December 1 2021

I AM AN “EARTHER”.

In my church, St. Andrew’s Tweed, hangs a large Celtic Cross, crafted by one of our parishioners. A Cross is Celtic when it has an orb, a circle at its center, symbolizing that the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in the Scriptures belong together, telling me each Sunday that I must listen to the living Word in nature as well as abide by the dictates of the Bible.

Here’s where the church erred.

Nature is God’s primary, direct, created Word and the Bible is God’s secondary, indirect, written Word. Under the fatal influence of Gnosticism, the church has not only reversed that order, but has, by absentia, allowed a curse to be placed on the work of God’s own hand.  

In 1565, the Belgic Confession was composed; it singled out creation as the primary source of getting to know God. Psalm 24 states this plainly: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”  

Yes, the Bible is a necessary tool for a Christian: it is a light that guides us in navigating Creation. In essence the Bible tells us that God created, we uncreated, Jesus recreated. 

The first step in understanding Christianity is to acknowledge that, since God created it, the entire world is holy. When we abuse creation, we take God’s name in vain, and curse God’s majesty, which never goes unpunished, witness Climate Change and the Covid condition, worsening world-wide.

I call myself an EARTHER because Genesis 3: 19 plainly states: “Earth we are and to the earth we shall return”. Yes, the earth’s DNA and the human’s DNA resemble each other closely. 

Back to Celtic Christianity.

That God is present in all creation was certainly the conviction of the ninth-century philosopher, John Scotus Eriugena, perhaps the greatest teacher of the Celtic branch, the church ever produced. His name simply means John, the Scotsman from Ireland. He taught that Christ moves among us in two shoes, as it were, one shoe being that of creation, the other that of the Scriptures, and stressed the need to be as alert and attentive to Christ moving among us in creation as we are to the voice of Christ in the Scriptures. One of his prayers was, “Show yourself to us in everything we touch; show your presence in every one we meet.”

Like the Celtic Christian teachers before him, the thoughts of John the Irishman, were particularly shaped by the mysticism of the Apostle John, who tells us that “God is Love.” The realization that God is also a love affair is summed up in the doctrine of the Trinity. 

Celtic Christians, a 1000 years ago, expressed this in this poem:
The Three who are over my head.
The Three who are under my tread.
The Three who are over me here
The Three who are over me there.
The Three who are in the earth near.
The Three who are up in the air.
The Three who in heaven do dwell.
The Three in the great ocean swell,
Pervading Three, O be with me!

When God created, he called it good after each phase, and very good when it was all completed. This basic goodness in creation is a special feature of Celtic Christianity. Says the Irish John: “God’s divine goodness is the essence of the whole universe and its substance. Evil is opposed to the existence of creation and where goodness is creative, evil is destructive.”

All this was written long before we experienced the evil of pollution, of global warming, of the current pandemic, which, we can now clearly see, is the devil at work. 1 John 5: 19 unambiguously states that today the Devil calls the shots in this world. Jesus in John 17 openly admits that Satan is “the prince of this world.”

As so often happens in the church, true reformers and true radicals are not tolerated by the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1225 the main writings of John the Irishman, were condemned by the Pope and in 1685 they were placed on the Index, the papal list of forbidden writings. 

But the Celtic influence persisted. 

Jesu who ought to be praised.
There is no life in the sea,
there is no creature in the river,
there is naught in the firmament,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu who ought to be praised.
There is no bird on the wing,
there is no star in the sky
there is nothing beneath he sun,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu who ought to be praised.

We must begin to see the earth as Holy, and identify creation with its maker, just as we recognize and revere Bach in his St. Matthew Passion.

That’s why I call myself an EARTHER.

November 24 2021

WHAT IS “CHRISTIAN?”

