Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

March 23 2022.

THE LOST GOSPEL.

“How do we know God?” 

“Who cares?”, you might say. True, we may flip out the odd OMG, but that’s often the closest we come to God. 

To be honest, most people don’t give a hoot about God. How can they love God and Christ – the perfect image of God – when they see those who claim to love God, despise and mutilate and murder and demolish and disfigure God’s creation? 

I know and believe that God created an orderly world. With the South Pole, the Antarctic, 40C above normal; with the North Pole, the Arctic, 30C above normal, that’s not orderly, that means chaos! Scientists warn that the events unfolding ‘up there’ and ‘down below’ are “historic”, “unprecedented” and “dramatic”.

 I believe that soon ‘the weather’ will crowd out the bad news in Ukraine, with an even greater death toll, and even greater fire and wind damage than what the poor people in Eastern Europe experience. Yes, gloom and doom are my second and third name.

You know why these events, wars, death, destruction, horror, happen? We lost the Gospel of the Earth! That’s why.

True, some church confessions mention that the Earth belongs to God, the Belgic confession especially. In answer to the question, ‘how do we know God’, it states: “First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe which is like a beautiful book”. But, in practise, in real life, in our day-to-day actions, we usually ignore these very fitting words. 

Bonhoeffer put meat to that statement, when he said “It is specific to the Christian faith that God and the world are one.” Just think about that: By harming creation, we cause God to suffer. While we call the Bible Holy, we refuse to call Creation Holy.

Enter Tom Hayden.

Tom Hayden, a California Politician, some 25 years ago wrote, ‘THE LOST GOSPEL OF THE EARTH.”  He examined Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism, and concluded that in all three faiths, tribal, native, aboriginal, nature-based mysticism was replaced with human-centred theologies that de-sanctified the earth and taught people to see themselves as dominant over nature. 

He wrote, “A backlash has been underway in the name of God; one that asserts the absolute rights of human beings to help themselves to nature’s bounty. As the backlash proceeds, as more of our forests and wetlands disappear, as more of our rivers and estuaries are degraded, as more of our cities are congested and polluted, I envision an even stronger environmental outcry arising once again”. 

To declare creation holy, to see it as God’s Primary, Direct Word, in contrast with the Bible, God’s Secondary, Indirect Word, would require a total change in church priority, preceded by a radical change in human behavior. Actually, sermons, without any reference to Creation, are like engines without power.

Eons ago.

An earth-shaking change took place thousands of years ago. Jacques Ellul, Professor of the Law Faculty of the University of Bordeaux in THE MEANING OF THE CITY, placed the blame on Cain. Cain?  What blame?

The Bible relates how Cain, Adam and Eve’s son, killed his brother, Abel, and through that act “Cain broke the relationship between humanity and the earth”. Writes Ellul, “The city is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and of his refusal to accept God’s protection. ….The city is opposed to Eden…..So civilization begins with the city and all that its represents.”

Ellul concludes that, “The City has a spiritual influence. It is capable of directing and changing one’s spiritual life”.

Don’t think for a minute that today living outside the city’s boundaries, means a return to EDEN. No, today the city is everywhere. Our (highly polluting) automobile is a product of the city. Our TV is a product of the city. Our government and its largesse are products of the city, and the list goes on. 

How then shall we live?

That is the perennial question. It is no accident of history that Jesus, God’s Son, died on a tree. The tree was the first to receive his flesh and blood. Trees are LIFE. Trees can live without us: we can’t live without trees. His blood next fell to the earth, as ‘earth we are and to the earth we shall return’. Both trees and the earth are holy, sanctified by the blood of Jesus.

We lost the gospel of the earth. Johan Herman Bavinck recognized this, when he wrote: “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal”. In other words, ‘my salvation and the salvation of the cosmos go hand and hand.’ 

“How do we know God?” 

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. (Romans 1: 20)

March 16 2022

 THE TWO POPES

There is an eery similarity between the Calamitous 14^th Century and the age we live in. Barbara W. Tuchman in THE DISTANT MIRROR, dealing with that period in intimate detail, begins her near 700 pages book, how, in the late 13^th Century, Europe experienced an immense burst of development in art, technology, learning institutions, banking, evident in the invention of the compass, mechanical clock, the spinning wheel, wind- and watermill, expanse of travel, establishment of European universities, just to name a few. We, too, saw much innovation in all fields in the last 50 years.

A sudden climate change.

