Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

MAY 10 2015

TIPPING POINTS

May 10 1940 is a date I will never forget. Seventy five years ago on that day I woke up with the news that Germany had invaded my country, the Netherlands. The weather was fabulous and, as an almost 12 year old, I remember sitting on a little brick wall in front of a large open space, watching the contours of the inner city, while a single German plane hummed overhead. The next day my younger brother and I walked to the Great Market of Groningen – 45 km from Germany – watching the victorious Hitler army entering, fully mechanized, trucks full of fierce-looking soldiers and lots of motorcycles with attached side-seats: already a military brass band was playing up-beat marches in the center of the square.
The Netherlands- and Europe- was never the same after that: a true tipping point. So, what is a Tipping Point? It is “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.”
Why do I broach this topic at this time? Frankly I feel in my bones that we are on the verge of momentous changes in society. I know that Malcolm Gladwell has written a book with the title of Tipping Points. I have not read it, but looked up a summary, and that was enough. My approach will be completely different.
There are some famous sayings referring to Tipping Points such as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and “the last drop that makes the cup run over”. That indicates that Tipping Points are unpredictable and usually caused by very small and unexpected events. This makes me wonder whether my prediction that a huge global tipping point is at hand, is wrong. On the other hand, I trust my gut feelings.

I chose the topic because of what I wrote in my daily journal based on a bible text. On April 28 the text was Jeremiah 31: 33, where it says that “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”
Here is what came out of my pen: “To have the law in our minds and written on our hearts is not something that comes out of the blue, but has a long time in the making: it is the end result of something that has accumulated over the years. One of the blessings of growing older is that we can gain more knowledge which may lead to wisdom, but only when there is a willingness to listen to God’s voice and an openness to see his creation as holy. To me this suggests that somewhere in my life there was a tipping point – call it conversion- which came unannounced but now keeps on arriving as I learn more and more.” So far my Journal entry.
Part of my ‘conversion’ involved a new lifestyle, not only a proper diet and a work-out regime, but also peace of mind and loving myself, my fellow humans as well as all of creation. The Greek word for ‘conversion’ is ‘metanoia’ which literally means “a turn-around of one’s mind,” thus a drastic change. And, indeed, over the years my new life has involved swearing off smoking, starting a running regime, becoming a vegetarian, moving from the city to a rural place and building an energy efficient home, heated with wood and equipped with solar panels. I know ‘conversion’ is different for each person. We all have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because having the law of the Lord written on our hearts and minds is a matter of many facets.

A Biblical Approach

The Bible, the Old and New Testament, contains many tipping points. One of them starts smack in the beginning. In Genesis 4: 14 Cain, after killing his brother Abel, complains to God that “whoever finds me will kill me.” That is a clear indication that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings. I think that they were taken by God out of the existing human race, at a certain tipping point: that point being the time where humanity was at a crucial juncture, where they were about to do irreparable damage to creation. So God singled out Adam and Eve to make a significant change, placed his law in their hearts and put them in a pristine park where they could learn how to live eternally, in a steady state – gatherer- economy without damaging creation. We know it did not work out.
The next tipping point came when Noah was chosen to make a new beginning. Again the old, old story: people forgetting about the God-Creator and out to enrich themselves at the expense of others and creation. So Noah was chosen to start a new beginning.
The Tower of Babel was another example how an altogether new society came into being, one that led to world-wide emigration, fomenting new ideas and new forms of art. We should not underestimate the changes wrought by the emerging of new languages and new culture. We now experience the opposite as dying languages spell the death of old cultures. The inroads of the English language as the Lingua Franca, as the expression goes, means cultural stagnation, a tipping point toward death. Somewhere in the Bible Jesus mentions that in the House of the Lord are many mansions. That to me suggests great cultural variety. The Lord loves immense choice and fecundity in everything. Every snowflake has its own pattern: every human being is unique. Our secular world wants uniformity, something we have to fight: Long live diversity, “Vive la difference”, as the French say. The Tower of Babel Tipping Point back with us in the form of racial strife everywhere.
The Exodus was another tipping point. When Moses led the expanded clan of Jacob – also named Israel – out of Egypt a new nation was born which, to this day influences the course of history in very significant ways. For this people which God called his own and out of which his Son would come forth – yes, Jesus was 100 percent Jew – the temple was their life, because God ruled them directly – something we call a ‘theocracy’. However, the notion that they were God’s people gave the Israelites a feeling of superiority, making them believe that nothing could possible end this state of affairs. After all, the Ark was God’s very symbol, placed in a temple room accessible only once a year by the High Priest. How could the temple possibly be taken! Yet it happened. In the year 587 Before Christ the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem was a dramatic tipping point. Today we can compare it to 9/11, the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 where too the USA encountered a crisis from which it will never recover.

The Central Tipping Point

The central tipping point in the history of the world is the coming of Jesus, his death on the cross, and his resurrection. Without His sacrifice there would never be hope for a renewed world and the return of the redeemed of the Lord. When he died the curtain in the Temple ripped from top to bottom, spelling the end of Judaism and the beginning of the Gospel for all people.
We are now in the Last of Days. All other tipping points after Jesus must be seen in that light. The year 313 was one of them, when Christianity became the official religion in the Western World with Emperor Constantine adopting the New Way. Another came when, in 1517, Luther on October 31 pinned his 95 theses on the church in Wittenberg and so openly challenged the degenerated ecclesiastical regime of that day.

Is the election of Pope Frances a tipping point? Good question. His priority to go to bat for the poor and to agitate against Climate Change has upset the billionaires who now refuse to donate big bucks to such projects as the $175 million renovation of the New York City cathedral, annoying the local cardinal who prefers a monument in his honor. Remember the definition of Tipping Point: “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.” The Pope is influential but when it comes to changing the minds of people, he is powerless. So there is no tipping point there.
We now await with a degree of trepidation the future Tipping Points, heralding the Second Coming. There are several minor ones waiting to happen. Water is one of them.

By now, just about everyone in California and elsewhere knows that it requires a gallon of water to grow a single almond, or that much of the green stuff we eat and the fruit we consume comes from the Sunshine state where no water means no food. Water certainly has the potential for an enormous Tipping Point, but so has the dying off of bees. Remember Peak Oil? It’s still very much with us today and will soon also become a real threat to the world’s well-being. Should I mention Climate Change? Loss of top soil? A pandemic? Global Debt?

The Tipping Point of All Tipping Points is soon to come: the Second Coming of Jesus. Handel in his oratorio “The Messiah” has an aria which has been taken directly from Malachi 3: 2, “But who can endure the Day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap…..Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.”
Revelation 18 specifically points to today’s capitalists: (verse 11) “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her (the source of their ill-gotten gains) because no one buys their cars and ATVs and Apple watches, and Gucci bags and Rolexes……….. they will weep (verse 19) in one hour the economic system has been brought to ruin.”

