Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

February 9 2022

EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

That’s what Revelation, the last Bible book is all about. It exposes the LIE of our economic and ecclesiastical situation, and thereby indicate that the END is here.

Here are some of these signs.

David Brooks, long-time columnist for the New York Times, and, together with Jonathan Capehart, a Friday night feature on the PBS News Hour, had a long essay last Friday in his regular spot in America’s leading Newspaper, The New York Times, expounding at length about the catastrophic chaos in the Christian Religion that splits churches continent-wide. Actually, an age-old problem, dating back to pre-exile Israel more than 2500 years ago. There’s a curious passage in Isaiah 6, where in verse 3, the ‘holiness of the earth’ is affirmed, (also proclaimed in Psalm 24) and then a few verses later: “Be ever hearing (the Gospel), but never understanding”.

That’s what I concluded from David’s Brooks’ essay, in which he cites Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Seminary: “Many of the seminarians at Fuller are moving away from church as we normally conceive it. They want to build communities that are smaller, intimate, authentic, which can often fit in a living room. They see faith as inseparably linked to community service with the poor and marginalized. There’s a general interest in getting away from all the bitterness that has devoured the elders and just diving back into the Bible.”

Neither Brooks nor Labberton mention Creation as God’s Primary Word, basically endorsing Gnosticism. Harold Bloom, in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION, in 1993, wrote, and I paraphrase, “The American Religion has ceased to be Christian, consumed as it is by GNOSTICISM, that pagan belief that nature and grace are separate entities, that God in Heaven has nothing to do with the earth below, calling ‘Spirit’ divine, and ‘Nature’ evil.” 

Why is it so difficult to connect the Christian Religion to Creation? Today the most applicable text in the Bible is John 3: 16, expounding God’s ultimate love affair with Creation, sacrificing the life of his beloved Son to buy the cosmos back from the Satan, the “Prince of this World”, as Jesus, correctly, called him. 

Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer, J. H. Bavinck, are steeped in Biblical knowledge. Here’s a quote from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “I entreat you remain true to the earth (his emphasis),and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

 Bonhoeffer sees God and the world (cosmos) as one. Bavinck states that ‘personal redemption and the redemption of the earth go hand in hand.’

The church has never given heed to these warnings. Now that the earth is in extreme peril, the church goes its wayward way, without any consideration for God’s wonderful word in creation: it, with some exceptions has become a clear example of EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS: a fraud.

Last week’s New York Times, openly admitted “The End of the World.”

“I can’t say precisely when the end began, just that in the past several years, “the end of the world” stopped referring to a future cataclysmic event and started to describe our present situation.” 

So writes Amanda Hess on February 3 2022 on Times’ front page. She continued: 

“Across the ironized hellscape of the internet, we began “tweeting through the apocalypse” and blogging the Golden Globes ceremony “during the end times” and streaming “Emily in Paris” “at the end of the world.” Often the features of our dystopia are itemized, as if we are briskly touring the concentric circles of hell — rising inequality, declining democracy, unending pandemic, the financial system optimistically described as “late” capitalism — until we have reached the inferno’s toasty center, which is the destruction of the Earth through man-made global warming.”

The END is caused by the fraudulent thesis that “Infinite Growth is possible in a Finite World.”

Should I mention the economy? Or the rebellion against vaccination, abetted by “The Christians”.

ARCTIC NEWS – worth a look – in its February 5 and 7 issues, believes that, yes, The End is Near. Typical of The End is that human true nature is exposed. 

Everything becomes what it is. 

Fortunately, there also is Revelation 14: 13, where it says, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on…they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them”. Fortunately, there also is Romans 5: 21: “Just as SIN reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This world is rushing to the End. We all know that. “Even though the LIE is fast, in race with truth, the LIE comes last”. 

 February 2 2022.

It’s a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrew 10:31)

A TERRIBLE TEXT: WHY?

Animal carcasses litter the land in areas where the rains have failed, as millions go without enough food and water in a country already grappling with civil war.

That’s Ethiopia today. Not enough rain, also the case in South America, a region China depends on for its soybean supply to feed the millions of hogs, whose porkchops are the staple for its people. 

The first month of the year 2022 has come and gone, and everywhere weather records have been broken. What will the other 11 months bring? If January is any indication, we are in for more of the same: more rain where it is not needed, more heat where it is already hot, more drought where the soil is already sheer powder and the forests not timber but tinder.

Where is the church?

Where is the church in all this? Does the church have any business in global affairs? What is the church for anyway today? Does it still have a purpose in the world? Remember: Jesus did not start the church: we did. He simply taught us how to live in and with creation in a loving relationship, a perfect symbiosis. John 3: 16 plainly tells us that Jesus died to restore the cosmos, including us. Have you ever heard that in church?