“Then, in 1315, after rains so incessant that they were compared to the Biblical Flood, crops failed all over Europe, and famine, the dark horseman of the Apocalypse, became familiar to all”, so writes Tuchman. The rise in population, preceding this natural disaster, had already exceeded agricultural production, with the result that general health had declined, leaving people undernourished and vulnerable. Today the same?

And then came the Black Plague, killing almost half the population.

So, what about us?

Compare this to today: Most of the Western world is overfed and undernourished, and the health of our Eight Billion of people is extremely vulnerable, saturated as we all are with plastic particles and organic compounds of unknown long-term danger, even as longevity is now double that of the 14^th Century, thanks to better basic hygiene. For how long can we feed our teeming billions, as in the background loom declining oil stocks – we eat OIL – Global Heat, an ongoing Pandemic which, writes the Lancet, may have caused 16 million deaths, while wars and rumors of war persist? That same medical journal estimates that some 80 percent of the world’s people suffer from some sort of ailment.

War.

The 14^th Century saw the Hundred Year’s War between France and England.  Ukraine is only a skirmish compared to our perpetual war against THE EARTH, evident in increasing environmental disasters, killing millions through foul air, heat, wars, floods, forest fires.

Climate Change then; Climate Change now.

Here’s a quote from THE DISTANT MIRROR, “Acts of man no less than change in the climate marked the 14^th Century as born to woe”. 

That Climate Change, now duped the “Little Ice Age”, lasted until 1700: 400 years! Curiously, it gave birth to Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Shakespeare, the van Eyck Brothers, Rembrandt, Bach, while America was discovered, and the Reformation took place. A truly Golden Age. I wonder: is cooler weather better for creativity? Will a hotter world do the opposite?

Oh, yes, those Two Popes!

The king of France, Philip the Fair, moved the Papacy to Avignon, Southern France, in 1302, objecting to Pope Boniface’s ruling that: “It is necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff”. Not until 1450 became Rome the religious headquarters again. 

Two Popes today?

Today, technically speaking, we too have two popes, one who retired, Benedict, and Francis.

However, Francis’ authority is deeply challenged, typical of today’s confusion which extends to all spheres of life, the result of two vastly opposite views, going far beyond the ecclesiastical scene, often due to what I call ‘the sex thing’. 

Take the USA: there Cardinal Raymond Burke lambasts the Pope’s support for civil rights for gay couples. Around a third of Catholic bishops in the USA are hostile to the Pope for various reasons, from anti-vaxxers to those who proclaim that being a Democrat and a Catholic, such as President Biden, is a contradiction in terms. The Alabama-based EWTN is a hotbed of pro-Trump and anti-Francis propaganda, claiming to be the world’s largest religious media network with a global audience of 250 million listeners. 

Due to these irreconcilable divisions, Francis could well be “The Last Pope.” 

In general, the church, Protestant and Catholic alike, faces impossible choices. Francis, however I admire the man, still seems to be powerless to abolish celibacy, even while Peter, the founder of the Roman church, was obviously married. Then there still is that scandalous teaching of excluding women from clerical functions. No wonder Pope Francis meets opposition from both the rigorous Right and the flexible Left, a malady also afflicting Protestantism.

To me, it suggests the fading importance of organized religion. Personally, it means working out my salvation in awe and probing (Philippians 2: 12): yet, abandoning the church is not the answer for me.

Two Popes are a symbol of our divided world, pointing to another dangerous political division: Russia and China versus the Capitalist West. 

All and all, the 21^st Century increasingly looks like the Calamitous 14^th Century when close to half of its inhabitants died. Will this similarity also extends to our time: a 40 PERCENT mortality rate through a nuclear war, combined with a sudden spike in temperature?

God have mercy.

March 9 2022

TIME TO PRAY.

What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:3).

I have been re-reading a book by a Harvard Professor, Herbert Benson, MD with the telling title, TIMELESS HEALING, The power and biology of belief.

He, himself a Jew, sees merit in all faiths, as long as there is a degree of commitment. Clinically, he discovered that faith in a higher body, helps recovery from illness, and, in dying, gives grace and comfort. Not surprisingly, church attendance, meeting people, makes them live longer and better. Dr. Benson recommends a simple prayer, repeatedly spoken, such as “The Lord is my shepherd”. I prefer ‘Maranatha, Lord Jesus, Come!” I use it when walking or running.

Prayer is timely.

