Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

DECEMBER 15 2018

LEARN TO LIVE ETERNALLY

My mother once told me that when she expected me she prayed that I would become a minister of the gospel, a preacher, in other words. Fourteen years later I was sent to the six year university prep school, an institution where only the last two years offered a choice: either a pre-seminary education, or a medical/legal career. When the time came, I chose the medical/legal option.

I now know the gospel-preaching venue never fully abandoned me. In a sense all my life has led to the point today where my goal in life is to focus on the Good News. Frankly, I am thankful that I never became ensnared into the ecclesiastical network: I probably would have been booted out.

Confusion abounds: clarity needed.

If there ever was a time of non-communication, it is now, in spite of Internet, Facebook, cellphones everywhere. Seeing these faces glued to communication devices often makes me wonder what they are talking about. To me it seems that it only adds up to more confusion.

No wonder that people are lost, are at odds with themselves and with society. Perhaps it stems from the growing uncertainty. Nothing is guaranteed anymore: life-time jobs are vanishing, long established patterns are disappearing, institutions are faltering, churches are closing, the gospel truth is watered down, marriage rites abandoned.

And then there is Climate Change. Of course, it poses no immediate danger to life, and, as long as this is the case, we won’t act, until it is too late. But the peril is real and that alone means that nothing can stay the same. Yes, nothing will be done about Global Heating, so it will get worse and worse, and thus everything will be much more different.

Collapse is in the cards, and then what?

We have tremendous traveling aids thanks to GPS navigating systems, guaranteeing that we will never get lost while driving, but there’s no such thing as a Global Spiritual System, telling us what to do before we die and where we go when we die. Such knowledge is now more important than ever.

Among all this confusion, among all these changes, all for the worst, what can I offer? Me? Who am I to install myself as a modern-day preacher?

Here’s one hint: The ‘fear’ of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. ‘Fear’ means seeing the Lord as the fountain of truth. That wisdom has two components: Bible knowledge and creational insight.

It is ADVENT time.

It is ADVENT time: we look forward to Jesus returning to earth. In the churches John the Baptizer’s words are read, “A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

We certainly live in the wilderness, a wilderness so immense that it is becoming denuded of all real life, real animals, real nature, real harmony. When wild-life vanishes, when insects disappear, then collapse is not far away. All human systems, built on infinite growth in a finite system, will fail, preparing for restoration which Jesus will bring.

John’s words are directed to all people of all time and everywhere: “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

We now live in the desert, a place increasingly becoming devoid of real life, of real nature, of real animals, of real wholeness and beauty. In that wilderness, in a situation full of man-made stuff, full of our toys, full of plastic and garbage, we have to again make place for God and his creation.

In spite of all the obstacles the Evil One has placed in our path, we must heed John’s words, “Prepare the Way of the Lord”.

In my youth I learned that we all are Prophets, Priests, and Kings. That office is more valid today than ever. And today, the Good News via the WWW, the Word-Wide-Web, is available to all. Preaching in a cavernous church building is no longer effective: monologues – sermons – are the least effective ways of communication: only 7 percent of a ‘good’ sermon is retained. Moreover, the message has become stale and so has the audience.

Why me?

I don’t know about you, but I do know about me.

In my journey of faith I have greatly relied on the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J.H. Bavinck. Actually I am a sort of expert on the writings of Dr. Bavinck, himself a missionary. I have translated three of his books and thus have his writings at my fingertips.
Both theologians are thoroughly “earth-minded”, of which Bonhoeffer is the more direct, calling the ‘heaven crowd” pious secularists. Churches – witness their hymnbooks – are anchored to a heaven mentality, which always has had a negative influence on the earth. Religion will not make a comeback unless it preaches the coming of A New Earth under a New Heaven, that’s why the words of John the Baptizer are extremely valid today: “Prepare the way of the Lord”. That way is not directed heavenward, but concerns one hundred percent the earth, God’s Holy Creation.

It’ll get worse before it gets better.

The world is desperate, desperate enough to listen to the only Good News out there: The imminent coming of the total renewal of planet earth where everything will be perfect and remain perfect, because the people have learned the hard way that ‘the wages of sin, greed, pollution, is death.’

But before that Total Renewal takes place, there will be hardship, severe trauma, worse than the world have ever experienced. Faith will be tested as never before. Jesus warns us explicitly in Matthew 24, the very chapter whose prophesy is now in its first phase: “And if those days were not shortened, no flesh would have been saved but because of the chosen, shall those days be shortened”.

LEARN TO LIVE ETERNALLY

Jesus taught us how to live. Yes, Jesus loved all-round LIFE, a true example for all. His first miracle was to make wine: wine, the best wine ever, wine to get drunk on! He told Israel to come and be alive; he told us to dance when dance is called for, to shed tears when sad things happen.
My life, your life must be a reflection of the life to come, when life can be enjoyed to the full.
Eternity starts here. If writing is your talent, write. If painting is your talent, paint. If creating sculptures is your talent, go ahead. If growing food is your talent, do so organically. If making toys is your talent, continue. If making clothes is your talent do so at your heart’s content.
My life.

I started to write more than four decades ago. In October 1972, in a Canada-wide competition, my 5000 word article on THE CITY, KEY TO SURVIVAL, “an essay on Ecology and Urban Living”, was awarded the Claude Leigh Real Estate Award, at the annual Canadian Real Estate Association conference in Vancouver. It also involved a full convention package, with a free trip and a substantial cash award. The essay was published in the Real Estate Institute of Canada Journal.

From 2000-2010 I wrote a weekly column for the Belleville, Ontario Daily, THE INTELLIGENCER. Years before that I contributed feature articles on a bi-weekly basis to the CHRISTIAN COURIER.

Writing has been my hobby for many decades. I remember writing for the short-lived CHURCH AND NATION, and, also contributed to the CANADIAN APPRAISER, the professional magazine of the Appraisal Institute of Canada.

Actually, in my business career as Professional Appraiser, I had to write narrative reports on commercial and industrial properties, often amounting to 50-60 pages, including descriptions of the area, the buildings, its Highest and Best Use, and, of course, the future feasibility of the subject property. So, even in my professional career, I had to tell stories about the real estate I had to evaluate.

LEARN TO LIVE ETERNALLY

Now, in the tenth decade of my life, influenced by the swift passing of my years, and closer to the end of life than ever, my thoughts also go beyond the end of this world.

This past week has been remarkable in that respect. COP 24, held in Poland’s coal country, advocated the End of Coal, because that carbon product is the most dangerous for the Climate. The USA, already per capita the highest polluter (and very religious) is doing the opposite.

No wonder there is an air of pessimism in the world. The people who voted for Brexit and for Trump are asking: “What is the future? What is this existence for?”