A few weeks ago, I received a mailing from the Christian School Foundation, a Canadian body with the aim to help Canada’s Christian School movement. To me it generated a somewhat adverse effect, a feeling of negativity, a strange reluctance to even read the booklet. I know it was the wrong emotion, Why? Today the word “Christian” is now often associated with ‘anti-vaccine’, ‘anti-homosexual’, ‘anti-science’, even ‘anti-creation!’

It was not always so.

In 1955 my wife and I and one little son, moved from Hamilton, Ontario to St. Catharines, where in 1957, with a daughter added, I became quite involved in establishing a Christian School there, convinced that public education would lead my children astray from the true faith.

I myself am a multi-generational product of Christian education in the Netherlands. My parents had gone to their village Christian school, while the parents of my grandparents paid for their Christian schooling, just as we now had to do.

I must admit, my Christian elementary education has had a lasting influence on me because of my weekly memorizing the rhymed Psalms: my wife and I sang them together when she suffered from dementia: the songs learned in our youth remained with her and me till the very end. 

I was for years the secretary of the local Christian School board, and a member of the Education Committee. Being self-employed, I spent at least one day a week working for this cause. From 1959-1965, as recording and corresponding secretary of the board of the Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools, a province-wide organization I traveled one day each month to Toronto, for an all-day meeting there. That often entailed another day of work, writing the minutes and doing the extensive correspondence.

Then a change.

When my term was up more conservative men took over and I lost touch with the Christian School movement. But not quite.

In 1972 I gave a chapel talk at the Beacon Christian Highschool in St.Catharines. That year had been a turning point in my life: two books changed my entire outlook: Donella Meadows: “The Limits to Growth”, and Telder’s (Dutch) “After Death, what…?” The first book awoke what must have been lingering in my mind concerning the future of our profligate lifestyle, predicting a sure end. The second confirmed my suspicion about going to heaven, and suggesting eternal life on earth. 

In that chapel talk, with my minister present, I expounded on my doubts about what I now call “The Heaven Heresy”, prompting the minister to send a letter to the school parents, contradicting my views. That, combined with my disenchantment with the growing inflexibility of the church I attended, coupled with the 1973 Oil Crisis and the outlook predicted by “The Limits to Growth”, my wife and I decided to make a radical move: sell business and house and move to Tweed where friends had come to the same conclusion. That happened in 1975. 

From City to Country.

We moved. I built an energy efficient house on 50 acres, two storey with large windows facing south, a central masonry chimney, all set to heat the dwelling with wood and a back-up system. We became part of a house church, the type of worship when Christianity began. I took extra university courses – economics, urban studies – wrote three master-appraisals, to qualify for commercial real estate appraiser, which I did in 1978.

Always a ferocious reader, I fell in love with Bonhoeffer. Translated three books by an enlightened Dutch theologian, J.H. Bavinck. Both men convinced me that personal redemption and redemption of creation go hand in hand: a radical new insight for me.

Years ago, I wrote a book, DAY WITHOUT END, in which I imagined myself living in the New Creation. That prospect still governs my life. I see everything from the perspective of eternity, and am also governed by Revelation 22 where is says, “And there is no altar there”: no church, no Bible in the New Age to come! The real “Christian” Life is totally centered on and in ‘creation’. 

That made me see how ‘original sin’ is the result of picking fruit from the Paradise tree without asking the tree for permission.

The ‘heaven heresy’ has distorted the “Message”: my growing trouble with church and Christian Education finds its source there, I believe.  

A new perspective needed.

Christian churches and schools, need a new perspective, one that focuses on the End, so that we can prepare ourselves for living in the New Creation: A total Way of Life, listening to Creation, and effectively loving it: That is the NEW Way. It seems to me that the written Word, God’s indirect revelation, has become a talisman, because our way of life constitutes a curse on God’s direct, created word, to our mortal peril. 

I pray and hope that these institutions follow that path. My reluctance to embrace the word “Christian” stems from my emphasis on God’s Created Word. 

What is “Christian”? We have to find another word.

