When I read comments from those who advocate a Christian regime, I never hear Jesus’ words: “Love your enemy”. The Old Testament language of revenge and bloody murder seems to rule their politics.

The USA may be on the brink of civil war. Arthur Koestler wrote, “They who oppose dictatorship must accept civil war as a means. They who recoil from civil war must give up opposition and accept the dictatorship.” Is that the future of the “Christian” USA? The Christian word, REPENT, comes to mind: Metanoia is the Biblical word, a total overhaul of our carbon-based mindset: is that still possible? If not, collapse is guaranteed.  

It seems the United States of America, armed to the teeth, is on the cusp of civil conflict, featuring not the 1861-65 North versus South divide, but terrorism, guerrilla warfare and ethnic cleansing, spelling the end of a great nation: Canadians and Mexicans, brace yourselves for a wave of US citizens fleeing north and south.

Darkness at Noon.

My take on this book is that dictators destroy the flower of the nation to hide their own mediocrity. Darkness will be plainly in view in the next weeks at the COP 27 meetings in Egypt, where apocalyptic messages will dominate, which will fail to move the rich nations, while Africa will bear the brunt of the weather disasters: the continent least guilty in bringing on catastrophic calamities. 

This still timely book describes a concept of an ideology, Communism, a distorted form of Christianity, which closely resembles the current theology, in which everywhere Christianity is being distorted to fit a certain mode of belief, totally alien to biblical teaching, testing both the essence of historic ecclesiastical movements and fundamental Democracy.

How God disappeared.

The book also reminds me of Geert Mak, a Dutch writer of some fame, who, some 30 years ago, wrote a book with the Dutch title, “Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd”, How God disappeared from Jorwerd. 

I started with “Since the invention of the steam engine, the world has been permanently in an abnormal state”. Geert Mak describes how prior to 1951, Dutch rural and small village life centered on local activities, not unlike Tweed, where I live. With the advent of the automobile and the tractor, city shopping and greater choice killed the grocer, the butcher, the small farmer, destroying the soul of the land, and God disappeared, also in the churches.

A dangerous trend.

The USA is following a dangerous trend: Italy turned right, so did Israel, suggesting that the populace distrusts the prevailing notion that the ‘elite’ has the answers. The rich do well for themselves, but the ‘invention of the steam engine’ has put a wrench into the democratic gears, and it does not take much to derail the system, a process currently on the way. 

It was Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” 

Jesus said: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand”, (Matthew 12: 25). These words are still valid today. The American election casts an ominous shadow over the entire electoral process. Add to this the enormous USA National Debt, now approaching $31 Trillion, or almost $100,000 for every living human in the USA, the financial future looks funereal. With interest rising, the cost to serve this debt is now some $15,000 per family, not counting mortgage or personal debt. Add the growing cost to repair environmental damage, the aging population, the looming recession, and a collapse of some sort is very possible.

Where will it lead?

Not only the USA: the entire world is teetering. Climate Change knows no borders. COP 27 will emphasize the injustice of heat and drought hitting prominently the poor: will that lead to international terrorism?

All bets are off! Abnormality will be the new normal.

November 2 2022

THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD.

Early last month “THE ECONOMIST”, Great Britain’s celebrated weekly, had a cover, shoutingTHE PRINCE, in fat letters, showing a picture of China’s President Xi Jinping, whom this magazine called, “the world’s most powerful man.”

The occasion for this feature article was the latest Chinese congress gathering, which happens every 5 years to appoint or reappoint its president. Mr. Xi received an unprecedented third term and dictatorial powers, with ‘China First’ ambitions, which bodes ill for the world and China itself.

The Economist called him “The Prince”, probably unaware that Jesus too used that designation, expanding it to: “The Prince of this World”. 1John 5: 19, explained it more precisely: “The entire world is under the control of the Evil One”, rather to the devil’s dismay, because “The devil’s best trick is to convince you that he doesn’t exist”. 

This makes me wonder: President Xi rules 1.3 billion people in China. How many are ruled by the Evil One, the True Prince of the world? 

It is no coincidence that Matthew 23 precedes Matthew 24: in that first chapter Jesus broadly condemns the religious teachers of his day, and in the next one he outlines what the future holds. That future is now.

Religion, false religion, dominates society. Three leaders, President Xi, President Putin, former President Trump constitute a triumvirate that features the forces of evil in this world. What will happen in Brazil is still unclear: the party of Bolsonaro of Brazil, the destroyer of the Amazon rain forests, still has major political power there.

What these evil men – yes, all men! – will accomplish is the total collapse of the world order. Take Putin: The war in Ukraine has already led to the near-destruction of the professional Russian army. His conscription of untrained people will lead to greater Russian domestic instability, as Russia itself has a history of sudden collapse. Poorly disciplined soldiers may trigger a mutiny or worse. When that happens, when Mr. Putin loses his war, he may, in his distorted mind, use the nuclear option on his own people. 

Johan Herman Bavinck, in his book on Revelation, comments on Chapter 18 verse 8. He writes: “The world will be consumed by fire in one day.”  As Mr. Putin continues to escalate his war in a futile search for victory in Ukraine, anything unimaginable yesterday may become inevitable tomorrow. The moment he loses his grip on power, the horrible consequences of another Russian collapse may well cause him to annihilate his own people in a spate of evil intent, through unleashing the ‘Bomb’ on them. 

Jesus and “Prince of the world”.