All my life I have been a reader and book-buyer. Books are my passion, and now, while I should get rid of them, I still acquire more. You know what I do? At the HIDDEN TREASURES, a local store where the belongings of deceased persons end up I occasionally browse for interesting volumes available for a few bucks. I buy them because someday soon society will break down and we are thrown back to basics, such as reading real books, playing real games, entertaining ourselves without access to electronic gadgets.

My long life includes wartime conditions, when only home entertainment was available. This time will come again, because we are living on the edge already, and very, very few people are ready.

Just as retirement needs life-long planning so societal collapse requires even more careful preparation.

Already there is a point of no return for the climate. Already there’s enough CO2, carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere to make sure that it will accelerate the heating of the Earth. The warnings are becoming more explicit by the day in all segments of society. Since industrialization, since 1800, the Earth has warmed by more than 1.5 degree Celsius, with the pace of warming increasing rapidly. Knowing human nature, and believing what the Bible tells me, “The End is near”, is finally a fact.

Preparing for Eternity involves a learning process. This week I am reading LEARN TO GROW OLD, by Dr. Paul Tournier. Much of what he writes applies to the end times we now are experiencing. He specifically focuses on the meaning of life. We are in this world for a purpose: “The need to discover the meanings of things is impossible to eradicate from the human heart,” he writes, but everything today conspires to prevent us from seeking meaning.

John the Baptist, a first class naturalist, lived entirely from the edibles creation provided, eating wild honey and locusts, now seen as a most excellent source of protein. He, 2000 years ago, not only pointed to Jesus, but also to today: “PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD”, and especially, “REPENT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND.” That KINGDOM is God’s precious creation, to be totally renewed: a fresh Garden of Eden.

Eternity is not a matter of singing in “White Robes”, reigning in Heaven, as the song, “By the Sea of Crystal saints in glory stand…” suggests.
It’s entirely a ‘down to earth’ life, the full implementation of “Love God – and his creation – above all and our fellow humans as ourselves,” a process that must start in our mortal stage.
That, today, is the heart of the Gospel.

Just like a meaningful retirement needs preparation well in advance of the actual start at 60 or 65, getting ready for eternity is even more necessary. Fortunately Revelation 14: 13 tells us, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”

Today labor often is a drudge, deadening, mind-killing, involving insecurity and polluting practices. The ‘deeds’ are the matters we are proud of, that stuff we delight in: hobbies, genuine interests, sailing around the world, exploring unknowns, experimenting with different concepts, cataloguing the 100,000 kinds of ants, learning new languages by reading Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, his book on the conquest of France, 2000 years ago in Latin, tracing your ancestry all the way back. Whatever… Nothing will be impossible.
That’s what eternity is all about: being fully human as Jesus was fully human and fully divine.

There, by the grace of God, the impossible dream becomes reality, where our true talents are revealed. That life starts today.

DECEMBER 8 2018

WE ARE KILLING GOD!

When last week I read about the sad situation with our insects, I was overcome with emotion: tears filled my eyes. It’s not that I have a special love for bugs – I know they love me – still lately I have tried to catch them and release them in the open rather than swatting them. Of course: a bit of self-interest: I have 4 apple trees in my yard and getting a good crop depends on these little critters.

My sad state of mind was caused by the awareness that insects are a crucial part of creation, and that their disappearance signals our demise as well. It also seems that only the odd person is ready to lament this, with the emphasis on odd.
It reminded me of an ancient proverb,
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of message the battle was lost.
For want of the battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

For want of those pestering and pesky insects, THE KINGDOM that God gave us to cultivate and improve is being lost. In the process we are killing God as well.

Back to insects.

Here’s a lengthy quote from the New York Times Magazine:
By far the (insect) expert there is E.O. Wilson, who began his career as a taxonomic entomologist, studying ants. Insects are not what we’re usually imagining when we talk about biodiversity. Yet they are, in Wilson’s words, “the little things that run the natural world.” He means it literally.
Scientists have tried to calculate the benefits that insects provide simply by going about their business in large numbers. Trillions of bugs flitting from flower to flower pollinate some three-quarters of our food crops, a service worth as much as $500 billion every year. (This doesn’t count the 80 percent of wild flowering plants, the foundation blocks of life everywhere, that rely on insects for pollination.) If monetary calculations like that sound strange, consider the Maoxian Valley in China, where shortages of insect pollinators have led farmers to hire human workers, at a cost of up to $19 per worker per day, to replace bees. Each person covers five to 10 trees a day, pollinating apple blossoms by hand.

By eating and being eaten, insects turn plants into protein and power the growth of all the uncountable species — including freshwater fish and a majority of birds — that rely on them for food, not to mention all the creatures that eat those creatures.

Bugs are vital to the decomposition that keeps nutrients cycling, soil healthy, plants growing and ecosystems running. This role is mostly invisible, until suddenly it’s not. After introducing cattle to Australia at the turn of the 19th century, settlers soon found themselves overwhelmed by the problem of their feces: For some reason, cow pies there were taking months or even years to decompose. Cows refused to eat near the stink, requiring more and more land for grazing, and so many flies bred in the piles that the country became famous for the funny hats that stockmen wore to keep them at bay. It wasn’t until 1951 that a visiting entomologist realized what was wrong: The local insects, evolved to eat the more fibrous waste of marsupials, couldn’t handle cow excrement. For the next 25 years, the importation, quarantine and release of dozens of species of dung beetles became a national priority. And that was just one unfilled niche. (In the United States, dung beetles save ranchers an estimated $380 million a year.) We simply don’t know everything that insects do. Only about 2 percent of invertebrate species have been studied enough for us to estimate whether they are in danger of extinction, never mind what dangers that extinction might pose.

When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of “collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems” — spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where “the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing” despite mass starvation and resource wars. “Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age,” he adds, “the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.”
So far the article.

WE ARE KILLING GOD!

Suppose we were to destroy all of Bach’s music, then, after one generation, he would be forgotten, historically dead. Suppose we were to destroy all of van Gogh paintings, would have erased all traces of this great painter, we effectively would have killed him.

By killing off creation piece by piece, insects today, bees tomorrow, birds another day, slowly but surely that would be it. That’s what we are doing to God.

COP24

This past week and next, the UN sponsored COP24 – dealing with Climate Change – is in session in Poland, a country where almost all electricity is generated by Climate Enemy Number One: COAL, Poland’s home-grown product.

Doom is in the air there in Poland. David Attenborough, celebrated TV personality and Britain’s foremost Climate Critic addressed the delegates from over 200 countries with the opening words, “Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

Well, action is in the works but not the kind that will prevent doom: on the contrary.

France is in uproar: President Macron, a fervent environmentalist, imposed a tax on fuel, gasoline and diesel, in order to initiate more climate change measures, which initially would cost money, hence the extra tax. Rather than accepting this global warming – reducing incentive, the masses revolted, throwing France into chaos.