If there ever is a time for prayer and meditation, for inner emotions to be recognized and ascertained, and for probing the purpose of life, it is now when we are beset with more perils than ever world-wide: Climate Change is accelerating, and military conflict only exacerbates the situation, with world hunger a distinct possibility, as Ukraine and Russia grow much of the world’s wheat.

Me, I can’t stand watching TV anymore. Tears well up when I see the tragedy in Ukraine unfolding. War is terrible, and our war against creation is having identical consequences, increasingly unpredictable weather. There is no doubt in my mind that we effectively live in the last days, beset, as we are, with insoluble problems of our own making. 

Look at the boycott of Russian products: ingredients such as oil, natural gas and wheat, are items we ourselves badly need. Mr. Putin is no fool: our banning of all things Russian has a strict time limit: the West needs a quick solution to the Ukrainian crisis, or we ourselves will be the losers. 

Prayer is our only help.

If there ever is need for prayer and peace, it is now, at the very time when ‘faith’ is at an all-time low, faith defined as belief in ‘divine’ law, the law summarized by Jesus in Mark 12: 30: 

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Dr. Benson, founder of Mind/Body Medical Institute, says that too long have we divided the mind/body spheres, sending faith and reason to opposite corners: Faith a private matter, reason dominating the public domain. We now experience the results of this fateful development, particularly evident in our ecclesiastical enterprise, where ‘religion’ is delegated to the soul, while creation, society, science, business, government, medicine, education, has been completely severed from the divine. That’s why Jesus, in his all-comprehensive ‘love’ commandment, includes all our facilities, the total person: heart, soul, mind and strength.

Time for prayer. 

Prayer will not cure the world situation. Prayer will not reverse the Global Heating disaster. Prayer will not restore our aging bodies and give us physical renewal. However, prayer will help us cope with the anxieties attacking us. Prayer can set our minds at peace and, since we are a unity, prayer will also affect our physical wellbeing, still our worries, and prepare us for eternity, and even make us love the perpetrators of evil, many of them are victims of circumstances beyond their control. Prayer will force us to face the reality of the moment, and will grant us true compassion.

Sin and death.

Romans 6: 23 unambiguously states that, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

“Sin” nowadays is not a popular word, perhaps because we, Century 21 people, are totally drenched in sin. When I appear before God’s throne to give account of my life, I don’t stand there as a woman or a man, as a Presbyterian or an Anglican, or as Christian Reformed, Roman Catholic Italian, a Jew or a Muslim, or as a citizen of Canada or Russia or Ukraine: I stand there as a ‘sinner’, deserving death, and having caused ‘the death of creation’ for whose re-birth Christ died: there is no such thing as individual redemption: personal redemption and the redemption of Creation go hand in hand: every Christian must be a sincere creation lover.

Spring is hope.

Yet, it’s spring. The sap in my sugar maples is flowing. The birds are returning. The snow is disappearing, and creation is reviving. The promise of renewal is reverberating throughout the universe, in spite of Ukrainians crying out in agony: Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:3).

March 2 2022.

PUTIN’S MARCH OF FOLLY. 

We live in interesting times, which, by the way, is a Chinese curse. That matters are not normal, is beyond question. Normality presupposes life ruled by ‘norms’, a concept that implies ‘ethics’, a set of acceptable standards that underly LIFE. 

Bonhoeffer in his book ETHICS sees life ruled by LOVE which becomes creative in FREEDOM. He writes, “One must subordinate oneself in ethical decisions to the will of God; must see one’s own actions sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of eternity, and then no matter what course is taken it will be the right one.”

I love that phrase: “In the light of eternity”. It means that, instead of looking back, to history, we look forward to our ultimate destination: The New Earth under a New Heaven. 

A long time ago we took the wrong turn, of which we now see its terrible consequence: resembling a suicide scenario. Wherever we look, we see the results of our initial error, which basically stems from failing to see God as the creator, and consequently, seeing Creation as holy. 

Here we are: 8 billion of us on this planet, and every single one of us a child of crude oil. Without crude oil and other fossil fuels, most of us simply wouldn’t exist. And without crude oil, we cannot continue to exist: we are on the road to suicide. 

You may see that as tragic, because tragedy always connotes being overtaken by some sort of fate, something we cannot fight. No, it’s the result of sin, of pride that comes before the fall, our fall.

Putin exposed.

