Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

MAY 19 2018

SOME PERSONAL STUFF

My roots.

I am city-bred, first generation. Both my parents were the first and only ones of their combined six siblings to leave rural life and move to the city. There my aunts, uncles and grandparents visited us quite frequently when shopping for items not available back home.

My father’s parents operated a grocery store, while my mother’s parents were small-time general farmers: cows, pigs, chickens and a horse, farming some 20 hectares of good soil, most of it surrounding the homestead. The immediate neighbors had similar holdings: nobody rich, nobody poor.

Both my grandparents were elders in the same church, sincere devout people, deeply committed to the Christian faith in its then rather uncomplicated expression. They were an example for me in their piety and simple trust. For generations they had lived their quiet lives in the Netherlands’ most northerly province, Groningen.

Urban Groningen was known as ‘the city’ or in Dutch, ‘de stad’, nothing more. People planning to visit the cattle market, or buy new clothes, simply said that they were going to ‘stad’.

I grew up in that city, an ancient one, dating back well before the 11th Century, the date when construction of the Martini church was started: the immense blocks of squared rock of its 100 meter high steeple-tower came all the way from southern Germany, some 500 km away, signifying the people’s tenacity, devotion and willingness to sacrifice some 1,000 years ago.

I attended educational institutions there for 16 years, the second half studying Latin, Greek, German, French, English, Dutch, plus various science subjects, all compulsory. The only option was Hebrew, and I now regret not taking it.

One of my ancestors was a delegate to the provincial council. A plaque above the entrance of his rural church honored him some 300 years ago for faithful service to the province and the Royal family, the house of Orange.

I was named after him, Egbert Drewes, the same as my maternal grandfather. Even though I was born and raised in the city, and once in Canada, settled in 1951 -23 years old – first in Hamilton for 4 years, then in St. Catharines for 2 decades, my staying often at my Opa’s farm as a kid, gave me a lasting desire for the country side. Having always been self-employed, first in insurance, then adding real estate, in 1975 I sold my agency and moved to rural Ontario, moving into an uncertain future.

That move was motivated both by the oil-crisis in 1972-3 and by reading THE LIMITS OF GROWTH, which deeply influenced my thinking and kindled my desire to attain a degree of self-sufficiency for our family. In the 1970’s there was a lot of scary talk. The sudden spike in the oil price threw the entire global economy in turmoil, and it surely affected me as well.

So I looked for a location far from large population centres, where land was still affordable. I bought 50 acres of mostly trees and rocks but enough cleared land to build a house, just about 200 km from both Toronto and Ottawa, 5 km north of the small village of Tweed. A pretty safe location, I thought.

Before we started building a well-witcher came who with his witching rod followed one underground stream, and then another, and where they crossed he told us to drill. He also told us how deep, and lo and behold, exactly where he had indicated a well was drilled, giving us 150 liters of pure ground water per minute, sufficient for 10 families.

We built some 150 meters from the highway. With the highway under re-construction, the company needed to dispose of large amounts of earth: they were happy to construct a driveway to my building site, an advantage to both of us.

Our dwelling.

I had designed a 2 storey house, with on the north one story – built into a hill, and a small window – and on the south 2 storey with four large windows, catching the sun, constructed with 2×6 studs, R20 insulation and extra foam insulation as well: a passive-solar house.

The first floor contained a three piece washroom with a shower, 2 bedrooms, and my office as well as a utility room, a root cellar, completely surrounded with earth, and a pantry for food storage.

I later added a one storey addition expanding the office space, a foyer, and making the bedroom bigger. On its roof section I installed 10 solar panels, an additional power source. On the second level I placed the bathroom in the centre, so that the heat generated there would be retained. Also the masonry chimney had 2 flues so that I could have a wood stove on both levels. Later, with more efficient wood stoves I only used one large wood stove on the first floor.

Once the house was ready, by living frugally I studied for 3 years to qualify for Real Estate Appraiser, taking courses at York, Trent and Queen’s Universities which also required the completion of three master theses, 100 page reports on Single Family Dwelling, on a 12 unit apartment building and a commercial building before I became an AACI, Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute. This allowed me to appraise a full range of properties, such as the Picton airport – a former RAF fighter training center – several river dams, a 5,000 acre former Weston retreat just east of the Algonquin Park, a uranium mine in Bancroft, and the entire Bruce Peninsula, 500,000 acres, for an Indian land claim, just to name some of the more odd pieces of real estate I evaluated. I did a lot of work for all levels of governments, federal, provincial, and many municipalities.

My garden.

I moved to Tweed to become more self-sufficient, that involved not only building an energy-efficient dwelling but especially having a large vegetable garden.

That was a lot of work: the soil was basically pure sand, and to make it more fertile, I went over to the neighbors some 200 meters away, and was allowed to cart away in my wheelbarrow age-old black earth, saturated with cow manure, too rich for growing, but mixed with my sandy loam it became good garden material. I forgot how many loads I transported, but 43 years ago I was that much younger, so I invested a lot of sweat into that undertaking.

I also constructed a simple 8`x 8`compost bin. Since we became vegetarian, almost each day we generated a bucket of green stuff. Since friendly near-by farmers were willing to provide us with manure, the last 5 years I did not touch the accumulated compost.

But in this past week I found the extra energy to completely empty our compost enclosure and carted 25 wheelbarrow loads to our vegetable garden of some 2,000 square feet: beautiful black, airy loam, promising us a good crop for the season to come.

FOOD

A recent article in WALRUS dealing with the FUTURE, suggest that “the production of whole foods – milk and meat, spices and flavouring, even fruits and vegetables – might soon become unnecessary and even irresponsible. The article expresses the belief that all these food items can be manufactured today brewing the same chemical compounds that give fresh summer peaches their taste. Given the scarcity of land and water synthetic food might soon become the only reasonable choice. Well, color me old-fashioned, but I don’t buy this at all.
May 19 2008

The best thing you and I can do to save the world, and, at the same time benefit our families, is to start to grow your own food, because today we don’t eat food, but oil. With oil barreling toward $100.00 (Can), edibles will become ever more expensive. That means that we have to get our guts in gear and start digging, something good for body and soul, as manual labor promotes peace of mind, improves physical well-being, while home-grown produce provides healthy nutrition.

The world now has now close to 7.5 billion with ever more demanding mouths, while food supplies per capita are about to shrink, signaling food inflation. The only way to keep this in check and furnish basic food for your family is to engage in “subsistence gardening.”

Today we burn 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but in 20 years annual production will be less than half that amount, while the number of people in the world will have increased by 50 percent. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that with drastically reduced amounts of oil and chemical fertilizer, our future will feature growing food shortages. Alternative energy sources will do little to solve the problem. Our main energy will be pure body power: we and our shovel, we and our hoe, we and our weary back, which, by the way, will save us sleeping pills.