Macron capitulated, confirming once more that Climate Change is an unstoppable Climate Cancer. The common man – de gewone man (in Dutch) – will not cooperate, will not accept the higher taxes, will not fall into line and be compliant, because they don’t believe that those in power will do the right thing. This is good news for Trump and seals the demise of us all.

There’s another 16th Century saying: “you cannot have the cake and eat it,” which in this case could read, “You cannot have a reliable climate and yet abuse it left and right, in the air above and down the earth below. But that’s exactly what we are doing, and the trouble is we are too far down this road to change, at least I can’t see a solution to this situation. Do you?

Fact is, we are a spoiled generation, ruled by short-sighted politicians, who cannot look beyond their next election campaign. Personally I think we’ll get a little help from ON HIGH: not the solution that we can continue our wasteful ways, no, a little help to speed up the end.

Will the BIG ONE come?

For quite some time now I have been of a mind that soon there will be a convergence of disastrous events. So far in the past 100 years we have weathered two World Wars, one enormous pandemic, the so-called Spanish Flu, which killed especially young adults, perhaps the class of people in 1918-19 most affected by the ravages – physical and emotional – of World-War I.

Today the entire world population is compromised physically by foul air, foul water and foul food thanks to our Global War on our natural environment. In other words, the world is ripe for a pandemic.

Last week Alaska experienced a large earth quake. They are coming closer, these upsetting events. As you know, Alaska is near the Arctic, where trillions of tons of methane are buried. There is the imminent danger that earthquakes will trigger large amounts of ultra-dangerous methane to be released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

Warming caused by us, using carbon-based fuels, makes snow and ice melt, which is taking weight off the land and dumping it into the nearby sea. This change in weight can trigger earthquakes and seismic shocks that can travel over long distances and trigger further earthquakes elsewhere.

Earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean can destabilize methane hydrates and such earthquakes as well as the eruption of methane itself can in turn destabilize methane hydrates in nearby locations.

Especially vulnerable are areas near fault lines, because that same shifting of weight happens in California where disastrous fires have incinerated massive trees and reduced human habitat to ashes, also affecting the precarious balance in that vulnerable area. It so happens that the San Andreas Fault is the sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It slices California in two from Cape Mendocino to the Mexican border. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate. There’s where THE BIG ONE will happen.

There have been many small ones lately in the entire Ring of Fire and, as yet, The North American Pacific Coast has been spared. The Big One will come there some time in the near future and be the onset of a domino of disasters, setting in motion a series of calamities from which the earth will never recover.

Revelation, that fateful last Bible book does not give a time table, does not provide us with date and place of the events to happen: on the contrary, the Bible repeatedly tells us that there won’t be a warning, but there will be clear indications: they are happening now.

The Death of Insects.

That article in the New York Times Magazine set me off on a new train of thought.
In our world for all practical purposes God is dead. We don’t openly say that, because it sounds blasphemous, but we certainly live that way. We wantonly kill nature, wild animals, fish, fowl, and feel offended when we say that these actions kill God also.

In a sense we do the same with our bodies: rather than have the body heal the body by employing the body’s defense mechanism, we swallow drugs, all sort of chemicals, that may give a cure of sorts, but every drug has side effects, and we really don’t know or want to know what they are.

I am inclined to call a spade a spade, that’s why we too must give events names that portray their essence. Instead of global warming or climate change, the affliction should be called what it is: climate crisis or climate cancer. Or, instead of the cozy-sounding global warming, planetary destruction would be more appropriate.

We live in interesting times. Those who most loudly trumpet Fake News are the worst offenders themselves. No longer do they trust reliable science, and persecute the bringers of bad news.
My blog, mainly based on what the American Religion calls THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, would, in their eyes, be totally fake news, because in their Brave New World language True is False and False is True. No wonder people are confused.

Economic anxiety is now everywhere. The stock market is a good barometer, up one day, down the next, while suicides are at an all-time high, signaling sociological, psychological and spiritual decay.
For want of the battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

For want of insects our world is lost because it is dominated by The Evil One. The GOOD NEWS is that these events prepare us for THE NEW WORLD to come, for which Christ paid the ultimate price, as John 3: 16 tells us:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

December 1 2018

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS.

Jesus, in the prayer he left with us, created a lot of controversy: for instance: what actually is meant by DEBTS?

Newer versions translate DEBTS as TRESPASSES and lately I have understood that to indicate our sinful excursions into nature, our unwarranted ‘trespassing’ into God’s creation, the environment or whatever you call our actions in cutting down the rain forests, in degrading the land and fouling the air.

But my recent contemplations, new reading of the Bible, and seeking out commentaries, have made me wonder whether my current explanation needs to be expanded.

So, what did Jesus have in mind when he asked us, his followers, to pray to his father, who is in heaven, to forgive us our debts, or trespasses, or sins, as we ought to forgive our debtors – those who make life difficult for us.

My struggling with these lines is the more acute because THE LORD’s PRAYER is often the only section in the Bible we have memorized, that’s why I believe it is necessary to have a clearer, more accurate understanding of that prayer.

However, I still believe that, in the light of the environmental sins we all continuously commit (because we are forced by our capitalistic society to either starve to death by not wanting to use oil – now an impossibility – or be a collaborator in sinning against creation) ‘forgive us our trespasses’ definitely has an ecological aspect. But now, thanks to my continuous reflection on this so important prayer, I am more and more convinced that it also has a deeper meaning.

So I decided to take a fresh look.

For this I resorted to two different sources, one written by two people I know well: Bob Goudzwaard and Mark Vander Vennen, in their HOPE IN TROUBLED TIMES. In that important book I looked up their references to THE YEAR OF JUBILEE, so explicitly described in Leviticus 25.

Here’s what Goudzwaard and Vander Vennen wrote: “If God’s people would practice JUBILEE justice and righteousness… where periodically debts are cancelled, slaves are set free, land returned to the original owners … then God would bless the land with peace and prosperity.
“Jesus, in his inaugural sermon, declares that he has come to proclaim the Year of Jubilee (Luke 4: 16-30 Page 197).”

A few pages later, (page 203), they wrote, “It is not an accident that the Year of Jubilee begins with the Day of Atonement (“atonement means ‘reconciliation’ or ‘making reparation’.) And that day is not just one of personal reconciliation. It is also the day of economic forgiveness and a new beginning for a sinful economy.”

I can add that a contemporary example of DEBT FORGIVENESS happened in Germany in 1947 when the Allies, the USA and Great Britain, forgave all the debts the German economy had made thanks to Hitler’s war policies. This signaled the beginning of the German’ Wirtschaft Wunder”, its post war Economic Miracle.
The USA would do itself a great favor by canceling ALL STUDENT DEBT. Let’s hope that the Democrats make this a priority.

My second source is Michael Hudson.

Michael Hudson is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College.
His new book has the telling title of AND FORGIVE THEM THEIR DEBTS, “Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Years.”

