Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

JUNE 30 2018

HAS RELIGION BECOME A RELIC?

Last week my wife and I went to a community event sponsored by the Tweed and Area Art Council. The council a few years ago purchased a disused United Church building, just north of where we live, and fixed it up nicely, the interior that is, the exterior is pure marble – a locally mined product – and as such it is known as THE MARBLE CHURCH.

The program was quite varied, and completely carried out by local people, who had written the plays, directed and performed them. Apart from six people – including us two- who belonged to our Presbyterian church, I was quite sure that very few in the audience as well as of the actors, musicians and dancers ever attended a religious event. Oh yes, I recognized some Roman Catholic people, and probably there were others who would go to mass regularly. It was quite evident that the performers were really dedicated, perhaps more than many church people to their institution.
By the way: among the total audience, some 100 hundred people, there was not a single minority member, quite typical for small rural communities which also vote conservative.

While watching I wondered what religion meant to both church goers and the unaffiliated. I don’t want to sound judgemental because I cannot see into their hearts, but I am pretty sure that religion really plays no role in most people’s life at all, both church goers and non. Do they ever have questions about GOD and how things started, and now especially, how it all will end?

J.H. Bavinck, in his THE RIDDLE OF LIFE opened his book this way:
“When we for the first time are consciously aware of what really is going on in the world, and therefore suddenly look at the world with renewed eyes, that is the precise moment when we are overwhelmed with questions. Why? Because the problems that confront us today are so numerous and in the main so intractable that, while trying to solve them, we cannot escape the distinct notion that we have an impossible fight on our hands.”

Yes, questions abound. But do people still seek answers?

I am a weather freak, not quite obsessed by it, but I certainly have a more than passing interest in what happens in the atmosphere. Every day I look at the website of the National Hurricane Center and the Wunderground.com. Both keep me posted on the weather-related events especially in North America. When this blog is posted it is supposed to be 35 degrees Celsius. Pretty hot stuff.

Will people wake up? Will they change their ways, so that they will have a clearer conscience when, appearing before the Judgement Seat, they can plead a degree of resistance to the looming weather-related disaster known as Climate Change? The Judgement Seat, What’s that?

A new book.

Our oldest son gave me a book last week: “12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to chaos,” by Jordan Peterson, Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is quite forthright, and quotes the Bible repeatedly. Example: Matthew 7: 14, “narrow is the way which leads to life, and few find it,” and Matthew 10:34: “Think not that I have come to send peace to earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”. None of that cheap grace stuff for him.
Peterson is not a member of a church. Is that why he quotes Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s last book?

It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. It’s a story that Ivan, the atheist Karamazov brother, has composed and recounts to his younger brother Alyosha, the aspiring priest. In it Jesus returns to the earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.” Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have you come to hinder us?” Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the Pope. The Church is the authority now.”
The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however, wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery.” Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor leaves.”

I repeat: “Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is an important part of Jesus’ teaching: “The Truth shall set you free”. True, the church of his day and of today rather not give the people a free hand. I wonder, is the result of this the following?
“Whenever God erects a house of prayer
The Devil builds a chapel there;
And ‘twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”
Daniel Defoe in The True-born Englishman

Dr. Peterson comments (page 191): “Dostoevsky saw that the great, corrupt edifice of Christianity still managed to make room for the spirit of its Founder………. With his great generosity of spirit, Dostoevsky granted to the church, corrupt as it might be, a certain element of mercy, a certain pragmatism. He admitted that the spirit of Christ, the world-engendering Logos, has historically and might still find its resting place – even its sovereignty – within that dogmatic structure.”

Peterson is not always that gracious. He takes the church to task in not following Christ’s example of total service, writing, “He not only demands sacrifice, but the sacrifice of precisely what is loved best”, and he then relates how Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, something Abraham did not need to do after all, but which the Father God did when the Son Jesus died on the cross.
Wonders Peterson, “Why does God – why does life – impose such demands?” Bonhoeffer, in his The Cost of Discipleship, makes the same point.

Fact is that the church – in the vain hope that more people will join – usually compromises the message. I believe that only radical preaching, in the form of “Seek first the Kingdom, the welfare of Creation,” will save the church from extinction. The failure to do so has caused religion to be on the retreat. But, paradoxically it also may lead to what Bonhoeffer calls RELIGION-LESS RELIGION.

Yes, religion, which has long provided the institutional and social scaffolding for a life of meaning, is in steep decline. The entire Western world, especially young adults are unlikely to identify with a religious faith, attend church or engage in other religious practices. But the sense of meaningfulness provided by religion is not so easily replicated in nonreligious settings: When these white people abandon traditional houses of worship, they increasingly search for alternative religious-like experiences (including those involving ideas about ghosts or space aliens) in order to feel as if they are part of something larger and more meaningful than their brief mortal lives.

Thomas Homer-Dixon – a Waterloo professor – wonders whether there is a direct correlation between environmental degradation and the peoples’ minds. Does a healthy atmosphere make people choose healthier options, including religion, while foul air, foul water, foul soil influences people to become foul themselves: after all we are what we eat, breathe and drink? Fact is that today, right now, longevity is faltering and people are starting to die at younger ages.

In 1919 Prof. Dr. J Huizinga wrote HERFST-TIJ DER MIDDEL- EEUWEN. The English translation has as title THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Today we witness THE WANING OF THE HUMAN AGE. We are managing – in total agreement with the purpose of the Lord – the total destruction of what took place in the first chapters of Genesis: the ever faster pace of environmental destruction of creation that God called `good` after each phase and `very good` when it was completed.
The curious part of this is that this final act of annihilation may well include the Waning of RELIGION.

That needs some elaboration. While in prison in 1944, and months before the Nazis killed him, here’s what Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter to a friend,
“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience–and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving toward a completely religion-less time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as “religious” do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by “religious.”

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the “religious a priori” of mankind. “Christianity” has always been a form–perhaps the true form–of “religion.” But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religion-less–and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war (1939-45), in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any “religious” reaction?)–what does that mean for “Christianity”? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our “Christianity,” and that there remain only a few “last survivors of the age of chivalry,” or a few intellectually dishonest people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them?

If we don’t want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religion-less as well? Are there religion-less Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity–and even this garment has looked very different at different times–then what is a religion-less Christianity?
End of the Bonhoeffer quote.

I ask the same question: Why is Climate Change or the Trump Tragedy not calling forth any “religious” reaction? What does that mean for “Christianity”?

My struggle is, “What does a church, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religion-less world? How do we speak of God without religion? We are killing God’s creation. Are we killing God in the process? In what way are we “religion-less-secular” Christians? What does it mean, as Bonhoeffer elsewhere stated, that “God, Humanity and the Earth are one?”

