JULY 13 2019

EVERYTHING BETTER IS BOUGHT AT THE PRICE OF SOMETHING WORSE.

That is a quote from C. G. Jung, the great psycho-analyst who died in 1961. You want an example? Our adored automobile is an immense improvement over the horse and buggy, but the price? Climate Calamity.

There’s another Jung statement that struck me: “The less we understand what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves….Our ability to embrace anything new is limited because we are our ancestors and whatever they never knew we can’t make part of our lives.”

Having lost the link to our ancestors, there’s nothing left to hold on: we have lost our anchor. The result is utter disdain for the natural world, loss of religious belief, rootlessness and global disaster.

Take Trees.

New research by two Russian scientists, Makarieva and Gorshkov has shown that there is such a concept as a biotic pump. They discovered that the ecosystem controls the Earth’s climate in a much deeper and stronger way than commonly believed: our forests are immense machines that pump water away from the oceans to the land. Forests, especially the Amazon Rain Forests are needed, not just trees, not just grass, not just pastures, not just cultivated fields. Only and only fully grown forests keep the machine running and provide the biosphere with the water it needs.

By now we know all too well that humans are destroying the world’s forests. We keep eliminating the things that make us live. Trees make us live and keep us healthy and wise.

It reminds me of that beautiful line in the Bible’s very last chapter, “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22: 2.)

Let me start with ‘nations.’ When in Matthew 28: 19 Jesus gives us the Great Commission, the same word ‘nations’ is used. It actually does not refer to individual countries, but to everything connected to people, such as races, sexes, ethnic and faith communities, economic classes, families, and tribes.

Thus “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of all humans in the world”, and also applies to the world itself, because humans and earth are one.

FOREST BATHING

This past week our oldest son gave me an amazing book to read: FOREST BATHING, by Dr. Qing Li, an associate professor of medicine at the Nippon medical school in Tokyo. I immediately ordered 5 copies of the book for our church’s Environmental Team. I also engaged one of our grandsons, an arborist to make some trails through the pine forest I planted some 35 years ago. Especially coniferous trees, such as pine, spruce and cedar generate a lot of oxygen and also emit such elements as “Phytoncides”. The word “Phytoncide” comes from the Greek ‘phyton= plant’ and ‘cides = kill’. These trees exhale these substances and so protect them from insects, bacteria and fungi. Through these chemicals they also communicate with other trees. Their concentration is the highest when the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius.

The learned doctor discovered that exposure to phytoncides increases the NK = Natural Killers count, which, he suspects, have anti-cancer effects. Yes, the leaves of the trees are healing agents, but our entire lifestyle enhances the tree- killing syndrome.

I read last week that 170 million trees in California alone are fallen victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. A few years ago, in urban Texas the prolonged heat there killed more than five million shade trees, and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, prolonged severe droughts are killing many billions more in the rain forests, while the new right-wing government in Brazil is determined to clear more rainforests there to accommodate agriculture.

Should I mention Forest Fires?

Every tree that dies or burns adds to Global Warming. You may have noticed that Alaska has never been hotter: 35 C!!. These high temperatures there are also warming up the water of rivers, causing warm water to flow into the seas around Alaska, while the many fires there are causing soot to be deposited on mountains and sea ice, further speeding up the demise of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic.

Dying trees mean a dying planet. There is no doubt in my mind that ‘the creative destruction’ of capitalism will persist to its bitter end, when money, the all-consuming Mammon, will have accomplished what has been Satan’s aim from the beginning: to destroy God’s creation.

Just as Jesus had to go through death to achieve life, the Bible tells us that creation too has to go through death to achieve life, and this time we humans are the cause.

The New Testament, in 2 Peter 3: 10, makes clear that the days of the world are counted and that the end will come unexpectedly: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”

So, let me go back to that poetic sounding sentence in the Bible’s very last chapter:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

The last two chapters of the bible, Revelation 21 and 22, picture a world where, as yet, no humans are present. But there are trees, lots of them.

The Garden of Eden had an identical development: everything there had to be in perfect shape before humans could appear. It is my argument that prior to the saints’ arrival in the new creation to come, the presence of trees will be instrumental for them to enter a virginal, pristine, unpolluted planet. I believe that the earth must first go through a recuperating process with trees as the primary agents of healing, because, basically, there is nothing wrong with God’s world that time – and the absence of sinful humans – cannot heal. And time is immaterial for the Lord for whom ONE day is as a thousand years.

We know about forest fires: they are a natural phenomenon, needed to rejuvenate forests, because a fire will kill the old and sick and bring to life the buried seeds. Peter was right about the all-consuming fire. For the new creation to come, our worn-out world needs a total conflagration to reveal the new to come, and trees play an enormous role in this process.

For that purpose a closer examination of what trees do is necessary.

We all know that trees are the lungs of the world. For humans to have one hundred percent pure air and ‘live forever’ a totally clean environment is required: hence the need for the new world to be fully filled with forests of trees.

Trees are more than oxygen providers. The tree’s underground system is as important as its foliage: the roots and its capillaries are just as essential for the welfare of the earth as the more visible branches, because a tree stands in its own decomposition. Much of the tree sheds its own weight many times over to earth and air, eventually becoming grass, fungus, and promoting the life of insects, birds and mammals. It is the cooperation of these many ‘by-products’ that make a tree so rich – they exist because of the tree, belong with it and function as part of it.

Birds nest, squirrels burrow and eat fungus, and insects prune and assist in decomposing the surplus leaves and activate essential soil bacteria. Animals are messengers to the tree and trees act as a garden for animals. This is an excellent example of life depending on life. A tree is a total being that involves minerals, plants, animals, debris and life. All of these elements make up the ‘tree cooperative’. All this has to be in place before the saints are coming home.

“The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the human population and for the earth itself.”

The leaves absorb the CO2 that has now made our weather so unpredictable and even deadly. The new earth, covered with healthy trees will completely heal the earth and clean the air, making it the perfect place for the ‘redeemed of the Lord, who will enter singing’ (Isaiah 35: 10) on the way to embrace their new abode.

So what about these leaves? Leaves have twice the specific heat capacity as soil, meaning plants can be about 9 degrees Celsius warmer than their surrounding environment. Consequently trees moderate extreme temperatures and humidity so it is tolerable enough to accommodate life. The leaves catch the rain, some of which the tree absorbs, and the remainder returns to the air through evaporation. Any rain that falls through the canopy has, on its way down, collected plant cells and nutrients and is much richer than regular rainwater. This through-fall is then directed to shallow roots, and serves all the needs of growth in that forest. Therefore trees use, collect, enrich and properly direct water so it can best be used in the forest system without human intervention.