Dr. Hudson’s book is about the origins of economic organization and enterprise in the Bronze Age, and how it shaped the Bible. It’s not about modern economies. But the problem is that the Bronze Age –2,000 -1600 Before Christ – and early Western civilization was shaped so differently from what we think of as logical and normal, that one almost has to rewire one’s brain to see how differently the archaic view of economic survival and enterprise was.

Hudson writes, “Credit economies existed long before money and coinage. These economies were agricultural. Grain was the main means of payment – but it was only paid once a year, at harvest time. You can imagine how awkward it would be to carry around grain in your pocket and measure it out every time you had a beer.
“We know how Sumerians and Babylonians paid for their beer (which they drank through straws, and which was cleaner than the local water). The ale-woman marked it up on the tab she kept. The tab had to be paid at harvest time, on the threshing floor, when the grain was nice and fresh. The ale-woman then paid the palace or temple for its advance of wholesale beer for her to retail during the year.
“If the crops failed, or if there was a flood or drought, or a military battle, the cultivators couldn’t pay. So what was the ruler to do? If he said, “You owe the tax collector, and can’t pay. Now you have to become his slave and let him foreclose on your land.
“Suddenly, you would have had a slave society. The cultivators couldn’t serve in the army, and couldn’t perform their prescribed public duties to build local infrastructure.

“To avoid this, the ruler simply cancelled the debts (most of which were owed ultimately to the palace and its collectors). The cultivators didn’t have to pay the ale-women. And the ale-women didn’t have to pay the palace.

“All this was spelled out in the Clean Slate proclamations by rulers of Hammurabi’s dynasty in Babylonia, and neighboring Near Eastern realms. They recognized that there was a cycle of buildup of debt, reaching a not repayable high overhead, followed by a cancellation to restore the status quo.”

Dr. Hudson continued, “This concept is very hard for us Westerners to understand. Yet it was at the center of the Old and New Testaments, in the form of the Jubilee Year – taken out of the hands of kings and placed at the center of Judaic religion.
“When debts were cancelled in Babylonia and other Bronze Age Near Eastern realms, it would have been against their way of thinking to complain that some debtors were benefiting from being freed from debts that other people had paid. In the first place, all cultivators became debtors during the growing season, with payments for everything from agricultural inputs to beer at the local ale-house to be paid on the threshing floor at harvest time. So annulling such debts benefited the population at large.

“With regard to individuals who had borrowed out of need, it was recognized that if some could not keep up, it was because they were poor or unable to do so. Mutual aid became the principle of helping people who were sick, widows who lost their husbands or other factors that obliged them to run up debts. Not to have helped such people would have deprived the community of their productive labor.
“Conspicuously absent from ancient moral values is the modern “moral hazard” theory to play solvent individuals against debtors. The point of reference was what would happen if people were not forgiven their debts. How would this have affected the community as a whole?
“The answer is that debtors unable to pay would have fallen into bondage to their creditor, working on his land, and ultimately have lost their own land. They therefore would not be available to work on their own land to grow crops to pay taxes and other obligations to the palace, or to provide corvée labor on public works, or serve in the military. Clean Slate proclamations were part of the community’s self-preservation.
“At the same time, the moral opprobrium was felt toward creditors. They were blamed for impoverishing society at large by their selfishness. The Greeks called his hubris, money-love and wealth addiction. And rulers saw an independent creditor class turning its wealth into large landholdings of creating a rival power to the palace.
“The context for today’s debt overhead is one in which most debts are owed to private-sector banks, bondholders and other creditors. Also, not everyone is in debt – and society is rich enough to afford imposing a loss of status and self-reliance on large classes of debtors. Still, there is a logic in forgiving debts owed by the needy (but not by the wealthy).

So far Dr. Hudson describing his new book AND FORGIVE THEM OUR DEBTS.

Today`s situation.

Today we live in a society where DEBT will do us in. Never has there been a time when the rich were so rich and indebtedness so pronounced. Thanks to historically low interests today’s debt is easy to carry, but inflation looms.

When, in 2008, banks were on the verge of collapsing, and with it the economy, governments rescued the banks. Today the indebtedness extends to governments, especially of poor nations, but also the USA which runs an annual ONE TRILLION deficit, their total debt being more than $23 Trillion. The USA public at large carries a $13 Trillion debt, while world-wide debt exceeds $250 Trillion.

The danger is that inflation will increase, due to Climate Change which endangers the food supply and thus make daily living more expensive. Trump has made a devil’s bargain with Saudi Arabia, promising not to punish them for killing Jamal Khashoggi, in exchange for lower oil prices, something which will temporarily keep inflation in check.

My new understanding.

Jesus announced THE YEAR OF JUBILEE, the age of peace and prosperity.
Jesus left us with the words, “Forgive us our debts”. My new understanding is that we must ask forgiveness for getting into debt, because debt binds us to the forces of evil where ‘the lust for money’ is the leading cause of all sin.

Once we have debts, we must obey the forces of capitalism, the malignant powers that destroy God’s good creation, the opposite of JUBILEE, because JUBILEE signifies the beginning of THE NEW CREATION. Once we have debt, our allegiance is to the DEBTOR, who, in turn also is a slave to the Greater Evil, reason why we also must ask for forgiveness there.

Shall I mention ENVIRONMENTAL DEBT as well? In Jesus’ time there was little of that because it is a Modern Day sin. To merely explain FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS as a small personal matter, such as a white lie here and being jealous there, is too easy an explanation.

Faith is an all-encompassing affair: it extends to every action we do. Faith involves our diet, what we eat to stay healthy; faith is a factor in how we live, from exercise – our bodies are holy – to the way we travel-highly polluting. Faith also extends to monetary matters. Debt – trillions of it – is a major factor in the exploitation of creation.

Ernest Hemmingway in THE SUN ALSO RISES, wrote, “How did you go bankrupt?”: Two ways, gradually, then suddenly.”
The same applies to collapse, whether financial or environmental: it often happens slowly at first and then suddenly it’s there, as the tipping point is passed.

Every one of our actions contributes to collapse and makes it necessary to pray, FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS.

Matthew 19: 23-25 is part of the story of the rich man who came to Jesus for instruction, and was told by Jesus to give all he had to the poor and then join the Jesus` followers, and live by faith. For him that was too much.
That same question haunts us to day
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

We are richer than this rich man. How did we become so rich?

We, every one of us, including me, became so rich by theft: We simply stole everything we have from the future. Our fraudulent wealth, both environmental and monetary, we stole from our children and grandchildren. We have left them with little or nothing: worse than nothing: messy weather, filthy air, dangerous storms, sickening soil, depleted fauna, the list goes on.

The time for answers is over.

“Who then can be saved?”

It’s time for PATIENCE and PENITENCE and especially for the PRAYER: FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS.