In our ‘wisdom’, we have turned prime farmland into subdivisions and big box stores, have allowed pollution to poison our pollinators, are burning food in our gas tanks instead of fueling our muscles, so, no wonder that finally, after some 210 years, the fear of global famine, expressed by English parson Thomas Malthus in his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” will come true.

The old is new again. The best security is an old-fashioned vegetable garden. The cost is minimal. And now – May-June – is the time, as plenty of rain has softened the earth, making digging a lot easier. Get a sharp spade, one with a short handle. This way you lift with your hips, avoiding a ‘back-breaking’ experience.

Choose a sunny patch, away from trees. Cut the grass there to the very roots, which makes turning the soil a lot easier. Shake out the sod, releasing the good earth into the dug portion. Put the grass and roots into a compost bin. Compost must be an important ingredient of your soil. If you don’t have a compost bin, start one today: put in leaves, grass cuttings, left over food, peals and all organic material. Keep the contents wet so that they disintegrate easier.

Where I live spring time comes with one obstacle: black flies. Let them bite you. After a few years you will become immune to their sting at least that is my experience. God made everything for a purpose, perhaps black fly bites strengthen our immune system, but they certainly help as pollinators and with bees in short supply, even black flies can be a blessing.

Once you have dug that patch, braved the pesky flies, endured that tired back and blisters in your hands and loosened the soil, you are ready to plant. For a start I would recommend green beans, onions, red beets, carrots, as well as a variety of cabbage plants. If you have room, plant some potatoes as well. Of course, tomatoes and squash plants are a cinch.

Remember that variety is essential. Any meal should have three colors: green salads, red beets, and orange carrots, for instance: the more colors on your plate the better. Michael Pollan, in his book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” says, in a nutshell, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” He also says that much of what we buy in the store is not food as much as ‘foodish’, quasi-edible substances made for long shelf-life rather than nutrition and taste. When you grow your own, you know what you get.

Most vegetables are easy to grow. Green beans need little care. Carrots need a sandy soil and, since the seeds are so tiny, constant watering until the greens break through the surface.
Potatoes attract Colorado potato beetles. I handpick these creatures and if there are too many I dust the plants with a friendly pesticide, which I also sprinkle on my broccoli and cabbages. Kale, a very healthy dark green plant, is the least trouble-prone.
So do yourself a favor, engage in a wholesome exercise, grow your own and prevent a lot of polluted air from happening, while enriching your table with nutritious fare. An all-around win-win situation.

I am city-bred, first generation. All our kids are in the city, Toronto, Hamilton, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Greater Kitchener area: for them the city begs as the jobs are there. I was fortunate to make a good living away from urban North America.

MAY 12 2018

ACCULTURATION (2)

Last week I ended with,” The ‘cultus’ of today is MONEY. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: the woods are paved, the mountains mined, the seas eaten, species eliminated: all because of money. More than half of all wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years because of money. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. Today we are selling God’s creation to serve us as slaves, 24/7.”

This week I continue this topic, and for this I turn to the book of Revelation, where Jesus sent a letter to a city called Thyatira as recorded in Revelation 2: 18-29. There, 2000 years ago, ACCULTURATION came to a head: the cultus of Christ versus the cultus of pagan gods. A very similar scenario is happening today.

Of the seven letters sent, this was the longest, the reason being that the situation there was quite complicated, resembling very much the economic scene today where a Christian institution – the church – exists and operates in a pagan world, a world bent on destroying God’s creation. Is the church up to it?

A few words on Thyatira itself.

Thyatira was a city of commerce and industry, a place well-known for her guilds or labor unions or business associations. Everyone who did business there or operated a company was automatically part of one of these social organizations. It even was compulsory to belong to one of these outfits on peril of being boycotted by all others: everywhere and constantly all were dependent on these powerful social organizations dominating the totality of social life.

For instance, it was simply impossible for an honorable Christian carpenter to ply his trade on his own, no matter how hard he worked. If he were not a member of the trade union then he simply was regarded as unqualified and ran the risk that nobody would call on him for work.

In other words in Thyatira persecution was not the result of political tensions generated by the way the church functioned, but in this city the entire structure of society imperiled the existence of the church there. Hmm…Sounds familiar.

It so happened that the church of Thyatira consisted primarily of small businessmen, people who for their daily bread depended on the cooperation of their clients. That meant that they had no option but to seek contact with the existing social network if they were not to perish financially. That was exactly the great question the church there was wrestling with.

Of course we can argue that the church there had to face reality, accept the consequences and simply venture out into the business world. This implied that the Christians were to become part of these labor associations and join these existing social structures.

But there was more to it than that. These bodies were outspokenly pagan. They had special high days involving solemn ceremonies, all of a non-Christian nature. These days were connected to the name of some patron deity and involved sacrifices to his idol. Fully integrated with this were elaborate banquets, always accompanied by a variety of pagan rituals. As a rule these festive meals degenerated into debaucheries, with strong drink and disorderly conduct creating additional havoc.

So to join all this was by no means an innocent affair. If these people would really get themselves involved in all this then they had to go whole hog, and that meant that they could not possibly shun these ceremonies and festivities.

The problem also was that there simply was no alternative. If they did not join then they could not make a living, and thus were doomed to begging for bread. And if they did join, then, in essence, their entire Christian life was imperiled. Between these two perils they had to choose.

In other words Christians were forced to adopt a pagan culture.

So what about today? Is it any different?

What was fundamental for the Church in Thyatira is today of equal relevance for the church of Century 21.

This time also the church exists in a world which breathes a different spirit. This time also the church cannot withdraw, cannot isolate herself and cannot retreat to an island: it has to remain right in the center of the world.

But to stay there means that it constantly encounters conflicts. The congregation of Thyatira was too small to exist on its own and so be self-supporting, could not be independent from society at large: it was simply too tiny and too insignificant.

The real question was: on what basis should she build her modus operandi, her total life`s goal? This was a conscious choice: either participate in the public domain, or fundamentally refrain from any of these civic activities.

Yes, this 2000 year old dilemma is very current today!!

Apparently there were those in Thyatira who emphatically proclaimed that they could join these pagan organizations, because the alternative would be destitution. Common sense must prevail. If these people were motivated by declaring that it was their irrefutable duty to renew these pagan labor unions from within, then and only then they could have some ground for discussion. But then their intention to join these pagan bodies had to immediately be followed by the cautionary cry that under no circumstances would they do anything that would go against the Lord’s commands and the holy will of Jesus Christ. They would vouch to always remain true to your Savior!

It is clear that in pagan surroundings, a young church is always involved in all sorts of social problems, because it often is simply impossible to sever all community ties. But it would be imperative to emphatically state that they would never allow to be seduced by pagan practices. That, however, did the preachers in Thyatira fail to do.