Trees are not just here to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen for us to breathe. Their purpose reaches much farther. Trees fight drought, prevent soil erosion, stabilize earth, shade us from sun, are key in the conservation of water, provide us with heat, control the effects of wind, provide shelter for animals and encourage biodiversity and nutrients for soil. God created trees because the trees are life.

Yes, the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Trees are not only for the earth: the seas too benefit as do the inland streams. Revelation 22: 2 again: “at each side of the river stood the Tree of Life.”  

Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrives, so does the rest of the food chain. Fishermen have planted trees along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.

Before the humans return to paradise, trees have to clean it for them. Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of soaking up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phyto-remediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution: indeed the leaves of the tree are cosmic healers!

So it makes perfect sense that the Bible starts with the Tree of Life, ends with the Tree of Life and has at its centre the Tree of Golgotha where our eternal life was assured. These three ‘trees’ are symbols of all trees explaining that simple sentence in the last chapter of the Bible which says:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

Here’s an interesting note: In the 17^th Century a Japanese delegation visited the Netherlands to investigate Christianity there. Reading FOREST BATHING I can understand why they rejected its Calvinist version. The merchants in the Dutch Golden Age lived by commerce, hauling trees from Sweden, slaves from Africa, gold from South America.

Here is a quote from that book, “Nature is not separate from mankind in Japanese culture. It is part of us. And the need to keep the two in harmony can be seen in every aspect of life, from the design of gardens that incorporate the natural landscape to the design of houses that blur inside and outside by means of translucent paper screens……….We are all connected to nature, emotionally, spiritually and physically.”

Who has the correct approach, the stern Dutch, dealers in timber, or the Japanese, lovers of timber?

It seems to me that we are going full circle. In the beginning the earth was fully covered with trees, as TREES were LIFE, assuring long, long lives.

Now, a denuded earth has become a death trap, as trees and their benefits are disappearing, making us yearn for their healing powers. The vanishing forests are finally focusing us to acknowledge how all of creation is of divine origin, while appreciating the healing power of TREES.

EVERYTHING BETTER IS BOUGHT AT THE PRICE OF SOMETHING WORSE. However there’s one exception: with Jesus’ sacrifice, his death on the cross, he brought about the new creation, making everything better: the price too was something better: RESURRECTION AND LIFE ETERNAL.

July 6 2019

SINGING

There’s one text I remember from a sermon, although I can’t recall what the female preacher exactly said. Here it is:

“Then Jehoshaphat consulted with the people and appointed those who would sing to the LORD and praise the splendor of His holiness. As they went out before the army, they were singing:

“Give thanks to the LORD,

for His loving devotion endures forever.”

The moment they began their shouts and praises, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir who had come against Judah, and they were defeated.” 

Guts and faith

It takes guts and faith to meet the enemy not with swords and spears, not with bows and slings, but simply with song. That happens when we listen to the people, because democracy was at work here. The story says that the king first deliberated with the people. Jehoshaphat took counsel with the nation and together they decided to tackle the problem in a unique way: rather than blindly attack, somebody suggested something different: let those who can sing, men and women, come forward and face the enemy while praising the Lord in song.

That calls for a lot of trust. The beauty here is that the people decided: it was not a command dictated by the king, who actually had absolute power.  

Picture the scene here: God’s people are under attack. A mighty army has invaded the Holy Land. The people of Israel basically are farmers who know how to grow food and look after cattle, but fighters they are not. Once a year they all gather in Jerusalem in that grandiose temple built by Solomon in all his glory: a magnificent structure. When they walk there from every corner of the nation, they travel by foot, and you know what they do? They sing all the way. There’s always a person who plays the flute or strings a guitar equivalent, making traveling easier. Yes, that’s what they are good at: Singing, not fighting. Psalm 100 comes to mind:

Make a joyful noise to the LORD,

all the earth.

Serve the LORD with gladness;

come into His presence with joyful songs.

Know that the LORD is God.

It is He who made us, and we are His;a

we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving

and His courts with praise;

give thanks to Him and bless His name.

For the LORD is good,

and His loving devotion endures forever;

His faithfulness continues to all generations.

People in those days lived by memory and storytelling. No books or TV. That’s how the Old Testament was preserved for us. And memorizing a poem was easier when it was given a tune. 

Singing

There’s something peculiar about singing: it binds the people together. Armies not too long ago marched on the tune of martial melodies. When, on May 10 1940, the German army occupied my hometown, they sang. The Russian Army has a famous male choir, well-known for its great performances. Yes, singing is universal.

 In my book, DAY WITHOUT END, I discovered lots of instances of singing. In Chapter 3, after meeting with my guardian angel, Cornelius, who is there when I wake up in the new creation, the first thing I do is,

“I start to sing, beginning a scale as low as I can manage and rising easily two, almost three octaves. My voice is pure and beautiful, or so it sounds to me. But, then, perhaps, in my exalted state, am I prone to exaggerate? So what?”

And then the next sentence is,

“Suddenly I stop singing, sensing that my voice has awakened the universe. As if shaken out of a deep sleep, I now hear the birds in the trees, the bees in the fields, the wind in the branches, the hum of the insects all tuned in a perfect harmony, singing to our God, Creator and Father.

“And then, as if on cue, the world comes alive. Out of nowhere, it seems people emerge: people, people, everywhere….I fall in line with women and men clad in colourful clothes that reflect their personalities and their traditions.

“Spontaneous singing wells up, starting at first as a song without words, resembling the humming of bees or the purring of kittens or the blowing of the wind in the trees. I raise my voice and strange, inarticulate tones emerge, melodious but wordless, resembling the wailing of sirens, the “all is safe” sign at the end of an air raid, a long extended sigh of solace.”

That’s how I described one scene in my book. I then continue on a personal note. Clarification: Melodia is the angel in charge of music. She was the one who organized the event that took place in the fields when the shepherds were told about the birth of Jesus.

Here she distributes sheet music. I continue citing my book:

“I have always loved singing. As a baby I hummed in my crib, my mother told me, and music has always been a part of my life. So, of course, I am ready to join Melodia as are many others. Our entire group comes over, some more out of curiosity than real interest in singing, and joins a group of about one hundred people. Melodia positions herself so that she is visible and audible to all.

“I return to my place and look over my part. Arctica is standing next to me. She has never participated in a choir before and has never sung from a score. However, the music is written in such a way that when the correct note is hit, the musical note glows a bit indicating the proper pitch. I find this a fantastic way of teaching both the untrained and those like me who have had a life-long exposure to choirs and singing. At first hesitantly, but with increasingly confidence, we try out our parts and with enthusiastic encouragement and participation from the notes on the sheets we soon sound quite professional.”

Later in the book, our group of 4, Arctica, Initia, Jethro and I, Novissimus, find ourselves in Africa, where we attend a concert, with Jesus, who is black, at the drums.