In 1972 I had a personal Tipping Point reading “Limits to Growth” by Dennis Meadows. Recently that same author was interviewed by the German weekly Der Spiegel.

Der SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Meadows, 40 years ago you published “The Limits to Growth” together with your wife and colleagues, a book that made you the intellectual father of the environmental movement. The core message of the book remains valid today: Humanity is ruthlessly exploiting global resources and is on the way to destroying itself. Do you believe that the ultimate collapse of our economic system can still be avoided?

Meadows: The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry. Their political and financial power is so great that they can prevent change. It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.

My comments: He says that Capitalism has a momentum of its own that is unstoppable, with the inevitable result of collapse.
Meadows continued:
You see, there are two kinds of big problems. One I call universal problems, the other I call global problems. They both affect everybody. The difference is: Universal problems can be solved by small groups of people because they don’t have to wait for others. You can clean up the air in Hanover without having to wait for Beijing or Mexico City to do the same.

Global problems, however, cannot be solved in a single place. There’s no way Hanover can solve climate change or stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For that to happen, people in China, the US and Russia must also do something. But on the global problems, we will make no progress.

With a growing population and a growing average per capita consumption, both energy demand and pollution keep rising, until a crisis occurs. We may have good intentions, but we utterly fail when it comes to solutions. And if we fail with regards to energy, we fail when it comes to the climate and our broader living environment, also known as the earth.

All this means that the return of the Lord will be preceded by immense disasters, the likes of which the world never experienced before. Even though the Day and the Hour are not known, Jesus told us to be on the alert because the signs are all too evident.

MAY 3 2015

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” – Churchill

Many people now are beginning to consider moving away from California, Nevada, Arizona and other drought-stricken regions. But where should they go? Many people now are beginning to consider moving away from ocean front as hurricanes, typhoons, weather in general will make it extremely hazardous to live near large water bodies. But where should they go? Many people now are beginning to consider moving away from fire-prone forested areas. But where should they go?
We are entering a period of serious consequences. The Global Warming of the atmosphere increases the number of times temperatures reach extreme levels which, in turn, evaporates more water from the oceans. It is from this hotter, wetter background that extreme weather events emerge. To make it worse heat waves and prolonged rainy periods, hurricanes and tornadoes will also occur more often anywhere and everywhere.
Tens of millions of people will be affected: Thirty Eight Million live in California alone and many other millions in Arizona with Phoenix and Nevada with Las Vegas, all situated in deserts, all artificially sustained by disappearing water. Perhaps California can turn to the ocean and desalinate the Pacific, but only at enormous cost in both money and pollution. Already monthly water bills there run into hundreds of dollars. Perhaps the BIG ONE will hit the West Coast as it did in 1906 near San Francisco which killed 3000 and destroyed almost the entire city. When that does, the earthquake will rupture the water supply system and deprive untold millions of one of life’s most needed resources.

And then there is the problem of rising oceans with the Cities of New York, Boston and the entire Florida Peninsula at risk. Add another 50 million there. And that is only in North America. The Netherlands is almost entirely below sea level.
We have entered a phase in the life of the world were anything is possible. Millions of people around the globe have already been on the move: forced by war, by drought, by desertification, by just too many people crowded out by tired soil, by relentless sunshine, by dry wells, by greedy landlords. James Lovelock, in his book The Revenge of Gaia writes: “We have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human time scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up.”

How long can we still exist in a world where, in order to feed ourselves and to equip us with our toys and weapons we have already abused close to 50 percent of the Earth’s surface? Mother Theresa, that saintly woman, in 1988 said, “Why should we care about the Earth when our duty is to the poor and the sick among us. God will take care of the Earth.” That sounds pretty pious, and, yes, Jesus gives us that very same advice (see Matthew 25: 35-40). But that was at a time when the entire world had less than 300 million people, a number the earth could easily support. Now we have 25 times that many, and in the Earth God gave us – this Holy place- our greed is causing poverty and sickness, is fostering famine and desertification. That’s why our Christian priority must change: yes we must help the environmental refugees, now numbering in the millions, but our first commitment is to remedy the cause, is fighting Climate Change. This year 2015 will be a decisive one for the world. From every direction perils threaten: economic, ecological, environmental, and electoral.
While I am writing this tears spring in my eyes. My heart is heavy. This year we will see another UN sponsored meeting on Climate Change: COP 21. The “21” stands for the number of previous ‘climate’ meetings, held somewhere in the world. In the year 2000 I was present at the COP 11 in The Hague. It was possible for me to attend this 10 day long gathering because one of my brother lives in that beautiful city where 40 percent within its boundaries is mature forests. To me COP 21 (the acronym stands of Conference of the Parties) conveys the age of maturity. Having reached the age of ‘21’ makes persons totally liable for their actions, because it indicates a coming of age and ability to embrace responsibility. If the previous 20 meetings are any indication – they accomplished little or nothing – then Number 21 might well be the last one. Why meet when nothing concrete happens? The airlines benefit and hotels and the food caterers as thousands of delegates from 198 countries gather to debate, pose for the TV cameras for the benefit of the home crowd, and make empty promises. The situation boils down to dollars and cents: economic growth is required to pay for the trillions of debts contracted to pay for pensions and health benefits in an aging world. The basic problem is that infinite growth is not possible in our finite earth.

The world faces painful dilemmas. Carbon-based energy is the culprit. We as a civilization are all too much like somebody addicted to a drug that will kill us if continued and kill us also if suddenly withdrawn.

Here is what the French Foreign minister writes. He will chair the next UN COP 21 in Paris.
“The climate has always posed threats to security. Climate disruption upsets the full range of economic and social equilibrium — and it therefore threatens countries’ internal security.
“In France, for example, historians have shown that disastrous weather in 1788 caused the food crisis that contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution. More recently, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc that led to disturbances in civil order and the deployment of the army on American soil.
“Beyond borders, climate change can stoke international conflict over the control of vital and increasingly scarce resources — particularly water. Examples of this include the tensions among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Nile and its tributaries, between Israel and its neighbors over the Jordan River basin, and among Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates.”

We know the consequences. We refuse to face them.
We are entering a period of consequences.
Matthew 24 in the New Testament warns us that the last of days will see (verse 7) “famines and earthquakes in various places. Verse 8:”all these are the beginning of birth pains,” signaling the onset of the New Creation.
This past week I saw a striking picture in the Guardian: A Buddha image amid the broken bricks from a collapsed temple in Nepal where thousands were killed. This for me was a symbol of the crumbling of religion everywhere.