On the contrary, they concocted a new sort of theology, a set of religious rules that seemed to justify cooperation with paganism. This theology was based on the premise that these heathen gods really did not exist at all, and that throwing a bit of incense on their altars posed no real problem at all. They would argue that this would constitute a harmless act because the recipients, those idols, didn’t even exist.

If they, with this empty gesture could guarantee an economic place in society, then, well, go ahead. They even went a step further: even these orgies and the subsequent sinful conduct were glossed over. It’s not so bad, during these nocturnal guild celebrations, to give in to one’s ‘primeval nature’. It does no harm to give full rein to the desires of the flesh because only then do you learn to know the depths of Satan.
That even sounded pious! You forget yourself in the filth of sensuous passions, and the next morning you wake up with a terrible hangover, but that is especially what you need because then you can, with full force, glorify in the grace of Christ.

Isn’t that a marvelous theology! Isn’t that a true miracle because it’s also very profitable! It allows you to be a carpenter, your pagan fellow citizens regard you as a congenial fellow, somebody who can join into the fun, and they order new chairs and table from you. Your business flourishes, and all is fine and dandy. And your Christian conscience is at rest.

That sort of theology is thoroughly practical and enables us to have the cake and eat it too. You become a successful businessman, you are in no time rich, you have the occasional fun-filled evening and happy-go-lucky night, and to top it off you can discover ‘the depths of the Satan”. It’s a perfect set-up.

In Thyatira the instigator of this new theology appears to have been a woman who is only identified with the less flattering name of Jezebel.

This woman presents herself as a ‘prophetess’. So, supposedly, she has her theology straight from the Holy Spirit. That’s a smart move because it wouldn’t be easy to base her ideas on the Scriptures. It’s, of course, much easier to appeal to prophetic inspiration. At the same time that part of the church that has not bought into the new theology is labeled as unspiritual. They are the literalists, those who adhere to the text of the Bible and are afraid to be swayed by power of the Spirit.

But she, Jezebel, has no such compunction, and she openly proclaims her theology. She does have adherents. She also has children and they side with their mother. Together they constitute a dangerous group in the midst of the church in Thyatira.

Are there Jezebels today?

Are there such people in the church today? Most definitely. There are many who deny that the earth is holy, who believe that nature is evil, and teach that Jesus never became human.

Today GNOSTICISM reigns. Trump is seen as the savior of Christianity. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell are the modern day Jezebels. They claim that oil is not polluting, and that prosperity – Joel Osteen – is a gospel-given. They see the earth is evil, so thrashing it poses no harm.

Punishment.

In Thyatira Jezebel and her followers receive a harsh but justified sentence. She will become seriously ill, her children will die, her adherents, the proclaimers of the ‘new theology’ will suffer severe suppression. They had embraced this new theology precisely to escape economic hardship and live a life of luxury, and now exactly the opposite is happening.

It is striking that Jesus calls himself one who searches the hearts and the minds. He exposes the ‘new theology’ as being essentially nothing else but cowardice, greed and a despicable compromise.

I believe that almost all of religion is affected by this teaching. Paul gave a warning to Timothy (1 Tim. 6: 10) “For the love of money is a root of all evil: and some whose hearts were fixed on it have been turned away from the faith.”
To bring that into a contemporary context, “For the abundant supply of fossil fuels is the root of all evil”. Carbon-based components supply all of us with the 24/7 service of 100 mechanical slaves.
But we are on the earth to serve creation and not to be served in such a way that creation dies.

“Hold on to what you have until I come”, are Jesus’ very words. That may involve some temporary hardship, but eternity is long.
That is the great requirement extended to all churches, also today.
Hold on: embrace what we have received from Christ: those are not matters we can bargain with. Live creation-friendly lives!

How the church in Thyatira dealt with the entire pagan situation, how she found her place within that pagan structure the Bible does not tell us. But one thing is clear: nothing that truly belongs to the gifts Christ blest us with, may ever be abandoned: the earth is holy, because it is a divine gift. We must treat it as such.

The last few verses of the letter to Thyatira forcefully speak of what is to come. “To those who overcome and do my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations”.

Acculturation today.

The ‘cultus’ of today is MONEY in the form of black gold. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. Today we are selling God’s creation to serve us as slaves, 24/7.”

How do we deal with the problem of our energy slaves which spell the end of creation?
That is the burning question today.
Thyatira withstood the temptation and got its reward: it got THE MORNINGSTAR, the Risen Christ and his new creation. Thyatira shunned the immediate reward to earn the eternal reward.

Our problem is much more difficult than what is related in the letter to Thyatira. We ARE fully compromised, we ARE totally integrated with the secular, earth-destroying, planet-polluting economy.
How we live today determines how we will LIVE tomorrow in the New Creation.

A note:
Some of the above has been translated from “En voort wentelen de eeuwen” (On and on the Ages Roll), by Dr. J. H. Bavinck.

MAY 5 2018

ACCULTURATION (1)

The word ACCULTURATION speaks for itself, well, perhaps not quite. It’s not a word we employ every day. You recognize the ‘culture’ in it, which has ‘cultus’ as root, meaning ”worship”, so it has something to do with our religious way of life, the manner in which we live and the habits we take for granted.

What I try to explore this week and next, is whether our lifestyle conforms to biblical givens and for this I use some examples, both from contemporary scenes as well as from an episode found in Revelation, the last Bible book, in which Jesus sends a special letter to a church in Asia Minor, the present day in Turkey.

I read the word ACCULTURATION first in my ‘MAN’S RISE TO CIVILIZATION. There it is defined as “the change produced in one culture by the encounter with another”. The author uses the example of the first Europeans landing in America and meeting head on with the reigning lifestyle of the natives there.
Our First Nation sisters and brothers gave us a host of their foods, such as maize, potatoes, pumpkin, squash, avocadoes, chocolate and several kinds of beans, all sorts of medicine, such as quinine, but there the change stopped. We did not adopt their way of life. One look at the First Nation Reserves in Canada and the Indian Territories in the USA is clear evidence that not the original native, creation-friendly way of life prevailed, but the European, with disastrous results for both the indigenous crowd and the WHITE people.

The curious fact is that whites, when first encountering the native way of life, actually preferred the “Indian” way. When thirty cases of captive Whites were analyzed by an anthropologist, he found that they refused to be ransomed, preferring the native way of life of sharing and hospitality which was lacking in their own culture. The native sharing was all-embracive, included the natural treasures, such as the animals and the plants, which all were seen as an integral part of their existence. Where the invaders, the Europeans settlers saw trees as something to be exploited, saw the soil only as a medium to cultivate, the people they encountered in The New World had a totally different philosophy of life, treasuring the unity of their humanity with the environment.

We know only too well that the European way of exploitation prevailed and, by and large, the acculturation, the cultural transfer favored the invaders.