“Long after the concert is over, the singing-sounds within me continue. To me singing is worship and worship means singing. Now singing is embedded in the new creation. The song of creation is always audible.”

Read the entire book. Go to “Bert Hielema: Day without End.”

The Bible has many passages referring to singing. Matthew 26: 30 relates how after the last supper Jesus and the disciples “sang a song and went out to the Mount of Olives.” Yes, the last thing they do is ‘sing’, before that fateful night.

Singing has always been a part of my life. As a youngster, 6 years old, I was part of a large children choir. Our grade school teacher loved music and singing was a daily affair. As a teenager I was in the school choir, and later in life was instrumental in starting a male choir. Even today my only tenor voice has a place in our church choir.

In my youth singing was part of daily life. As a family we would assemble around the pump organ and sing. During the 5 year war 1940-45 after the Sunday meal, attended by some dozen people, our own family and always visitors, we would have a pretty standard repertoire of psalms my father liked, always ending with “The Wilhelmus van Nassau” the Dutch National Hymn.

Even today, as I write, there always is a song in my mind.

But back to choirs.

I believe being a member of a choir is an enlightening, communal experience. It requires a set of skills and enhances them.

Let me enumerate them as they come to mind.

Singing is an exercise in community. When I sing, I have to listen to the other singers, and not try to dominate but blend in so that the song becomes a harmonious entity. Also I breathe in deeply and exhale, which clears my lungs and gives health benefits. I must engage my brain by reading the notes and obtain the right pitch. Reading notes and listening to music is itself an enriching experience. Listening to music is an aesthetic exercise and makes a person wiser and adds to the lifespan. Being part of a group is a natural human trait, so much neglected in today’s individualistic society.

Yes, singing is universal: it is found in all cultures and, despite protestations of tone deafness, the vast majority of people can sing. Singing also often occurs in collective contexts: think about sports stadiums, religious services and birthday celebrations.

We now also know that feeling sufficiently socially connected guards against physical and mental illness, and increases longevity.

Singing bonds.

Few other activities have such great social benefits as singing together. While we sing our voices blend, and harmony is the result. I like that word ‘harmony’. It is more than a musical expression, that too because it adds beauty to the whole, but harmony does more: it spreads shalom, it enhances the human psyche, it – in church singing especially – is the only way the people of God are allowed to directly participate in worship.

 Bottom of Form

Singing bonds: it has an ice-breaker effect. People reveal themselves more quickly and, I have read, fall in love more easily when singing together. Singing is a form of promiscuity, in the good sense: our breaths mingle, as we suck in the ecclesiastical essence, and find pleasure in vocalizing our faiths.

Sometimes, when the words of the hymn move me, I choke up and stop singing. Sometimes when the words are overly pietistic or even gnostic, I don’t argue as I used to do when my displeasure came out in the open. Today I am mellowed, shrug my shoulders at the words that offend my understanding of the Bible or my notion what faith is all about in these last days. “Onward Christian Soldiers”, or “By the sea of Crystal”, or “Pilgrim through this barren land”, come to mind: nice tunes, terrible words.   

“When truth is replaced by silence, then silence is the lie”, I read last week.

There’s so much that is untrue in the church, that harping on it would be my constant occupation, so, perhaps my silence is a lie. God will forgive me.

I started out with

“Then Jehoshaphat consulted with the people and appointed those who would sing to the LORD and praise the splendor of His holiness. As they went out before the army, they were singing:

“Give thanks to the LORD,

     for His loving devotion endures forever.”

Just picture these singers, these courageous women and men, singing their hearts out, even as they are shaking in their boots, because what if……..

There’s magic in crowds. It only takes a few courageous leaders to instill confidence in the wavering mass.

So, what is my lesson for this week?

We, the church, the people of God, are again in mortal peril. Today it is no just that a few tribes are out to get us: the entire world conspires against the Truth, preferring the lie of constant economic growth and ever increasing standard of living, instead of facing the truth of Our Finite Earth, now on the brink of Collapse.

Jesus warned the people of his days- and, of course, us today – to be true to the circumstances of their time. He said, “We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” (Matthew 11: 17). To be truly human, we have to lament when sorrow strikes, and rejoice when good things happen.

And today? Today death is all around us: dying whales, slaughtered elephants, disappearing insects, forests aflame, the earth quaking everywhere, the Arctic melting, young people perishing from overdoses, lies tolerated. Where is the dirge, the plaint of mourning?

Today more than ever, our song must be two-fold: lament for all that is dying due to our cruelty and also songs of praise for what is coming: the glorious new creation, now being prepared for those who mourn the state of the earth and live in the expectation of the New Earth to come.

June 29 2019

THE END OF RELIGION?

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18: 8.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his introduction to his book on CREATION, basically an explanation of Genesis 1-3, the first Bible book, writes, “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

Isn’t that curious?

And he is not alone in this.  Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University, in his APPROACHING THE END, makes an identical statement, when he starts his book with, “When I begin to think about what I should say about creation, the title “The End is in the Beginning” immediately comes to mind.

And then there is another voice that utters similar sounds, albeit from a different angle, but equally with the End is mind. Dr. J.H. Bavinck in his book on REVELATION, the last book of the Bible, wrote, and I translate, “Under the force of constant hammer blows, still raining upon this pseudo world, humanity finally becomes the humanity it was meant to be in the most detestable sense of the word. It becomes the real human, that is the rebel, the prisoner, the doubting, the unconverted.

“World history, stripped bare from all pretenses, is not simply a record of events: it is nothing else than that through all these happenings, through prosperity and adversity, through wars and peace, through increase in knowledge and culture, through all this and more, in the end everything becomes what it always has been. (My emphasis). That’s why the Kingdom of the Son of man, the reign of Christ who is Humanity Personified, can only come when the Kingdom of the Beast has had the entire world in his grasping hands.”

So Bavinck too states that the end is in the beginning.

In essence Bavinck says that before Christ returns the TRUE image of humanity will be revealed in all its depravity, in all its god-forsaken state of mind, in all its sinful condition, plainly evident today in our dealing with creation, God’s precious masterpiece. This indicates that we travel from Chaos to Cosmos, from Cosmos to Chaos, from Beginning to the End.

Yes, the End is in the Beginning.

The Bible starts with the three words, “In the Beginning”. Then continues, “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Chaos, in other words, no sense of order, no structure whatsoever, yet, somehow, in the back ground, God’s Spirit is there.

Now that we are approaching the End, we are starting to see the same initial conditions: Climate Calamity, widespread destruction, water shortages, droughts and floods, rumors of war, looming epidemics, 95% of the arable soil contaminated… and the list goes on. Our End is like the Beginning, when through prosperity and adversity, through wars and peace, through increase in knowledge and culture, through all this and more, in the end everything will become what it always has been: chaos.

