March 4 2023
WHY ARE WE HERE?
Good question: why are we here on earth?
Let me, from the outset, make plain, that, when we die – and we all will – there is no heaven to go to. John 3: 13 is quite clear: “No one has ever gone to heaven, except the one who came from there”. Selling the heaven-heresy to Christianity has been Satan’s greatest achievement, has led to the earth’s exploitation, and lies at the basis of our Global Heating predicament.
From the very beginning, the Bible tells us – Genesis 3: 19 – Earth we are and to earth we shall return. So, ban all heaven thoughts: there’s no escape. God created the earth as his kingdom, as ‘the smile of God’s good pleasure’. When creation was ready for habitation, God called it good seven times. What God calls ‘good’ is good indeed: that’s why it is exactly there where we are heading for eternity.
So, what happened with creation, a long, long time ago? An educated guess.
I am of the opinion that, some 10,000 years ago, when there were few humanoids, people who more or less looked like us, God selected a man and woman from the primitive tribes then existing, and infused them with his Spirit. God also gave them a special place, an oasis, between two sparkling rivers, a region full of fruit trees and beautiful flowers and marvelous animals: ‘paradise’ in the full sense. He also told them to be one with all these creatures, regard them as equals in all ways, all being God’s handiwork in whatever form, all functioning as partners in serving God’s totality.
Influenced by two theologians.
I owe Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian, and Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic priest and esteemed paleontologist, for greater insight in these matters. Bonhoeffer suggested that God and creation are complementary, just as Bach and his music are synonymous. Teilhard was forbidden by his superiors in the church to publish his findings on evolution, yet was an outstanding Christian and celebrated scientist.
We are on earth for a purpose.
We are here to discover who we are and why God placed us here. The selected human pair, recognized in the Older Testament as Adam and Eve, were charged with developing creation to its full potential in an organic and symbiotic way. In it they failed, perhaps not quite cured from the old ways of treating God’s work of art. Typical is how their view on trees “beautiful to behold and good for food” (Genesis 2: 9) changed when its utility was seen as primary “good for food” rather than its beauty aspect. (Genesis 3: 6).
Something happened.
That seemingly innocent reversal, switching from beauty to utility, meant that the harmonious, majestic unity of creation as it emerged from God’s hand, became the frantic, demon-dominated planet in which we now, 2023, dwell as cursed humanity. This simple switch goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up creation’s cohesion. It really meant that God surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. (Deuteronomy 32:20). That’s us.
Get used to it: in this world God no longer calls the shots. The result is that
God’s kingdom is at tatters. The kingdom is, after all, made up of all plants, all animals, all people, all angels: all things. When, in the later Ten Commandments God asked us to ‘hallow his name’, the Israelites knew that it had nothing to do with a designation of God’ name: God is a ‘no name’ entity, cannot be described. My name, Egbert Drewes, points to an old guy, now sporting a newfangled goatee, but God is beyond name and appearance. When we keep his name holy, it means seeing creation as sanctified, with the purpose of not only keeping it from harm, but improving upon it.
Yet.
Nevertheless, we still have to rectify what has gone wrong. Our task is to “Seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness”, as Christ urged us to do in Matthew 6: 33. That requirement is still first and foremost our task, even though the entire economic enterprise which has granted us temporary luxury and extravagance at the expense of God’s Holy Creation, is now backfiring on us with leaps and bounds. There is no stopping, because ‘it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrew 10:31). Here ‘creation’ is analogous to God!
Why are we here?
Good question. We are here to prepare ourselves for THE KINGDOM TO COME, the new creation where God is all and in all.