I am old enough to remember the years leading up to World War II. Everybody knew that something ominous was opening up, but ‘appeasement’ was the word most in vogue. Chamberlain, returning from a trip to Hitler in his retreat somewhere in Bavaria uttered the famous words, ”Peace in our time.” That was in 1939. We know what happened: this was followed by a war which claimed 60 million lives.
Today we are in a similar situation, except that the stakes are immensely higher: the lives of the entire 7+ billion world population are at stake.

The earth is fighting back and, believe me, the earth will come out the winner. Again the Socrates dualism is rearing its devastating head. The earth is not pure dead matter. The Psalms repeatedly picture our world as a living entity: mountains leaping like calves, trees clapping their hands, hills jumping for joy. Romans 8 features the most human-like comparison: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (verse 22). I love that sentence.

One of the most telling Bible passages is Isaiah 24, “The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up and very few are left.”

What does it mean: the everlasting covenant?
It all goes back to the beginning, to Genesis 9. There are these marvelous words, “I now establish a covenant with you…. And with every living creature that was with you, the birds – now down by 50 percent – the livestock – now imprisoned as so much poisoned meat – all the wild animals – also down by half or more – every living creatures on earth – yes, fish, whales, polar bears, you name them.
A covenant is a treaty between people of equal status such as in marriage. In this creational covenant God treats us as equals, giving us charge of the Living Earth, but we have broken the covenant: that’s why matters are backfiring on us: Climate Change is the result, one of the many disasters we face.
In the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, God laid out how we as ‘owners’ of the world should live. Yes, I say ‘owners’. Psalm 115:16 explicitly says that “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to humanity.” By granting full possession of the earth the Lord laid down a few ground rules. A small example found in Deuteronomy 20: 19, involving trees. “When you lay siege to a city… do not destroy its trees.” Trees are life. I simply love Revelation 22, which starts with the amazing words: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” I have read somewhere that we, in North America, enjoying the highest standard of living, need 4500 trees each to provide us with oxygen. People elsewhere need much less. To combat Climate Change we need trees, and, I am sorry to say, my country Canada, has the highest tree-killing record in the world, all in the name of Economic Growth. Lack of trees causes erosion, which forces people to relocate. Just last month saw almost a Thousand Africans drowned in the Mediterranean Sea: looking for greener pastures.

The word ‘Mediterranean’ means ‘in the Center of the Earth’. The entire history of the world has taken place around the shores of that sea. History started there. Will it also end there? The drownings there are a symbol of a world that is disappearing. Europeans have exploited the African side of that region, have for the longest time seen its black population as inferior, equal to animals, and treated them as such and their lands as well. Now these people are desperate: we have brought them the Western religion, destroyed their tribal cohesion, disrupted their sustainable way of life and now they come knocking at Fortress Europe, asking for repayment which we are denying because in spite of its riches, the European Union with 500 million people has never been more indebted than today.
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

Just as the fallen Buddha image in Nepal indicates, we have abandoned our Gods and have fallen for worthless idols that are out to destroy us. The Bible is pretty outspoken on this score. The Five books of Moses describe the Flood, because of the godlessness then. It tells the story of Sodom and Gomorra, destroyed because of its wickedness. It relates the disappearance of the 10 tribes of Israel, and later the exile of the 2 remaining tribes because they abandoned the Covenant. Both Matthew 24 and Revelation outline the ultimate destruction, already now evident everywhere.
The real climate that has to change is the climate in our hearts. That is something the COP 21 will not deal with. COP stands for the Conference of the Parties. All these parties, 198 of them, lack a unified view. The rich will want to retain their riches – the reason why Europe doesn’t want desperate Africans. The poor want to emulate the wasteful Western life. Stalemate is the predictable outcome. COP should stand for Christians Opposing Pollution. Polluting is the misuse of the name of the Lord, and, says Exodus 20: 7: “the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

Beware: we are entering the period of consequences.

APRIL 26 2015

Who is more influential in the church: Jesus or Socrates?

When Jesus died he exclaimed: “My God, my God why have you left me all by myself?” Jesus died in agony, surrendering himself to his Father: “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
When Socrates died, he welcomed death. In The Trials of Socrates, Plato depicts Socrates’ last moments before his death. Plato quotes Socrates: “I’ll no longer stay put, but will take my leave of you and depart for certain happy conditions of the blessed”.
Socrates is certain that he’s on the way to heaven, and even says a prayer to the gods after drinking the poison: “‘One is, I suppose, permitted to utter a prayer to the gods – and one should do so – that one’s journey from this world to the next will prove fortunate”. Socrates died to celebrate death.
Jesus saw the human body as holy, formed from the clay of the earth. Upon Jesus’ second coming his followers will be raised in perfection: no more death or disease. Jesus died to defeat death.

Both men died after a long legal process. Socrates was condemned to die because he was a bad influence on the Greek youth. Jesus died because he was a bad influence on the church of his day. Socrates gladly drank the chalice filled with deadly poison, seeing death as better than life. Jesus saw death as the ultimate enemy.
Both did not leave any personal writings: Socrates’ teachings were meticulously recorded by Plato, while we know about Jesus from the four Gospels.
Since Christianity became a global phenomenon, who has been more influential: Jesus or Socrates?
Sad to say: The Greek philosophy of heaven as the Christian’s eternal habitat has triumphed, thanks to Socrates. That’s the reason why most of Christianity – almost every expression whether that is Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, or every other denominational wing – has suffered from a form of dualism, splitting body from soul, sacred from secular. Originating in Socrates, as recorded by Plato, many ideas which were long regarded and accepted as the pure unadulterated essence of Christianity, such as the doctrine of an immortal soul, a self-denying attitude towards matters involving our body, and the view of sexuality as in itself ‘the sinful lust of the flesh’, are deeply rooted in Platonic thought.

It is evident everywhere. Look no further than the hymns we sing in church: in most of them there is a ‘heaven’ reference, and salvation only applies to men and women, never to ‘nature’, the whole creation, as plainly outlined in Romans 8: 22. I like the current Pope, but when I see him in his white robe, escorted by all male companions also immaculately dressed in identical pure habits, I see dualism at work: the church separate from society, as the priestly class represents God and his angels. Just as God is supposed to be sexless so these men are supposed to be that too. We know that reality is different. We cannot separate sex from life: denying the presence of sex is akin to denying creation.