But how about those synagogues? Weren’t they churches? No, the Old Testament synagogues were religious schools. In Yiddish they are still called ‘Schule’. And the temple? That’s so Old Testament. The temple then is creation now. Even that temple had numerous depictions of trees and flowers and animals. Just as salvation then was for God’s Chosen People, the offspring of Israel, and the temple its exclusive place of worship, now the Cosmos is our object of love, as John 3: 16 unambiguously proclaims.

The ECONOMIST, that prestigious weekly, in its January 9^th issue, has a two-page article, featuring a picture of an old – fashioned church sporting a FOR SALE sign with as subscript, “Follow us online!” Its heading: God, Mammon and real estate.

The ECONOMIST, being the economist, writes from a dollar-and-cents point of view, not questioning the church’s purpose in society. It does mention that there are 1200 denominations in the US, most of them struggling. 

I am a member of such a struggling church. Last year we amalgamated with a nearby Presbyterian Church counting on its existing members to increase attendance and revenue. Before the uniting it contributed 35% of the budget. After the unification it dropped to a fraction of that. People are more attached to ‘home turf’ than confessions. Apparently, they care little about the ‘communion of saints’ with strangers. 

During the last five weeks of the pandemic, our church, now without a minister, and with a person in charge adverse to technology, online became offline. An attempt to start an online Bible Study attracted only 20 percent of the listed members, a meagre 7-8 persons.

All this makes me question the entire ecclesiastical ‘enterprise’. 

I have long opposed the church’s monologue approach to explaining the gospel. I have pleaded for person-to-person interchange of faith experiences, made impossible by the ‘sermon’ delivery, a custom dating back to the Middle Ages when people could not read: sermons breed ignorance and complacency. Also, by exclusively dealing with the written, indirect, secondary, WORD, and by preaching ‘a heaven-oriented’ Gospel, the church has become alienated from God’s direct, primary, Created Word. 

There are advantages to online meetings, imperfect as they are: they save driving long distances, save heating a building used for one hour out of 168 weekly hours. Online people, in the comfort of their homes, may feel freer to open up to other ideas and opinions. Also, we do well to take to heart Augustine, one of the earlier Christian leaders: “Many whom God has, the church does not have; and many whom the church has, God does not have.

It’s a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I agree: That is a terrible text.

How do I explain it? In my opinion a sin against creation is a sin against God, is taking God’s name in vain. We, the so favored West, do this 24/7. We all know the first line in the Lord’s Prayer is, “Hallowed be Thy Name”. It tells us that God’s signature on Creation makes the world we live in ‘holy’.

Our persistence in shying away from God’s Holy Created Word, and taking the road traveled by the majority, has caused the travail we are in, increasingly earning us God’s wrath. We should read that text differently: 

“It is dreadful to fall into the hands of the living Creation!”

That’s what we are experiencing.

How the world has changed, for better and for worse, over five generations. 

DEAR GRANDCHILDREN, 

You all are successful, with healthy lives, good jobs, happy families and beautiful children; you are loving parents; in a word, you have made it. So why a letter from me, your 93-year-old grandfather? 

I have fond memories of mine! As a kid, ages four to 12, I often stayed with my mother’s parents on their 30-acre farm powered by one horse in the Netherlands. No electricity. A pig, a flock of chickens, a dozen milk cows and some young cattle. My paternal grandparents had a grocery store and, in horse-drawn wagon, called on my mother’s parents periodically, bartering eggs for coffee, tea and soap. Both my grandfathers were elders in the same large village church. 

When my mother married in 1923, her father gave her in today’s currency the equivalent of $200,000 – enough to equip a complete household and for my father to buy a car and the machinery to start his business. 

I remember one particular grade school lesson in 1939; it was the 100th anniversary of the first steam-powered train from Amsterdam to Haarlem. The teacher told us that some people in 1839 called this new-fangled transportation a “devil’s device.” We all laughed: how could that be true!? 

THE UNRAVELLING PROCESS 

When your Oma and I moved to Tweed, Ontario in 1975 from the city, the bullfrogs and birds woke us up. These sounds are gone. In the city you don’t notice these changes: here in Tweed, I do. Things have changed: the economy has priority. We now live in a world where a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. We live in a world where an elephant is worth more dead than alive, where a whale . . .. 

My grandparents, born 150 years ago – 1870 – in rural Groningen, knew how to live: in community. True, they did not have penicillin and people died younger, but there was genuine fellowship – music, choir, theatre groups, church. With the frogs and birds, that is largely gone. 