November 17 2021

         A MESSENGER OF SATAN.

It’s not often that I discover something new while in church. It wasn’t the minister’s words either, although he listed the passage, but then left it unread and unexplained, but to me it was an eyeopener. 

The reading was 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10, a passage where Paul reveals something about his state of mind. On previous occasions he had mentioned the dangers he had faced while traveling, by foot and on ship with considerable peril to his physical wellbeing, but he never touched on his emotional state until he had almost completed the second letter to the church in Corinth. There, without much of an introduction, he related how he suffered with a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him. Years ago, I mentioned the same expression, thorn in the flesh, to a friend.

Still, this passage opened an avalanche of annotations in my mind. I suddenly remembered how months ago I had read an article in the Guardian, and, when back home, I searched “limerence in Guardian” and rediscovered that a psychologist Dorothy Tennov years ago, had coined that term in her book, “Love and Limerence: The experience of Being in Love”.

According to her, ‘limerence’ can be an obsession for another person, so intensive that it plays havoc with his or her emotional stability. Paul called it a ‘thorn in the flesh’, and ‘a messenger of Satan’. Pretty strong language!

The Guardian described it as “the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.”

That’s what I spotted in Paul’s confession: his thorn in the flesh was a case of limerence. None of the bible commentators have ever connected Paul’s affliction with being infatuated with another person. That’s what I suspect Paul suffered from: obsessed by feelings for a woman, perhaps one married.

Since then, I have spotted several instances of this phenomenon. A rather public affair developed between South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and an Argentine Journalist who he met in 2001. Limerence can linger for years until it explodes. Suddenly from June 18 until June 24, 2009, 8 years later, the Governor disappeared, telling his staff that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail while he quickly and secretly had flown to Buenos Aires, to meet with the woman he had so admired for so long, leaving his wife and 4 sons. Even though none of the media mentioned Limerence, I see a striking resemblance to a similar case that happened within my field of observation. Often, when this takes place, the words of Euripides, a Greek playwright, 2400 years ago, are prophetic: “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make”. We see it all too often that lover’s hate turns deadly, when God’s grace is not present.

Back to Paul. 

In my “Day Without End”, still available on the web, I relate how Paul meets up with his ‘love’ in the New Creation. Paul prayed three times to be released from this affliction, but the Lord in his wisdom said, “No Paul; I know that this bothers you, and I also know that Satan is involved in this, but you are strong enough to deal with it, and my grace will help you to combat this affliction”.

Another angle.

After following the procedures in Glasgow, at the COP26, I also see “Limerence” in the society, how we, as the Western World, have a collective affliction of Limerence, another messenger of Satan, who is alive and well.

We have a love/hate relationship with carbon-based energy, coal, natural gas, oil. We have created a society where we have become totally dependent on this relationship, truly a Satan-inspired situation: we know that this liaison with carbon will end in death, but we tend to ban this curse from our brain.

ARCTIC NEWS posted a new blog this past week, dated November 13 2021, just a few days old. The frightening headline was: HUMAN Extinction by 2022? The Arctic is heating up enormously, with anomalies showing as high as 9.1°C in October, according to the NASA satellite observations. Right there, in the far North where methane is buried, a gas 80 times more potent than CO2, Carbon Dioxide, the globe’s killer is becoming bolder by the hour, a fact COP26 has chosen to ignore.

By now it is obvious that COP26 has been a total failure. One Scottish newspaper had as headline: “Still on the road to hell.” The obvious message for today is: Get your house in order: Heed John the Baptist’s message: Prepare the way of the Lord.

NOVEMBER 10 2021

NOBODY, NOTHING EVER DISAPPEARS.

The COP 26 Conference has a problem: nothing ever disappears. We too could have a problem: nobody ever disappears.