So where are we today?

Where in the “Indian- First Nation” culture, life was fully integrated with the environment, today everywhere the opposite is true, the dominating factor being MONEY, fiat money, money created out of nothing.

THE DEBT SITUATION.

The Global Debt situation, currently at the peak of $237 Trillion, means that every person on the globe owes $31,000, the poor peasants in Africa and India and the rich folk in North America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Europe. However, based on the immense difference between poor and rich, we, wealthy Westerners, on an average, are on the hook for more than $300,000 per head, or more than $1 million per family.

How did this debt situation come about?

If the financial institutions had not been able to turn debts into assets – mortgages and bonds – and sell these to investors, then debt creation could not have gone to such extremes and consumers would not have been able to borrow and spend themselves into a looming financial ruin.

If western consumers had not been able to borrow themselves so far into looming ruin, they would also not have been able to buy so many goods from Asia and other developing nations for a time. Asia and developing nations would not then have been able to mint so many new millionaires and billionaires in their governments and businesses who then funneled capital into western property markets, and western property markets would not have appreciated so far beyond domestic income gains.

If property prices had not increased so far beyond income gains, then households would not have had to borrow so much just to get a roof over their heads or obtain a post-secondary education.

If property owners had not been able to borrow so much, property prices, education and related services would never have been able to rise so much for so long, and become so unaffordable for the masses.

So, here we are: dug into a hole out of which there’s no escape.

William Butler Yeats (1854-1939) warned us in his poem The Second Coming that the world is upside down and that “the center cannot hold“:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…

Butler Yeats lived through World War I, saw the rise of Hitler and experienced The Great Depression.

Today we are on the verge of something worse. Here’s why.

The old need the young to drive productivity and innovation, pay taxes and support the social safety net. They also need the young to buy their assets (real estate, securities, businesses) when they wish to downsize and raise liquidity. If the young are broke: under-employed, over-indebted and under-saved, they cannot get a footing and the social contract becomes undone. That scenario threatens today.

Twenty years of central bank and government-enabled debt-driven asset bubbles, have broken long-standing laws of financial and social equilibrium. A total repricing cycle is necessary to break these inflated prices and return to “normal”.

Is return to normal still possible? When I took out my first and only mortgage in 1962, the ‘normal’ rate was 6 percent. SIX PERCENT today would kill everything.

For centuries cities have lured the young and ambitious in search of jobs and security. Now only the smart, brainy well- educated couples in finance and law can find a home there. Only they, earning is excess of $125,000, can assume the immense debt or afford the high rent of living in the city. Most other young people either flee or shun the increasingly unaffordable property prices.

Only a culture of debt has made city living possible. A culture of Debt always degenerates into a culture of Death.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” is a famous phrase said by Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. In it the character Polonius counsels his son Laertes before he embarks on his visit to Paris. He says, “For loan oft loses both itself and friend.”

ACCULTURATION further explained.

We live in a money culture, a culture financed by debt. It reminds me of Hitler Germany.

Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and in an amazing six short years he managed to build up a tremendous war machine, which, once it was set in motion, in the space of another 6 years conquered all of Europe except Great Britain.

On May 10 1940 the city I lived in, Groningen, fell, and after a 5 day struggle, the Netherlands too came under German occupation.

It used to be that in peacetime money is created when people buy homes and take out a mortgage or corporations build factories by issuing bonds, with the banks or bond byers providing the money. With the low money rates today – now as low as 3% – house prices almost everywhere in the world shot up, because the lower the rates, the more people can afford to buy property.

In wartime, money is created by government order for another purpose. Then the opposite happens: rather than financing positive developments, such as single family dwellings or office towers and museums or art galleries, that money is used in a negative way with fields littered with craters, with people killed and wounded, with roads destroyed and buildings demolished and children and their parents fleeing, often demoralized and depressed.

Today this difference is no longer true.

Now even in non-war times we experience war time conditions, because we are in a perpetual war against creation, where we exhaust water sources, where we deplete soil, where we pollute the air, where we change the weather for the worse.

As the universal war against creation worsens and becomes more violent, the planetary liabilities increase as deserts spread, seas rise, potable water disappears, lives are destroyed and infrastructure disappears: the inevitable result is inflation, money becoming less valuable. Wars always lead to stagflation, inflation combined with depression.

All this comes from creating money out of nothing, which fed our addiction to the money culture.

That’s how Hitler financed his 6 year war from 1939 to 1945: he just printed money. At his death, the Germans possessed 70 billion Reichsmarks in worthless banknotes and 380 billion in obligations of a regime which no longer existed. All of Germany had been converted into money and was totally destroyed, reduced to ZERO.

The JUBILEE effect.

In 1947-48 the allied occupation powers, the USA and Great Britain canceled all German debts, which was easy because most of the debts were owed to people who had been Nazis. Freeing Germany from debt was the root of its economic miracle.

Actually the Bible advocates such a move: every 50 years God had ordained that in the year of Jubilee all debts must be cancelled, giving all a chance to start a new life unencumbered by debts.

Today this is not possible because the debt is too huge: it would bankrupt all financial institutions and all governments.

Here’s what will happen.

Today our Age of Money is plunging the world into the most perilous instability. There are more than Seven Billion people in the world, increasingly huddled in cities that survive only by virtue of money. But money is to us as the potato was to the Irish people in the 1840’s: when money fails in its function – and with $237 Trillion of debt out there this is bound to happen – the cities of this earth, London, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Washington, Hong Kong, Beijing, will starve. Every city has a little Ireland in it, as Marx foresaw.

Money, far from being the harmless arena of human pride and joy, is the great destroyer. Because money is eminent desire, there’s no satisfaction in the external world unless it is conveyed in money.

Columbus landed into a money-less society, built on perpetuity. He then sucked out a thousand years of gold from the Caribbean in two or three years and extinguished all its human life. They were killed not by the musket, but by the more lethal invention, money.

Jesus, when he died on the cross, saw before his eyes not only the cosmos he had created, not only the people who had clamored for his death – and he prayed for them then and there – but he also saw with great clarity the thirty pieces of silver which had been the catalyst for the betrayal. He also pictured in living color, and in extreme detail the destruction caused by the human race, and the creational devastation, the result of the pursuit of money.

In our Western world everything is about money: the stock market, the strength of the dollar, the price of gold: three items mentioned in almost every newscast.
The word ACCULTURATION speaks for itself. It has the word ‘culture’ in it, which has ‘cultus’ as root, meaning ”worship”, so it has something to do with our religious way of life, the manner in which we live and the habits we take for granted.

The ‘cultus’ of today is MONEY. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: the woods are paved, the mountains mined, the seas eaten, species eliminated: all because of money. More than half of all wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years because of money.

We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. Today we are selling God’s creation to serve us as slaves, 24/7.