James Lovelock, an atheist scientist, now 101 years old, says in The Revenge of Gaia that our planet is fighting back with climate change and melting poles. The economy will keep destroying trees, mining the earth and pulling oil out of the ground, even though we know we leave a worse world for you, my dear grandchildren. 

My generation started this unravelling process. That is my legacy, and I beg you for forgiveness. The short-term thinking of my generation based on the religion of profit at all cost is at the root of it all: now I see that I am the severed tree; I am the dead whale. My generation is the culprit. 

Yet I believe that some of this “living close to nature” is still in you; after all, we are products of our forebears, still partners with the air, soil and water around us. Embrace the natural world around you and in every action work for her welfare. Love the earth; love her unconditionally. Question every one of your actions for its consequences, every step for its ultimate result. 

You are smart young people. When you closely examine what goes on out there, you will re-discover the unity and order, evident everywhere, because everything is connected somehow harmoniously to everything else.

THE LAW OF SERVING.

When you look around with open eyes and minds, you’ll see that life is all about serving. The law of serving is at the heart of every creature. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist. Every creature, in final analysis, is nothing else but a servant for others. And that happens automatically, as if a mighty hand brings all this in motion. Each being operates according to its nature, but everything together is so oriented that the existence of the one supports the other and maintains it. 

With us humans, service is different – infinitely richer but also more difficult. Humans know exactly what they do and why they do it. As a consequence, humans have much greater opportunity to serve. Every category in society serves the other; a world can’t do without medic- al helpers, but it also needs arborists and food inspectors, and even video-makers and other “new-fangled” inventions. 

The trouble with us humans is that the inclination to only serving our needs is both stronger and more dangerous, promoting our welfare at the expense gauge the needs of others, we also can easily ignore the plight of our neighbours and the care for creation. 

In short: serving is for most of us something we are reluctant to do. That “me first” inclination often overwhelms all other feelings. Given this weakness, we humans have been given a command by God: serve one another, serve creation! This serving, so “naturally” accomplished by all other segments of the world, we have to implement with full awareness. We all are connected from bottom to top to each other and all living matter. 

My wish for you, my dear grandchildren, is that this multi-level serving will be an integral part of your daily life.

Yours, with all my love, Opa 

Bert Hielema, a long-time contributor to CC, writes a weekly blog at hielema.ca dealing with contemporary issues. He has 5 children, 13 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. He lives in Tweed, Ontario.

 

January 26 2022

DISCIPLINE AND WISDOM

King Solomon states as purpose of The Proverbs: ‘ the attainment of wisdom and discipline’, and the ‘acquisition of a disciplined and prudent life’. In verse 7 he writes, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

I try to live by those givens. 

Now that I am a widower, living alone, I am more in charge of my life than when my wife of 67 years was alive. She still lives in me, but, for a long time, she suffered from dementia and spent the last 10 months in a Long – Term facility locally where I visited her every day.

It has always been my aim in life to attain wisdom and discipline, very much encouraged by my spouse. I regulate my time rigorously: I get up at 7.30, have a healthy breakfast, prepared in a slow cooker, of organic oats, add fruit, and have 3 cups of rooibos tea, followed later by 2 cups of coffee. (I had kidney stones a couple of times. Not recommended).

At 11 o’clock I start to prepare a hot lunch, soup from the freezer on Sundays, while, on most weekdays, I eat homegrown potatoes and vegetables – no meat – with a healthy mix of gravy, onion, garlic, tomato, olive oil, and once a week either rice or spaghetti with sauce.  In the afternoon a large bowl of yogurt sweetened with pear sauce or maple syrup and one slice of bread for supper. I now love cooking and experiment with different recipes. O yes, a piece of chocolate daily!

Invariably I exercise on my treadmill, stationary bike and rowing machine every day in the winter or walk for an hour in the nearby forests. In bed at 9.30. O yes, I have an afternoon nap. I always read aloud a Psalm before breakfast, and pray. After my morning meal, I type in a 500 words meditation, based on the lectionary of that day. 

There you have my daily routine, which also consists of a week-long ‘write and scratch effort for my weekly 800 words, blog. I always have a few books on the go, many from my own collection. I hardly watch TV, but read the New York Times, the Guardian and the Globe and Mail.

My family.

I have 5 children, 2 in the USA. My 3 Ontario ones, living in Toronto and beyond, visit each week, in turn. My daughter and her husband come every other week; she also phones me at 9 am and 5 pm without fail, and supervises my shopping. My USA daughters phone and try to come as often as possible. 