Romans 1: 19-20 comes to mind, “What may be known about God is plain to them…..For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

In other words, Creation itself places us before God. Does this mean that those people are “Christians” who see creation as God’s, as Divine, and as such honor God as the creator and live accordingly?

If that is the case, where does this place the church? Does it spell the end of religion? Is attempting to live a creation-enhancing life sufficient to win favor with God? In other words, has Religion become a Relic?

Since living a completely non-polluting life has become impossible, even though we must aim for that, grace and prayer are our only refuge.

JUNE 23 2018

BE NOT AFRAID

Lately I have been rereading a book a friend gave me: BEYOND THE MODERN AGE, written by Bob Goudzwaard and Craig Bartholomew. My first reading was more or less cursory, gaining an idea, trying to discover whether my vision is also shared by these illustrious authors.

The first time I did not notice it, but in a more careful going-over I detected a statement I identify with, a quote from David Bosch, a South African theologian who wrote that “The Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ ministry”. This means that seeking the Kingdom should be our goal in life as well.

True, calling for a ‘care economy’ – as the book does – is a worth-while aim, but I strongly believe that pursuing this within the framework of the Kingdom Ideal must be the aim for both church and all believers.

I know this book is not a theological work and, as such, these two Christian authors, one an economist and the other, Bartholomew a philosopher were perhaps loath to express a particular theological opinion, although the book is a deeply religious one, but, in my non-professional status, the Kingdom concept goes beyond any scientific consideration and any ecclesiastical enterprise because it entails all of life, after all the Kingdom of God is simply the world, the perfect planet that now is prepared for us for eternity. It encompasses the totality of creation and it is the most single event for which we all must prepare: after all it is our future!

That’s why I believe David Bosch should have been featured more prominently, because it constitutes the real answer for the young people for whom this book is written,

Still there is much to recommend in the book. It certainly points to multiple resources and quotes many eminent scholars, some of them saying that there’s no longer light at the end of the tunnel: that life has become “a closed loop”. The raw current reality today is that all nations, all economies pursue growth, all advocate expansion of the economy at all cost. The recent purchase of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline by the Canadian Federal government illustrates this point: dirty Albertan tar-sand oil needs an outlet. By all indications Climate Change advocates are losing.

BE NOT AFRAID

I also believe that the authors did not sufficiently emphasize the disasters to come, as outlined in Matthew 24 and in much of the book of Revelation. One of the students of the university where Bartholomew taught, Liz Harmer-Windhorst, did that in her book entitled THE AMATEURS, where she implicitly said that unchecked technology, with which the public has falling in love, can be so dangerous that it will depopulate the earth.
And that is just one possible danger, one example of the many dystopian views around nowadays, this time written by a Christian student. These young people know the score, read the signs, experience a post-modern world much more intensively than the older generation.

BEYOND THE MODERN AGE was written for students, and was to serve as a guide for the future, an uncertain future, a time when abnormality is the norm. We see that all-too-well today, that’s why my heading is BE NOT AFRAID.

A new age dawns.

Since the book was written, a lot has happened. Even though it was published last year, the authors relied on information a few years old. Matters change so fast that anything in print today is old news tomorrow.

Yes, there are many reasons to be afraid because the world is changing fast for the worse. Look at Africa.
There the Giant African baobab trees suddenly die after thousands of years. I have seen them when we were in Malawi.
Baobabs are a peculiar part of the sub-Saharan landscape in Africa. Wielding gnarled branches that can spiral up to nearly 100 feet into the air and with bloated trunks that send out branches spanning an average of 65 feet all together, the baobab is a vital part of the region’s ecology and a celebrated staple Africa’s culture. And like many parts of the natural world, the baobab suddenly finds itself threatened in these post-modern times.

The numbers are grim: 8 of the 13 oldest and 5 of the 6 largest trees on record have died or experienced deterioration over the past 12 years. The impact of their loss would have profound consequences on many levels. Baobab age has always been a difficult thing to tabulate, since the trunks produce only faint growth rings. Recent breakthroughs in radio-carbonating suggest they can live about 3,000 years. Nothing lives forever, but the latest spate of deterioration and death among the species’ oldest members is downright scary.

From the immense to the miniscule.

Not only are the titans of nature in danger, also an insect Armageddon is under way, the result of a multiple whammy of environmental impacts: pollution, habitat changes, overuse of pesticides, and global warming. And it is a decline that could have crucial consequences. Our creepy crawlies may have unsettling looks but they lie at the foot of a wildlife food chain that makes them vitally important to the makeup and nature of the countryside. They are “the little things that run the world” according to the distinguished Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, who once observed: “If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

The best illustration of the ecological importance of insects is provided by our birdlife. Without insects, hundreds of species face starvation and some ornithologists believe this lack of food is already causing serious declines in bird numbers.

Another reason to be on edge.

And it’s not only the trees, the insects and the birds that are suffering: nature herself seems to act unduly different. The Yellowstone Park’s Steamboat Geyser has erupted eight times since March 2018— that’s more eruptions than in the past 15 years combined. Scientists are unsure what is causing the eruptions. The geyser, which is the tallest in the world, erupted four times alone in the month of May, so University of Utah scientists installed a portable seismic array around the spring in hopes of gathering data to help reveal how intermittent geysers work, according to the USGS, U.S. Geological Survey.

The Book of Revelation predicts that an enormous earthquake will destroy a third of the world. Super-volcano Yellowstone is capable of doing that. Revelation 16: 18 tells us that “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.”

And the animals also feel that worse is to come, and feel threatened.
A bison has gored a woman for the third animal attack in Yellowstone National Park this week.
Lately twice in a week a female elk with a calf injured two women near a Yellowstone hotel. Park officials aren’t sure if it was the same elk.
A bison rammed and slightly injured a woman in Yellowstone in early May.

There’s lots of political trouble on our ever more vulnerable planet

During 1940-45 I witnessed Nazis targeting Jews. Across the street from us lived a Jewish family. The Gestapo first picked up the husband. A few days later the children were taken away. The pregnant mother, in deep agony, of course, was left alone for a week, then she also was arrested in the middle of the night.

I was reminded of this when the Trump administration separated children from their parents, with the tacit approval of a large portion of Christian America.

History repeating itself.

The Trump and his dutiful followers are for me a scary reminder of the Nazi regime, where the German church too was a silent partner.
Then there was the G-7 summit in Quebec City. Its failure wasn’t fundamentally about trade, or even the Western alliance. It was about the steady collapse of the postwar order and the way power structures are being reorganized and renegotiated across societies and across the world.