NOVEMBER 24 2018

WILL CLIMATE CHANGE ALSO BE A MIND CHANGER?

Most of us humans are an optimistic bunch. Not I. Perhaps it is my age. Perhaps it is my upbringing. Perhaps it is my inclination, my religious outlook, which prompts me to pray every day, “Maranatha, Lord come quickly.”

It’s not that my life is hard, or that I am destitute. It’s not that I am in poor health, even though my spouse of 65 years has some health issues which keeps her home-bound and has made me a care-giver, also needing the constant assistance of our children and friends plus extra help. Perhaps for some the news may be depressing, but actually I am among the few who is totally optimistic about the long-term outlook for the world, because the Bible, my constant source of wisdom, tells me that all is well that ends well.

So, what is the bad-news/good-news scenario out there?

The bad news.

The bad news today centers on the accelerating effect of Climate Change, the rise of fascist and “alt-right” politics, violent world-wide conflicts, millions of stateless refugees, a looming Brexit crisis, and a financial system teetering on collapse. Trump.
There’s more. A few weeks ago WHO (World Health Organization) published a 180 page report, centering on the particular vulnerability of children due to the dire consequences of air pollution.
Every year air pollution kills 7 million people world-wide, more than the total death toll of AIDS (1,1 million), TB (1,4 million), Diabetes (1,6 million) and traffic accidents (1,3 million). That makes air pollution the greatest health danger.

Blame Climate Change and the increasing peril of forest fires. Air pollution cuts the average lifespan of people around the globe by almost two years, analysis shows, making it the single greatest threat to human health. The research looked at the particulate pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and industry. It found that in many parts of the worst-affected nations – India and China – lifespans were being shortened by six years.

Children are especially vulnerable here. Every year some 600,000 children die from infected air passages because they live in an atmosphere saturated with tiny particles caused by automobile traffic, industrial activities, agriculture and other hazards as well as indoor pollution. Ban all cars from urban areas: yes, we know the remedies, we won’t implement them.

The world is a unity: everything is connected to everything else.

Are wild-life species less important than humans? True, most of us live in cities where we hardly ever see wild-life. A new study has shown that “loss of one species can make more species disappear (a process known as ‘co-extinction’), and possibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden regime shift, or even total collapse.”

Well, it so happens that 60 percent of all wild life, all birds, all fish has already disappeared. Are we next?

Physical fatigue fosters failure.

City people today must work longer hours, need more overtime, more wage earners per family, just to make ends meet. This means that they come home tired, have less time for their children, less time for reflection, hardly the energy to watch TV, never time for God and his world, for religion and serious reading, let alone time to get in touch with their inner selves.

Is there any good news?

I believe we live in an age of great spiritual hunger, which calls for open discussion, as part of the healing consists of striving for greater harmony with the natural world in which we live and which is, itself, so gravely threatened.

Needed: Days of Atonement.

What we need is Days of Atonement, that so beautiful concept initiated in Leviticus 23: 28, “Do not do any work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God.”

Atonement today means saying sorry for the sins against Creation, and promising a new start, initiating reform and sticking to it.

Churches are the natural initiative takers there, but don’t expect them to start that biblical concept: we are in an age that thought it knew better than the collective wisdom of ancient religious traditions. It thought that the progress of scientific knowledge would turn aside the darkness and that the need for religion would recede, but the opposite has been the case.

Sad to say, Western Religion, both Christianity and Judaism, just as in Jesus’ days, have stagnated and resorted to empty formalism and vacuous traditions, afraid to see the reality of the state of creation, where mounting evidence points to collapse. All signs shows that a 5°C rise in temperature could occur very rapidly, as soon as September 2019.

The signs are clear to the discerning eye.

I don’t want to rehash all the ominous indications of Climate Change: to the discerning citizen, these are all too clear. What is happening is not a linear, gradual heating, but exponential increases that will take months, rather than decades, to take effect.

WILL CLIMATE CHANGE ALSO BE A MIND CHANGER?

No. The largest Christian denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, is in total disarray. A top Vatican official last week issued a scathing open letter accusing an archbishop who launched an unprecedented attack on Pope Francis of mounting a “political frame job devoid of real foundation”.

The fiasco was not surprising — the tone-deafness and self-protectiveness of the Roman intervention, the bafflement and internal divisions of the American bishops, and the liberal-versus-conservative arguments that followed were all characteristic of Catholicism’s crisis under Pope Francis.

A church in disarray has no interest or inclination in being prophetic: too busy to retain the status quo, as sex abuse scandals and consequent lawsuits multiply. In everything else connected to the scandals there is little progress because Catholicism’s leaders cannot agree on what progress means.

What’s needed is a VATICAN III, an open debate questioning where the church is going, and let variety appear, allow priests to marry, let the differences take form in separate denominations, the way Protestantism has developed. The Roman Church which prides itself to be united in faith and doctrine, in reality is split in many different ways, a sign of the times. What is needed is the ending of Popery, is doing away with the office of The Holy Father altogether. And let the chips fall. Yes, Francis could well be the Last Pope.

And the Protestant wing?

There most believers are winging all the way to heaven, delighted in leaving the earth in total disarray, clinging to the satanic belief of Pre-Tribulation-Rapture: well, they got a surprise coming.

All this is true to form, as Revelation 22: 11 indicates: everything will in the end show its true colors. The church is no exception there.

The same is true for all created matter.

We are – nature-wide – in such a vulnerable position that only ONE of the many support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide.

Here the most immediate danger is ICE, melting ICE.

When Arctic sea ice melts beyond a certain point, the positive feedbacks this triggers (such as darker water absorbing more heat, melting permafrost releasing methane, shifts in the polar vortex) could render runaway climate breakdown unstoppable. When the Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, temperatures rose 10C within a decade. That can happen again!

Given human nature and the 40% support Trump has in the USA, Climate Change only will accelerate making collapse inevitable.
Of course were the world totally united, were all politicians on the same page, were all believers to see the world as God’s world and thus holy, then, yes, disaster could be avoided.

When the US joined the Second World War in 1941, it replaced a civilian economy with a military economy within months. In one year, General Motors developed, tooled and completely built from scratch 1,000 Avenger and 1,000 Wildcat aircraft … Barely a year after Pontiac received a navy contract to build anti-shipping missiles, the company began delivering the completed product to carrier squadrons around the world.” And this was before advanced information technology made everything faster. So, yes, a total switch to renewable energy is possible, if….

The problem is human.

It already started in the Garden of Eden. The voice of The Evil One was more seductive than the voice of God.

So let me go back to that beginning, to Cain killing his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy. He fled, and God went after him and promised him a free hand to develop God’s world according to Cain’s conception.

Why did God do that?

I believe that God wanted to see creation developed faster, wanted a quicker pace of progress in the world so that his coming again might happen sooner.