More next week. .
(Some of these thoughts I found in “FROZEN DESIRE, an inquiry into the meaning of money” by James Buchan.)

APRIL 28 2018

HAS THE GOOD NEWS BECOME FAKE NEWS?

The Greek word for THE GOOD NEWS is Eu-Angelos, from which we now have Evangel as well as Evangelism, the term to designate the act of bringing the Gospel.

It is my opinion that in the last few decades the essence of the GOOD NEWS has changed: under the influence of Gnosticism it has become a personal affair, relating solely to ‘me being born again.’ Many hymns not only laud going to heaven – another Gnostic heresy – but also emphasize that only we humans, are ‘washed in the blood.’ People simply don’t realize that Jesus’ blood and flesh was first hammered into the tree and that his blood first dripped into the earth, both blessing trees and earth forever.

That the major part of American Christianity has sided with Trump, a man who glorifies in being a ‘sinner’ is proof positive that American Christianity has ceased to be “Christian”, as Harold Bloom conclusively demonstrated in his book, THE AMERICAN RELIGION.

The American religion sees earth as evil, and denies Jesus’ humanity, in effect canceling the core message of the Bible. In other words, American Christianity in almost all of its denominational expressions has become a fake religion.

Where do I base this on?

Bonhoeffer in his essay “Thy Kingdom Come”, writes, “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond (he means heaven): rather he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children. ….We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean PIOUS, CHRISTIAN SECULARISM, not the godlessness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of THE EARTH.”

Eighty percent of white Evangelicals who voted for Trump see the earth as evil. That’s why Trump rescinded Obama’s environmental rules, and appointed Pruitt as his environmental secretary, a man who denies Climate Change, and encourages the use of carbon fuels.

J.H. Bavinck, Bonhoeffer’s contemporary, comes to the same conclusion. In his book, BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, ‘A Radical Kingdom Vision’, he writes,
“It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one over¬arching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck signal a radical shift from the generally accepted definition of SALVATION. Accepting this total package means adhering to a faith-life completely and drastically and fundamentally different from the generally accepted definition, basically signaling that the current idea of THE GOOD NEWS essentially is FAKE NEWS.

There’s also another factor.

Compared to the conditions when the Bible was written, we Westerners are the richest ever by far, having 100 energy slaves at our beck and call 24/7. This makes Jesus’ pronouncement about living so luxuriously quite scary. He said, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”. When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” (Luke 18: 24-25).
This rhetorical question, “Who then can be saved”, is found in all three Synoptic Gospels, and is today the burning question facing all churches, because our lifestyle is the highest ever in history.

This question is especially relevant for us: basically we no longer need God: we are too rich (taking highly polluting cruises is just one example). We also are too technically independent.

So then what is THE NEW GOOD NEWS today?

We live in different times. Everything is up for grabs. Our entire outlook of life is changing. Anything to do with carbon fuels – and that means 99.9 percent of what we consume – is now tainted, pushing us squarely toward extinction.

Last week I read an article by Dr. David Page, a terrestrial geologist with decades of experience. In ARCTIC NEWS he writes, “The dramatic explosion of Siberian permafrost mounds over the last four years has received worldwide media attention, igniting speculations of a methane “time-bomb” and a climatic threshold crossed.”
Once these methane mounds explode – and this can happen any day – he gives humanity a couple of years, a verdict echoed by Dr. Guy McPherson (Sam Canara).

Today, Anno 2018, reminds me of John the Baptizer, whose singular message was “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck state, based on the Bible, that not heaven but the renewed Garden of Eden is the Kingdom to come.

This means that churches have to make a radical shift, from Fake News to the Real NEW News, from individual redemption to the planetary, from personal to global, from heaven to earth.

That this involves an almost impossible U-turn is evident from Jesus’ own words, “Many are called, and few are chosen”, found in Matthew 22: 14. Luke 18: 8 confirms this, “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” The sad fact is that, just as ALL governments aim for Economic Growth which is the cause of Climate Change, all churches preach Heaven, at the detriment of Earth.

So…

Is the Old Testament here different than the New? Do both Jews and Christians differ on this point? Not really. The Jews still are the COVENANT people, still possess the real message.

The Christian viewpoint can be captured in one paragraph: All of Life is Religion, and since God made the earth, The Earth is Holy; life is of one piece, not a split between heaven and earth, not sacred apart from secular, not nature here and grace there: no dualism at all, because ‘EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.’

The Jewish faith.

This past week I read an essay by a Jewish Rabbi. Here’s what he, in part, had to say:

“Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the great twentieth-century theoretician of Jewish law (Halakhah) who died twenty-five years ago, addressed (some religious) questions within the context of his own tradition—though his answers are relevant to people of all faiths.

“On the one hand, explains Rabbi Soloveitchik, Judaism wants people to live full, natural lives, and the commandments pertaining to the physical side of existence—such as festive meals, conjugal relations, or offering first fruits—force people to involve themselves in the natural world. In this manner, one who follows the Halakhah can avoid the temptation of a purely ethereal, otherworldly spirituality, which leads to a dualistic affirmation of the spirit and rejection of the world.”
My comment, “That is my type of language: cuddle up to the earth, our natural habitat forever.”

“On the other hand, Halakhah demands that one actively sanctify one’s physical existence. This sanctification is attained through the observance of mitzvot (commandments), which affect every facet of a person’s worldly existence, from the moment of awakening until the moment of falling asleep.”
There again, my comment, “Sanctification means making holy: all of life is holy.”
“These mitzvot sanctify not just one’s personality (by asserting control over one’s physical drives), but one’s very actions and physicality. By infusing every area of life with meaning and purpose, the individual avoids a divided existence. The all-encompassing demands of the mitzvoth ensure that one will be conscious of God at all times. When one serves God by all means at one’s disposal, one consecrates one’s entire life to God, making one’s service of God integrated and complete.”
My comment, “Isn’t that beautiful!? It basically says that all of life is religion and must honor God.”
“What are the dangers of a religious posture that ignores the arena of one’s natural worldly existence, concentrating exclusively on religious feeling and contemplation? Rabbi Soloveitchik’s objections to such an approach can be grouped under five headings: This form of religiosity is otherworldly, unrealistic, purely subjective, overly individualistic, and undemocratic. Judaism, by contrast, believes that the world is “very good,” and frowns upon monasticism.
“With its pervasive psychological realism, Halakhah has recognized that ordinary mortals need to be jogged out of their spiritual lethargy, and that unless they are prodded to specific action, many will be quite content to neglect the religious life completely. Habitual observance ingrains moral and religious sensibility into the very fiber of the personality. It strengthens the inner power of spirit and, at a deeper level human emotion is profoundly affected by the very process of externalization. …
“The fact that it is more likely that actions will influence emotions than the reverse explains why Halakhah devotes its primary attention to actions. If religion does not provide man with an objective framework of action containing specific divine norms, it will—at best—be vague and transient. At worst, it will lead to the most horrible excesses.
“Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that it is not only undesirable for one to try to escape one’s corporeality, it is also impossible. Any ideology based on the premise that a human can become a purely spiritual creature is doomed to failure. By focusing solely on the person’s contemplative-spiritual side, it fails to acknowledge the strength of his or her inner drives and passions. Seeking to do the impossible, it fails to do what is necessary, namely, to restrain and channel one’s drives and use them positively. Freedom from the authority of specific norms, and from a sense of coercion in following them, leads to moral anarchy and finally degeneracy. By becoming concrete, objective, and specific, religion becomes strong enough to affect one’s entire life, to withstand temptation, to endure regardless of the individual’s mood, and to survive from generation to generation.
“A religion that focuses solely on inner experience may lead to an “extravagant religious individualism” that is not geared toward the formation of a community.”
My comment again: Going to heaven is based on pure individualism. This rabbi totally concurs with Bonhoeffer and Bavinck that formation of community is the aim of religion, as Bavinck unequivocally states, “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.