Then there is the ‘fear’ of the Lord.

 The word ‘fear’ in that text, is subject to misinterpretation. “Fear” there does not indicate ‘being afraid’ or ‘shrinking away from God’. It actually indicates the opposite. Maimonides, the great Jewish sage, categorized the fear of God as a positive commandment, as the feeling of human insignificance deriving from contemplation of God’s “great and wonderful actions and creations.” 

To update this well-known, often recurring, text, and incorporating Bonhoeffer’s thinking also, equating creation with God, my attitude toward life, my goal for eternity, is “living in total admiration, contemplation and knowledge of God’s creation, as the starting point of understanding and wisdom”.

There, in a nutshell, is the prescription for my LIFE. I do believe that Jesus came, not to bring a religion, even though we have now The Christ-ian Religion. No, in descending to earth he wants me to fully experience being human, following his example through all phases of life, from baby to infant, to toddler, to boyhood, teenager and adult.

It is telling that, as an idealistic twelve years old teenager, he tried to reason with the professors of religion at the Jerusalem School of Theology, where later Paul too received his advanced schooling. It is significant that, as an adult, he never repeated that dialogue. Instead, he condemned their teaching in no uncertain terms. He learned young in life the pitfalls of religion, which killed him.

. 

What else did this 12 years old teenager, teach me?

What Jesus learned in 3 days of give and take while his parents were frantically searching for him, also taught me a few things about myself.

For one thing: I, too, was formed in my youth. There I received the foundation of my life. After Jesus’ exposure to ‘theological teaching’ he forever stayed away from the temple-school and their learned professors, knowing full well that ‘religion’ and ‘tradition’ kill, just as it did Jesus. 

Today ‘religion’ kills creation, which I see as the embodiment of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and fully redeemed through Christ.

That’s why that text, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction,” I try to rule my life.

January 19 2022

THE ROAD TO HELL, OR….

“But something darker and deeper seems to be happening as well — a long-term loss of solidarity, a long-term rise in estrangement and hostility. This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.”

That’s a quote from David Brooks in the New York Times January 14. He cites a wide range of facts and figures, from increases in traffic deaths, accelerating murder statistics, a rise in violent and irrational behavior, and general lawlessness. He does not understand why.

Well, I do.

It does not take much of Bible knowledge to grasp what is really happening. I call it the Matthew 24 syndrome: it makes fascinating reading. Jesus has the prophetic eye and the intrinsic insight that lends credibility to his words. He can spot the trends and, knowing human nature, directly extrapolates what sinful humanity will commit to in the future, which is now unfolding. 

Today we have reached the plateau of human ingenuity, and with natural resources depleting, and all elements, air, water, land, under increasing stress, it’s downhill from here. As Seneca observed 2,000 years ago, “Increases in growth are sluggish but the road to ruin is rapid”. 

Today we are on that road. C.S Lewis pinpointed it accurately when he wrote: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

That’s the road we have taken, the more traveled one, when we, 150 years ago, chose the exploitation of the earth as our gateway to prosperity. Now we are, undoubtedly, on the path to perdition. 

Matthew 24.

Matthew 24: 6-8 mentions ‘wars and rumors of war, famines, earthquakes: the beginnings of birth pains.’ 

Look around: Today Russia threatens Ukraine. China threatens Taiwan. Iran threatens Israel. Global Heating threatens the entire world. When unity of purpose is needed to combat the pandemic and climate change, the United States is a house divided. 

Matthew 24 paints a scenario that has an uncanny resemblance to today. Yet, our society, both business and politics, lives in a bubble of illusion, believing that, by tweaking here and there, we can continue our way of life as if nothing is basically off balance.

Unpredictable times?

It is said that we now are living in un-predictable times, given the pandemic and climate change. The final 2021 issue of The Economist, editorializes that “The era if predictable unpredictability is here to stay”. 

Nothing is further from the truth. This assumption would have applied to the  year 1900 when, after 100 years of solitude, the unfolding of the next 100 years, caused hundreds of millions of violent deaths. Now we know exactly what will be in store for us: ever worsening economic, social and climatic conditions, without any chance of improvement. As C. S. Lewis coined it 60 years ago: we are on the road to hell, and nothing can possibly deter us. Any effort to soften the impact through technology or chemical solutions, through Artificial Intelligence or military options, will simply backfire and cause more deterioration.

Brace yourself. 

Already the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and South America, where the summer of 2022 has started, the heat is building up and droughts accelerates. Last year’s La Nina – supposedly having a cooling effect – still made 2021 among the hottest ever. Now, with 2022 and the onset of El Nino, hellish heat is a safe prediction. Says Matthew 24: 21:

“For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” That’s a sure prediction.

