April 22 2017: EARTH DAY.
THE CHURCH AND EARTH DAY
If you want to find out what churches really think about the earth, look no further than the buildings they occupy and the hymns they sing. This elementary evidence – its body language if you will – explains volumes.
Consider these edifices: look up and the first thing you see are high ceilings suggesting salvation to come from on high with steeples pointing to heaven. This sort of architecture reaffirm the doctrine behind this: heaven is the goal for the pew sitters. The high ceilings represent the vault of heaven and the steeple is simply another pointer to the place where God and his angels dwell, soon to be joined by the true believers.
Granted some Protestant churches are more modest in this regard but the Roman Catholic cathedrals are basically replicas of what their leaders see as their future: way up there in heaven. Often the high ceilings there are adorned with the figures of angels, leaving no doubt that the church sees itself as the portal to heaven.
Once we construct buildings and incorporate our beliefs in their design, then it is very difficult to change direction. That’s the reason why it is almost impossible for the church to convey the biblical notion that God loves the cosmos (John 3:16), the Greek word for all that exist in nature and beyond. That our future is here on earth constitutes a hard sell, because the worship takes place in buildings that belie that belief.
There also is an additional factor, even more powerful, something that makes it very difficult to connect the church with the earth: the hymns the church sings are a constant celestial affirmation.
I grew up with it: in grade school – a Christian institution – I was taught all sorts of heaven songs: “Get in line, get in line, then follow the ‘to heaven’ sign” was one of them (Sluit U aan die mee wil naar de hemel gaan). Another song says “Heaven is the greatest place, the singing there beyond amaze.” (In de hemel is het schoon waar men zingt op blijde toon).
So how does the average Christians celebrate EARTH DAY?
Probably they don’t. A well-known hymn is a good example, ”Guide me, oh thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.”
The tune is magnificent, especially for a male choir setting, but the words are revealing: PILGRIM through this BARREN land!
Pilgrim!! We are passing through! We don’t belong here! The earth we live in is barren land, a good for nothing desert, so let’s leave it, go to heaven where everything is honky-dory.
Oh yes? Where do we get that idea? Not from the Bible! There it says (John 3: 13) “Nobody has ever gone into heaven, except the one who came from heaven the Son of Man.”
Paul affirms that when he writes to Timothy: “God lives in inapproachable light who nobody has seen or can see.”
I once saw Larry King interview Billy Graham. Remember them? Larry asked Billy: “What happens when you die?” Billy answered: “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God.” Oh ya? The trouble with Billy is that he does not know the Bible. God cannot be approached. Only Jesus, his Son can see God. For others seeing him means death.
Hymns!!
Oh these infernal hymns! There is a really old one, which says “Prostrate before Thy throne to lie and gaze and gaze on Thee.” Simply impossible. I imagine that’s what Billy had in mind when he spoke to Larry King.
Yes, the Heaven Heresy persists. “I am a stranger here, within a foreign land; my home is far away upon the golden strand.” Another downer on the earth. And the list goes on. In my Presbyterian Hymn Book almost every other song mentions heaven. Heaven is so ingrained in peoples’ psyche that it is impossible to eradicate, yet our eternal life depends on it, if we believe what John 3: 16 says: “God so loved the world, the cosmos, that he offered his only begotten Son as payment to buy it back from the Great Deceiver. Those who believe that will have eternal life. Here is the exact wording (NIV): For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
The heart of the gospel.
When God so loved the world, sacrificing his Son as payment to buy it back, should we not love it too?
I dare say that here we are at the heart of the gospel.
This text, as far as I know, is the only place in the entire Bible that makes attaining Eternal Life through believing in Jesus, conditional upon loving God’s creation. The two entities belong together, period.
Colossians 1: 15-20 explains Jesus more fully, making it one of the most prominent passages in the entire Bible.
15 Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things (ta panta in Greek) have been created through Him and for Him.
17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
The Christ so eminently described here is the one that was crucified, the most painful of all deaths, to restore creation, God’s work of art, that very planet we abuse now more than ever. To make ”heaven” the goal for eternity is a complete denial of Christ’s sacrifice and his divinity, and so gives a totally false interpretation of the real biblical message.
