MAY 17 2015
RESILIENCE
Where are we?
It seems to me we are in a state of denial. Everywhere I see signs that business as usual is no longer possible.
Of course the reigning mantra all over the world is still the pursuit of economic growth. It bears repeating that only total fools and economists believe that infinite growth can take place in a finite world. Politicians, banking on an ignorant public, also keep on proclaiming this fallacy as a God-given right. Jeb Bush – aspiring to be the next Republican president – said last week: “My focus is going to be about how we, if I run, how do you create high sustained economic growth.” This Bush (Number III) also has no feeling for language. The naked truth is that all governments stand and fall with this gospel. No growth or even worse negative growth puts a stop to the entire welfare state from which most of us are benefiting immensely. We want growth. We need growth. The financial wellbeing for all of us except the very wealthy depends on governments being able to pay pensions for the elderly, medical bills for everyone, support disabled persons and small children, all items totally dependent on economic growth. And all that at the time when cities everywhere are clamoring for untold billions of tax money to install subways and rapid transit and dealing with aging bridges and crumbling highways.
We seems to be blind to the obvious fact that we live in a world that is rapidly wearing out, is suffering from lung cancer, is becoming emaciated by the constant clamoring for more, is drying out as wells are depleted, aquifers being emptied, topsoil being stripped, trees being eradicated. Yes, those trees. We can live without food for 30 days, without water for maybe 48 hours, but oxygen we inhale every minute. Killing trees is like choking ourselves, a most cruel death, but that’s what we are doing.
Why do we act so suicidal? Now that the majority of the people live in cities, people have lost touch with the once living, now dying earth. Also all governments are big city institutions, so the plight of the earth goes unnoticed. The church? It long ago lost the Gospel of the earth.
We must quit wishful thinking. Pollution will persist. Weather will get worse.
Don’t for a minute believe that suddenly Big Business will stop polluting, stop making cars, stop drilling for oil, stop felling trees, and the media, TV, radio, papers, stop advertising. Don’t for a minute believe that the majority of the earth’s inhabitants will stop driving cars, stop fueling up, stop being influenced by the Boob Tube. Mass conversion is not happening and no longer can happen: we have simply gone too far. We have built an infrastructure based on an infinite supply of life-destroying fuel. All our suburban and exurban houses and high rise condos need power, need four-wheeled transportation: there is no going back, there only is the unavoidable abyss.
So what should we do?
Resilience is the key, especially spiritual resilience, belief that we await a new earth, thanks to Christ. The word ‘resilience’ comes from the Latin verb ‘resilio’ which means ‘spring back’. Resilience is required when threats arise. We then know how to cope with them. Resilience involves being aware, honestly assessing the situation. Only when we come to terms with the true state of affairs can we prepare ourselves to some extent.
Forget about Sustainability, the modern buzz word. Sustain what? Our current way of living? It’s exactly that sort of energy-rich life that has brought us where we are today, with the CO2 count now exceeding 400 ppm, part per million, up from 280 where it was before the Industrial Revolution, guaranteeing Clime Change Disaster.
Oh, yes, I know that Jesus said that “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” using KJV language, the KJV standing for the 1648 King James Version of the Bible. My NIV, the New International Version, says it a bit more plainly. The passage comes at the very end of Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount. There it says “Each day has enough trouble of its own,” supposedly indicating that we should not make provisions for tomorrow’s different future. Jesus in the preceding texts – verses 25- 32 – tells us not to worry of what we shall eat or drink, or where we will get our clothes. He then says something that has thrown us all for a loop: He tells us that our priority in life is ‘to seek the Kingdom’. Supposedly if we only had concerned ourselves with implementing the Kingdom option we would have never ended up where we are today.
So what does it mean when Jesus says that “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and you’ll never have to worry about food or drink or clothes or shelter” as all that will come automatically when we pursue the Kingdom goals.
A long time ago I happen to listen to what is called the Christian Radio and heard a preacher proclaim that if we pray, read the Bible, go to his church, tithe especially to his program and his church, then God would bless us. That has been the essential message in the Bible belt. I was brought up with the then gospel truth that Home, (Christian) education, Church and other Christian organizations comprised the Kingdom.