And as Rabbi Soloveitchik notes in The Halakhic Mind, “the force and effectiveness of religion grows commensurately with increasing participation of the entire society in the religious drama.

“Thus, in a normative religion such as Judaism, all individuals are equally able to approach God. A religion lacking this common basis of connection to God becomes stratified; as Rabbi Soloveitchik writes, it “gives rise to ecclesiastical tyranny, religious aristocracies, and charismatic personalities. And there is nothing that the Halakhah loathes and despises as much as the idea of cultic mediation or the choosing of individuals, on the basis of supernatural considerations, to be intercessors for the community.”

My comment: ”I sense here a hint to the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, with its historic hierarchy, which is not found in the Bible.”

HAS THE GOOD NEWS BECOME FAKE NEWS?

Yes, the traditional message of the church that Jesus saves our souls, and that we, upon death, go to heaven, is still the core of the Christian message in all denominations. It totally ignores God’s earth which he called ‘good’ repeatedly. The earth, as God’s Work of ART, is an extension of the Divine and as such is holy.

The REAL good news – which I call THE NEW-OLD NEWS is that God, the Earth and Humanity belong together, which will find its perfection in the New Creation to come: it is NEW, because the church strayed away from it: it is OLD because the Old Testament mentioned it repeatedly.

The NEW-OLD NEWS truth is foundational for both the Hebrew and the Christian Faith.

April 21 2018

WORLD WAR FOREVER.

Very few people will share my opinion that we have been engaged in a WORLD WAR against creation ever since Adam and Eve, a total war which I label WORLD WAR FOREVER. The reason that it started almost totally unnoticed, as a mere skirmish, is its innocuous beginning: no more than picking a fruit.
Nevertheless this conflict is now so intense that it threatens everybody and everything in the world and will lead to a total environmental collapse in a few years.

That WORLD WAR FOREVER was the immediate consequence of our disobedience, manifest in the growth of thorns and thistles sprouting everywhere – see Genesis 3: 18.

Why was and is this a global war? It is because all of creation, everything that existed including humanity, became defiled.

That’s the main reason why I see original sin in a different way: I perceive it as an attack against the totality of creation, symbolized in the first chapters of Genesis, by a fruit tree. There, I believe, the human pair plucked an apple or pear or peach or whatever, without asking the tree for permission.

That first act of defiance basically amounted to placing ourselves above creation. Rather than being its servant, we acted contrary to Jesus’ words, Mark 10: 45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That ‘many’ includes part of humanity and trees. That the Bible uses trees as examples indicates their importance in the Bible.

The Bible often refers to trees as symbols of perfection. In Psalm 1, for instance, an upright person is “like a tree planted by streams of water.”
And then there is the Tree of Life which indicates to me that the Tree represents Life.
When God gives the human pair a tour of the Garden of Eden he personally singles out some specific tree species, emphasizing first their beauty and then their usefulness. Later when the Satan follows the same route, he switches the order, mentioning first the utilitarian aspects of the fruit – good to eat – and as a second thought its aesthetic function.

Taking the fruit without permission marks the beginning of capitalism, which, from its very inception, has exploited the earth for human benefit, and so initiated WAR against creation, which has grown in intensity in exponential proportion to the growth of human numbers.

Jesus, growing up in a carpenter’s shop, was acquainted with wood from an early age. Luke 13: 7 shows Jesus’ practical bent, “So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?”
I think Jesus saw soil also as important, because he made us from soil, “Soil you are and to soil you will return”, is a famous quote.

Jesus, grown up with trees, died on one as well. His flesh and blood were hammered first into the tree before it reached the soil: forever blessing them both.

In the very last Bible chapter there is that beautifully poetic line: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations”, which to me suggests that the sin against trees is at the root of sin in the beginning, because the destruction of trees heralded the demise of the earth: the absence of trees signifies the death of creation, robs us of a cure.

Universal War.

My point is that our war against trees and earth is the real WORLD WAR that has raged from the very beginning of human history and find its culmination today, spelling the End of civilization as we know it: that war began with a tree, will end with the tree, while the Tree of Calvary stands at its very centre to restore it all.

Politicians and generals love wars because it detracts from problems at home. That may over-simplify the situation but looking at what is called World War I – 1914-18, even now people wonder why it ever happened. But it did take place and changed the world, another hasty step toward the End.

In CATASTROPHE 1914 EUROPE GOES TO WAR, the author, Max Hastings, writes in his recent book that “It is a conceit of our own times to suppose that we are obliged to live, and national leadership to make decisions, amid unprecedentedly rapid change. Yet between 1900 and 1914, technological, social and political advances swept Europe and America on a scale unknown in any such previous timespan, the blink of an eye in human experience. Einstein promulgated his special theory of relatively. Marie Curie isolated radium and Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first synthetic polymer. Telephones, gramophones, motor vehicles, cinema performances and electrified homes became commonplace among affluent people in the world’s richest societies. Mass circulation newspapers soared to unprecedented social influence and political power.”

True, World War II – 1939-45 – was necessary: Hitler was a force for evil, which had to be removed, an outgrowth of the World War I.
Wars usually are unnecessary. There was no reason for the USA and Britain to go to war with Iraq in 2003. There was no reason for Germany and France to fight in 1870, beyond newly formed Germany to prove its military power. There was no reason for war in 1914, beyond the murder of an archduke in Bosnia. As A.J.P Taylor said of 1914, “Nowhere was there a conscious determination to provoke a war. Statesmen miscalculated and became prisoners of their own weapons. The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight”.

Anno 2018 we again are in an era of immense change, with the prospect that the world of WORK will see tremendous upheaval as Robots and Artificial Intelligence start to deeply influence – and perhaps mostly eliminate – work for a large segment of society, especially the male portion.