In the Russia-Ukraine situation, Putin’s Pride is the prevalent factor. He sees history in terms of his own place there, certainly not ‘in the light of eternity’. Putin lives in the past; he imagines himself as the Czar, and his billionaire buddies as the former nobility, while the common people are the serfs, either to conform or to be sent to prison. He wants to go back in time, a road that has led to tragedy and folly.

Christians are totally different: they look forward, expect to have eternal life, and see today as the preparation for tomorrow, living in the New Creation: they see life in the light of eternity.

So, what is world history? 

World history, as we experience it today, is terribly sad: one damn thing after another, as somebody put it. It is even more so because we know that it, inescapably, leads to a disastrous finale. 

We saw this ever more clearly in the events of the last week, when Putin pursued his greater Russia goal, his very own March of Folly, which will precipitate what the Bible calls, “The fall of Babylon”.

That fall is now in full swing. It has to come because it constitutes part of God’s holy justice. Revelation 18: 11 – 19 provides us with a clear clue: “The merchants of the earth will mourn”, and so will the politicians and the bankers and the money manipulators, for they are on the losing end: “in one hour the economy has been brought to ruin.”

This passage tells me two things: (1), The collapse of our world comes at a time of material prosperity, witness today, and, (2), comes totally unexpected.

The movers and shakers of today’s world are still convinced that, somehow, they can preserve our awesome civilization. They don’t believe that it is coming to an ignominious end. They think that it is just another economic downturn. 

A very pessimistic view.

Here is what I see coming. Putin in his March of Folly, has not factored in a peasant revolt: the Russian people turning against him. Times have changed: Internet and Facebook and Twitter have brought everything home.

Putin, drunk on his own delusion and perverted by his own position of grandeur, is unable to face the raw reality of a popular revolt against his rule. In his manic state of self-deceit, his insane mindset refuses to face defeat. When confronted with internal revolt and growing resistance in Ukraine, rather than face failure, he orders the world’s total destruction: Putin bombs the world into oblivion: That is his ultimate March of Folly. 

World history is, indeed, suicide; world history is, indeed, a leap into the abyss. That is what humanity does without prompting: God does not have a hand in all this.

Back to Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer in his book ETHICS sees life ruled by LOVE which becomes creative in FREEDOM. He writes, “One must subordinate oneself in ethical decisions to the will of God; must see one’s own actions sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of eternity, and then no matter what course is taken it will be the right one.”

February 23 2022

IS GOD GONE?

There’s a curious text 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.

That’s us. There is good side to that: God has granted us independence: we resemble young people, leaving the parental home and striking out on our own. Yes, God is the ultimate pedagogue, full well knowing that the best way to learn is to try. The Bible tells us so: in 1 Thessalonians 5: 21 he urges us: “to test everything; hold on to what is good.” That’s what we did up to a point.

Looking back 2,000 years, and knowing a bit of history, we have come a long way, especially in the last 50 years. After a quiet 19^th Century, the next 100 years became the bloodiest ever, with 10% of all those alive in 1900, dying prematurely in the following 50 years, due to 2 World Wars, the Spanish Flu and Stalin-induced famine in Ukraine.

Then from 1950 on, the world saw tremendous economic growth and an astounding increase in Carbon-inspired technology, feeding a population explosion, quadrupling in my life-time from 2 billion to almost 8 billion. 

However, in our supposed self-sufficiency we eliminated God from our world. Without God history is reverting toward barbarism. We have an authoritarian strongman in Russia, invading his neighbor, a rapidly expanding dictatorial China, waging genocide on its people and threatening Taiwan, cyberattacks playing havoc with the world order, democracy in retreat everywhere, thuggish populists across the West undermining democracy, from Turkey to Hungary to, yes, the USA as well. Even the weather is in tune with the global barbaric behavior, boding ill for the coming summer, with the CO2 count galloping and the far more lethal methane in the Arctic bubbling up out of control. 

APPROACHING THE END.

More than 30 years ago I bought THE HIDDEN FACE OF GOD by Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman, a professor of Hebrew: an outstanding book, displaying tremendous insight into both the Hebrew and the Christian Bible. 

Friedman deals extensively with both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, two troubled authors of tremendous talent; two brilliant men brought up in strict religious families, struggling with the concept of the death of God, both proclaiming that “Without God, all is permitted”: today’s headline.

Friedman points out that when God is close-by, a daily or semi-permanent presence, people often rebel. He points to the Israel tribe, wandering in the desert for 40 years, daily provided with ‘angel’ food, with wonder water, with a cloud by day, sheltering them from the hot sun, yet always yelling against Yahweh. He concludes that people cannot stand God’s proximity. 