Trump takes delight in sowing mischief. That proves that he is an important man: he really can upend the world order. He thinks that the world is a nasty place, and by his actions he accomplishes that: a pure power trip.
He thinks that everybody is out to get him, so he trusts nobody and suspects everyone: he judges people by his own standards, which are purely self-centered with no regard for others, no sense of history, no feelings of compassion whatsoever.
In this low-trust Trumpian worldview, values don’t matter; there are only interests. In this low-trust Trumpian worldview, friendship is just a con that other people try to pull on you before they screw you over. This low-trust style of politics is realism on steroids.
Never trust a man who cannot laugh, who cannot joke, who cannot cry: such a person resembles the Devil.
Trump loves dictators like Putin and Kim Jong-un; hates democrats like Justin Trudeau.

Here comes my sermon for the week, complete with a hymn.

BE NOT AFRAID.

… And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.
Luke 12:4.

… In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16: 33.

Those are two quotes from Jesus the Christ.

The Bible paints far more scary scenarios than those i quoted above. All point to a future that holds no promise: only more trouble and uncertainty. The realistic thing to do today is to prepare for collapse. The entire financial framework is becoming totally unhinged. I don’t want to repeat all the possible bad things that can happen, because it would far exceed my 2000 word limit I have imposed on my weekly blog.

Suffice it to say that, if we did not have the promise of Jesus the Christ that he will return and make all things new (“I am making everything new! Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21: 5), we would indeed succumb in despair.

Today my favorite hymn is ABIDE WITH ME:

Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

BE NOT AFRAID.

Trump is not what scares me: his followers, mostly church-going Southern Baptists and heaven-touting Pentecostals: they are the people that frighten me. They use the Bible as a talisman, but they are totally ignorant of their biblical ignorance, and proud of it.
I once heard a man who was a firm believer in RAPTURE explain to me how this happens: he told how of the two pilots on a plane, one would suddenly disappear and with him also a number of passengers: they were raptured and united with Christ in the air.

I tried to explain to him how Matthew 24: 39 clearly indicates that not the sinners but the believers are LEFT BEHIND. Jesus – who should know the score – relates how: “they (the sinners as in Noah’s days) knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all – the sinners – away.
That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” When Jesus comes again, the sinners will disappear (I have no clue what happens to them), but Jesus will gather his disciples around him because (see John 3-16) they are – like Jesus – earth-lovers. My explanation made him angry.

When the Son of Man returns he will give the renewed earth to his faithful, those who have ignored the RAPTURE rage and have remained faithful to the earth, the very globe out of which God the Creator, formed us, giving us the name ADAM, which means EARTH. Yes, Jesus has overcome the world, now ruled by THE EVIL ONE – see 1 John 5: 19.

Upon Jesus’ return the earth will be given to us totally renewed, cleansed of all pollution, indeed a new earth.
Thank you Jesus: that’s why we need not be afraid.

JUNE 17 2018

This week I have a guest, Sylvia Keesmaat. I cannot possibly praise her adequately: she is simply the best biblical scholar alive today. She is an adjunct professor of biblical studies at the Institute for Christian Studies and the Toronto School of Theology. She lives on an organic solar-powered farm in rural Ontario where she teaches gardening workshops and is involved in environmental education.

The Beautiful Creatures: Trees in the Biblical Story
This poetic essay was originally published in The Other Journal

by Sylvia C. Keesmaat

In the beginning, there were no trees. There were no trees, for there was no rain to nourish them
and no creature to tend them. In the beginning, there was the Voice. The Voice called the earth to
birth the trees. As the Voice called and beckoned, the earth brought forth and the growth began:
sap rushed up, limbs stretched, breaking the moist soil, reaching for the warmth of the sun. Roots
groped, stretched, moved through the crumbly earth, embraced and cleft rocks, drew nourishment. Buds
formed and leaves unfurled, fluffy and small, growing as the sun dried and warmed them and as sap filled
them.

The Voice said, “Be trees full of life, be strong. Grow fruit for the birds and the animals, and branches for
their homes. Be pleasing to look at, shout forth the grandeur of the Word. Dig your roots deep; draw
nourishment from the earth.”
And the trees became living beings.

Then the trees watched as the Voice called forth once again, as the Voice formed another creature out of the
earth. “This is the earth creature,” said the Voice, “who will tend you, who will dress your figs and prune
your young blossoms. This is the creature who will provide water in your youth and pruning in your old
age.”

Then the Voice spoke to two of the trees. “You are the tree of life,” said the Voice to one, “And you are the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” the Voice said to the other. “You are set apart for the covenantal
meal I will share with my image bearer—the meal that will bring life, and, eventually, knowledge.”

The trees rejoiced in their calling, but not so much that they didn’t hear the words spoken to the image, the
words that made the trees wonder at the gravity of their calling: “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you will die.”

The trees wondered at how it had all gone wrong so quickly. Oh, they knew what had happened, all right.
They had overheard the conversation as they surrounded the serpent, the woman, and the man. They bore
mute witness as the wisest of the animals discussed the words of the Voice with the woman. They watched
in silence as the image took the fruit, the fruit that belonged only to the Voice, and ate it. They knew that if
their gifts were taken at the wrong time, there would be no nourishment; they knew that grasping would
result in death, not life.

Before the Voice returned in the cool of the evening, the trees had already begun to mourn.
* * *
She was a young tree, as far as trees go, but she had already heard most of the stories of the land in which
she stood. Some were stories of care and nurture, of a time when the earth creatures had given rest to the
trees, when instruments had been fashioned from her wood to give praise to the Voice, when those who
bore the image of the Voice had ensured that the fruit was dressed and the pruning done. They were stories
of hospitality given under the shade of the tamarisk tree and shelter given in the shade of the broom.
But even in those stories, she saw the seeds of brutality. She had heard of Abraham, planting the great
tamarisks for shelter, providing hospitality in their shade. She had also heard of Hagar, sent by that same
Abraham out to the brutality of the desert, placing her son in the shelter of a broom tree as she waited for
his death. The deep sweet shade of hospitality and the desperate last shade of the starving and parched.
The young tree knew the other trees in Israel—the tamarisk, whose size and water droplets create a uniquely
refreshing shade; the white broom tree, whose fallen branches provide embers that never go out and bedding
for a night in the desert; the sycamore, whose fast growing branches sustain many harvests for light, strong
beams and whose dressed fruit provide food for the hungry; the saltplant, whose leaves provide a quick
meal; the yitran tree, whose bark makes strong and sturdy rope. She knew the yearning of the trees to freely
provide nourishment, shelter, and wood for the earth creatures who imaged the Voice.
But she knew that such gifts were scorned. She had heard how the king had conscripted forced labor out of
his people, how he had taken the men from the nurturance of the land and the trees to quarry stone for the
temple and palace. But not only were the people enslaved, so were the trees. No regenerative sycamore
from the land of Israel for the buildings of this king. Rather, whole forests cut from other lands and used for
walls and floors and roofs—cedar and cypress, the proudest of the trees of Lebanon. She had heard how one
of the king’s houses was called the House of the Forest of Lebanon—a forest sacrificed and re-created for
the splendor of the king.