Earthquakes.

Scientists warn that, as the world heats up, to expect more earthquakes. And true: every day we read reports how the Ring of Fire around the Pacific is rumbling and roaring. Here too there are biblical predictions: Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament repeatedly warn of an enormous earthquake, especially in Revelation 6 and 11. 

What must we do?

The entire Bible has been written with this very end in mind. Matthew 5: 48 translates “teleios” as perfect: “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”. Teleios points to the new creation, points to ‘perfection’, now not yet possible. The root of ‘teleios’ is ‘telos’, which means ‘end’ or ‘goal’. Our aim in life must reflect pure and permanent living, loving creation unconditionally: Only that prepares us for eternity. The alternative, the easy road, the prevalent one, advertised a thousand times per day, causing social conditions David Brooks does not understand, is the road to hell, now clearly outlined. 

Remember the murderer next to Jesus on the cross: conversions are possible!

WWJD?

JANUARY 12 2022.

Each Saturday morning, I receive an email from John Mauldin, a financial forecaster. He is an entertaining writer and I usually read his predictions. For some reason finances interests me, and, although I am a cautious investor and quite conservative, I, at my stage in life – born in 1928 – am more interested in the return of my saving than return on them. 

In his missive of January 8, 2022, he starts off with: “Some evangelical Christian groups wear cryptic little “WWJD?” pins. It stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s a good question to ask when you face a moral dilemma. The economic dilemma, while different, becomes clearer when we ask what certain mortals will do. That will be our framework as we consider what 2022 will bring.”

John Mauldin is, I think, not an informed Christian, which is evident from the   paragraph I quoted where he sees Jesus as a moral teacher, having little to do with everyday life, such as economics: there the question what Jesus would do, is irrelevant, so says John Mauldin, and with him almost all others.

Still, “What Would Jesus Do?” is a relevant question. John the Baptizer, in a spat of uncertainty, sent some of his followers to Jesus in a quest for his genuine origin. Jesus’ simple reply was: the sick are healed, the dead raised. In other words, “With him the Kingdom that John had so fervently proclaimed, had come.” 

REBUKE

That became clear in two everyday examples. When the mother-in-law of his disciple Peter fell ill, Jesus ‘rebuked’ her illness and she was healed. When the experienced sailors, his fishermen disciples, were caught in such a severe storm that they feared for their lives, Jesus ‘rebuked’ the wind. “Rebuking’ points to a severe dressing down, and a return to the original status. “Rebuke” in these two cases were examples of  human-physical and atmospheric conditions that had been brought about by the integral influence of The Evil One on all of life. Today, for instance, the Covid occurrence originates with “The Prince of this World.” In 1John 5:19 we are told that, “The entire world is under the ‘control’ of the evil one”, including wars, holocaust and pandemics. Our economic system, at the root of our environmental eschaton–inducing eclipse, is caused by ‘the evil one’. In ‘rebuking’ the wind, for a moment, New Creation conditions were called into being, because Jesus is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. His kingdom is not a moral affair: his Kingdom embraces all of life. John 10: 10 tells me that, “The thief (Satan in this case) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I, Jesus, have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

There we have it: Jesus came not to teach us morals, not to live ethically: he came to teach us how to live, and that to the full.

How to live?

Dr. Sabine Dramm, in summarizing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, singles out his one overriding conviction: “Specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.” In his essay, Dein Reich Komme, (Your Kingdom Come), Bonhoeffer writes, “He (Christ) does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond; rather, he gives us back to the earth as his loyal children.”

Indigenous teachings,

We can learn an awful lot from the original, ‘first nation’ people in the world. On August 13 1992, almost 30 years ago I bought for $27.95 The Wisdom of the Elders, a series of 50 mini essays exploring the age-old wisdom of indigenous people word-wide: they all see the world and what it contains as holy. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is another great example of earthly wisdom, a regimen we have failed to adopt, to our great disadvantage.

WWJD?

What would Jesus do if he were around today and faced with Covid and vaccination? There are a lot of church people who refuse the means of science in connection with the current epidemic, probably the first in a series. 

God has given us our bodies as our personal possession to treasure. He also tells us to love others as ourselves. Vaccination is a good example of this love: by protecting ourselves, in the best possible way, admitting that the shots are not perfect, by these injections, we confess our love for our own bodies, while also providing a measure of defense for others, both expressing our communal love as the Bible commands. 

WWJD? Christ, in everything like us, except for sin, with a body susceptible to disease and, yes, death, would submit his holy body to these preventive elements, these vaccinations, of course.