Also “In the beginning” humanity was so godless that God was compelled to make a new start with Noah and his family. He also vouched not to destroy the world again, fully well knowing that perverse humanity would cause its own destruction in the end, allowing for a New Beginning.

We are at that stage now.

Today chaos is universal. Even the vast oceans, covering 70 percent of the earth, are saturated with plastic particles. All the earth and air …….No, I don’t have to start listing all the ills in the world. I take great comfort from my daily Bible reading, and am especially intrigued by Matthew 24 where Jesus warns to be vigilant: The American Religion regards Trump as a demi-god, seen as appointed by God to deliver America from the godless Democrats. Matthew 24: 10-11 points to this, “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.” Yes, Trump is a false prophet.

Stephen L. Carter, law professor at Yale, in his book, THE CULTURE OF DISBELIEF, writes, “America’s civil religion portrays its people, often in comparison with people in other countries, as God-fearing souls, as champions of religious liberty, and in many instances as a nation God has consciously chosen to carry out a special mission in the world. (But) America’s civil religion consists of platitudes. They have no religion except a theology of “America First”.

That “America First” theology is sharply accentuated in Trump’s Campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” That speaks to the American “Christian” mind”, an altogether pagan notion, which has nothing to do with Christ and his core message, “Seek First the Kingdom of God”, which essentially means “to seek the welfare of Creation, God’s work of art and his precious masterpiece”. Exactly the opposite is the aim of Trump’s America.

Dr. Harold Bloom, America’s foremost literary critic and Hebrew Scholar, in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION, subtitled The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, writes that “We think we are a Christian nation, but we are not…..The American stands outside creation, Gnostics, believers in individual divinity.”

Now that we see THE END OF NATURE, we also see THE END OF CHRISTIANITY. The love for creation has disappeared as we have shaped a society totally dependent on its destruction. Whatever we do leads to greater annihilation. This simply means that with every action we destroy God and with it the Christian Religion, the two go hand in hand.

That’s why Dietrich Bonhoeffer is important today. In his essay, “Thy Kingdom Come”, he writes, “Christianity is neither an archaic replica of the heavenly world nor a cluster of sacred shrines and hallowed sanctuaries, magic escape routes from earthly turmoil. Rather the Christian is to live faith as much in the marketplace and factory as at church altars. Faith is thus to be embedded in the way each Christian becomes strong in his or her service of EARTH and its PEOPLE……………..(But) We are Christian at the expense of the earth….We cannot bear having the earth so near……However Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other world beyond: rather he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children….We have fallen into SECULARISM, and by secularism I mean pious Christian secularism, the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the EARTH”

Here’s what Bonhoeffer says about the church, “The function of the church is to witness to the resurrection of Christ from the dead, to the end of the law of death of this world that stands under the curse, and to the power of God in the new creation.”

The church has totally failed on that score and has aided the Evil One.

Bonhoeffer sees John 3: 16 as today’s most important Bible text: “God so loved the cosmos that he gave his most precious Son to buy it back from the Satan”. 1John 5: 19 explicitly states that today, now, this very moment, while you read this, the Prince of this world, THE EVIL ONE, is in charge. And he holds sway, also over the church which, by and large, sees HEAVEN as the destination of its people.

Last week, as a caregiver, I had a meeting with other caregivers in a new nearby Baptist church. Of course I inspected the facilities, and in its news stand found a pamphlet on heaven. No surprise. The last words my oldest brother in the Netherlands who attended a conservative church, said to me, “See you in heaven.”

John 3:13 explicitly states that, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man.” “The Son of Man” is Jesus, the Son of God. He alone, nobody else, not you nor your pious parents nor the saints of old, will go to heaven or have gone to heaven: only Jesus did, from where he will return to announce and accomplish and establish The New Earth, the re-configured Garden of Eden.

THE END OF RELIGION.

What is meant by religion?

Religion involves the human psyche which makes it a complex phenomenon. The simple explanation is that all humans are religious beings, in the same way that we are sexual beings. Just as sexuality is going through a final phase, religion too is under constant debate. There really is no scientific consensus about the question, “What is the definite definition of ‘religion’”? Some point to the three Abrahamic ones, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, while others include Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism, Shintoism, actually any “ism”.    

Andrew Sullivan tells me that, “Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. It’s in our genes and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized husk of a society.”

He writes, “By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods).”

He continues, “Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion. Their denial of any God is as absolute as others’ faith in God, and entails just as much a set of values to live by — including, for some, daily rituals like meditation, a form of prayer.”

Bavinck also believed that the religious impulse of humanity would not disappear, not even with increasing secularity in the West.

He wrote this about 70 years ago. Since then a lot has changed, witness the advent of Television and the Computer, with all its technical gadgets.

Bavinck essentially took a psychological view. He could not foresee the immense changes in today’s society, where Trump is seen as appointed by God to lead America, where the mainline churches are aging rapidly, which basically means that the official Christian view is disappearing.  

Observing society in the Western world today, I must conclude that God has become a stranger in his world, even among the church which basically has become gnostic: God-consciousness has disappeared.

So, yes, religion is still out there, in the sense of “The Search for Meaning”, the name of a book by Viktor Frankl. Many still search, trying to come to grips with what’s happening in the world. Many more purposely ignore the signs, and close their minds to the dire state of affairs, especially climate-wise. But, as Freud has observed, “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways”.

These unexpressed emotions also apply to religious feelings, which suppressed, result in pronounced religious antagonism.

And Jesus?

Jesus did not advocate religion: he brought us LIFE and that to the full. Religion? He was thrown out of the Nazareth synagogue – his hometown. In the Jerusalem temple he chased out all the money changers. There he also argued with the religious leaders, calling them blind guides, who lead the people astray, and adders, who poison their minds. And finally, the church of his day killed him. No, Jesus was no friend of religion.

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Yes, there’ll be lots of faith, but not in Christ’s Kingdom to come.

The late Dr. Evan Runner, professor of Philosophy at Calvin College taught me that “All of Life is Religion”

I believe that to be true. Its consequence is that Religion disappears and becomes anonymous with life, with oxygen, with air, with everything that exists. That’s why Revelation 21: 22 points to The New Jerusalem, and tells us that there is no temple there.

In the New Creation there is no need for Religion, because then LIFE is religion. Every action, all our thinking, will be geared toward the glorification of God and the beautification of his created word. That’s why the Bible will disappear. Then the Word will be in our hearts.

That’s how we have to live TODAY, even though it means the end of religion but not of worship!

June 22 2019

IS TIME UP?

I always have a book or two on the go. This past week I read THE VALUE OF NOTHING, by Raj Patel, a graduate of Oxford, the London School of Economics. I bought it a decade ago. 