The trees felt silenced, shunned not only for building, but also for praise. The king brought wood from afar
—almug wood—to make trusses and beams and steps, to shape into lyres and harps (I Kgs. 10:11-12; 2
Chron. 9:10-11).

The young tree knew that even though her fellow trees were not being shaped into instruments of praise,
they could still send forth praise to the Voice. And she knew that she provided sustenance and shelter for
many creatures besides those who bore the image of the Voice. But still she mourned, for there was more
than neglect. There was abuse.
She had seen the idolatry of those who ceased to nurture the trees but rather worshipped them, of those who
formed unwilling trees into the sacred groves. She had smelled the scent of the cakes, baked on reluctant
embers and offered to a god who had no voice. She had seen the practices of those who worshipped under
the young trees, in the groves. They did not allow the trees to fulfill their calling: providing shelter and
warmth and food. Instead, they carved the trees into unwilling images—the earth creatures who were
supposed to be the image themselves! They used the wood of the trees to make their false weights and their
short measures with which to defraud the poor. They used the wood for the stalls for their warhorses, and
the crafting of beds for their opulent leisure. And they took wood not to cook food, but to put their children
in the fire of sacrifice (2 Kgs. 16; 2 Kgs. 17:10 ff). The trees were no longer the sustainers of life, but the
bringers of death.

She did not hear the Voice, the word of life, through these people who neglected and abused her, who
brought death and not life to the land. The earth had become like iron and the sky like copper: no one
provided dressing for her fruit or tender pruning in the spring. No one granted the trees their Sabbath for rest
and glory. Her fruit withered on the limb. She cried out, groaned. So she was not sorry when the armies
invaded and the people of the land were taken away. The people were captured but the trees were free.

At first, the trees rejoiced in their newfound freedom. No more was the axe heard in the forest; no more was
the sound of sawing and chopping in the land. The trees enjoyed their rest; they grew to maturity once
again; birds inhabited their branches, and animals ate of their fruit. The trees clapped their hands with joy.
But then the land began to change. It turned from rest to wilderness. The thistles began to strangle out the
seedlings and the vines began to bind the branches, choking out the sunlight, soaking up the water. Limbs
that were unwieldy began to crack and drop. The shoots of the olive roots began to weaken the parent trees,
and the side shoots on the fig began to sap their strength.

The elder trees told the stories, then, of the earth creatures, made by the Voice to care for the trees, to cut the
vines and root out the thistles, to transplant the new shoots to places of space, and to prune the saplings and
weak limbs. The trees began to long for the coming of such creatures, for the return of those obedient to the
Voice (Lev. 26:34-26, 43; Isa. 64:10; Ezek. 6:14).

Then, one morning the trees heard the Voice once again. It was a voice of power, a voice of love, a voice of
gladness. But not a light gladness. The gladness of this voice was deep as if it had known deep sorrow and
suffering, yet once again saw reason to be joyful. It was like the beginning again. The Voice called to the
trees, “Awake, awake, awake.”

The sap began to answer, drawing itself up through the trees to respond to the Voice. Buds began to form
leaves and then blossoms. And with the blossoms, birds came, eager for a drink of nectar and a meal of
insects. Fruit formed, grew plump and ripe, and with the fruit, animals came, eager to take and eat. The trees
rejoiced in the calling of the Voice; they clapped their hands, and the Voice whispered the promises. “They
are coming once again. You will be tended and cared for; no longer shall the thistle choke your young and
the vine bind your elders. Myrtle and cypress will shoot forth. Stumps will give birth to branches and trees.
The dead shall bear life. There will be peace. You will provide shelter once more; the earth creatures will
sleep securely among you (Ezek. 34:25; Ezek. 36).

“And you trees,” said the Voice, “will have a new task. No longer will you be just for food. Your fruit will
be for food, but your leaves, your leaves, they will be for healing.
“My creatures are broken,” said the Voice, “they are in need of healing.” And the trees saw a great river
come from the Voice, and the waters of the river nourished their roots. And their leaves sprang out, green
and firm and tender—the leaves for healing.
The earth creatures began to return. The trees saw that they were broken. And they began to call as the
Spirit gave them voice, “Come, all you weary, we have healing for you” (Isa. 11:55; Ezek. 34:25-27, 36:22-
30, 47:3-12; cf. Ezek. 17:22-24).

At first the trees believed what the Voice had said. At first they trusted. At first the renewal seemed to come.
Sabbaths were practiced once again. The land and the trees were rested and tended. They were fruitful, and
they flourished. And then the wars began.
The trees saw their strongest and straightest taken for weapons, for barricades, for crosses. The trees were
once again instruments of oppression, instruments of curse. They groaned under the weight of the death they
were called to witness and to bear.

After a while, the war ended. But in peace, the reconstruction began: trees to rebuild houses, trees to line the
temple, trees to line the palaces.
Then there was war again. And then peace. But for the trees, peace or war, the violence never stopped. They
knew now that death, not healing was the only end to the story the Voice had told. The elders could not
even begin to whisper the promises of healing, or the story of the earth creatures who had imaged the Voice.

The night was very dark, and the shepherds avoided the darkness of the trees, keeping their flocks to the
plain. It was exceedingly dark. And then, in the darkness, there was light. Suddenly there was singing in the
spheres, the heavens alive and lighted and the music of the spheres singing, “Glory to the Voice and peace
on the earth where God’s favor rests.”

It was a song the trees had long forgotten. But after that night, they began to sing it once again, “Glory,
glory and peace.”
For years they sang it, and occasionally a tree would experience that peace, that glory. For there were
whispers that the earth creature had come, the one who would truly image the Voice, the one who would
tend and bring healing to the trees. There were stories that he had sought shelter in the desert under the
white broom trees for a time, along with the wild animals. There were stories of teaching he gave in the
shade of the trees. There were sycamore trees who provided sight when he came to teach.
Some trees had felt his presence, experienced his touch, felt bondage lifted when he spoke. The trees again
began to hope. And it truly was hope, for the brutality continued. The building progressed. The crosses were
shaped. But hope came.

And then one day the trees felt their branches seized, and they were caught up in the voice of the crowd as it
exclaimed, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” And the
song they had been singing since that dark night on the plain was finally sung by all of creation.
Until the day of the twilight of the world. The trees knew that a violence greater than any the world had
ever seen was in the air. They heard the plots. They were in the garden, silent witnesses as the image of the
Word prayed to be let out, let out of the violence. They were there for the kiss, the soldiers roughly leading
the image away. One of them was forced to be the instrument of torture. One of them was forced to bear the
death of the only faithful earth creature, the image of the Voice, the one who had called them to life once
more. Now they were complicit in the death of life itself. One of them bore the wounds, soaked up the
blood, stood firm and tall until death came. When the sun refused to shine, the trees were there, weeping.7
The trees were also in the garden at dawn. They saw the beings who rolled away the stones. They were
waiting when the creature, the image, emerged. But they saw that the creature was an image that had
changed. Like the trees, the image was wounded. And coming to the trees, the image began to tend them,
digging in the earth, shaping branches, touching wounds with his wounds. The trees knew that the ancient
promises were coming true after all. Death had come, and with it, hope was fulfilled.

