PREPARING FOR COLLAPSE (4)
Is my Theology all wrong?
My Bible tells me that Collapse will come suddenly: bang, there it is! That’s the reason why Jesus keeps on telling us to be on guard all the time. Actually his return to earth- where he belongs as the Son of Man, Humanity Personified – is something he looks forward to. Why? I base this on theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johan Herman Bavinck whose book Between the Beginning and the End – a Radical Kingdom Vision- will be released on October 31. Both categorically state that Jesus, Humanity and the Earth belong together. To explain that concept is the main reason why we have the Bible, confirmed in Psalm 119: 105 which says that God’s word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Where do we plant our feet when we walk? Here, on our very earth, sometimes muddy, sometimes rocky, but by and large a very agreeable place. The Scriptures are there to help us in exploring this world. Let me remind you that when the Psalms speak about God’s Word it refers to the 5 books of Moses with a few prophets thrown in. Yet even these few books give enough illumination for us to navigate God’s creation unhindered, enabling us to treasure the trees and the bees and appreciate the plants and the ants.
In order to prepare for Collapse – and the coming of a renewed world – we need both biblical knowledge and intimate insight into nature both sorely lacking, witness the heaven myth, Climate Change and world-wide pollution.
Here is human history in a nutshell.
In the beginning God gave the earth to us as our special possession, but we sold it to the Enemy. Fortunately Christ bought it back with his blood (that’s where the Cross comes in) and will restore it to its former glory when Beginning and End again coincide, because the Beginning is in the End and the End in the Beginning.
It is my deep-felt belief that God wants to unite all fractured parts of his creation into his kingdom to come. Forget about individual salvation. Salvation is universal: it’s all about the restoration of Paradise Lost. Forget about us personally enjoying God and be saved in him. The sole goal of our life is that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all?wise will of him who lives and rules for ever. Jesus, in the Sermon of the Mount, said that our foremost priority is to “Seek the Kingdom and everything else will fall in place.” For us this means to seek the welfare of creation and build our life on that premise. That’s also why in the Lord’s Prayer the first plea is “Thy Kingdom Come!” By praying that line we must actively implement it otherwise it is just a throwaway phrase.
If I am right, does that mean the end of the institutional church?
Look at the church today: it’s usually old people. Seventy percent of church services take place without children or young people. This past week I read in our daily newspaper that three United Churches in Belleville, Ontario – the larger town 45 km from us- will combine into one, citing falling attendance. This simply means more drop-outs, as the average age attending church is 76 and old people hate to change worship locations. That’s happening all over the Western world.
I am increasingly convinced that the decline of the church can be traced to its failure to integrate the Written Word with the Created Word, which is a direct result of refusing to see our very earth as our eternal habitat and seeing creation as God’s Kingdom.
The demise of the church is also something that must happen. In the one but last chapter of the Bible (Rev. 21:22) it simply says that in the New Creation there will be no temple, no synagogue, no mosque, no cathedrals, thus no places of worship at all. The church, denominations, sermons, preaching, popes, priests, the entire religious rigmarole will have disappeared. We are well on the way to see that: a clear sign of Collapse.
Even though Christ’s return will be without warning, there will be lots of hints. “Will I find faith on earth when I return?” laments Jesus, who gave a decisive indication of the Last Days in Matthew 24, where he warns of ‘The abomination that causes desolation’ (Matthew 24: 15). In that context Jesus uses the phrase ‘let the reader understand’. From this I conclude that
(1) This desolation refers to Capitalism, Climate Change, world-wide pollution, wars, human indifference, all the great destroyers, all man-made abominations. The outbreak of Ebola is also part of this eschatological phenomenon.
(2) We can only understand this when it actually happens: Let the reader beware. My parents and grandparents would not have had a clue what Jesus was referring to.
Do I really have to rehash this again?
That we have new climatic conditions is beyond dispute. NASA’s Earth Observatory recently commented on the extreme temperatures we were experiencing in North America this summer. The months June to August were the world’s hottest ever. NASA also states “In places where it should be seasonably hot – the eastern and southern United States and western Europe – it’s just been warm. In places where weather is usually mild in the summer – northern Europe, the Pacific coast of North America – it has been ridiculously hot.”
A study recently published in Nature warns that the two-headed dragon of air pollution and Climate Change will likely result in severe damaged crop growth, indicating that our world is rapidly moving toward a state where nobody can survive. One bright spot: (I am kidding of course) tourism is coming to the Arctic, where people can take a cruise now for a trip through the ice-free water of the Northwest Passage.
Speaking about water: we know water is essential for the survival of all life – but it’s not just about drinking water. Seventy percent of world’s freshwater use is for irrigation. While each person drinks an average of one liter of water daily, it takes 2,000 liters per person to produce the food we eat.
In the United States, examples of “peak water” abound. Nowhere is peak water more evident than in California, where more and more farmers lack enough water to maintain their livelihoods. The record-breaking drought across the Golden State is hammering the lake and river tourism industry there, where marinas and boat ramps are becoming high and dry, and is causing fires as never before. Entire cities in California are now under threat of running completely out of water, and country groundwater levels are falling at higher rates than is normal as a result of the severe drought.
Scary scenes abound
July saw new all-time heat records in the Siberian town of Norilsk, which is just above the Arctic Circle and known as one of the world’s coldest cities. Yet this past summer temperatures there were on par with those in the Mediterranean. What’s worse: several massive methane blowholes left craters in Siberia. They have caused much of the scientific community to fear the worst because the escape of methane is the ultimate danger. One of the craters is 60 meters – 200 feet –across, and appears bottomless. Russian scientists found extremely high concentrations of methane at the bottom of the first crater found.
Why is methane so menacing? In the atmosphere, methane is a greenhouse gas that, on a relatively short-term time scale, is far more destructive than carbon dioxide. It is 23 times as powerful as carbon dioxide per molecule on a 100-year timescale, 105 times more potent when it comes to heating the planet on a 20-year timescale – and the Arctic permafrost, onshore and off, is packed with the stuff.
NASA has already reported about the threat posed by the distinct possibility of a massive amount of methane being released from the Arctic – which holds five to six times the carbon equivalent of that humans have burned in our entire existence on Earth – along with the fact that most of this carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable top soils within 10 feet of the surface.
Moving beneath the Arctic Ocean where methane hydrates – often described as methane gas surrounded by ice – exist, a March 2010 report in Science indicated that these cumulatively contain the equivalent of 1,000 to 10,000 gigatons of carbon. Compare this total to the 240 gigatons of carbon humanity has emitted into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began. In other words: we are in the process of unleashing hell on earth, thanks to our devotion to the gods of our age.
Psalm 115 comes to mind. It mentions idols and suggests that the danger is that we become like them. This is now becoming the case: we have mouths but we cannot speak, eyes but we cannot see, ears but we cannot hear, noses but we cannot smell, hands but we cannot feel, feet but we cannot walk, nor can we utter a sound with our throats. In other words: we have ceased to be human.
That same psalm says (verse 16): The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to man. Where we failed, Jesus, the Son of Man, was able to do the perfect thing.
Is my theology at odds with the church?