December 5 2020
THE COMING RE-SET
1972 was a decisive year for me. I was converted, I was born-again. For the first time in my life I gained a new perspective on LIFE. Unknowingly, two friends were instrumental in my personal re-set. One gave me a book which convinced me that the ‘heaven destination’ was wrong. When shortly after, I spoke at a chapel meeting of a Christian High School, I voiced my new insights with the enthusiasm of a new convert. However, the local minister felt compelled to send a letter to the parents disputing my views and promoting his heaven heresy. Oh, my!
Another friend – so true, we all need them – gave me a copy of “The Limits to Growth”, a book projecting a financial and ecological collapse in 50 years. That was my second conversion, this time becoming an environmentalist, rounding out my metanoia, my completely new outlook on life.
Yes, conversion is an all-out affair: it affects the whole person, physically, mentally, spiritually. John 3:16 points out: “God so loved THE COSMOS – ALL that lives and moves and has a being – that he sacrificed his beloved Son to restore it.” That makes conversion a matter of the heart and a matter of all day-to-day actions involving LIFE.
That total new outlook changed my life, and was a factor in moving from the city to the country.
Now almost 50 years later, we have arrived at the last phase of humanity. The Great Unraveling followed by the Great Re-set, has begun, visible in such obvious ways as the Covid-19 plague and Climate Change, noticeable also in less revealing occurrences such as the disappearance of species, both plants and animals, and the decline in ‘faith-based’ institutions, in churches and synagogues.
In 1972 the authors of THE LIMITS TO GROWTH projected a 50 years outlook and painted a disastrous scenario if we continued on the path we were on. At the time of publication, the book was ridiculed as being unrealistic and pessimistic, and so its warnings went unheeded, showing that our Fossil Fuel affinity is more than just a convenience: it is an addiction. Just as with tobacco and alcohol for some, we all have become incurable Carboholics, and there is no Carboholics Anonymous, which means that our future is determined and its guaranteed consequences. With alcohol or tobacco, we either quit or die, either stop cold-turkey or collapse, but the trouble with carbon is that we have burned our bridges, have painted ourselves in a corner: we have shaped a society that no longer can function without that poison.
A new daily habit.
A few weeks after my wife died on October 23, I started writing a daily 500 words meditation (1000 words on Sundays) on the Lectionary, the prescribed Bible readings as recommended by the Anglican Church. Last week here’s what I read in Luke 21:
Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.
That Day, mentioned in this text, is THE DAY of the Great Re-set. We are living immediately prior to it: for all of us the END time has arrived: the great Unraveling, followed by the great RE-SET.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered and amplified a series of effects that were the result of much stronger irregularities, such as Climate Change and resource depletion. We are waking up to the fact that we live in a FINITE WORLD, unable to provide adequate sustenance to close to 8 billion ever more greedy customers: the CONSUMER SOCIETY is over, and COLLAPSE is the next step.
Already we are forced to travel less: mass tourism has disappeared forever. We are also forced to consume less, threatening the livelihood of millions. Yes, governments created out of nothing trillions of dollars to make matters easier for those thrown out of work or whose business depended on the now defunct industries, but that’s money down the drain. It simply means that more trillions need to be assumed by the next generation that has no viable future and will never be able to repay the combined debt of today’s monetary shortfalls and the restitution of the immense environmental deficits.
More bad news.
Already, in addition to the alarming pandemic risk now also looms the specter of worsening economic conditions. The US Congress has so far failed to pass a renewed and expanded stimulus bill; if one isn’t quickly forthcoming, the bending economy may break. Businesses—including hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hotels, bars, movie theaters, and retail outlets—that were barely holding on are now starting to shutter for good. Households that are behind on mortgage and rent payments are facing foreclosure and eviction, with as many as 40 million Americans at risk of homelessness in the coming months. Food banks are already at a breaking point, and the specter of famine is on the horizon. If something doesn’t change, we may be headed toward a depression the likes of which hasn’t been seen in nearly a century.
We could also see fuel shortages. Oil, gas, and coal companies harvested fossil fuels using the low-hanging fruit principle, targeting the highest-quality and easiest-to-get resources first. After many decades of this, what’s left are largely low-grade resources that require extra effort to extract or process, and costs a lot more to bring to market.
As Gwen Tverberg in her blog, THE FINITE EARTH, has demonstrated repeatedly: an economy running on fossil fuels, needs low prices, but the current price is unsustainable for the oil industry, so we are caught in an impossible bind: higher fuel prices means higher inflation, and higher interest rates which, with the trillions of debts created, make repayment impossible. That is just one facet of our daily life. Climate Change and Inflation will accelerate as forests burn, methane escapes and public health deteriorates, causing further economic hardship.
I am glad that Joe Biden is the next president, but he faces impossible hurdles. What is called for is total political unity as the problems today are the greatest ever faced, but cooperation is the last thing on the minds of the Republican Party, still dominated by the Trump mentality. A nation divided in itself cannot function.
The Bible pulls no punches. “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.”
We are living in days of anxiety, in days that precede the END. There’s no way out. And it will ascend on us suddenly, like a trap. We are in for a total re-set, a change of life imposed upon us from above, as in many ways the earth and its creator are synonymous, are one and the same: sinning against creation is sinning against the Creator: he is not to be mocked.
So why do I write in such seemingly negative tones?
I do this because I love creation and those who dwell therein, love God and the Son, love myself and my family. Love does not blind: love is revealing and makes me suffer with the abused, with all and everything that undergoes change for the worse.
The GREAT UNRAVELING has started: the great RE-SET is coming. Creation knows that. Rejoice: the great ADVENT is the New Creation bought by the blood of the Lamb.