Here was the image who had borne death, who still bore the wounds of brutality and violence, living and
giving healing. And the Voice came once more: “There will be a river of life from my throne, from the
heart of my suffering rule. Go, find nourishment in that river, stand on its banks, drink water without price,
draw its life into your roots, produce fruit in abundance, every month of every year. And your leaves, your
leaves will be for the healing of all creatures.
“My creatures are violated, raped, betrayed, killed, and tortured,” said the Voice. “They are in need of
healing.”
It was the promise of old. But this time it came after the death of the world, and the trees knew that life had
conquered.
As the image tended the trees, a woman came and recognized him as the gardener. The trees knew that he
was the gardener, for the Voice was one who tends and heals (Jn. 20:11-18; Rev. 22:1-2).

The trees have noticed a small difference. They have seen, here and there, those who share their groanings,
who want to end the violence, who are like that one who so completely imaged the Voice.

The violence has not ended. But the trees once again tell the story in hope. And in that story, their wounds
find a place in new life; they too bring life and healing. But even in that healing, they await the coming of
the one who will make all things new. And in that hope they rejoice, clapping their wounded hands (Rom.
8:18-25; Isa. 55:12).

Thank you, Sylvia, a most fitting name, to let the TREE speak to us so eloquently.

June 9 2018

DO ANIMALS AND TREES HAVE RIGHTS?

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or the birds
of the air and they will tell you; or ask the plants of the earth, and they will instruct you.
Job 12: 7-9.

One of my very good friends loaned me two books on Animal Rights: “Do Animals have Rights,” by Alison Hills, an easy read which gave a measured approach, and “The Case for Animal Rights,” by Tom Regan, a hard slog and much more radical. In it he refutes the still current view that the animals we eat, hunt, and experiment on are, in the words of Ren? Descartes, “thoughtless brutes.” Regan’s opinion is that animals are sophisticated mental creatures who have beliefs and desires, memories and expectations, who feel pleasure and pain and experience emotions, and like us, animals have a basic moral right to be treated in ways that show respect for their independent value.

Is he right?

We all know that chickens are kept in cages and cows in confined conditions, not unlike people in faraway countries, packed in favelas, in shantytowns, and other make-shift slums. A few years ago a fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, killed hundreds of people because they could not escape their packed places. We condemn it where it concerns people. Should we also agitate against the same situations for animals?

There is a curious passage in Genesis 2, where God named the first couple Adam and Eve. Later that same human pair were given the right to name animals. It seems to me that this signifies that we have a certain power over animals, which is plain in later biblical episodes.

At first, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve apparently were vegetarians, eating only from the plants and trees. Later, with Noah, this changed. Abraham provided (Genesis 18:7) the Lord with meat from a calf, tender and good. The same happened when the Prodigal Son re-appeared. Jesus ate fish. Also the Bible is full of animals being slaughtered for ceremonial purposes.

Can our mass-production of animals continue? The on-going production of Tar-Sand oil and fracking are real signs that the easy energy has been used and that EROI or Energy Returned On Investment becomes ever smaller, with the result that the fuel price creeps up, and air-and water pollution grows by leaps and bounds, heralding hard times ahead.

As an aware Christian I believe that we should welcome the days when chickens revert back to their natural pecking order and contended cows roam the vast expanse of prairies where they belong.

But back to my original question: Do animals have rights? Yes, they do. Do chickens and other incarcerated animals have rights? Yes, they do. Just as the people in Bangladesh and elsewhere have the right to be housed decently, and live comfortably, so, if my Bible is true, animals too have the right to exercise their freedom of movement. Job’s words thousands of years ago are still relevant today. What we have lost is the wisdom animals can teach us. We no longer have the ability to understand what the birds are trying to tell us. We no longer know how plants can enlighten us. We are paying lip service to the knowledge that in God’s hands are the life of every living being – animal, birds, plants – and the breath of every human being.

It is exactly our ignorance of “the wider world out there” that has led to the mechanization of animal production.

However, our first duty is to see that people everywhere in the world live in humane conditions, as God has named them and they are made in His image. As long as this is not the case, we cannot demand that animals have priority over humans.

So how about trees? Do they have rights?

Some time ago I read Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I was struck by one sentence, “I entreat you, brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

Another sentence stayed with me, also decades ahead of his time: “To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence…”

Nietzsche`s rebellion against the church originated from the preaching of the Heaven Heresy, still almost universally seen as the gospel truth. The much maligned Nietzsche was a genius. His father and both his grand fathers were Lutheran preachers, one even a bishop. He was also slated to join the ranks of clergy but, seeing that the church was dead and so concluding that God was dead as well, he changed course and at a very young age became a professor of classical languages.

Nietzsche loved the earth, loved animals. He lost his mind when he saw a poor horse whipped to death. He wanted to remain true to the earth and saw pollution and mistreatment of animals as blasphemy.

So how about trees?

I have long maintained that the original sin included taking fruit from a tree without asking permission. Simply we ignore the tree-mendous importance of trees in human life: they are our counterparts. They take in CO2 – a greenhouse gas –and breathe out oxygen, the very element we need every second of our lives.
When I accidentely brush against a tree, I always ask the tree for forgiveness. I see trees as my neighbors, and love them as such.

Last week the Globe and Mail had an article by Maria Banda, an international lawyer and the Graham Fellow at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She wondered whether Trees have Rights. Here’s in part what she wrote:
“I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” These words, spoken by a small orange creature in a Dr. Seuss children’s book, point to a more fundamental question. Should trees and other voiceless elements in nature have rights? Courts, legislatures and communities increasingly say they should.

“An extraordinary legal revolution is unfolding around the world. Last month, in a historic ruling, Colombia’s Supreme Court declared that the Amazon (river) is a legal person with rights – to be protected, conserved and restored – and ordered the state to reduce deforestation.
“This past year alone, from India to New Zealand, four rivers, two glaciers and a sacred mountain have been granted legal personhood. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the regional human-rights treaty protects the rights of the environment as such. U.S. municipalities are joining in.”
This is the opening statement of Ms. Maria Banda.

She concludes with:
“The road will not be easy; there will be implementation challenges along the way. But rights evolve. And, over time, a healthier world may emerge.”

Trees really matter.

Trees really Matter: no trees, no LIFE. Dying trees mean death for humans. Nietzsche was right: “By killing creation we are killing God. Remember Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings. There talking trees were a decisive factor in the last battle against the evil empire.

North America’s ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.