I see some similarity there in our church practises by hiding behind rites and confessions, shielding us also from God’s immediate presence through the intermediary of priest or minister, because we are afraid to deal directly with God and Jesus. 

God is gone into hiding.

God is gone for those who, in the name of God, rebel against the legally elected government. God is gone for those who, in the name of God, destroy his creation. God is gone for those who, in the name of God, condemn colored, homosexual, transgender, Islam people. God is gone for those who, in the name of God, wage war. God is gone for those who, after destroying the earth, expect to go to heaven.

When Jesus was tempted by the Devil, (see Matthew 4: 8) the Satan offered him the entire world. Just before He was crucified, Jesus prayed to protect you and me in a world dominated by the Evil One, a world to which we don’t belong (John 17). We belong to the world to come, because in today’s world we have eliminated God, who has hidden his face to see how we manage without Him. 

Now, through his wounded world, God is unleashing his righteous anger, through which, combined with human evil, God is showing his irresistible powers to punish us for mortally molesting his holy work of art, as infinite as God is infinite. 

Yes, on the public scene, God has gone, Today, in our arrogance and ultimate stupidity, we were convinced that we could shape the cosmos in our own image, with satellites and space journeys, with clever machines and instant communication: a world without God.

God is gone, but not in the lives of his people. I feel his presence continually. But from the public scene he has been barred, because we, by destroying his creation, have killed him also. 

After the Flood, God promised not to repeat that process, fully well knowing that this time around, by hiding his face, we ourselves would accomplish the world’s destruction. 

Now, with The End in sight, the world is ready for renewal, already.  accomplished by Jesus Christ. Maranatha.

A SONG AND A PRAYER.

February 16, 2022

Something completely different! New times: new songs, songs reflecting our earth, the place God gave us to inhabit for eternity, and new prayers as we await his coming.

THE LORD’S PRAYER in verse and song. 

Melody of “All people that on earth do dwell”.

Our father far beyond our reach

Yet still so close that you can teach

Us how to live in your great earth

Where we forever have our berth.

You made this world for us to dwell

Made it both yours and ours as well

Made it so holy, all for us

To treat with care without a fuzz.

Our father in eternal light

So great and ever, ever bright                  

Your kingdom you to us did give

To treasure, so that we may live.

Your kingdom is the holy earth

You made it: it reflects your worth

Your precious, dear beloved globe

Our last and very real hope.

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 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.

A translation of the Dutch Easter Song: Daar juigt een toon.

A voice rings out a glorious hymn

Resounding through Jerusalem

A bright new morning lies ahead

The Son of God rose from the dead

Now death has lost its very sting

We now need ne’er fear anything

For Christ has conquered everything

He truly is creation’s king.

Now that the Lord rose from the dead

We look for brand-new life ahead

New life prepared by his demise

New life in earthly paradise.

A Lament for creation. An adaptation. With refrain.

Where are the birds that sang in tall tree towers,

Why are the woodlands now full-soaked in ash,

Where are the eyes to see the fire showers,

Where are the tears when birds no longer dash?

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?

 When will we hear no more of species dying?

 When will we care enough to cherish all?

How clean the water, how tall the grain?

How green the forest, can the earth renew again?

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 and for our voice to weep.

How clean the water, how tall the grain?

How green the forest, can the earth renew again?

Music: 11.10.11.10 with refrain, based on TIDINGS: James Walch, 1875. P.D. 

The entire world is struggling with extinction. Despair is mounting.

When anxiety for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and pray, Maranatha, Lord Come, 
and visualize the new creation,
where all is at rest, where the wolf and the lamb feed 
together, and swords have become instruments of peace.

I then see shalom emerge, everywhere
in earth and sky and seas.

In my dreams I see Jesus, walking hand in hand
with his woman friend, amidst a throng of children
Happily dancing around that pair.
I see flowers in manifold colors and shapes,
And I see above me the balmy sun,
with healing in its wings, 
friendly, soothing, refreshing, blessing
those who have waited for the Lord.                 

O Holy Earth.

O holy earth receive our tears

O brother Jesus, still our fears.

We live as exiles in our land,

Oh, where, oh where your healing hand?

The people all are drunk with wine

In blinded daze see no decline

The nations’ rulers spread the lie

With death for many, life for some.

What evil thought gave life to birth

That made us kill God’s Holy earth?

(Tune: The Old Hundredth: O people that on earth do dwell)