Every day I browse the Guardian, where I got some tips how to grow old gracefully. Here are some of the suggestions: drink coffee; read a book each week; walk fast or run; meditate; take a nap; have your main meal at noon – little else until breakfast; become vegetarian; walk a dog; do bush-walking; use olive oil and turmeric; avoid TV at night; keep learning; work longer.

All easy steps, most of which I have followed for decades.

I also read, in the Atlantic, a piece by James Carroll, a former RC priest who recommends abolishing the clergy and so save the church.

And then there is ARCTIC NEWS. Oh, oh. Its heading:

 But first back to Patel who analyzed the real cost of a hamburger.

He estimates the energy cost (in 2009) of the 550 million Big Macs sold in the USA at $300 million per year, producing a carbon foot print equivalent of 2.66 billion pounds of CO2. He stated that, “In addition to the carbon in the footprint, we might want to add the broader environmental impact in terms of both water use and soil degradation, together with the hidden health cost of treating diet-related illness such as diabetes and heart disease.” None of that is paid by the McDonald Corporation but by society as a whole.

So what is the REAL cost of the hamburger?

“According to a report by the Centre of Science and the Environment in India, a burger grown from beef raised on a clear-cut forest should really cost about Two Hundred Dollars.”

I singled out the hamburger, but the same is true for many food items. Take breakfast cereal: by the time it reaches the table, it has been processed from corn or wheat to a corn flake or wheat square, has traveled from farm to factory, where it is milled, dried, filled with preservers, then trucked from factory to wholesaler, from wholesaler to store, from store to customer, neatly packaged at a total cost of at least 20 energy calories for each food calorie, with hardly any nutritional value, I might add.

That process applies to much of the food stuff we eat.

The ARCTIC.

Oh: the Arctic!! We know, energy calories cause Climate Change, and Climate Change causes Climate Calamities. Brace yourself: This past week temperatures over the Arctic were high, very high, up in the 20 Celsius range. Smoke and soot from fires in the North, including Siberia, darken the ice, accelerating the melting process. Changes to the jet stream due to the rapid heating of the Arctic are causing hot air to move deep into the Arctic, including over the Laptev Sea all the way to the North Pole, while high temperatures in Siberia are warming up the water of rivers, causing warm water to flow into the Arctic Ocean. Melting ice in Greenland increases water levels threatening coastal regions.

Permafrost is no longer perma-nent.

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

ARCTIC NEWS reports that, “As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions and exports, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm CO?-equivalent when methane and nitrous oxide are included, intersecting the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term “climate change“ is no longer appropriate since, what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean system, accelerating over the last 70 years or so, is an abrupt calamity on a geological dimension, threatening nature and human civilization. Ignoring what the science says, the powers to be are presiding over the sixth mass extinction of species, including humans.

“As conveyed by leading scientists: “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences”, writes Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. “We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that”

It seems that TIME IS UP!!

So, these hamburgers and that box of cereal and all the items we eat have disastrous consequences for all of us. We either stop eating or we must pay sky high prices for alternative food products that don’t pollute or cause Climate Disasters.

Since we can’t stop eating, the only alternative is INFLATION because in the near future we are forced to pay the true price of the items we eat and the products we manufacture. Not only that, but also pay for the cost of repaying what we have borrowed from the future. Impossible. It is too late to change.

These repayments involve more than just consumer items: we have built our cities in North America on the assumption of unlimited and cheap fuel: our subdivisions and exurban settlements bear testimony to this phenomenon. Driving to work for 30-40 km one way on congested roads, has become the norm as inner core residences are too much in demand and too unaffordable. These single family dwellings on spacious lots make public transportation impossible. These neighborhoods will see drastically lower prices, thus food inflation on the one hand and property deflation on the other. The same will be true for the value of shopping centers, and of commercial real estate in general.

Return to the land? There too: too late to change.

Jobs? They should go to rural areas where small-scale farming should be the future, farming with horse and hoe, farming with sweat and backaches, farming with families and friends.

The old could be new again …………….if we are smart, which is questionable. 

The wise will take measures, because this society is built on energy, the use of which has to go down to zero. If we don’t do it voluntary, the system will collapse and we have a much greater problem on our hands. Let’s face it: we have lived in a make-believe world for the last 70+ years. We have created a society built on a faulty foundation, and that includes the banking system. We also have – thanks to the almighty computer – a society so complex that the least hiccup will cause it to collapse. And collapse it will, sooner than later.

This means that we should create a fallback system.

How do you create such an animal?

I just came back from an hour of hoeing, braving the flies, which reminded me of Ogden Nash: God in his wisdom made the fly.
And then forgot to tell us why.

 You know what growing food entails? I started my garden when I was 40 years younger and had the physical stamina to travel with a wheelbarrow to the decades old manure pile some 150 meters away where, available for free: beautiful black earth. I carted scores of loads of this precious stuff, mixing it with my sandy soil. Each year I add our own compost.

I now have a vegetable garden of 45’ x 55’ (14m x 17m) divided in 8 segments of 45’x5’ each (14m x 1.5m), covering some 2,600 square feet (240m2) with pathways in between. Each year I rotate a different kind of edible: this year bed 1 has cabbages- red-white-kale-Brussels-sprouts; bed 2 red beets; beds 3, 5 and 8 potatoes; bed 4 green beans; bed 6 onions-leek, carrots with some mint in between, some rhubarb plants as well as some raspberries; bed 7 tomatoes, lettuce, basil, and other herbs.

That’s our fallback position. Yes, it takes a bit of sweat, and multiple mosquito bites, and oodles of satisfaction. Each year I learn something new. A gardener friend sprinkles bone meal in the planting groove, so I have done the same. Later I will water the plants with a blood meal solution. Yes, it calls for work, but, frankly, I love doing it.

The new truth is that nothing beats eating your own home-grown food: no carbon footprint, no chemicals, no pesticides: the real product of God’s Whole Earth.

On to the RC church and James Carrol.

He wrote in the Atlantic: “My five years in the priesthood, even in its most liberal wing, gave me a fetid taste of this caste system. Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, its sexual repressiveness, and its hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction. The clerical system’s obsession with status thwarts even the merits of otherwise good priests and distorts the Gospels’ message of selfless love, which the Church was established to proclaim. Clericalism is both the underlying cause and the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe.

He wrote something I have often stated, “Clericalism’s origins lie not in the Gospels but in the attitudes and organizational charts of the late Roman Empire. Christianity was very different at the beginning. The first reference to the Jesus movement in a nonbiblical source comes from the Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus, writing around the same time that the Gospels were taking form. Josephus described the followers of Jesus simply as “those that loved him at the first and did not let go of their affection for him.” There was no priesthood yet, and the movement was egalitarian. Christians worshipped and broke bread in one another’s homes. But under Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century, Christianity effectively became the imperial religion and took on the trappings of the empire itself. A diocese was originally a Roman administrative unit. A basilica, a monumental hall where the emperor sat in majesty, became a place of worship. A diverse and decentralized group of churches was transformed into a quasi-imperial institution—centralized and hierarchical, with the bishop of Rome reigning as a monarch.  Church councils defined a single set of beliefs as orthodox, and everything else as heresy.”