The common factor has been hotter, drier weather. And drier weather means more fires, and more fires fuel hotter climate. Last May was the hottest EVER.

It always strikes me that, when in Genesis 2 trees are described, the beauty aspect is mentioned first. That also points to our original mandate of beautifying creation. It is my considerate opinion that the early humans mentioned in the Bible lived so long because the main cover of the planet was trees, breathing out super-rich oxygen.

Trees: yes, we take them for granted, but they are a near miracle. Photosynthesis trees turn one of the seemingly most insubstantial things of all — sunlight — into food for insects, wildlife and people, and use it to create shade, beauty and wood for fuel, furniture and homes.
For all of that, the unbroken forest that once covered much of the continent is now shot through with holes.

Humans have cut down the biggest and best trees and left the runts behind. What does that mean for the genetic fitness of our forests? No one knows for sure, for trees and forests are poorly understood on almost all levels.

What we do know that what trees do is essential: they clean up our garbage, not only CO2 but also our oil spills. 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 thrive, so does the rest of the food chain.

In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.

Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning 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 phytoremediation.

Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.

In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call “forest bathing.” A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system, which fight tumors and viruses. Studies in inner cities show that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower in a landscaped environment.

Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature.

One of these substances, taxane, from the Pacific yew tree, has become a powerful treatment for breast and other cancers. Aspirin’s active ingredient comes from willows.
Trees are greatly underutilized as an eco-technology. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.

Trees are also the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. The Texas Department of Forestry has estimated that the die-off of shade trees will cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars more for air-conditioning. Trees, of course, sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures.

When we built our current house in 1975, I planted soft maples, fast growing trees, now shading our house to the extent that we hardly ever need the air conditioning. I also planted 4000 pine trees.

Luther once said, “even if I knew that the Lord would come back tomorrow, I still plant a tree today.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or the birds
of the air and they will tell you; or ask the plants of the earth, and they will instruct you”.

We need ever closer contact with creation. Dying trees, forest fires, earth quakes, violent storms indicate a broken relationship with creation.

Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tells us, “I entreat you to remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

At the root of all heresies is the notion that we go to heaven when we die, which makes sinning against the earth an acceptable act. It, in essence, means that we, by killing creation, we kill God also. But the Bible tells us that God, creation and the human race form an organic whole. That wholeness includes animals and trees.
Yes, they do have rights.

Next week some excerpts from Sylvia Keesmaat’s poetic essay on Trees.

June 2 2018

ALLIS WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

I was struck by a line in David Brooks’ column in the New York Times on May 25. He wrote, without further elaboration, “We’re in the middle of some vast historical transition, and it’s very hard to know what to believe in”.

Brooks has difficulty to find a cause to believe it. I do not. I believe that we are rushing to the END. Bonhoeffer, in his book CREATION AND FALL, which deals with the beginning – Genesis 1-3 – quite paradoxically starts with the total opposite: ”The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end.”

That is so true: we don’t really know how creation started. We do know how it will end: Christ will return and make all things NEW. Yes, all is well that ends well.

Those of us who believe this, have something to go by, and shape their lives accordingly. Those who believe this also see matters with different eyes: the real vast historical transition – and very few believe this – is from a man-shaped planet – which is quickly collapsing – to a renewed world remade according to God’s intentions: that will be extremely exciting and the REAL GOOD NEWS.

BUT………

People who have followed me know that I am a Collapsitarian, a person that is convinced that we are on the cusp of something totally different, totally ominous, totally catastrophic. The signs are out there, and I see the state of American politics as just another sign of a historical transition.

History is important. We have seen instances of ‘historical transition’. Luther’s Reformation, his courageous fight against the all-powerful religion of his day heralded a historical transition, something that did not happen in isolation, but was fueled by such inventions as the printed press, which gave people the ammunition to form an opinion.

In setting the stage for this Cultural Revolution, THE BLACK DEATH acted as a preparatory element, a full century and more before Luther made his monumental move. Otto Friedrich in his THE END OF THE WORLD, in his chapter on THE BLACK DEATH, which killed 30-50% of Europe, writes: “If anything had been learned during the Black Death, it was that the church and its priests were helpless in fighting the plague…..Some tribute to it not only the general decay in papal authority but the growth of the Lollards and the Hussites and all the other dissenters and rebels whose impassioned demands for a new way ultimately burst forth in the REFORMATION.

Carbon Power, the use of coal, oil, natural gas to fuel machinery, starting at the end of the 18th Century, heralded another age, an age now harboring calamities exceeding the ravages of THE BLACK DEATH, such as epidemics, floods, hurricanes, unbearable heat, disastrous economic conditions, water wars, droughts, and territorial disputes. Throw in religious fanaticism, raising its ever-more ugly head, and my premonition of imminent disastrous times, appear to be completely justified.

Some similarities to today.

The Black Death in the mid-14th century coincided with a schism in the Roman Catholic Church, with two Popes in power, one in Rome, and one in Avignon, southern France. Today we see similar religious strife in all branches of religion: Pope Francis is the most hated prelate of all times because of his relaxed stance on such controversial phenomena as divorce, homosexuality and related sexual matters. The Protestant wing is deeply divided along these same lines, while Islam experiences immense differences between moderate and fundamental wings.

The times they are a’changing.

Stability is gone, yet uncertainty in economic and political fields seem to have the opposite outcome in religious matters: in times of financial and social troubles, institutions of faith seem to become more rigid, with reasoning being abandoned, dialogue suspended and hatred and animosity ruling the day.

Yes, we live in times of some vast historical transition, and for many people it’s very hard to know what to believe in, so they dig in and stick to the ‘old-time-religion’.

It so happens that, what I believe is at odds with the general teaching of the church, which still is almost exclusively ‘heaven’ oriented. Will the carbon-carnage make a difference? Will a universal plague ameliorate or harden the hearts of the people? If the BLACK DEATH is an indication, disastrous times will make people more rebellious.

A timely warning.

On May 28 the Globe and Mail had an article with the heading,

“Will we be prepared for ‘Disease X’ – the next pandemic?”

TOM KOCH, professor of medical geography at the University of British Columbia and the author of Cartographies of Disease and Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground, wrote:

Ebola is back, again active in Africa. Influenza is about to begin this year’s march in Australia. Measles outbreaks are broadly reported and the list goes on. What’s next in the world of infectious diseases?

The World Health Organization calls it “Disease X,” a previously unknown pathogen that likely will cause the next pandemic. It will be new, spread quickly and, if history is a guide, carry a mortality rate greater than 30 per cent.

Every century has had its Disease X. There was plague, of course, recurring periodically between the 14th and 19th centuries. Then there was yellow fever, which in the 18th century decimated eastern U.S. cities. In the 19th century cholera was the global threat. More recently, it was influenza in 1918 and polio in the 1950s. AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, West Nile Virus and Zika: all evidence of rapid evolution in the microbial world.