It is no different in the Protestant wing. There may not be these elaborate ceremonial customs – still very much alive in the Anglican-Episcopalian Church and the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches – but the essence of the message has not changed, in spite of the Reformation, 500 years ago in 1517. There still is the Sunday session in the ‘sanctuary’, centering on the sermon while the rest of the week is devoted to ‘secular’ pursuits. Public education is seen as the national shrine where God is banned and consumerism is dominant. No wonder ‘religion’ is no longer popular as the relevance of Jesus has faded while the star of Socrates is soaring. If Christianity wanted to regain its prominence then it has to make it a 365/7/24 affair, centering on ‘creation’ the cosmos God loved so much.
It is evident that every theology depends for its public expression on some sort of philosophy. Dr. Robert Heilbroner in his book The Worldly Philosophers quotes John Maynard Keynes: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” What applies to economic matters is also true for theology. Most of what is generally considered Christianity is deeply influenced by dualistic Greek – Platonic – philosophy. The philosophy which shapes my Christian thinking is based on a line of thought by Abraham Kuyper who said, as Dr. Evan Runner put it: “All of life is Religion.” No dualism allowed.

Yes, “All of life is religion”.

It is the basis of my life. Nothing we experience falls outside our field of faith. When I run – which I do three times each week ‘religiously’ – I do so because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. When I grow food – which I do prayerfully – I do so because the soil on which I rely is holy soil. I see all my actions as religious.

Not so in most of North American churches, thanks to Socrates and Plato. There Gnosticism rules. The word comes from the Greek word ‘gnosis’ – no surprise as Socrates was Greek – which means “knowledge”. Harold Bloom, America’s foremost literary critic in his book The American Religion writes “The United States of America is a religion-mad and religion-soaked country. We think we are Christian. But we are not. So creedless is the American Religion that it needs to be tracked by particles rather than by principles. The American Religion is post-Christian, despite its protestations, and even that it has begun to abandon Protestant modes of thought and feeling.”
Bloom argues in his book that the American Religion, which is so prevalent among us, masks itself as Protestant Christianity, yet has ceased to be Christian. It has kept the figure of Jesus, a very solitary and personal American Jesus, who is also the resurrected Jesus rather than the crucified Jesus or the Jesus who ascended again to the Father. He quotes President Eisenhower notorious for remarking that the United States was and had to be a religious nation, and that he didn’t care what religious it had, as long as it had one. Bloom takes a sadder view: “we are, alas, the most religious of countries, and finally only varieties of the American Religion will flourish among us, whether its devotees call it Mormonism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, or what-ever-you-will. And the American Religion, for its two centuries of existence, seems to me irretrievably Gnostic. It is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the-self, and the knowledge (gnosis) leads to freedom, a dangerous and doom-eager freedom, from nature, time, history, and community.”

The Late, Great Planet Earth

The Late, Great Planet Earth is a good example of American religious thinking. It outsold the Bible there. Dualistic America sees the earth, God’s pride and joy, as evil. No wonder Republican politicians, the Christian people’s representatives, have no regard for the environment and pursue warlike policies, anything that will destroy the earth and bring on Armageddon. The churches there are consumed by a premillennial eschatology. They read in the Bible that the Rapture will take place when all believers will be taken up into heaven before the great tribulation and Christ Second Coming, to establish a Thousand Year Kingdom on Earth.
The word “rapture” comes from the Latin verb ‘rapio’ which means ‘to seize in order to keep’. (Rapio, rapere, rapui, raptum= I have been seized). Our word ‘rape’ has the same root. Supposedly ‘rapture’ means that God will seize people in order to keep them in his kingdom.

Lindsey focused on key passages in the book of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, and suggested that the foundation of modern Israel in 1948 plays a pivotal event in some conservative evangelical schools of eschatological thought. He also cited that an increase in the frequency of famines, wars, and earthquakes would lead up to the end of the world.
Although Lindsey did not claim to know the dates of future events with any certainty, he suggested that Matthew 24: 32-34 indicated that Jesus’ return might be within “one generation” of the rebirth of the state of Israel, and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple. In his 1980 work The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, Lindsey predicted that “the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it”. Well, we are still here.

That’s why America’s supports Israel

America’s support for Israel originates with Hal Lindsey’s book. Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide.
It is inconceivable that a substantial portion of Americans would want to support any other foreign country even where doing so was contrary to U.S. interests. Only Israel commands anything near that level of devoted, self-sacrificing fervor on the part of Americans. That’s why it is certainly worth asking what accounts for this bizarre aspect of American public opinion. The answer is that all this stems from wholehearted support for the ideology of Socrates. It has nothing to do with Jesus.
There are other, even more deeply penetrating consequences of the Socrates allegiance. Isaiah (Chapter 24) foretold this long ago:
The world languishes and withers, the heavens languishes together with the earth, the earth lies polluted under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.

René Descartes, a devout Roman Catholic scientist, famous for Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) wrote that “The human destiny is to be ‘masters and possessions of nature’. Animals have no feelings, could be whipped, skinned and amputated because they lacked souls.”
It seems that environmental degradation, as foretold by Isaiah, leaves many Christians indifferent. We see this now everywhere in the world, no wonder chickens and turkeys raised in inhuman conditions contract diseases and have to be slaughtered by the millions, with the possible consequences that these illnesses will be conveyed to humans.

The result of this two-minded belief sees the human being as made in God’s image while nature is different, a supporting cast for the human drama, to be exploited. Nature is no more than the sum of its parts and can be reduced to those parts for human use dominating creation.
So who is more important in the church: Jesus or Socrates?
Socrates wins hands down.

Jesus lamented whether he would find faith on earth upon his return. Of course faith will never disappear. However the prevailing faith in Christian churches is faith in the great Socrates because he was the very person who propagated the ‘heaven’ belief. On the contrary, Jesus and his teaching centering on ‘love God – that is his creation – and your neighbor as yourself’, finds very few takers in the church.
The reigning forces in society, the Capitalistic Enterprises, are making it almost impossible to “love yourself’, let alone creation and one’s neighbors. By force of the monopolistic grip on the food industry, the transportation section, the entertainment arm, all forces inspired by the dualistic Platonic religion, it is almost impossible to free ourselves from these satanically inspired influences. It takes a good deal of insight, action and especially prayer to free ourselves there.
Jesus has promised us freedom. John 8: 33, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus, unpopular as he is – witness the decline in church attendance – is nevertheless the only One who can free us from being enslaved to the Spirits of the Age. Only when we see LIFE as a unity, humanity one with land, sea, air, animal, plants, is permanent life possible. Socrates, in spite of his almost universal support, represents the forces of Dualism, separating us from the Truth and thus enslaving us, the very source of all ills, splitting us from the Source of Life.
Jesus died so that the eternal church would live. Socrates died and, by his death, corrupted creation to the core and robbed the church of its essence, the unity in
Christ and the freedom that comes with it.

Next week” We ain’t seen nothing yet.”

IS GOD DEAD?