Our family often walks on a nearby old railroad track, made more than a century ago, all hills and valleys made smooth by shovel and pick, requiring enormous muscle power to accomplish it.
To finish the Cross-Canada-Railway thousands of Chinese were imported. Today, thanks to Carbon Power, physical labor is no longer needed, as the use of OIL has given each of us 100 slaves 24/7. Slavery always is an abomination, as we are discovering.

When politicians run stuck – and today they do – they become aggressive and talk war. With lunatics increasingly in the driver’s seat, the world situation looks grim. Both the state of the economy and the environment are precarious. The explosion of global debt is beyond anything ever recorded: the global debt is now $237 Trillion, or $30,000 for every living being on earth, including the 3 billion people who live on less than $1,000 per year. That amount grew $21 Trillion globally over the last year, roughly 10%, while global growth was a mere 2-3%, an impossible situation. That simply means global bankruptcy and that very soon. What will be the consequences? The current monetary situation reminds me of Paul, the apostle, writing to his friend Timothy (1 Timothy 6: 10), “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

Behind this crazy borrowing of money, now such an immense amount that it never ever can be repaid, looms the human future, one of strife, conflict, war, revolution, of which the Syrian situation is but a prelude. If the weather so far in 2018 is any indication, we are in for a most perilous year there too. As yet missing are severe earthquakes. Be prepared!

Additional perils

Basically the Syrian war is a result of
(1) Climate Change, where drought and desertification has threatened the livelihood of millions of farmers in the Middle East. This is poised to become a world-wide phenomenon, either too much water or not enough, and
(2) religious, a conflict between Muslims: Sunni versus Shias, between the supporters of kings, democracies, and secular governments, versus the Sunni arm of Islam, and the Alawites, Iran and Iraq. As such, it is extended across the entire Middle East, encompassing Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies on one side and Iran and its Shiite allies including the Washington supported government in Baghdad, the Washington demonized government in Damascus and the Hezbollah faction of Lebanon, on the other.

In one form or another, this clash has been going on for 1300 years, and is centered on the Middle East, far, far away from Toronto, New York, Paris, Melbourne and London. Geographically it has nothing to do with us, but since OIL is buried there, and OIL lubricates our wasteful lifestyle, we have an intimate interest in the region. That’s why the USA Fifth Fleet is there: the Trillion Dollar deficit in the USA annual budget mainly comes from its military expenditure, not really priced in into the world Oil price.

Just as in the period 1900-14, now 100 years ago, the nations are armed to the teeth, with the immense difference that the weapons are a thousand times more lethal.

And then there is the computer scare: the next war may simply be a war of wits: who can neutralize the other party first by sabotaging the entire Internet network.

The new face of war.

That means that “war” may mean anything from a trade war to cyber-attacks to an actual shooting war. Due to that broad definition of war we must be prepared all the time, because the overriding war is THE WORLD WAR FOREVER.

Our precaution must include everything from the basics (food, water, fuel) to holding some cash out of the banks (in case they stop working for some reason), to having a certain amount of physical gold and/or silver bullion handy.

The base level preparations we should have in place regardless of what sort of war comes along:
• A minimum of three months of food for your family plus others. You decide how many others that might be. A couple of close friends? Half your church?
• Water filtration devices capable of filtering one gallon per person, per day, for three months. You may have to buy extra devices and/or filters to accomplish this. If you do not have access to your own water (well, nearby pond, lake or stream), then stored water sufficient to last several weeks.
• Cash out of the bank that can cover three months of living expenses.
• A bug out bag pre-loaded with your most valuable documents, irreplaceable pictures, medicines, perhaps a cross bow and arrows, some cash and some gold/silver bullion. As the natural disasters of late have shown, you never know when you might have to pick up and flee with little/no warning.
• All the basics in case of a nuclear exchange or a grid-down event that causes nuclear plants to overheat and explode as happened in Fukushima. Dosimeters/Geiger counters, plastic sheeting, tape, and disposable coveralls and facemasks.

I installed a frost-free hand pump on our well. It came in handy when the pole carrying the electricity from the highway to our house, snapped and we were without power for three days.

A different world.

Today we live in a different world, where World Wars are waged simultaneously: today WW FOREVER is intensifying, to the point where this ancient war, started aeons ago, is the immediate consequence of our disobedience.

It started modestly, beginning with the growth of thorns and thistles sprouting everywhere, but is now threatening our very existence thanks to ABRUPT AND SUDDEN Climate Change.

All other wars – cyber and economic, even nuclear – pale into insignificance compared to the dangers of Methane Hydrates exploding in the Arctic: once this happens, we have less than a decade of life left.

Be always prepared to meet your Maker because that ancient, but enduring WORLD WAR FOREVER can suddenly intensify to total destruction thanks to the melting ARCTIC.

Post Script.
My mistake: a mere zero!

Last week I made an error: the debt per person in the world is $31,000. But, based on GDP per person, it is $300,000 for us Westerners, with a Gross Domestic Product of more than $30,000 per person, while in poorer regions it is a less than $1,000 per person, still a considerable sum for the average dweller in much of China, India and Africa.

APRIL 14 2018

THE WORD OF GOD.

When preachers talk about THE WORD OF GOD or THE WORD OF THE LORD, they mean THE BIBLE: Period. When common folk refer to the Bible, and some do occasionally, they always mean THE WRITTEN WORD.

A few weeks ago I read a magazine published by a Christian post-secondary institution. In it the author described the rationale for such an establishment, basing his reasoning solely on the Bible, honoring the maxim, SOLA SCRIPTURE, Scripture Alone.

A few months before, at that same college, I attended a lecture on the REFORMATION. There too the speaker limited revelation to the Bible, frequently mentioning the SOLA SCRIPTURA formula.

It is my considerate opinion that all churches – and I don’t know of any exceptions – have the wrong idea of THE WORD OF THE LORD. The same applies to Christians centres of learning, with the likely exception of the Toronto-based Institute for Christian Scholarship (ICS): they all see the Bible as their raison d’?tre only.

Yet these Reformed churches and Christian learning centres – and all our five kids attended Christian Schools – all state that they adhere to the Three Forms of Unity, (1) The Heidelberg Catechism, (2) The Canons of Dordt, and (3) The Belgic Confession.

The latter categorically states that we know God FIRST by his creation, making creation God’s PRIMARY OR DIRECT WORD, because it solely is God’s doing: no human involvement at all.

That makes the Scriptures God’s SECONDARY OR INDIRECT word, because the Bible as we know it came into being 1700 years ago. Yes, the Bible is an inspired human book, whose contents were decided in the Church Council in Nicaea in 324 by majority vote. The Song of Songs barely made it, and so did Esther, while the Gospel of Thomas was excluded.

Here’s what the Belgic Confession says about knowing God:
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.

Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory
and for our salvation.

If I see this correctly then the task of the church is twofold: it must strive to know God by
(1) instructing its adherents to learn about creation, and making them closely look at its greatness and harmonious design, and doing everything possible to safeguard Creation, because it is HOLY. Ideally a preacher to have a deep interest in nature, one who takes John 3: 16 seriously – as we all should.
(2) Getting to know God requires connecting Creation with what the Bible teaches: the two are like an ideally married pair, like the engine and its wheels, like the horse and the wagon.
Psalm 119: 105 combines the two when it states that “Your (written) Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path in the Created Word.” In other words, the Bible ought to shed light on our daily routine of life, in all its creaturely manifestations.

Calvin

We do well to listen to Calvin who was a wise man and was never tired of pointing out that in the bible God condescended to our limitations. The Word of God – the Bible – was conditioned to the historical circumstances to which it was uttered.

Take the creation story: it was written for an agrarian tribe with no knowledge of the intricacies of evolution and the slow natural changes due to different climate and habitat. The creation story is an example of what Calvin called ‘balbative’ or ‘baby talk’, which adapted immensely complexed processes to the mentality of the uneducated people – now, it seems comprising the vast majority of church goers.

In my opinion the Bible basically tells us how God created the cosmos, how, once in our possession, we sold it to God’s arch enemy, and how Christ, with his death, bought it back.
Creation points to God’s greatness and infinite wisdom, but it is absurd to expect Scripture to teach scientific fact: anybody who wants to learn about astronomy should look up, way up.

The Belgic Confession is correct: the natural world is God’s first revelation. Answers to such controversial matters as homosexuality and same-sex marriage, cannot be found in the Bible. For that we have to go to God’s animal world, where we can observe homosexuality among apes, for instance. When it exists there, then we can conclude that the same is true among humans and thus a natural occurrence.

What the Bible especially tells us is that we must love creation and its inhabitants unconditionally. Where Creation is – or was – perfect, the Bible is not. The very last verses in the New Testament point to the persons who transcribed the original documents, and warn them not to add or subtract anything. Of course humans being humans did that, made errors and spouted opinions – such as Paul did recommending wine for a stomach ailment and for women never to speak up – that make no sense today. Based on the Bible the Roman Catholic Church still sees women as second class creatures.

Many of those who see the Bible as literally perfect, not a word out of place, are yet Muslim haters, contradicting Leviticus 19: 33-34, “When aliens live with you in the land do not mistreat them…. They must be treated as the native born. Love them as yourselves.”
Of course these aliens had different habits. Of course these people were religious, and of course had practises that would be considered horrible today, yet the Bible preaches tolerance.

The Reformation was a good thing, but is also opened the door to many interpretations, so that we have scores of different denominations, all claiming to know exactly what the Bible teaches us.

The Bible urges us to get WISDOM. Proverb 4: 7 tells us that, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”

Getting wisdom is the wisest thing we can do! Of course, studying science is not the same as gaining wisdom: but both
require study, discernment, and hard work.

Centuries ago, when Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) observed creation, he felt that science was ‘more divine than human’. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who expanded on Copernicus’ findings was silenced by the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Even today there still is a strong anti-intellectual tendency in much of religion, especially among the so-called Christian-Right.

This anti-science mentality has come to a point where the earth is seen as evil, influenced by Gnosticism, a pagan practise severely condemned, especially in the letters of John.

Bonhoeffer categorically stated that God, Humanity and the Earth form an unbreakable bond. J.H. Bavinck wrote in the same vein, maintaining that redemption of creation and personal salvation are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have one without the other! You can’t say you love Jesus while consciously polluting the earth he created. (Colossians 1: 15-20).

In his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, “a radical kingdom vision”, Bavinck writes,
“In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
“This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation.”

This simply means that creation is HOLY.

The Bible affirms the two-pronged concept of THE WORD: John 1: 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word (LOGOS), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Psalm 33: 9 affirms that, “For he spoke – said THE WORD – and it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm.”
These texts do not refer to the Scriptures – it did not exist – but to God’s Creating Word.

Jesus died on the cross to buy back – redeem – creation that WE sold to God’s adversary. Jesus also saves us, but his primary goal was to restore Creation: John 3: 16 makes that abundantly clear. Only those who love Creation as Jesus did, have eternal life.

Dr. Barry Commoner, American biologist and educator, is an example of divine insight. He taught at Washington University and Queens College and came to the same conclusion as Bonhoeffer and Bavinck.

By studying creation Commoner fashioned Four Laws of ECOLOGY.

1. Everything Is Connected To Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. Humans and other species are connected/dependent on other species. With this in mind it becomes hard to practice anything other than compassion and harmlessness.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature, and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown. Everything, such as wood smoke, nuclear waste, carbon emissions, etc., must go somewhere.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, likely to be detrimental to that system.” The Creation, one can argue, has an intelligence, and to tinker with that “unintellectually” we get global warming pollution, etc.

4. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

Chaos everywhere.

Today nature/creation is disintegrating, and, since everything is connected to everything else, this affects all of life.

The election of Trump is merely a symptom. Sociological CHAOS made this happen: the rich too rich, the poor too poor. This week I am reading FIRE AND FURY by Michael Wolff, and am astounded by the ignorance of the current US President, who is nevertheless the champion of some 40 percent of the US electorate.

It comes as no surprise that the chaos in God’s Created Word is reflected in the chaos in the political field and in the economic sphere.
What we observe today is the waning of the nation state. The state is caught in an impossible situation, expected to be everything for everybody: healthcare, life-time pensions, total security.

Once the debt-trap springs, ($237 Trillion world-wide debt divided by 7.5 Billion people equals $300,000 for every living person on the Globe!!) most people are caught without reserves: riots will be the result, as Trump’s FORTY percent will rebel: they have the guns.

THAT COLOSSAL DEBT WILL DO US IN.

When the recession hits, the rise in unemployment will further reduce personal savings and the ability to consume. It will further strain an already burdened government welfare system as less and less people will pay taxes while there is a swelling pool of aging baby-boomers dependent on government assistance in pensions and medical costs.

History is rushing to its END. The good news – and it is GOOD NEWS for those who honor BOTH WORDS- is that the next “crisis,” will be the “great reset” which will see the COMING OF THE KINGDOM, because all possible disasters will converge: Nuclear War, Climate Change, Pandemic, Earthquakes, just to name a few because ‘everything is connected to everything else’.

It is striking that Revelation 21: 22 specifically mentions the absence of a place of worship, “I did not see a temple in the City”, the New Jerusalem, the restored Garden of Eden.
No temple means no church; no temple means no Bible. God’s Kingdom only includes THE EARTH, fully restored to its pristine state.

Treasure the EARTH as your dearest possession, because only the CREATED WORD will prevail.