Cain, driven from his fields, uprooted from a slow-moving agricultural society, received carte-blanche to mold creation into the image of murderous humanity. Cain shattered that great stability, the affinity between the human race and God’s creation, obliterating the lingering legacy of Paradise. He introduced insecurity, the taste for blood, the desire for revenge.

With Cain, Satan took effective control over the earth, yet Cain, who defied God and denied him, is promised protection by God.
So where did Cain go? He turned his eye and his desire to Eden, toward the lost Paradise, which also happens to be the perpetual quest of humanity.

The search for a home, the search for Paradise Lost, is nothing else than the human desire for God’s presence, the God Cain, and humanity in general, rejects.

Cain, haunted by fear, in order to feel secure, built a City.

It is now nigh impossible to imagine life without the City. People even in the smallest communities depend on the city. Our pension cheques, our TV programs, our tax notices, they all come from the city. Human development and the City are intimately intertwined. The City, the place of progress, is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and his refusal to accept God’s protection.

Cain calls the City Enoch, which means “A New Beginning.” Cain is going to make the world all over again, but now in his image. God’s creation is seen as nothing. Cain, with everything he does, digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. But each solution becomes also a new problem, each invention a new offence. Cain molds creation according to his plan. It is no longer God’s world: it is Cain’s creation and now almost totally Satan’s.

Today we all have become extensions of the City. Yet the City, Cain’s answer to Eden, to Paradise really, is God’s way of preparing God’s people for the New Jerusalem, the City of God.

The City is now the place through which Christians must pass. It is the World Today. The world is the City. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, China, Russia, even the Sahara deserts, the satellite-filled expanse above, every square inch of the universe has been annexed by the City. Yet God uses the momentum of human progress and the advance of our knowledge not only to bring about the downfall of those who willfully pollute creation, but miraculously God also blesses human progress for the benefit of the building of God’s City.

The City today is our Virtual World, dominated by technology, flick of the switch heat and cool, where reality is not allowed.
But reality is cruel: it does creep up on us, while we sit in our spiritually dark room, staring at a stupid screen.

It now looks that we will have an ice-free Arctic two years from now, which means total Climate Change, resulting in COLLAPSE.

WILL CLIMATE CHANGE ALSO BE A MIND CHANGER?

Don’t bank on it: as always I end with a biblical given: Revelation, of course.
Here is what it says: (Revelation 16: 21), “And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague of Climate Change was so terrible.”

Climate Change will happen. Will personal change also take place, or will it lead to curses?
WILL CLIMATE CHANGE ALSO BE A MIND CHANGER?

Yes, the GOOD News is that ALL IS WELL THAT ENDS WELL, in this case: a new humanity in a new creation.

November 17 2018

TIKKUN

A Jewish friend of mine, the late Dr. Harold Goldsman, who taught psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, gave me a number of TIKKUN magazines. The Hebrew word TIKKUN means “to heal, repair and transform the world.”

In one of the issues I found a statement that is dear to my heart. The author, a professor of Hebrew, writes, “Most importantly, we need a new sort of Jewish piety, a religious attitude fitting to an environmentally concerned future that is already upon us. Among the elements I seek is a Judaism unafraid to proclaim the holiness of the natural world, one that sees creation, both of the world and the human self, as a reflection of the divinity and the source of religious inspiration….The insight that God and the universe are related not primarily as Creator and creature, but as deep structure and surface, a central insight of the mystical tradition, is key to the Judaism of the future.”

I’d say, “Amen, brother.”

I have said this often, and also have maintained that, if we want to ‘evangelize’, bring the Good News to the world, then all Christian and Jewish believers will find common ground proclaiming the message that creation is holy, that we, by harming it, sin directly against God, the creator. This central insight of the mystical tradition is key not only to the Judaism of the future, but to all Christianity as well.

From there is it just a small step to bring the Best news the world has ever heard: that, when we self-destruct – and this is only a matter of time – a renewed creation awaits us.

Jewry and Christianity have a lot in common. Years ago, when one of our daughters lived on the edge of Beverly Hills, our hotel was next door to a Messianic Synagogue where we attended a 2 hour long service, complete with the carrying of the scroll and a Cantor, singing the law. The sermon was based on one of the letters of Paul. Had we lived in L.A. we would have joined that congregation, visually combining the Old and New Testament.

That TIKKUN – total renewal – is needed world-wide becomes more apparent every day. Our Globe has 70% water coverage, and most of the heat we generate by the zillions of carbon explosions in our beloved automobiles each minute, settle in the oceans.

Warmer oceans result in stronger cyclones. Cyclones can suddenly push huge amounts of salty warm water into the Arctic Ocean. The danger is that a strong influx of salty warm water into the Arctic Ocean could trigger destabilization of hydrates in sediments, resulting in massive eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Methane is TEN times more lethal than CO2.

This methane could cause temperatures to suddenly rise strongly at the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, speeding up decline of sea ice and permafrost, and further deforming the jet stream.

This could trigger even more extreme weather events, in particular storms, flooding, heatwaves and fires, across the Northern Hemisphere that could devastate crops, take down power grids and threaten meltdowns of nuclear power plants.

Such fires could add huge amounts of black carbon to the atmosphere as is happening right now in California.

Furthermore, without access to fossil fuel and with the electricity grid down, many people could turn to kerosene lamps for lighting and burning wood for heating and cooking, resulting in even more black carbon emissions that have a huge immediate warming impact.

I believe we vastly underestimate the immense dangers of our way of life. TIKKUN means “to heal, repair and transform the world.” It is too late to change the course of events that inexorably will lead to destruction of everything living. But it is never too late to change the way we, as individuals, live. Actually it seems to me that this is a requirement for entering THE KINGDOM to come.

LIFE IS A UNITY.

Life is a unity: we are what we eat; we are what we think; we are what we do. But we also are what we believe, as faith must guide us, also in sickness and health.

Always uppermost in my mind is The New Creation, and trying to imagine conditions there and simulate them in the here and now. It seems to me that, as Genesis, the first Bible book, relates people ‘in the beginning’ lived hundreds of years, still, supposedly, influenced by a healthy atmosphere such as pure water and air and good genes, as well as natural eating habits and close community ties.

Today we eat plastic and plastic is a poisonous substance. The world produces 300 million tons of plastic each year. Given that a ton equals 2,000 pounds, this is 80 pounds per person on the earth.

Every month or so, living in the country as we do, I have to gather my recyclables and bring it to the recycle center, some 10km away, a job I hate because it brings home to me how much plastic is part of our daily life. Already plastic has infiltrated our innards. It cannot be long before these poisonous products will affect our health and wellbeing, causing an epidemic of cosmic proportion, a new killing disease called PLASTICIDE. Already it is found in our drinking water, and, I would not be surprised in much of our manufactured foods. Once it is ingrained in our bodies, there is no way we can expunge it: we are what we eat and plastic, a pure oil-based product, becomes part of the human psyche, distorting the way we think, the way we act and the way we die.