APRIL 19 2015

Let me assure you right away that God is not dead. Can I say that he has retired? Yes, that makes more sense: he has removed himself from the scene in an ultimate act of humility to make place for Jesus. How else could Jesus inherit the Kingdom and we become co-heirs with him? Only at the death of the testator or with an assumption of power of attorney by another person can a transfer from one generation to the next be accomplished. Colossians 1: 15-20 is the key to understanding this drastic change. It bears repeating.
“He, Christ, is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by him all things were created……..He is before all things and in him and by him all things hold together…… For God has pleased to have all fullness dwell in him and reconcile to him all things on earth or in heaven by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross”.
There you have it: everything imaginable is now in the hands of Jesus.

Why did Jesus come and God disappear?

Paul in this key-passage of the Bible tells us that Christ, by making the ultimate sacrifice, death on the cross, has now taken God’s place. For all practical purposes an orderly succession has taken place, from father to son. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world had as its sole intention the restoration of the Kingdom, the new heaven and earth. We need a new world because the present one is so damaged by us that it needs a complete overhaul. Christ’s suffering and death, indeed the entire order of redemption, had no other pur¬pose than the realization of that Kingdom. The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering: its entire focus is aimed at the unique, powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom that was lost in the Garden of Eden.
Here is another truth: there is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal-vation is of necessity universal. We are saved as members of the Kingdom, as future occupants of the New Creation. “Seek first the Kingdom”, Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount. Our goal in 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. Just as Adam’s sin shattered the world, so it will again become an orga¬nic unity in Christ. Christ is not only the priest who for us has restored the way back to communion with God, but he is also the King who estab¬lishes his saving rule over this fallen world. When he appears, says John the Baptizer, “the Kingdom of heaven is near” (Matt. 3:2), and when Jesus himself starts to preach the gospel in Judea and Galilee, his initial message is none other than the single proclamation that “the Kingdom of heaven is near” (Matt. 4:17). Through his suffering and death Christ rein¬states the Kingdom and unites in him all things under God’s rule. When he heals the sick, raises the dead and rebukes the demons, he demonstrates that all the strands of world his¬tory converge in him.
That kingdom comprises everything: it is always universal and cosmic in scope, benefiting the entire creation. Fact is that Christ, in his author¬ity over storm and sea, demonstrates that in him God’s Kingship embraces the entire world, which would be meaningless without him.

You’re not convinced?

Forget about heaven: believing of going there is the ultimate heresy. Here on earth we must find our calling, promoting the welfare of creation in preparation of the coming of the perfect earth. Jesus always used down-to-earth stories to illustrate his teaching. He was so popular because the Pharisees spoke in legal terms: the law, the law, the law is the goal. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The entire ministry of Jesus was to prepare the people of his day and the people of all eras, including, especially including the people today, for the Kingdom to come.

There is a parable that illustrates this entire concept.

It is the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son. The word ‘prodigal’ might turn you off, because it is not a word you or I use in daily life. Actually the word comes from the Latin – as so many of the English words- ‘prodigium’ meaning among others ‘an unnatural thing’. Thus the word ‘prodigal’ could be a person who goes against nature. Hmm, does that make us all ‘prodigal”?
You find the passage in Luke 15. In short this is what it says. A very well-to-do father had two sons, both of quite different characters. The younger son is quite rude, actually. He says to the father – Jesus here suggests that the Father represents God, the father – “It’s about time you kick the bucket and divide the estate. Life is more than mere work, and I want to enjoy myself.” So, believe it or not, the father complies, leaves the real estate – the entire farm enterprise – to the one son and his investment portfolio to the other. The young rascal cashes it all in and goes to the city where he lives as if his funds will last forever, as if his resources are infinite, exactly the way we live. Then depression hits, the stock market collapses, he loses all his ready cash, his friends leave him, and he is forced to take a dirty laborer job, tending pigs, the lowest of all chores. He comes to his senses, returns to the estate – broke and repentant at the mercy of the other son – where the father welcomes him, throws a big home-coming party. The other son gets wind of this, is upset and leaves.

What’s the real meaning of all this?

When Jesus tells a story his words have meaning for all eras, and for each of these eras the meaning is different as we progress in understanding.
So let me transpose this story to today. The youngest son sets the ball rolling. He approaches the father, states his intention that he wants to have the father step back completely – basically play dead – so that he can claim his part of the estate. To his surprise the father agrees, thinking perhaps that this is the best way to make a man of him (Deuteronomy 32: 29 comes to mind ‘to see what sort of person he really is’). Without delay the entire estate is divided up: the older son gets the real estate, the buildings, the land, the tools and farmhands that go with it, while the younger one gets all the other assets, the gold, silver, cash, stocks, bonds. It is well to remember that the older son retains the source of all the riches and remains responsible for the development.
We know the story: the younger son squanders his assets and returns.

So what is at stake here?

I see the father of the two so different boys as God who surrenders title to the two parties: the older in charge of the kingdom and its vision, the younger free to do with the earth’ treasures as he sees fit. In other words: church and world.
First the younger one: after a life of debauchery he returns to the father, who had granted him leave to experiment. There’s where our generation too finds itself. The younger son pours out his heart: “Father forgive me. I have sinned. I have acted against nature, wasted so much. I am not worthy to be called your son.”
The father replies: “you were dead, but now you are alive. Let’s celebrate.” This reply reminds me of Jesus’ words in the Last Supper (Matthew 26: 29) where he says that the next time “I will drink wine with you in my Father’s Kingdom, the New Creation.” Take note: real wine that gladdens the heart.
The Father and the younger son, now totally repentant, represent the new state of the Kingdom, an eternal party, complete with wine and the delicacies of the earth. The younger son once represented the consumer society which has now pretty well used up whatever the earth contains and now is at its wit’s end. He has seen the error of his ways, seen the futility of the throwaway society, has been reborn to the New Creation way.

And the older brother?

This is a more complicated matter. He is not the curious type. Rather than investigate the source of merriment – so unusual since he had total control – he asks a servant to find out what’s going on. This in itself portrays the person. Rather than going himself he asks somebody else to call out the father for explanation.
The curious part of this tableau is that of the three persons in this drama, he is the only one who did not die. The Father did when he divided the estate, the younger son did when he was at his wit’s end and was reborn to a new state. So how do I picture the older son? I see him as the stern Calvinist, the self-righteous Right-winger who has God in his pocket. I see him, nostrils flared, deep furrows on his face, shouting “Music! Dancing! Wine! And that in the middle of the work-week! Who’s minding the store?”