Bonhoeffer calls this sort of heaven-oriented-activity “pious secularism”. Bavinck categorically states that redemption of the person and redemption of the earth are two sides of the same coin: you cannot have one without the other.
That is totally revolutionary! It calls for a completely new approach to the Christian Religion!
Both men emphasize that we are fashioned from the earth, from this ‘barren’ land. We are called ADAM which means ‘earth’, the same good earth that feeds us, the same good earth that bears us, the same good earth that clothes us, and, yes, the same good earth that also is our final resting place.
The very last words of the book Daniel are (Daniel 12: 13): “As for you, go your way to the end. You will rest in the earth, and then at the end of the days you will arise from that earth to receive you allotted inheritance.” That reward is not heaven, but a renewed earth.
All who are dead will rise at the end of the days. David, Abraham, Daniel himself, all God’s children, still buried, will arise when the Lord calls them. Says John 5: 25: “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.”
That signifies a limitation: only those who have listened to the voice of the Son of God, honoring the earth, trying to curtail one’s CARBON FOOTPRINT will be able to respond to the call to life. The others will remain in the earth.
Back to that hymn with the beautiful melody: after the ‘barren land’ phrase, the next line is “I am weak but thou are mighty”.
Granted, we have the occasional weak spell, but the Psalm 8 describes us differently:” You made us rulers over the works of your hands, you put everything under our feet.” That refers to the earth, God’s precious planet. The globe he has given to us to look after and cultivate and cherish.
That is an awesome responsibility. Someday God will call us on the carpet, demanding an account, asking us to how we have dealt with creation, with the earth out of which we are fashioned.
Back to that “Guide me” song. There the next line is: “When I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside, death of death and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side”.
Actually the entire heaven notion has been derived from Greek (pagan) philosophy. This is not only confirmed by crossing the river to come to safe ground, as in this song, because this river reference is also of Greek mythology origin, where the river Styx formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld. This fits in with the heaven heresy, which too is a pure Greek (pagan) concept.
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.
Mike Pence, the man who will take Trump’s place when he drops dead or is impeached, describes himself as “A Christian, a Conservative and a Republican” in that order. So how would he interpret Psalm 8, he who calls himself a Christian foremost?
By all indication he hates the earth, evident from his actions as enforcer of the planet destroying policies of his boss. One would expect that a Conservative would be in favor of conserving, especially the environment, but no, conserving applies only to such disputable items as heterosexual marriages and forbidding abortions under any circumstances.
Oh these American Christians. Bonhoeffer once wrote: “God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God. Anything of the churches of the Reformation which has come to America either stands in conscious seclusion and detachment from the general life of the church or has fallen victim to Protestantism without Reformation.”
All too evident in RAPTURE, A word NOT found in the Bible!!
This warrants a closer look at American Christianity. Dr. Harold Bloom has made this an object of a study, contained in his book THE AMERICAN RELIGION. He gave it a subtitle: The emergence of the Post-Christian Nation.
In essence he says that America thinks itself to be Christian but this no longer is the case. Now Gnosticism reigns.
This is all too evident in its treatment of the earth. Gnosticism believes the earth is evil. EVIL. So it can treat it as such.
Among themselves the US Church is divided between post-millennials and pre-millennials. The ‘premils’ believe that the world’s showdown battle (Armageddon) will happen before the Thousand-Year reign of Christ.
The view that the saved will be snatched up to heaven (the Rapture) before the battle, was first stated by Cyrus I. Scofield (1843–1921) in his (still) best-selling Scofield Reference Bible.
Hal Lindsey in his THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, which sold 81 million copies, has had a lasting impact on Post-Christian America. The title says it all. The LEFT BEHIND books and videos picture airplanes where suddenly passengers and even pilots miraculously disappear while the sinners are left behind. One adherent told me that he believes that pilots and co-pilots must hold different views on these matters lest planes suddenly become pilot-less.
Matthew 24:39 tells a different story. There Jesus tells us that not the elect, but the sinners are taken away: the believers are LEFT BEHIND on the earth. Jesus mentions Noah, and then applies this to the saints of all times, who ARE LEFT BEHIND on the earth.
In summary: The Church, if it wants to be true to its mission, must attract earth-lovers – of which there are many. That means it must focus on the EARTH and ban the HEAVEN HERESY.