The confusion about the Kingdom is almost total. Fortunately J. H. Bavinck, in his old-new book Between the Beginning and the End: A radical Kingdom Vision has cleared up the misunderstandings. Here are his words:
“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 world of animals and all 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. The celestial bodies have their orderly trajectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice, and so, in their course they sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water satu¬rated earth, their summits piercing the clouds; they stand there in proud loftiness but even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation lies only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other”
Even now the world as we know it, as we experience it every day, the trees, the air, the water, the soil, the animals, and us humans, comprise the Kingdom, now distorted by us sinners. To follow Jesus’ words: “To seek the Kingdom and its welfare” is the first and foremost task of the Christian. Pretty radical stuff!! Yet the essence of Christianity!!
And there is where ‘resilience’ comes in, the capacity to ‘spring back’. Today we have shaped a society totally dependent on fossil fuels. Once they are gone – or once we are forced to foreswear them because of its highly poisonous nature – we have nothing to fall back on: no chance to spring back, no resilience whatsoever.
I can’t tell you what to do, but I can ask questions. What does it mean to pursue the aims of the Kingdom? Does it mean to go totally green? Remember the Kingdom is God’s creation. “Seek first the Kingdom” essentially means to do everything for the benefit of creation, God’s Holy Temple. Does that mean a total paradigm shift in whatever we do? We now realize that the Carbon-rich road is ‘the way of death’. Resilience means having an alternative, possessing the only alternative: the way of life eternal.
Let me give my thoughts free rein. God’s creation has all sorts of back-up systems. It is ‘resilient’ to the nth degree, but only if we live according to the rules of the Kingdom, as outlined in the covenant God made with us. What are these rules? Micah 6: 8 tells us what the covenant requires of us: “To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.”
To act justly not only applies to humans of whatever race and orientation, but also to trees, soil and air. To love mercy applies not only to humans of whatever race and orientation but also to animals, cows and chickens. To walk humbly with our God also involves obeying his laws in creation, following his rules for preservation, for permanence, for eternal sustainability.
Let me make some more guesses. Being resilient means freeing ourselves from having carbon-slaves. The USA fought a disastrous war within its borders to abolish human slavery. The North was victorious, and the Africans became African Americans, yet basically still remaining second class citizens. Slavery today is thriving more than ever. Over the years the Western World acquired a totally different form of servitude: engaging the carbon-based slaves that heat and cool our houses, and that make it possible to travel in comfort by car or by air. The American Civil War was the bloodiest USA war ever. Now the Universal bondage depending on carbon-based fuel has become the War against creation with the potential to wipe out most of the world’s people and species, because of the total lack of resilience: there is no Plan B, no back-up system.
Jesus tells us that to seek first the Kingdom which will guarantee us food, shelter and clothing. Do we really believe Jesus’ words?
The Gospel is a very down-to-earth affair. We are told to love our neighbors as ourselves and God- his work of art, his creation – above all else. Using substances that endanger our lives is the opposite of loving ourselves. Loving creation means getting to know where and how creation can help us to survive. Creation is there to serve us, and we are there to serve creation. Forget about dominion. I am told that the Hebrew verb used by God in his charge to Adam and Eve to cultivate the earth is the some word that Joshua uses in his farewell address to the Israel people: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Back to the “Seek first the Kingdom” mandate that Jesus gave us. It is not surprising that the church has not pursued this. It is perhaps his most puzzling statement. Perhaps seeking the kingdom was possible in his age and time, when matters were simple and straightforward. Then all food was organic, damage to creation minimal. Then people lived in community, often sharing food and residing close to each other, with weddings that lasted 7 days, funerals that involved the entire community.
Today matters are so different. It used to be that in my neck of the woods, before automobiles, people depended on their neighbors. From where I live I can see across the road a house where a trucker lives who parks his rig there on weekends. I don’t have a clue what he looks like. The only people I really know are the ones I see in church on Sundays and often during the week for various activities, and they live all over the place.
So how do we go about seeking the Kingdom together and, as a community, seek salvation? Frankly I must confess I have very little to say about it.
I have headed this column with the word Resilience. The word ‘resilience’ implies that we have our defenses ready, that we know what to do when the ‘last things’ start knocking at our doors, when the Apocalypse comes calling without warning, the prelude to the coming of the perfect Kingdom.
Sorry for not being more clear-cut. I am as much at a loss as you are, perhaps even more so, but it is a situation I am struggling with because I know one of these days or years we are confronted with Collapse. Will we be ready? Will I be ready?