What we experience today is the culmination of a war that had its origin in heaven, of all places. It all started with, “And there was war in the heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels fought back” (Revelation 12:7-8). The Evil one was defeated and landed feet first on earth, where he became The Prince of the World.

This ‘Prince of the world’ has infected all facets of history: God continually had to make new beginnings: with Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with David, and finally with his Son. Now we again are at an end, as the Destroyer of the world is trying to pull down every pillar of the universal palace. 

In 12^th chapter of the Revelation of John, Satan is called “he who seduces the entire world” (verse 9). Jesus depicts him as the ultimate deceiver, the “father of lies” (John 8: 44). He twists human thought in the web of delusion, he conjures before the human eye the mirage of salvation and grandeur and, caught in the grip of falsehoods, as an easy prey, pulls the people to their perdition. He is the king of conceit, the royal champion in mind bewilderment, and the three men I mentioned are champion deceivers, faithful followers of the “Prince of this world.”

“Revelation” has it all.

The basic message of Revelation, the final Bible book, is: “Everything becomes what it is”. Evil is plainly visible in the Ukraine war; evil is seen in Putin’s refusal to allow grain shipments; evil is evident in our continuous use of Carbon Fuels; evil is observed in the rapid disintegration of organized religion; evil is lurking in limitless economic growth in a Finite World. 

But the good also emerges, in the fight against racial discrimination, in equal rights for women, especially in Iran and elsewhere, in trying to live in tune with creation.

It is now clear that “The Prince of the World”, sees that he is at the point of defeat – The Lord’s Second Coming – and is redoubling his efforts. 

The worst and the best is yet to come.

OCTOBER 26 2022

THE VERY LAST MARRIAGE

Today Chaos is the universal condition. We have really screwed things up, and it looks increasingly that remedies are impossible, so we have to live with the consequences of our past conduct and our current living habits. The real question is ‘how long’. How long what? How long until living becomes impossible. This is already the case in multiple countries, such as Pakistan, where floods cover a good portion of the land, or Australia, one of the white, rich countries, or British Columbia, that lush Province, the most sought-after living destination in Canada with its beautiful scenery, the salmon streams, the skiing jewel, the endless forests, all under the siege of lung-killing particles.

A recent article by a forester is utterly damming:

“Whole forests with fire-resistant giant sequoias up to 3,000 years in age have recently gone up in flames. Whole stands of drought-resistant Great Basin bristlecone pine, a species that can reach 5,000 years in age, have been sucked dry by bark beetles. Monumental baobabs, the longest-living flowering plants, buckle under the stress of drought in southern Africa. The iconic cedars of Mount Lebanon, ancient symbols of longevity, struggle in warmer, drier conditions. Millennial kauris in New Zealand and centenarian olive trees in Italy succumb to invasive diseases.”

When age-old trees succumb, it is time to stop and think. When nature, which has made 5,000 years old trees to brace wind and drought, floods and ice, hurricanes and wars, fall prey to Climate Chance, it is time to reflect and assess where we are. Trees are our canaries in the coalmine, are our alarms to wake us up. Their peril is our peril; their expiry is our expiry; their plight is our plight: we have to stop and think; stop and look back; stop and change; stop and pray.” 

Pray?

We have to stop preying and start praying. David Wallace-Wells wrote The Uninhabitable Earth, life after warming, in 2019, now three, almost 4 years ago. Day by day we read of new extremes in the weather, and the turmoil is not confined to atmospheric anomalies, the political picture is equally chaotic, evident everywhere, in Iran, in England, in Russia, in the USA, as people struggle with food shortages, with inflation, with extreme weather, with fuel prices surging. It should be remembered, and almost entirely forgotten, that this world is God’s world, as Scriptures tells us repeatedly, with Psalm 24 outspokenly proclaiming that “The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”   

So, what we really are doing is ‘sinning against God!”. Just imagine Johann S. Bach being alive or Rembrandt, and, in their presence, we openly destroy their music or paintings. Don’t you think they would get upset and become angry? Well, that’s what we, in our arrogance and stupidity are doing to God, the creator! 

Primary Productivity.

We, as the human race, have coopted more than 50 percent of the world ‘s basic raw material, the soil, the forests, the seas, the air, and left little or nothing for the land and sea animals, or the birds or the insects. Everywhere they are being crowded out and soon we too, will disappear: it is merely a matter of time, and time is accelerating with tremendous speed. Events are speeding up. Already there are rumors of nuclear war. Russia, the USA, Pakistan, three countries with unstable political parties, are readying their ultimate destructive weaponry just in case.

Holy Matrimony

“The land will be married”, writes Isaiah 62: 4. Revelation 21: 2 fleshes that out, “The New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”

Who is the groom? 

The new humanity, including Christ as the “Primus Inter Pares”, the First among Equals, humanity personified.

Who is the bride? 

The New Creation. The bride is NOT the church. That same chapter, Revelation clearly states that there, in the coming era, there is no place, no reason for the church anymore, as the Law of God is embedded in each person there.

The old humanity, including its institutions, among which the Ecclesiastical organisations, will disappear, leaving no trace. As we witness today, our course of action or failure to act, is leading to total destruction. The old has gone; the new is on the verge of appearing.

Jesus has told us that in the New Creation marriage will be abandoned, will cease to be a way of life. That means that the very last marriage will be sealed and celebrated when the new humanity, with Christ as a permanent member, will in perpetuity marry the new creation, forming an unbreakable bond that will last into the utmost eternity, growing in love and bonding in ever greater measure.