Because the new bug will be, well, new, we will be largely unprepared. Nor should we be surprised. Since influenza first spread globally from domesticated poultry in China in 2,500 BC, certain conditions have always presaged the arrival of a new pandemic disease. All are present today.

First, there is deforestation – the destruction of natural ecosystems to provide housing and food for cities. Bacteria and viruses are displaced and must survive by migrating to new places and populations.

Deforestation is powered by urbanization – the growth of dense settlements that become reservoirs for the migrating microbes – new destinations for the bacterium or virus forced out of its niche by human advance.

Then there is the trade that supports those evolving cities and their industries. Microbes are mostly homebodies. They don’t travel on their own but instead move with travelers and the goods they carry. Once, that meant sailing ships that spanned the globe and locally the ox carts of local providers. In the 19th century cholera travelled from New Orleans up the Mississippi River in steam boats and then new trains that linked southern and northern cities. Today, modern microbes circle the globe with us on airplanes, either caught in cargo, captured in the wheelbase or with infected passengers on board.

Income inequality has always been a boon to the bacteria and viruses that have plagued humanity. Impoverished people who are ill-housed and ill-fed are stressed. Their immune systems are weaker and their environments insecure. They become the perfect vehicles for disease propagation.

Finally, there is nothing like war to promote the advance of microbial legions. Troop transports assured 1918 influenza would spread from the United States to Europe where the First World War created hugely distressed populations that were the perfect targets for the new disease. Troops returning home carried the virus with them.

In our defence, experts are increasing surveillance while scientists strike to create “platform technologies,” broadly designed medicines and vaccines that in theory can be modified to target new microbes once they are identified. Still, even with a vaccine almost ready, it took more than a year for an Ebola vaccine to be developed and tested. By the time it was ready for distribution the West African epidemic of 2014 was mostly over.

Even with the most advanced technologies it will take weeks, and probably months, to isolate the precise nature of Disease X, months if not years then to engineer a vaccine or cure. It then takes months if not years for a new drug or vaccine’s testing, commercial patenting, manufacture and then distribution. By then it will be too late.
All this is the failure of our successes, the downside of our modern achievements. The only answer is to assure that public health organizations – from city-health departments to international agencies – have the funding and support they will require to react when Disease X emerges. Unfortunately, we are, in most countries, more concerned with health efficiencies than health preparedness. WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have had their budgets cut in recent years. To prepare and to insure our health and survival, we can and must do better.
And so, we wait for Disease X and, too, the tools to fight it.
So far Tom Koch.

Laurie Garrett in 1994, in her THE COMING PLAGUE said essentially the same: “The extraordinary, rapid growth of the Human population, coupled with its voracious appetite for planetary dominance and resource consumption, has put every measurable biological and chemical system on earth in a state of imbalance.
“Extinctions, toxic chemicals, greater background levels of nuclear and ionizing radiation, ultraviolet penetration if the atmosphere, global warming, wholesale devastations of ecospheres – these were the changes of which ecologists spoke as the world approaches the twenty-first century”.

Neither Koch nor Garrett mention the melting of the Arctic where pathogens may be uncovered that have been hidden for thousands of years.

I have long maintained that next time when disaster strikes, it will be accompanied by an array of other calamities.

“We’re in the middle of some vast historical transition, and it’s very hard to know what to believe in”, writes celebrated columnist, David Brooks.

What does this signify?

“It is hard to know what to believe in”.

Politicians will not tell us. They never predict a difficult future. They never mention Climate Change in a bad light. They always see the sunny side, such as the immense potential of renewable energy. They always promise more economic growth in a finite world.
Don’t look to churches to tell us. They most certainly will not tell us to prepare for a New Earth and start living that condition now.

The Bible, however, pulls no punches: Matthew 24 makes the startling claim that the coming disasters will be so totally devastating that (verse 22), “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive!”

That’s what is in store: the final judgement is upon the world in the form of natural disasters, earthquakes, pandemics, all happening simultaneously: neither technology nor medical science can prevent it.

The final judgement over this terrified world will reveal itself in its inevitable self-destruction of the culture.

Emperor Nero set his own capital, Rome, on fire. He had no clue what he was doing. We too have not the faintest idea of the horrible fate that today threatens the entire human civilization.

Humanity, totally estranged from God, has become drunk on its own technical prowess and mesmerized by its own grandeur: this same human race will end itself through its own radical self-delusion, polluting itself into oblivion, destroying whatever it has built, in a spontaneous act of suicide.

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

Just as THE BLACK DEATH by all accounts led to THE REFORMATION, so it could well be that all the disasters that now are brewing and will burst forth in all their ferocity in the near future, will make people pause and wonder whether there is a God and whether this God is of any use.

Yes we are in the middle not only of a vast historical transition, but we are on the very last gasp of human sinfulness.

The Black Plague brought the worst out in people. The coming series of the ultimate disasters will do the same.

But ALL IS WELL THAT ENDS WELL: Revelation 21: 1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth!”

MAY 26 2018

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE.

I once preached in our church on Jonah, and not finding a song about him I made one. Singing it on the tune of Psalm 8, “Lord, oh Lord your glorious name”, was a lot of fun.

JONAH IN THE WHALE

REFRAIN
Whale oh whale in all the sea
The greatest whale
With its double-steepled tail
Swallowed Jonah in travail:
Oh what a tale!

1. God, the Lord to Jonah said:
Go to Nineveh the bad
Jonah did not like the charge
Instead to Tarshish did he march
Set out to sail. REFRAIN

2. Jonah caused the storm they got
Sailors then did cast the lot
In the sea they threw the male
And at once it stopped the gale
But not the whale! REFRAIN

3. In the belly of the fish
Jonah made a fervent wish.
Then the Lord spoke to the whale
Who spew Jonah on the shale
So pale and frail. REFRAIN

4. On the Nineveh he went
Telling all now to repent.
When they did he got so mad
Calling God e’vrything that’s bad
How sad, how sad. REFRAIN

5. Jonah tired and angry
Sat himself under a tree
Which the Lord for him supplied
But the tree grew sick and died
And Jonah cried. REFRAIN

6. Then the Lord to Jonah said
If one dead tree makes you so mad
Don’t I then have equal right
To be concerned for Nineveh’s plight:
Don’t be so trite! REFRAIN.

In verse 11 of the last chapter of the book of Jonah, the LORD said, “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left, as well as many animals?”

No doubt ancient Nineveh was a huge city, also because people farmed within the confines of its limits: that’s why it was so huge and had many animals. That indicates that cities in the very early antiquity were basically self-sustaining: they had to be.

The city of Rome changed that pattern. During its heyday it was totally depended on the countryside, needing ever greater distances to find food and wood. Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his book THE UPSIDE OF DOWN, writes, “The Empire needed more and more energy, and in the end it could not find enough.” That was the end of Rome.