Let me stop there and comment on this as a person who has attended church for close to 90 year, often twice on Sundays.

“Home churches, no clergy”. That’s what we need in these last days. The clergy are the organization’s retardants, are the ones who stick with the traditional, are the status-quo maintainers, afraid to rock the boat, cling to yesterday’s failing strategies, drive the young people away and keep the laity dumb.

Home churches can do the opposite, although fewer will participate, yet, that’s how the church grew, that’s how the people became informed, learned the Scriptures; taught themselves to articulate the message of salvation, trying new approaches, incorporating the created Word with the written word, making ‘loving one’s neighbor’ a reality.

There too: it may be too late to change.

The current model has failed; the monologues are outdated. It is time for the people in the pew to take over and become prepared for eternity as mature Christians because all denominations suffer from the same lethargy.

Enough; something else altogether: African Swine Fever.   

African swine fever– the largest animal epidemic in history – is currently rampaging throughout China and other parts of Asia.

Pork prices have shot up 40% globally. This epidemic is just one more pressure on food prices; others include India’s drought and the US Midwest floods.

The disease has a similar effect on pigs as Ebola has on humans, causing massive internal hemorrhaging and very high death rate.

So far, over one million pigs in China have been culled–slaughtered, that is – to stop the spread of the disease. However, China has over 440 million pigs, half of the world’s total pig population, and experts estimate that up to 200 million pigs will have to be killed this year alone to slow down the spread of the disease.

African Swine Fever does not affect humans, but it is bound to have a devastating effect on food security in Asia, which depends on pork for much of its meat consumption. In Vietnam, for example, 75 percent of meat consumption is pork. Already, pork prices have risen by as much as forty percent globally.

To recap all this:

Vast changes are afoot, inflating the items we need to stay alive, and deflating the goods we possess. We all will be severely affected, to the point where our very survival is at stake.

June 15 2019

THE ULTIMATE TEST

We, you, I, every member of the human race, is on the earth for a purpose. That purpose is to try us out for the new earth to come. That trial involves an exam of sorts, even though the Lord’s Prayer has a line, “Save us from the time of trial”, but this is not going to happen. Sorry to say, but the ultimate test is coming, unique to our generation for a reason. As the last generation we must face the consequences of being the most destructive of all who came before us. That makes following the Lord’s command nearly impossible: “Be perfect, as God is perfect”. That’s what Jesus told us in Matthew 5: 48.

The Greek word for ‘perfect’ is teleios, better translated as ‘holistic’. We must live a holistic life, not only refrain from harming creation but even enhance it.

In “Tending the Garden”, Paulos Mar Gregorios, Metropolitan of Delhi in the Indian Orthodox Church, echoed Bonhoeffer and Bavinck, when he wrote, “Human redemption can be understood only as an integral part of the redemption of the whole creation. Romans 1: 20 confirms this:

“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.

This text points to God as the Creator. Creation is God’s primary message to the world. 

Why has the entire theological enterprise, from Pope in the Roman Catholic Church to the Archbishop in the Anglican Church, to the Billy Grahams in the Baptist and Pentecostal movement, to the Allah adherents, solely centered on the Bible or Koran as the only source of salvation?

Harold Bloom in THE AMERICAN RELIGION, both translator and interpreter of the Hebrew Bible, writes fundamentalist America  (which Bloom calls the Know-Nothing Believers) uses the Book as a Talisman in the same way a person carries a charm or a magic ring to ward off evil. But ask them to define their beliefs and the stammering begins, probably alluding to ‘Rapture’.

“In the beginning was the Word,” that how Jesus’ disciple, John, begins the Bible book named after him. Psalm 33: 9 tells us that, “God spoke and it came to be.” That “came to be” is not the Bible: that came to be is “creation”. Creation is God’s Primary Word. If we want to LIVE forever, have eternal life in perfection, then we have to understand this, then we have to mentally, spiritually, and physically treat Creation as our most precious possession, for the simple reason that it is a direct product of God’s unfathomable ingenuity. The Bible is there to explain how creation came to be: call it a handbook, a directive, a guide for understanding creation. No wonder there are so many different interpretations because they all use the wrong approach. We have turned the entire God culture on its head by using the directions as the real thing, while demoting the real thing to a matter of abuse and scorn.

How did this come to be?

C. S. Lewis hit the nail on the head when he wrote in the Screwtape Letters, “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts”.

Well, that’s where we have been travelling: the road to hell. Instead to work “by the sweat of your brow”, as God told Adam and Eve, our generation has avoided the sweat by employing energy slaves, lambasting the land, wasting the weeds with cancer-causing chemicals, effortlessly speeding everywhere by plane, by car, by motorboat, until….

That until… is now knocking at the door.

The voices that spell ‘doom’ are getting louder by the day, yet the institution that’s supposed to advance the Coming of the Kingdom, the church, is absent here. History is repeating itself. In Jesus’ time the church brought death to the Redeemer. This time we are killing God. How? Dr. Bloom has shown that the American Religion, basically all religious expression, has become totally gnostic, and sees creation, God’s work of Art, as evil or as irrelevant.

The End is approaching.

It’s hard to believe that our miraculous human enterprise, with its megacities and spectacular technology, with its flying machines and satellites, with its television and smart phones, is ending.

That’s what the scientists – the true scientists, not the lackeys of business and politics – keep telling us. We’ve done ourselves in, are destroying ourselves with our own, fatal success. Oh, yes, more and more people are telling us this, but the question is: will the people with power, the heads of state in, say the USA or Brazil, even listen?

And will the others, the world leaders who understand the situation, do enough? Their mantra too is Economic Growth, while business as usual continues, because profits must keep rolling in.

There’s some good news. The good news is that, for the sake of the believers, the true believers, matters of universal disintegration are speeding up. That’s the good news.

David Wallace-Wells in his recently published The Uninhabitable Earth, writes, “Half of the Great Barrier Reef has already died, methane is leaking from Arctic permafrost and may never freeze again, and the high-end estimates for what warming will mean for cereal crops suggest that just four degrees of warming could reduce yields by fifty percent.”

Permafrost covers 25% of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the world’s largest icebox, and its landmass is 4.5xs larger than Antarctica, 6.5xs larger than the United States. It is stuffed full of carbon locked in frozen ground accumulated over eons, which, by way of contrast, makes coal power plant emissions look bush-league. Global warming has changed the equation. Nowadays, permafrost disintegration is officially hot news.