That is just one of the hazards we face.

Nobody can say exactly where and when a major earthquake will take place, but we know that there is a very high probability for it to occur in seismic zones: the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean comes to mind.

We are totally distorting the earth’s balance with huge forest fires, untold billions of tons of ice melting at both poles, making it certain that enormous earthquakes will occur.

In Revelation 11: 13, the last book in the Bible, whose title means ‘disclosure, or revealing secrets’, such an enormous earthquake is mentioned, “Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred.

Revelation 16: 18 repeats that ominous prediction, “At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed.”

REVELATION tells us that Nature will fall upon the human race as a provoked lion: it will breach all the constrains humanity has laid upon it, and will explode into extraordinary catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, failed harvests, pandemics. All these will be more severe than ever.

Already the signs are there in trumps. Before TIKKUN can take effect, before the healing, repairing and transforming of the world can take place, all traces of The Old World must be eradicated.

That process is now happening.

CLIMATE CHANGE: WAR ON CREATION

Climate Change is simply a euphemism for WAR ON CREATION. Today the war zones are all too visible: The fires in California, the ice disappearing in the Poles, the destructive hurricanes and typhoons, all are the opening salvos in this war.

In our urbanized world we don’t notice that the frogs are mostly eradicated, that the insects have mostly been eliminated, that the mammals, elephants, whales, tigers, lions, are mostly gone, because we have usurped the habitat to grow soya beans, which we feed to the cattle, whose manure causes more Climate Change, and whose meat clogs our arteries.

Enter Ivan Illich.

Influenced by Ivan Illich, and his LIMITS TO MEDICINE, I have long been interested in natural healing, in trying to combine all creative elements in day-to-day living.

Illich has a tendency to exaggerate matters, but in essence he points to the right direction. “The threat which current medicine represents to the health of the populations is analogous to threat which the volume and intensity of traffic represents to mobility, the threat which education and the media represent to learning and the threat which urbanization represents to competence in homemaking. In each case a major institutional endeavor has turned counterproductive.”

Illich wrote this in 1976. I bought his book, LIMITS TO MEDICINE, in that same year, at a time when CLIMATE CHANGE had not yet become a universal phenomenon. Today counter-productivity extends to all facets of society: No matter what we do, we cause more trouble. Economic Growth really means Climatic deterioration. It is like cancer that is fatal, because it is fanned by the human mind. Just as The War on Cancer quietly expired, now that it will affect a major part of the Western World, so Economic Growth will kill us as sure as incurable cancer.

This fatal global outcome is not the result of ideologies, religions, mad rulers, or the like. This death-march emerges out of a social network as a result of the way the universal system is connected. That doesn’t mean there is no direct cause for this mortal outcome: it is the result of the capital in the hands of the top TEN Percent, money that needs to be spent in some way.

Wherever there is a poor Ninety Percent and a rich Ten Percent, thus an imbalance in the accumulation of capital, the excess will spill from the more endowed side to the less endowed one. In that sense, the War of All Wars, Humanity –us – against Creation, is the Child of Capitalism: in other words “Too many Resources in Too Few Hands.

Paul was so right when he wrote to his protégé Timothy, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. (1 Timothy 6: 10), including the evil that will destroy us all, and, let’s face it, we all are guilty of causing the ultimate demise.

HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?

In these last days that is the ultimate question. My grandparents and even my parents – all children of the Pre-Carbon Age – did not have that problem which is unique to us CARBOHOLICS.

We all are responsible for this deadly situation. There’s no such thing as clean living for us Westerners. Even though our house is heated by wood-ends obtained from the local Pallet Factory, while some of our electricity is supplied by solar power stored in batteries, in the scheme of things it amounts to little.

What I am trying to do is to reduce my carbon footprints to a minimum in every way possible: that aim is constantly on my mind, not an obsession, by certainly a genuine desire.

I believe that such a goal in life is different for every person. I take my cue from Paul again, when he wrote to his friends in Philippi, “Dear friends, as you have always obeyed–not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence–continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, (2 Philippians 12).

Fortunately there is no singular way to salvation. Jesus’ own words tell us that, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. (John 14: 2).
Many mansions also mean many different ways to redemption.

It is not only what we do: it’s how we employ TIKKUN, how we

“heal, repair and transform the world.”

We all have the responsibility to work within the means allotted to us. Our ultimate conduct always must be guided by the Royal Command, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6: 33).

For today, in the extreme times we live, this means that in all our actions we must strive to do TIKKUN, “To heal, repair and transform the world, the cosmos.”

This is a leap into faith, believing that when our single-minded purpose in life is to pursue the welfare of creation, that, when we do that all our needs for daily life will fall into place.

Trust and obey, there’s no other way.

NOVEMBER 10 2018

NOT HONORING THE EARTH MAKES GOD INTO AN IDOL

Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J.H. Bavinck regard us humans as part of nature: God, the Earth and Humanity are not only mutually dependent but are so intimately connected that they form an organic unity. Genesis 3: 19 unequivocally states that we will return to the ground out of which we are formed, for “earth we are and to earth we shall return.”

J.H. Bavinck writes in BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, “A Radical Kingdom Vision”, that, “The word ‘adam’ reminded the Israelite immediately of the first Adam who was taken from the dust of the earth. That made the word eminently suitable to typify the human race in its unbreakable unity. The Israelite here sensed some¬thing of the fact that humans are earth-bound. A human being, ‘adam’, belongs to ‘adamah’, the life bearing earth. With every sinew of his existence he is tied to the earth, which bears him and feeds him. That is the reason why in the word ‘adam’ there is some¬thing of the strains of tran¬sitoriness, of perishability, of vulnerability and insignificance.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says essentially the same. In CREATION AND FALL, in a lecture he gave in the early 1930’s he wrote, “In my whole being I belong wholly to this world: it bears me, nurtures me, holds me……….The more I master it, the more it is my earth.”

With uncanny foresight Bonhoeffer in 1932 saw the dangers of technology: “Technology is the power with which the earth seizes hold of humankind and masters it. And because we no longer rule, we lose the ground so that the earth no longer remains our earth, and we become estranged from the earth……….There is no dominion without serving God. …Without God, without their brothers and sisters, human beings lose the earth….. God, the brother and sister, and the earth belong together.”

Just imagine that was written by a 26 year old theology professor in Berlin, more than 20 years before Jacques Ellul wrote his THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY in 1954.

Canada and the USA: so different. Vive la Difference!

I am very happy to live in Canada, where we still struggle to rectify the way we have treated our indigenous people, the original occupants of our nation, a country with its various climates, and thus greatly different approaches to life.

From them we have inherited the inclusive way of life, where every living thing is treated as holy, in contrast with us Western whites who came as conquerors, not only of their ecologically friendly existence but even more so as conquerors of nature.