And we?

Ever wondered why there are so many trucks on the highways? Many of them are there to bring food to the millions of city dwellers who want three square meals per day: food from all over the world. We waste a lot of that food, enough to feed the poorer 30 percent of the world.

By now it’s becoming quite clear that in North America, trucks and the cars have fashioned our cities, an unsustainable situation. Walrus Magazine, in its May issue, with as subtitle, “The FUTURE OF almost everything”, emphasizes this again when it points out that, “If we are currently doing a poor job of building them (the cities), it is because we insist on catering not to the need of city dwellers, but to the demands of cars.”

One of the curses of modernity is that North America’s cities have been weaned on the automobile: the entire economy depends on having a personal vehicle: our subdivisions, our shopping malls and our box stores all are car-dependent. Not so much in Europe. There the cities are centuries old and came into being before the advent of the automobile.

WALRUS really sees the North America’s future in terms of UTOPIA, wishing for a car-less, walkable, bicycle-friendly city. Dream on! The problem of suburbs and accommodation for the poor does not magically go away: we are stuck with the ‘sins of our fathers’ in more than one way. Not only did we welcome the ‘car’, we also gutted all public transportation, seeing salvation in carbon slaves. Even now governments on all levels subsidize automobile manufacture to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The same is of true of energy production. Where will the money come from to build subways at a rate of $1 billion per mile, as we all are already overburdened with debt?

I already quoted one example from the Bible. Let me take another one, even far earlier.

You may recall how the two first sons of Adam and Eve were quite religious and made an offering to Yahweh. God accepted Abel’s gesture of devotion, but rejected Cain’s, because he was not sincere in his approach to God. This infuriated Cain so much that he killed his brother. Religious strife is still with us and is often the most ferocious.

Cain fled and we read that he built a city. This is a clear sign that the human desire is to exclude God from creation and is the prime motive behind the founding of the city. Oops, that hurts: the city is not a product of God, but of his ever-present opponent.

Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, is the first city builder. He called it Enoch, which means a New Beginning.

French Law Professor Jacques Ellul in his book THE MEANING OF THE CITY mentioned that it was Cain’s intention to re-make the world over again, with not the Garden of Eden but the City as the new paradise.

He also wrote: “Cain has built a city. For God’s Eden he substitutes his own, for the goal given to his life by God, he substitutes a goal chosen by himself.
The city is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and of his own refusal to accept God’s protection. ….The city is opposed to Eden….God’s creation is seen as nothing. Cain made a new start, a start no longer seen as God’s beginning, but of human making.

And thus Cain, with everything he does digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. With Cain’s founding of Enoch, we have a sure starting place for all of civilization, with the result that Paradise became a legend and creation a myth. Cain took possession of the world and used it as he wishes. We do the very same: it is our highhanded piracy of creation that has made it impossible for creation to give God the glory.

Today we see this all too clearly in Trump who has no consideration for God’s creation whatsoever, enthusiastically supported by the majority of “Christians”.

Country versus City.

Ellul does not glorify the country over the city, because, today, by and large, the countryside simply has become an extension of the city. Geert Mak in his Dutch book “How God disappeared from Jorwerd” (Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd), eloquently describes how a small Frisian village lost its tradesmen, its specialty stores, its very soul, when commuters bought its houses, and relied for on city-based big block merchandize, so effectively killing the village’s economy.

The same is now true everywhere in the Western world on a much grander scale. We have gone to Asia for making things, while the old manufacturing cities are losing their soul: doing exactly what happened to Jorwerd. Just look at Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Lansing, Welland and Windsor: there too God has disappeared, paving the way for Trump.

Once our financial house collapses, the same will happen to New York and Toronto, to London and Frankfort.

Ellul mentions that too when he writes that, “Babylon is not A city, it is THE city……..When the wrath of God is loosed, she is struck first…. She is the very home of civilization and when the great city vanishes, there is no more civilization, a world disappears…..The very fact of living in the city directs a person down an inhuman road. They are taken into the service and worship of a somber goddess.”

Strong language and utterly scary.

Is that the end? Does Ellul in his THE MEANING OF THE CITY offer no hope?

He does. He points to the NEW CITY to come, the exact opposite of the city Cain founded and in which we now live. In the new city, the City of God, the Lord’s presence will be constant, his spirit all pervasive. It promises in Revelation 14: 13, “Our good deeds will follow us there”.

Writes Ellul: “The new city is founded in humility, constructed in the acceptance of God’s decisions. ……….Just as the new city is the accomplishment of what we humans were never able to realize, she is also the exact opposite of the earthly city….and the exact counterpart of what we humans had wanted to do.”

Properly speaking the new world to come will totally reflect God’s will. It will be a world where communion with God is perfect, expressed in total symbiosis with all, humans, animals and plants.

The City of the Future.

Today water has become a curse: rising sea levels, unstoppable rains, more severe hurricanes have made water-side properties an insurance nightmare.

Not so in the City of the Future. There the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, starts with “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the City. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” Isn’t that beautiful: the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations!

That tells a lot. In the City of the Future, water is as pure as God. Trees are there too: the very trees which had become inaccessible after Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden: the Trees of Life, trees that provide a variety of fruits continuously.

It seems to me that we can visualize paradise as being situated on a high plateau with the fountainheads of mighty rivers. It suggests to me that these four rivers represent the streams that irrigate the major countries of the world and so provide the world with riches and life.

Paradise is the source that provides the world with precious water. It lies at the centre of the world. Paradise discloses the secret of the well being and beauty of the world: it is here in particular that God reveals his presence.

Revelation 21 gives a description of the New Jerusalem. Streets of gold? Well, I don’t particularly buy that. I believe that John tries to convey here the utter uniqueness of the coming Kingdom. That singularity is so different, so totally contrary to what we see the city today.

So what how will The City of the Future be like?

The City of the Future, the new paradise, is like the old paradise, with rivers flowing, with the trees of life growing in the heart of the world. From these the world receives its life.

In Revelation 21, John has a view of the new city. He looks closely for a temple there, but sees none. Not seeing a temple there he concludes that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple: the divine law written on our hearts. Gone are the churches, the preachers and the Bible.

The Good News.

The City of the Future is already happening today. Churches are changing. I am a member of our church’s Environmental Team. We are converting the lawn around our church building into “Bee and Butterfly friendly flower beds”, and intend to raise vegetables there as well for community use. We also have special services at outdoor beauty spots. On June 23 this will take place at our own property at our huge Beaver Dam.

We’re in the middle of a vast historical transition. Now is the time to prepare for Life after life. Now is the time to prepare for the City of the Future: the complete oneness of humanity with creation.

If you want to live in The Eternal City to come, seek a church community or start one that practices the holy unity of God, Humanity and the Earth.