In my mind the older son represents the church, the institution in charge of proclaiming the Kingdom, and the instrument of preparing the people for the Coming of the New Creation, and failing to do so. Although Jesus had the then church in mind, the Pharisees so set in their ways, it is no different today. The contemporary church has not died to the old, has not embraced the vision of the Kingdom, but is still clinging to the outdated – Greek philosophy inspired – heaven heresy.

Back to Today

Both the church and the world are in an impasse. The old remedies no longer work. From basically the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the 1970s or maybe a little later we have seen material progress at work. During all that time, there was a steady increase in the availability of energy per capita. By White’s Law, which is one of the basic principles of human ecology, economic development is function of energy per capita. That is now coming to an end. We are at a cross road. We are running into the limits to resource extraction, as the cost of resource extraction start rising. Even though everybody is emotionally committed to the myth of progress, matters have stalled. The church too is confused and dying.

What to do now?

We have to plod on. God is still out there, the Father always on the lookout. He never interfered in the parable, and he will not intervene now either. We are on our own. There are no more easy answers. This is crunch time.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this coming. He says that before we can meet Jesus in the New Creation we must reach a degree of maturity. Bonhoeffer calls this “coming of age.” Here’s what he wrote: “So our coming of age leads to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have to know that we must live as people who manage our lives without him.” (Letters from Prison.)

In other words, as we live in an age where God is hidden, it’s more and more a time where we have to assume greater responsibility whether we are ready or not. Bonhoeffer uses the phrase “coming of age.” Coming of age, in the context of our present situation, where the entire world is at the edge of total collapse, not only environmentally but also financially and morally, means that we have to be ready to meet our Maker. Jesus calls himself The Son of Man, meaning he personifies the human race. Coming of age means that we are ready to present ourselves as worthy representatives of humanity, fully aware of our place and task in the present situation and ready to take our place in the New Creation.

Is God dead? No, he is there in Jesus Christ, the firstborn of creation, the first really true human, but also the Primus inter pares, the First among us, his equals.

APRIL 12 2015

California always leads the way.

The last time I visited Los Angeles was in 2009 when one of our daughters lived there. While wandering in the Century City shopping Center on the edge of Beverly Hills, I noticed – as a man how could I miss it – that women there were showing a lot of cleavage, something not yet evident in more modest Ontario. Since then displaying one’s female attributes has become a pretty general phenomenon everywhere, especially among the more glamorous crowd. One look at the (British) Daily Mail confirms this. Also in California, now 40 years ago, Mega Churches were born, with the late Rev. Schuler leading the way in his Crystal Palace. This too quickly spread all over the USA.
Today California leads the way again, showing that water is a finite resource. Being deprived of adequate water will have major implications not only for the sunshine state but for the entire world. It is the first real Western casualty of Global Warming, with many more to follow. This past week I saw a map showing the exceptional drought conditions in the USA. More than half the country suffers from lack of sufficient moisture, either in the form of rain or due to depleting ground water, while the rest seems to be daily bombarded with violent storms. Bloomberg reported last week that “We aren’t nearing the end of California’s climate troubles. We’re nearing the beginning.”

Here is a small example what is on store for California homeowners.
I once had to appraise a property where the vendor had falsified the well’s water supply, from 0.1 gallon per minute to 10.1 gallon per minute. Naturally the purchaser sued the vendor and there’s where I came in. A single family dwelling with no assured water supply has a drastically lower value, as water must be trucked in at great cost, and a cistern is needed to catch rain water, if there is rain, that is. A well needs to be able to pump a minimum of 1.5 gallon per minute, or some 6 liters, to give homeowners sufficient water.

Just imagine that not only an entire state, California, not only several others, such as Nevada and Arizona, lack water, but more than half the USA land mass suffer drought conditions, and that exactly in those parts where most of the food – wheat, corn, soybeans – is grown. Next in line are the homeowners in the affected areas as all of them basically built their dwellings in the desert. Nature always wins.
For over 10,000 years people lived in California, but the numbers there were never more than 300,000 or 400,000. Now that state has 38 million people, with 32 million vehicles, living at the level of comfort that we all strive to attain. If California were a country it would have the eighth highest Gross Domestic Product in the world. We will soon discover in our pocket book that California supplies all of North America with the largest percentage of fruits, vegetables, almonds and nuts. To raise one single almond takes a gallon – 3.78 liter – of water. One walnut equals 5 gallons: plain nuts, of course, but so is our entire way of life. Watch our essential supplies shrink and prices skyrocket. The long-term outlook is for iflation.

When we visited Los Angeles every single family dwelling in our daughter’s neighborhood – on the edge of Beverly Hills – had a buried irrigation system because not having a green law was seen as unpatriotic. Palm Springs there is one of the more desirable locations, where, in the middle of the desert, the daily per capita water use is 201 gallons – more than double the state average. When I visited there the community offered a drought-defying tableau of burbling fountains, flowers, lush lawns, golf courses and trees. The noise and smell of mowed lawns were constantly in the air.

All this will change: drastically.

California again leads the way, and this time it means an exodus, the first and not the last of forced immigration from arid regions to the more habitable places. Already the lack of water has caused unemployment among farmworkers to soar as the soil turned to crust and farmers left half or more of their fields fallow.
“Climate conditions have exposed our house of cards,” said Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist in Pasadena who studies water supplies in California and elsewhere. “The withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can’t keep doing this.”
Why has this drought situation not earlier been detected? Everybody knew that there had not been nearly enough rain for years, and that the winter snowfall in the mountains had been minimal. Blame stupidity and inertia. Democracy presupposes citizens capable of thinking for themselves rather than being misled by propaganda. But with the average family now holding two full-time jobs that are often uncertain, plus raising kids, there is little time for keeping informed so many refuse to think about such complex issues. The same is true of Climate Change, of course. There too nothing will be done to prevent even greater catastrophes, because drought is just the start of a string of disasters. TV and the mainstream newspapers – except the Guardian – fail to inform. For most economists their only religion is believing in an expanding economy. With elections looming in the Western World – the UK in May, Canada in October, and the USA having a perpetual political program – false promises will fill the TV screens, obscuring the true nature of nature.

A book that opened my eyes to reality was The Limits to Growth, published in 1972. The entire world acts – and perhaps even believes – that we live in an Infinite World. There is only one unlimited concept in the world, and that is God’s love for creation, of which we are an important part. In the meantime we act as if all is well, even when every day those who have ears to hear and eyes to see notice that we are approaching – no, we have already reached – the Limits to Growth. Literally what we are now doing to the planet and to human society is akin to burning down the house while we are still living in it. Today a wooden partition goes into the wood stove, tomorrow part of the outer wall. Soon the roof will collapse, but never mind, the show – growth – must go on. Everyone needs fuel, especially during a bitter winter, but only a mad man starts deconstructing the house in order to burn bits of it in the stove or fireplace.
Almost as mad as that is stealing bits of other people’s houses to burn, but that at least is not soiling your own doorstep – well not right away. In a world of limited resources and limited space we’ve now reached the point where raiding our neighbors’ houses – China and Africa come to mind – is the same thing as raiding our own house, because the net effect is the same – disaster on an unprecedented level.
Of course it’s easier to live in denial and keep on cannibalizing the world’s vital resources at an ever-increasing rate and pretend that it’s business as usual, but in reality it is anything but that. The alarm bells from commentators from all sectors: science, economics, religion etc. are getting louder and more frequent, better argued and with the raw data to back it up, but we are still not listening.