The entire 2 weeks get-together of the world’s problem solvers, cannot cure the matter that ‘matter’ is indestructible: it’s a basic law of physics. There is no such thing as ‘waste’. In every natural system, what is excreted by one organism as waste is taken up by another as food. Humans and animals release CO2 as respiratory waste, an essential nutrient of green plants, while plants breathe out oxygen which all living creatures need. 

Neither can this conference or any organization do away with the fact that we, as members of humanity, past, present and future, will be held accountable for our actions and equally important our inactions, or, to put it theologically, our sins of commission, and our sins of omission.

Times, insights change.

Take Black coal: it is mostly carbon, pure black carbon, a priced commodity during my wartime experience as a teenager in German-occupied the Netherlands. Then a clump of that shiny glistening substance was treasured as the best source of heat during that terrible winter of 1944-45 in the City of Groningen where I was born and raised. At one time it was known as ‘black gold’ because it powered the early mining machinery, cotton mills and locomotives. Now it is synonymous with the Black Death.

Why death? This same black coal contains mostly CO2, which rises from our car exhausts and factory smokestacks, heats the atmosphere with lethal consequences. When we buy our trinkets at the DOLLAR store, stuff mostly made in China, the world’s largest polluter, then we directly contribute to Climate Heating, which now has elevated the world temperature from 1 degree Celsius in some areas to some 3 degrees in the Arctic and Antarctic, where the mega-methane is emerging.

We need our carbon slaves

Our weakness is that our entire society is based on the use of carbon. Wind does not always blow; sunshine is never guaranteed, so backup systems are needed, as renewables fill only a fraction of the energy required. Realistically, we have painted ourselves in a corner, have created a situation without a fallback option.

Europe versus North America.

Europe’s landscape has a different pedigree: its cities excel in compactness, based on foot traffic and bikes. In my youth I never saw a school bus. Europe’s energy use per capita is half of the North American’s, based on spread-out subdivisions, large yards, green lawns, individual lots. 

In Europe mass transportation is economical because city density is so much higher. In North America, built on the automobile, cutting down on fuel consumption, is nigh impossible, so, while words in Glasgow at the COP26 come cheap, deeds become difficult, thanks to the different structures of our society.

Yes, nothing disappears.

Since there is no waste, since nothing really disappears, nothing simply goes away: that’s the problem our world has. The real quandary COP26 is dealing with is that immense amounts of material have been extracted from the earth, converted into new forms, and discharged into the environment without taken into account that ‘everything must go somewhere’, with the result an enormous accumulation of harmful material such as the CO2 has heated the immense oceans, and expanded their reach.

And we, humans, we too never disappear?

Yes, we too never disappear. Revelation, that last Bible book, says, (Rev.20: 12) “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne (of God), and the books were opened….The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.”

Nowadays with our powerful computers everything seems possible. Well, God has an even more all-encompassing system, containing all what we have done, a fool-proof system. A Day of giving account is at hand. The way we have dealt with our bodies, our neighbors and, especially, with God’s world, will be at the center of our discussion.

Our economy is built on ‘faith’ as fundamental as Christians believe in the New Creation. Economic faith belies reduction in Green House Gases, belies reduction in methane. Will you eat less meat, will you buy less yogurt or use less butter or cheese or drink less milk because cows cause a lot of methane? Will you really drive less? Will you, with every one of your actions, keep Climate Change in mind? 

That’s why a personal and universal reckoning is coming. Psalm 94 tells us:
The Lord is a God who avenges.
    O God who avenges, shine forth.
Rise up, Judge of the earth;
    pay back to the proud what they deserve.
How long, Lord, will the wicked,
    how long will the wicked be jubilant?

NOVEMBER 3 2021

IT’S PAYBACK TIME: NOTHING COMES FREE.

COP26 is on the way. The media are full with reports of boom and doom: boom for the solar and wind industries and electric cars manufacturers, and doom by the ‘too little, too late’ crowd.