The melting of the permafrost in a very short time, will quadruple the global temperature. When the Giga-tons of Arctic Methane explode – and it is exactly there where the rate of warming is the highest – then a sudden spike in temperature is the result, which would spell the end of all that lives. That is not science-fiction: that is a distinct possibility. The odds that this is occurring are much higher than our house catching fire, for which we all carry fire insurance.

What sort of insurance is there for Methane mayhem?

The altered climate will cause multiple catastrophes, listed in Wallace-Wells’ table of contents: heat death, hunger, drowning, wildfires, out-of-control weather – typhoons, tornadoes, floods and droughts – a fresh water drain, dying oceans, unbreathable air, the spread of plagues not seen in millennia and of tropical diseases throughout the world, climate wars and more.

Yes, matters are acceleration exponentially! In the last 25 years we have altered “twenty-two percent of the earth’s landmass”. Ninety-six percent of the world’s animals, by weight, are now humans and their livestock,” writes Wallace-Wells. He describes “the forces that  unleashed climate change – namely ‘the unchecked wisdom of the market’” to conclude that “neoliberalism is the God that failed on climate change.” Indeed those who hope that salvation from the human-induced climate catastrophe will come from our neoliberal leaders are deluding themselves and wasting time.

“More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in the past three decades,” Wallace-Wells writes. The climate catastrophe is predominately the creation of the World War II generation, the boomers and their children. And if we don’t wean ourselves quickly from oil and gas, from our meat-intensive diet, and if we don’t stop pouring concrete, large parts of the earth will become uninhabitable.

Wallace-Wells quotes, “a billion or more vulnerable people have little choice but to fight or flee.” You think the Syrian war produced a refugee crisis for Europe (a war, by the way climate-change induced drought)? Or that Central American drought has propelled unsustainable numbers of migrants to the U. S.? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

“Since 1980,” Wallace-Wells writes, “the planet has experienced a fiftyfold increase in the number of dangerous heatwaves…The five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002.” Humanity has been playing with fire. “In 2010, 55,000 died in a Russian heatwave…In 2016…temperatures in Iraq broke…120 in July, with temperatures dipping below 100, most days, only at night.” The Chicago heatwave of 1995 killed 739 people, “of the many thousands more who visited hospitals during the heatwave, almost half died within the year. Others merely suffered permanent brain damage.”

Meanwhile “nearly two thirds of the world’s cities are on the coast – not to mention its power plants, ports, navy bases, farmlands, fisheries, river deltas, marshlands and rice paddies…Already flooding has quadrupled since 1980…and doubled since 2004.” NOAA has predicted a possible eight feet of sea level rise just in this century, Wallace-Wells reports.

A human holocaust looms.

This week I also read a book by a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl.

Just a word on how I select my topic of the week. Actually, I don’t choose it: it chooses me. Somehow each week my eye is directed toward a certain topic, either a bible passage or a book. This week the book was MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Dr. Frankl was professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Vienna. During three years of incredible suffering at Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, he developed his theory of LOGOTHERAPY, which treats the human being as a whole in the effort of groping for a higher meaning of life. Dr. Frankl, in his book, explains that LOGO means ‘meaning’.

So I started to write about ‘the purpose in life and what is the meaning of it all in the light of religion.

David Brooks, the New York Time columnist, last week wrote, “We’re living in the middle of a religious revival; it’s just that the movements that are rising are not what we normally call “religion.” The first rising movement is astrology. According to a 2018 Pew poll, 29 percent of Americans say they believe in astrology. That’s more than are members of mainline Protestant churches.

“Another surging spiritual movement is witchcraft. In 1990, only 8,000 Americans self-identified as Wiccans. Ten years later there were 134,000, and today, along with other neo-pagans, there are over a million. As Tara Isabella Burton put it in an excellent, deeply researched essay in The American Interest, “Wicca, by that estimation, is technically the fastest-growing religion in America.”

It reminds me of Amos 8: 12, People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

People are screaming for “meaning”, and don’t find it because the churches have failed to pursue THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM.

The church has fallen for the Gnostic-Hellenic notion that the body is evil, and that matter is without quality. The Biblical TRUTH, however, is that human redemption and the redemption of the entire creation go hand in hand. Of course: this is God’s earth!!    

Jesus told us in Matthew 5: 33, “Seek first the Kingdom of God”. Once we do that, our entire life will acquire meaning. Seeking “The Kingdom of God”, means promoting, living, minding, focusing on the welfare of creation.

Let me repeat that: Our sole goal in life is to enhance creation, is to beautify it, it is promote its wellbeing, is to rise up in the morning with the sole purpose to pursue the beautification of the natural environment. That gives meaning to life, a meaning that extends into eternity. Christ came to wrest creation from the power of the evil one. That’s why John 3: 16 is so important. There it says not that God so loved the human being that he offered his life to set it straight, but that God so loved THE COSMOS. That word encompasses everything created, including us poor creatures, now devoid of meaning, now embracing all sorts of false religions, now slated to become obliterated by the coming Holocaust.

God so loved the world. The only way to gain meaning at this late hour is the do likewise.

The entire world history can be summed up in these words, “God is trying to determine who are worthy to inhabit the New Earth to come”.

That’s why today our constant prayer should be,

“Forgive us our now inevitable intrusions into your holy creation, and make us worthy to inhabit the New Earth”.   

June 8 2019

IS ‘666’, THAT OMINOUS SATANIC SITUATION, IMMINENT?

I had a dream. Some prominent psychologists see dreams as important: Carl Jung comes to mind and today the author of the 12 steps, Jordan B. Peterson.

I had that dream last Sunday morning

Here’s what I saw in full color. Our entire school body, the University Prep school I attended for 8 years, was walking to the school building. There was a wide waterway in its path with a long bridge. The bulk of the students and staff were across when the bridge started to move to allow ships to pass, and preventing the laggards to cross. I was among those stuck before the bridge, seeing a vast array of fast moving ships, all cargo, sailing through the open channel at top speed.

Among the first group I had spotted my Latin teacher, who had scheduled a test that day that would determine my final mark: failing it would mean that I would not get my diploma. Let me add that I was not an outstanding student. I was highly nervous in my dream, emotionally upset.

Yes, I did pass the exam thanks to my Greek teacher whose better mark rescued me (the average was counted). This month, it is exactly 70 years that the last phase of my formal schooling ended. I now realize that the final exam, involving 6 languages and 7 science subjects, must have been the most traumatic event in my life.

So what sort of explanation is there for this strange dream? Here’s what I think.

I believe that we, as a society, face a similar traumatic situation, also a real test. The greater part of humanity will pass the bridge, and a small segment will be “Left Behind”. The reckless speed of the ships indicates to me that world events will highly accelerate. Matthew 24 relates how Noah and his family were “Left Behind”, another ‘ship’ image, while the sinners were taken away. Jesus added, (verse 39), “That’s how it will be when Jesus returns”: the Jesus’ followers will be left behind.