We are blind to reality, perhaps because we no longer have a choice, so we pretend.

It is beyond my capability to understand the economic mind. A few decades ago the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail to convince the nation that tobacco was not harmful. Now Capitalism is waging war against the “Limits to Growth” scenario. This anti-Limits apparatus is so strong now that it even dares to oppose science in order to defend growth. This is most evident today in the denial of climate change, especially among North America’s church-going people, with the fossil fuel industry leading the attack on climate scientists. The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The Club for Growth, the Heartland Institute, etc. can be counted on to conduct “independent” studies that reach conclusions supporting deregulated international trade, deregulated finance, repeal of environmental and welfare legislation, etc., all in the name of growth.

There used to be a song called “All you need is love.” Now the words have changed: “All you need is growth.” Where will it come from in a world where we are running out of water and arable land? The only growth is in war and war-like attitudes.
It’s the age-old battle again. When the Satan approached the first humans in the Garden of Eden, he or she convinced them that by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they would be like gods, with access to unlimited riches, able to exploit all earth’s treasures. In other words: infinite growth. That false religion still rules the world. The church has a song: “Christ shall have dominion over land and sea.” We in our daily dealing follow the Satan rule where we practice “Humanity shall have dominion over land and sea,” with the inevitable result that we destroy both land and sea.

I once was part of that corrupt crowd, not on purpose by through ignorance. Just imagine: in 1965 Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring”. I got the book as a member of a book club, but gave it away without ever reading it. Now we know that what she said was entirely true, except the disaster zone is not only DDT but the entire world.
The evidence is clear that we are depleting all of our resources far too quickly, especially the land we use to produce food and draw raw materials from. What is the good of land when water lacks? The last few years land prices have skyrocketed. Now watch them plunge. Water shortages devastate the quality of land, just as deforestation exacerbates water loss and soil erosion. Couple this with increased damming of rivers, pollutant run-off into rivers, fracking and mining and we’ve a recipe for a water crisis, which will, in turn, lead to a food crisis.
Without fresh water we cannot have agriculture – this is the basic fundamental industry that keeps most people on this planet alive. But almost everybody in the world increasingly relies on intensive agriculture to provide vegetables, grains, fruit and meat. Instead of preparing to avert a major disaster, the political powers are gearing up for water wars rather than making a cooperative effort to save or increase our existing water resources and manage the use of water to reduce ridiculous wastage levels.

Some people in China are aware what’s happening. They wanted to warn the one-fifth of the world’s people there so they produced a film ‘Under the Dome’, highlighting the problem of water pollution and over-use in the unstoppable march of China towards economic supremacy. But the people on the top banned it. What these rulers cannot avoid, which will bring China’s economic miracle to an end, is the ultimate collapse of the environment that will force them to stop the machine. Bad air, bad water, bad land and total reliance on imported food will inevitably take its toll.
Of course these problems are not restricted to China: China is simply the canary in the coalmine. Across the Middle-East, Asia, Africa, southern Europe, USA and central and southern America there are increasing difficulties relating to the basics of food, water and the condition of the land.
While many of us are worried about ‘the economy’, whether or not we can afford that holiday or a new car, we should be far more worried about what we are going to eat and drink in a few short years from now.

The Bible – even for those who are not believers – contains a lot of wisdom. Paul, the apostle, wrote to his protégé Timothy that “The lust for money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6: 10). That today is truer than ever. All crimes, including polluting, are driven by the love of money, without regard for the future. Solomon had some wise words to say stating that ‘a wise person looks ahead.’ That’s exactly what we are missing: wisdom. A wise person notices that our house, the ‘oikos’ on which the word ‘economy’ is based is on fire. Most of the people continue to watch the silliness offered on television, too pre-occupied, too tired, too uninterested in what’s really goes on in the world out there. To be wise is to look ahead and prepare for a different tomorrow.
For the future to come, look no further than California.

Next week: Is God dead?

I am getting ready to work my garden soil, starting indoors with carefully placing tiny seeds in compostable containers, later planting the seedlings outside in a cold frame as soon as the frost is out of the ground.

Forty years ago when our family moved from the city to the country, the soil around the dwelling I was building was pure sand. Not much grows on sand, so after completing our new home, I removed the thin cover of grass and started to wheelbarrow scores of loads of black mature manure from the next door farm – some 300 m away – and slowly the soil of my future garden turned color, from a yellowish sandy substance to a darker and more fertile growing medium. Each year I add new compost as well.

What I was doing was improving the substance we ourselves are: we are soil, we are of the earth. A long time ago, the Bible tells us, God fashioned the first human pair from the earth. The Hebrew word for soil is Adamah, from which Adam comes. The word adam reminded the Israelite immediately of the first Adam who was taken from the soil of the earth, hence the well-known saying: soil we are and to soil we shall return. Just as we have red clay and black soil, we too have people of different colors. The word ‘adam’ typifies the human race in its unbreakable unity. We all come from the earth and we all go back to the earth. Earth-bound we are, forever. We, the human beings, are adam, and belong to adamah, the life?bearing earth. With every sinew of our exis­tence we are tied to the earth, which bears us and feeds us.

But by and large we regard soil as disposable, just as we do people. We trample on it, pave it wherever we can, and, stupidly build our cities on its most fertile sections, because that sort of earth is good for digging and drainage, so we abuse it: it’s only dirt after all.

Yes, soil is treated as dirt that’s why we regard it with contempt. Yet all human life depends on it. Ancient Sanskrit texts have warned us: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it”. Yes, destroy the earth and we destroy ourselves, and that’s exactly what we are doing.

Monsanto is no help. The ‘santo’ in Monsanto seems to suggest ‘sanity’ and ‘saint’ but the opposite is true. Monsanto deals in seeds specifically doctored to supposedly withstand pests and insects, while its weed killer, called Roundup, is now said to be cancer-producing. The GM – Genetically Modified – seeds cannot be used for seeding the next spring. How much better these seeds are still being debated. It seems to be that putting these altered substances in the soil may poison it forever. In my book when I see the word Monsanto I change it to Mon-morte, a substance associated with ‘morte’ = death.