Today’s all-encompassing crisis is telling us in no uncertain terms that we are wrong, have been wrong, and will perish when we persist in our destructive ways.

From 1861-65 there was the US Civil War between North and South, between the Confederates and Unionists. The issues then, basically centering on the way minorities were treated, have never been resolved.

In South Africa a similar conflict led to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which openly laid bare the differences and genuinely probed the basic fundamentals, to come to some lasting solutions. Canada followed a similar path.

Canada’s more conciliatory approach toward nature and our First Nation people, is in sharp contrast to the way our Southerly neighbor does its business.

In the USA there has never been a public discussion and an open and honest effort to bring genuine unity between the North and the South and consequently the USA still stands for DSA, the Divided States of America. Today this division is enhanced by religious differences, where the real schism centers in the way we see and treat creation.

All Christians believe that God created the earth, but, for reasons I have often outlined before most church people believe that, upon death, they go to heaven, leaving the earth.

Yet, we are here to serve, each other and also the earth.

We are here to serve, including creation. Matthew 20: 28, “The son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life for many.”
The general misconception of Jesus’ mission is that he came to save souls, but John 3: 16 states that Jesus came to buy back the cosmos from The Evil One, who by hook and crook had attained temporary authority over the earth. Matthew 4: 8 describes this, “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Satan’s grip on creation is confirmed in 1 John 5: 19.

Society in general and the church in particular has bought into this untruth, this LIE, that we can live separate from the earth, which, in essence means, that we can live without God, making that very God concept an idolatrous faith. Yes, NOT HONORING THE EARTH MAKES GOD INTO AN IDOL

That’s why a TRUMP can be endorsed by many in the church, a church that has no use for the earth, essentially no use for God, while using that very name as a talisman. Too often we are like a magician who pulls a rabbit out the hat. From it comes the saying Deus ex Machina, calling on God only when we need him.

We are smart.

We think we are powerful, and in a sense we are: we are very clever, we are very resourceful, very inventive, but we are not wise. Nobody can be wise without God, who is the source of All Wisdom.

Today all our ingenuity, all our smartness, all our braininess is being tested and found wanting, because we are convinced that we are gods and therefore need not pay attention to God, the creator of the earth.

NOT HONORING THE EARTH MAKES GOD INTO AN IDOL.

For many centuries we have managed without God. But now exponential growth has taken us in a surprisingly short time from a relatively empty world to a world full of people and their furniture. It is now full of our things but empty of what there was before, empty of God.

So what? the Christian Right argues. Why care for the earth? We take from it what we can, exploit it, and then ‘zoom’- we are swished off to heaven in the great Rapture.

That lack of wisdom is the reason why rural American folks have placed their trust in Donald Trump, a person who has fought to cancel the very medical insurance these people need, a president who has reduced the taxes on the rich and tried to eliminate the benefits for the down and out, proving that there is no wisdom without God.

They have forgotten that all white Americans are of immigrant stock, that all black Americans have been imported by the white people to make money.

When I was in grade school, as a 10 year old, in 1938, I was taught that people of color, whether black or brown were inferior to white. Trump has reinforced that notion, has promoted that lie in order to gain votes and create division, a purposeful ally of the Prince of Lies.

When I survey the world then matters are not good. David Brooks in his Friday column reported that in the last few months he had visited 23 states and found that the real divide is between rural and urban people. I remember traveling through parts of Wisconsin just prior to November 2016 when one of our grandsons got married. I noticed the TRUMP signs wherever there were three old cars in the driveway on a yard with a less than a luxurious dwelling, and neglected gardens. Likely these people lived on food stamps, draw some sort of Social Security, depend on Medicaid, and probably were in debt, most likely due to medical bills. Yet they voted Republican.

When I look around where I live in rural Ontario, then I don’t see the same scenario. True when I visit the medical clinic in Tweed, a municipality located in one of the poorest sections on the province, the same sort of people are visible: older, perhaps somewhat overweight, but there is an enormous difference: medical treatment is the same for all: rich or poor, educated or not, everyone is equal. The biggest worry in the USA is a medical emergency.

Years ago my wife had an acute medical problem while visiting our daughter in Minneapolis: we called the ambulance, received top care in the nearby hospital, the stay there was about 24 hours, and the bill was $12,000 US. Fortunately we had insurance, but for many in the USA the premiums are high, the deductible alone almost insurmountable, so they go without coverage. They have been brainwashed that the State is evil, yet only the state can provide the so needed care, and that care must be applied equally to all created matter, to people and nature alike: because without the earth, without taking care of the very substances of our body, water and soil, we die and religion becomes a sham because “NOT HONORING THE EARTH MAKES GOD INTO AN IDOL”.

God needs no sacrifices, but he wants faithful obedience. The great sacrifice has been made when Christ died on the cross to redeem creation. But idols need sacrifice all the time, and the true nature of The American Religion is evident from creation being sacrificed for the short-term benefit of the people.

When God issued the Commandments, he made provisions for any eventuality. In Leviticus 20:2 he decreed, “Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him.”

Our short-sighted society is committing that very act: by our actions, in our utmost idolatry, we are sacrificing everything living, including our children.

This is God’s world and we are responsible for how we treat it. This is such an elementary statement that it is hard to say more about it. Capitalism prides itself of being efficient. No system that uses resources at a rate that destroys natural life-support without meeting the basic needs of the people in the world can possibly be considered efficient.

Our ability and inclination to enrich the present at the expense of the future and of other species, is as real and as sinful as our tendency to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor. To hand back to God the gift of creation in a degraded state capable of supporting less life, less abundantly and for a shorter future, is surely a sin.

If it is a sin to kill and to steal, then surely it is a sin to destroy carrying capacity – the capacity of the earth to support life now and in the future. To sacrifice future life on the planet to protect present prosperity and extravagance goes directly against the work of Jesus who came to save the cosmos.

We must face the failure of the economic growth idolatry. We must stop crying out to the growing economy “Deliver me for you are my god!” Yet, that is exactly what we have been doing. We have made God Almighty our IDOL. Instead we must have the courage and the faith to ask with Isaiah, “Is not this idol I hold in my right hand a LIE?” (Isaiah 44: 20).

That LIE is eminently embodied in the person of the president who only speaks truth when it suits him. For now he will use his still considerable power to promote right-wing populism, authoritarian, intolerant, and isolationist he is.
The Democrats – divided as they are – also are fanatic adherents of the GROWTH ECONOMY.

So what holds the future?

Revelation 18 tells the future:
In fear of her torment, they will stand at a distance and cry out: “Woe, woe to the great city, the mighty city of Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.”
NOT HONORING THE EARTH MAKES GOD INTO AN IDOL.
The great city, the mighty economy, our capitalistic society, which we idolized, which we exploited, robbed of its essence, will collapse and in its stead will come THE HOLY CITY, God’s RENEWED CREATION.