The USA church is deeply divided on the Climate Issue. A significant number still cling to the Rapture escape, happening soon, when the chosen sail up to heaven in mysterious ways, but that ain’t gonna to happen, ever. 

We are stuck on earth, whether we like it or not. For those who ‘wait upon the Lord’, the issue is clear: live a life in tune with creation so, when Christ returns, the transition to real holy living is smooth. The early church was ready for Christ’s return, but now, that it finally looks real, the church is even afraid to mention it. 

Why?

Why is Christ’s return not current pulpit talk? Hasn’t the entire Bible been written with the END in mind? Yes, Jesus came to right the wrong committed in the Garden of Eden, but to shout that out, takes guts. No wonder the church lacks songs to celebrate this event. 

Here is a hymn that deals with today. Throw the old – 19^th century – hymnbook out and write a new song every week. 

COP26

No easy fix.

The nations give their pledges:                   

Reduce oil use;

Stop air abuse 

But they all come with hedges.

COP26

A final fix?

Is there still a tomorrow?

We must cut oil

Or face turmoil

And cause the deepest sorrow.

COP26

A final fix? 

The weather won’t get better

More storms and heat

More hail and sleet

More drought and also wetter.

COP26

The final fix

with earth’s expiry looming

So right on track

Jesus comes back,

To set creation blooming

There’s a melody to that written by an 18^th Century German composer Schubart. I found the tune in a Dutch hymnal, the first lines being, “God enkel licht, voor wiens gezicht.” If you can’t sing it, why not shout it out! We need more legitimate protest!

NOTHING COMES FREE.

One of the laws of ecology is NOTHING COMES FREE. 

For centuries we have treated our planet as being ‘More than conquerors’, as victors with the right to plunder and dominate. And always, in the background, has been escape clause: heaven. 

Satan has had two major victories: planting the idea that his influence is non-existent, and that heaven is the destination of the true Christian. In 1988 I saw Billy Graham being interviewed by Larry King – still out there on YouTube – who asked Billy what happens at his death. Graham replied, “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God”, ignoring Paul’s warning that “God lives in inapproachable light”, forever unseen (1 Tim.6:16), while Jesus, in John 3: 13, states that ‘nobody has ever gone to heaven’.

We are stuck on earth, and now we face the consequences of our rapacious rebellion against God and his creation.

COP26 shows us our endgame as mortals. The Old Testament Church killed Jesus; the New Testament church, especially the Southern Baptist, the Pentecostal and conservative Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as the Christian offshoot, Islam, all by their heaven doctrine, are effectively killing God and his creation. God will not accept that meekly: his is the vengeance, built into creation: NOTHING COMES FREE. It’s payback time for plundering God’s precious work of art.

COP26 will not provide the FINAL FIX.

Confessing that we are not all-powerful is proved by the way the world is changing: there are more and more alarming statistics emerging, numbers we ignore to our peril. Since 1751 the world has emitted over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO?.  At a cheap $65 per ton, that’s a staggering 100 TRILLION DOLLARS, more than 3 times the world’s GDP.

There have been ample warnings regarding Global warming. In The Next One Hundred Years, Shaping the Fate of Our Living Earth, Jonathan Weiner cites Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner Arrhenius who in 1896 wrote that “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air… This change might very well heat the planet.”. Well, he was right, and we did not heed his warning.

THERE IS A WAY

And yet. There is a way, a way that goes by the name of THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIGHT. It involves a ‘mea culpa’, a confession of sin, a bowing down before the Creator, and an acknowledgment of SIN, that terrible word that almost has disappeared from our language. 

To remedy Global Heating is now impossible: there’s not enough money to make the trillions of tons of CO2 gases disappear.

God’s grace comes without a price tag. Jesus paid the price. Bow before him.

OCTOBER 27 2021

IS THE EARTH ALIVE?

“The hills are alive with the Sound of music”, sings Julie Andrews. “Praise him, you mountains and hills”, sings Psalm 148. Is the earth alive? Yes, yes.

Reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerrer has further convinced me that the indigenous people saw all elements of creation as alive and worthy of personality, which made me realize that I’ll need eternity to learn the lingering languages of all living matter.

I live among the hills and the forests in Eastern Ontario, and, in my daily ‘forest-bathing’ walk, welcoming the wind and the rain with their distinct melodies. Both Richard Elliott Friedman and Dietrich Bonhoeffer see God alive in his creation. Romans 8 relates how the entire creation is groaning as in pains of childbirth. I sincerely believe that these birth-pangs are now reaching its final stages, as COP26 in Glasgow meets to discuss its medical condition and makes resolutions to prolong the birthing agony.

In the coming weeks all aspects of The State Of The World will be discussed and the dire consequences of our earth-exploiting-activities be laid bare, and remedies proposed. It will be an interesting fortnight.

Dr. Barry Commoner, in his book, The Closing Circle, published 50 years ago, in 1971, wrote FIFTY YEARS AGO! that “we are in an environmental crisis because human beings driven by the urge to conquer nature to produce wealth, have broken out of the circle of life and are destroying the environment. We are on a suicidal course.”

This insightful professor, a teacher of biology and ecology, formulated the four laws of Ecology, 

1. Everything is connected to everything else
2. Nature knows best
3. There is no free lunch
4. Nothing ever disappears.

Jesus, in John 3, in his dialogue with an important Jewish personage, in verse 13 clearly states that nobody has ever gone to heaven, except Jesus himself. Then he drops this bombshell: (verse16-17 and I paraphrase), “God so loved himself, and the cosmos he created, the firmament, sun, moon, stars, planets, including Planet Earth, that God was willing to sacrifice his only beloved Son, Jesus the Christ, as a ransom to buy back – redeem – his creation from the Great Enemy, so that those who believe that this transaction is legal and binding, have LIFE forever in a new creation.”

In short: Jesus’ mission was to ‘restore creation’ and that process includes redeemed humanity. 

Dr. Commoner, probably not a Christian in the accepted sense, has been a real prophet on par with Isaiah and Jeremiah, in seeing the consequences of our destructive actions half a century ago.

Now, Anno Domino 2021, we are reaching the final stages of our ‘trespasses,’ our sins against creation which Jesus mentioned .in The Lord’s Prayer, a prayer centering on “The Coming of the Kingdom”.

Each day we see or read about another record-breaking weather event. Each day there are more confusing stories about sexuality and Covid-related conditions. Each day the data regarding the economy and inflation and shortages have conflicting conclusions. What is certain is that nothing is certain anymore.

On October 24 our Environmental Team led the service in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. There our congregation sang a four-verse hymn of which the first two are:

We live in times of deepest gloom

With Covid and with Climate doom.

The future looks so dire and grim:

Our only hope now comes from Him.

O Holy Earth receive our tears

Console us, still our deepest fears,

We live as exiles in our land,

Oh where, of where, your helping hand?

I cannot sufficiently emphasize the extremity of the dangers we live in, because we keep on ignoring Dr. Commoner’s law regarding “Nature Knows Best”. 

Jesus summarized God’s laws in a few lines: “Love God above all else, and your neighbor as yourself”.

We cannot love God as he is beyond knowing, that’s why he left creation for us as THE object of love. His creation is also our neighbor, and our benefactor, the soil providing food, the trees shade and fresh air, the…. And the list goes on and on. 

The principal law of ‘nature’ is ‘service’: the sun serving the flowers and grasses, which, in turn, serve the animals and humans, with us as the servants in chief, following Jesus’ rule for his life, as he claimed repeatedly that he did not come to be served, but to serve, even to the extent of washing feet.

IS THE EARTH ALIVE?

Yes, the earth is alive, but not well. It is extremely angry at this point because we have not treated her as an equal, as our source for life, as our neighbor, as the apple of God’s eye.