We now have more than Seven Billion of ever more greedy eaters in the world. To keep up with global food demand, the UN estimates, 6 million hectares of new farmland will be needed every year. Instead, 12 million hectares a year or 30 million acres are lost through degradation. So we move to the next part of the earth: rip out the tropical forests, the Trees of Life, so that McDonald can offer us cheap hamburgers. That cure too has become a curse.

Soil. A miraculous substance. One handful contains more micro-organisms than all the people who have ever lived on the earth. To me soil is gold, my soil in which I plant potatoes and cabbages, onions and beets, carrots and tomatoes. Yet we treat it like, well, dirt.

A paper, by researchers in the UK, shows that soil in small patches that people cultivate by hand contains a third more organic carbon than agricultural soil and 25% more nitrogen. This is one of the reasons why our 2000 square feet – about 200 square meters – vegetable garden produces at least 5 times more food per square foot than mechanically worked soil.

A little aside, still to do with soil. The Middle East is in turmoil. Why? Oil is one reason, but more important is the soil or the lack thereof. The Middle East once was immensely fertile. The ancient empires of the Persians and Medes, the famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh all functioned so well and so long because their settings were like Paradise: luxurious land, high-yielding hummus, the original word for humans. No longer: overgrazing, stupid agricultural actions, greed in other words and endless wars, have turned these regions into deserts, now only still inhabited because of oil, that poisonous substance that will undo us all. Global Warming and looming food and water shortages will accelerate the coming collapse. Polluted earth breeds polluted people.

Civilization started in the Middle East. The Bible mostly plays out there. Loss of soil always creates turmoil and this turmoil even topples tyrants. War and pestilence might kill large numbers of people, but in most cases the population recovers. But lose the soil and everything else goes with it. That’s what’s happening in our suicide-bent world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has something to say about soil and the earth.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theology professor in Berlin and totally opposed to the Hitler regime. He was hanged in April 1945, a few weeks before Germany collapsed. He was then 39 years old and the author of many books. I have his A Testament to Freedom a 530 page volume containing his essential writings. In it he takes the church to task as it has moved away from the earth and has embraced the pagan-idea of heaven, increasingly seeing the earth as evil. Here are his words: “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from the earth in other worlds beyond: he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children.”

Bonhoeffer calls this ‘heaven message’ pious secularism. His words: “The Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth is pious secularism which also makes it possible to preach and to say nice things.”

In his Creation and Fall he is very outspoken as well. There he writes: “The soil and animals over which I have dominion, are the world in which I live, without which I cease to be. It is my world, my earth, over which I rule…. I belong completely to this world. It bears me, nurtures me and holds me….There is no dominion without serving God. Without God, without our brother and sister, we lose the earth. God, brother and sister, and the earth belong together.” So far Bonhoeffer, my kind of theologian.

Then there is J. H. Bavinck

Bavinck too has written about this. In Between the Beginning and the End: a Radical Kingdom Vision, talking about Jesus, the Son of Man, humanity personified, he wrote: “Death by hang­ing severs the connection with the earth that feeds us all. Numer­ous nations still maintain the ceremony of treating a small child with special rituals when it first gets into touch with the fertile earth. This contact with the earth is an essential element of life. We are taken from the earth, we belong to the earth, and we live through the earth. Our bond with the earth is so strong that we cannot for a moment imagine existing apart from the earth, and hanging breaks the contact with the earth. Hanging places a person outside the great cosmic unity and puts him all by himself as an exile, outside the wider context of God’s glorious creation. That is why hanging is an eloquent expression of being expelled from God’s kingdom. When suspended above the earth, humans are placed outside the contact with the earth. Exiles, lonely and lost souls, humans are carried outside the powerful context of God’s life?energizing grace. Such is the signi­fi­cance of that dreadful death, death on the cross. The Scriptures, rather than emphasizing that death on the cross is pain­ful, point out that it foreshadows the cruel reality of carrying God’s curse.

A handful of Mud

In Tending the GARDEN in the chapter called “A Handful of Mud” I found this thought-provoking description. It is written by a missionary who lived in India. In the chapter he related something he experienced as a young child growing up far away from urban areas. He and his playmates had been skipping and hopping on the side of the steep hill. These slopes had been patiently terraced hundreds of years before, and now every terrace was perfectly level and bordered at its lower margin by an earthen dam covered by grass. While running, one of the boys had dislodged one of those dams resulting in water and mud seeping away. Along came an old man. This is what he told these rambunctious boys: “That mud flowing over the dam has given my family food every year from long before I was born, and before my grandfather was born. It would have given my grandchildren food, and then given their grandchildren food forever. Now it will never feed us again. When you see mud in the channels of water, you know that life is flowing away from the mountains.”

Soil is life. A handful of mud can make the difference between life and death.

Thanks to globalization, thanks to tireless tractors and huge harvesters, thanks to tree-removed mountain sides and acrimonious agricultural practices, no longer is a handful of mud treasured for its life-given potential.  The earth has become inert dirt, has become a medium to be made and molded in the image of the machine, just like the modern human race. The earth, now penetrated with pesticides, now artificially adulterated with fertility-killing fertilizer, now depleted with life-giving microbes, resembles the dead minds that operate the multi-million dollar behemoths, only interested in the price of corn and wheat and soybeans.

Soil always means toil. It reminds me of Genesis 3: 17: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life….. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken.”

Until that time Adam and Eve lived off the land, were gatherers, as the apples and berries and other edibles were there just for the taking. Monsanto asserts that the toil is taken out working the soil thanks to oil, but that is pure foil. This spring, as usual, I will brave black flies and pick potato bugs and do whatever I can to produce food by the old-fashioned and cumbersome way. That means digging my raised beds, and hoeing the weeds, and praying that the rains will be just right: not too much water, not too little. Since my soil is still very sandy, very porous, it can take a lot of water. Every year I seed and plant my garden in a different order, and with 7 large beds, I rotate my produce every 7 years.

All year we eat from my veggie garden: healthy organic food, home-grown: no carbon footprint there, no stuff imported from thousands of miles away, displayed to please the eye, treated to look good, on soil that is saturated with none of the ingredients that makes soil healthy.

We are what we eat. Only when food is grown on healthy soil can it produce healthy produce and healthy people. We are what we eat. No wonder illnesses multiply and tumors appear out of nowhere because soil without toil has become oil. Basically we eat poisonous oil. Soon shrinking government budgets, a product of stalled global economies will cause cutbacks also in healthcare. That means that increasingly we are on our own. Prevention is the best medicine. We are what we eat. Good soil means good produce, means healthy people. Good health starts with the Good Earth.