Is that the meaning of my dream?

So how do I tie this in with today’s circumstances?

David Brooks had an interesting article in the New York Times last week. He highlighted, “How technology reshapes consciousness.”

Here are some snippets.

“Over the past several years, teenage suicide rates have spiked horrifically. Depression rates are surging and America’s mental health over all is deteriorating. What’s going on?

David Brooks wrote that the answer starts with technology, and the sort of consciousness “online life” induces. He writes that when communication styles change, so do people.

Centuries ago, around 1500 AD a shift from an oral to a printed culture also transformed human consciousness. Once, storytelling was a shared experience, with emphasis on proverb, parable and myth and I may add, religious experiences, as everything was seen in a religious light. I remember reading a Martin Luther biography how he was caught up in a terrible thunder-lightning storm and deadly scared, vowed then and there to devote his life to serving God: so he became a monk.

At that time, Brooks writes, the printing press made life more a private experience, still enjoyed ‘en famille’, in the privacy of one’s home.

Today the shift from printed to electronic communication has similar consequences. Here people switch their attention and affection from bonds, such as from family and friends, basically to strangers and persons met ‘online’.

Yes, until recently most of the contacts a person had were with family and friends, a pretty stable situation. But now most of the attention a person receives comes from far and wide and is tremendously volatile.

David Brooks writes, “Sometimes these online posts go viral and get massively admired or ridiculed, while other times they can leave you alone and be completely ignored. Communication itself, once mostly collaborative, is now often competitive, with bids for affection and attention. It is also more manipulative — gestures designed to generate a response. People ensconced in social media are more likely to be on perpetual alert: How are my ratings this moment? They are also more likely to feel that the amount of attention they are receiving is inadequate.”

He quotes David Foster Wallace in that famous Kenyon commencement address, “If you orient your life around money, you will never feel you have enough. Similarly, if you orient your life around attention, you will always feel slighted. You will always feel emotionally unsafe.”

The internet has become a place where people communicate out of their competitive ego: I’m more fabulous than you (a lot of Instagram). You’re dumber than me (much of Twitter). It’s not a place where people share from their hearts and souls.

Of course, people enmeshed in such a climate are more likely to feel depressed, to suffer from mental health problems. Of course, they are more likely to see human relationship through the abuser/victim frame, and to be acutely sensitive to any power imbalance. Imagine you’re 17 years old and people you barely know are saying nice or nasty things about your unformed self. It creates existential anxiety and hence fanaticism and trauma caused by aftershocks of not being recognized: a victim of today’s Technological Society, the name of Jacques Ellul’s masterpiece.

Bit by bit; bite by bite; byte by byte.

It reminds me of James Comey and his opinion piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago.

Here’s an excerpt. “Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

“But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

“It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.”

I see an analogy here. Bit by bit, bite by bite, byte by byte we are bitten and smitten by technology: can’t live without it: first thing in the morning, last thing at night, 24/7, at work or what used to be called, at leisure. I believe we all have fallen victim to this phenomenon.

It all started so simple: a landline telephone, then a mobile, then a smartphone, then internet, then twitter, then Facebook.

I believe we have now come to the point, “Does technology serve us, or are we serving technology?

Fact is that our world today is replete with manicured nature, with designer-babies and scientifically shaped chickens, quick maturing, lots, lots of meat.

How natural is nature anymore? Today we have little or no control over the Internet or the logarithm-controlled financial markets. It all seems that the forces of nature control them as well: everything is now a number-game, all controlled by digits, not unlike that infamous number: 666. 

It looks more and more that we have arrived at an historic junction in human history: we are well on the way to leave that recently entered Anthropocene stage, the era dominated by the human race, to rush into the Technocene stage, the new period dominated by technology.

It seems to me that human nature, softened up by carbonized living, conditioned by television and electronic toys, is ripe for the machine-age, and has been perfectly prepared to surrender to the number game, with its very humanity at stake.

THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE.

This also means that in no way are we ready to voluntary engage in measures to combat the Climate Emergency, which requires a world-wide effort involving sacrifices reminiscent of war-like conditions, depriving ourselves of all the luxuries, all the conveniences that has made us the most pampered people in history with 100 energy slaves at our fingertips.

The cruel reality is that we face an abrupt end to this unnatural universe we have fashioned. I believe it is too late to change. Humans are by nature inclined to avoid difficulties, and act only when the danger is so acute that immediate response is needed. Today it is questionable whether we are still capable to respond to the current challenge. As long as personal climate responsibility has not become ingrained in everyone’s daily living habit, politicians, always testing public opinions, will do nothing.

Add to this the now so prevalent techno-mentality that is robbing us of our human essence, and pronto, disaster knocks. More and more we have become psychologically cyborgs, extensions of the machine, where we integrate these devices into our mental functioning, into our social and emotional lives.

What is 666?

Many believe that the number signifies the inability of the Evil One – yes he exists! – to bring perfection, portrayed as 777. 1John 5: 19 should not be forgotten where it says that the Evil One calls the tune today. Jesus repeatedly calls him, “The Prince of this world.” (John 12: 31; John 14:30).

In these last days, whether this is next year or 20 years from now, given human mentality not to prepare for tomorrow, the end of humanity will come. This is not pessimism at work: that is the cruel reality. The number 666, says the Bible, will identify the person: not just 666, but any number, Social Security, Social Insurance, Pin, any word, as we drift toward a cashless society where universal control is in the cards.

Technically this is quite feasible; mentally this is already on its way, while psychologically we are being readied. Once the climate emergency is baring its ugly claws and only desperate measures dictate a possible solution, with famine festering, unimaginable unnatural disasters evident, ultra-strict rationing needed, the number rules.

What to do?

Jesus advised us to flee the city where control is most easily implemented. Re-read Matthew 24: it gives a true picture of the days to come.

Is that all the advice I can give?

Should we chuck all mechanical devices? Should we sell our urban properties and settle in the country? Should we give up our jobs which mostly are promoting the current destructive lifestyle?

I might as well say that we should quit eating, as our current diet requires 10-20 energy calories to provide us with one food calorie, which perfectly illustrates our current predicament.

During the war 1939-45 we had paper coupons for food and textile. Ubiquitous copiers today have put a stop to that: now eye-recognition and a secret number will serve as identification for rationing, which is sure to come: no number, no food. Not compliant with the Satanic Code? No food.

Sounds ominous? It is.

We are in this situation, which bit by bit, bite by bite, byte by byte, has become our death trap. There’s no escape. The only remedy is found in the Bible, in 2Peter 3: 11-14,

Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,  looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!  But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless,