JULY 28 2018
KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN?
A personal story.
For 10 years – from 2000 to 2010 – I wrote a weekly column for the regional daily, THE BELLEVILLE INTELLIGENCER.
My column featured my picture, of course, and its title YES….. BUT…I still remember where I was when I decided on this heading. My wife and I were on the way to Minneapolis, intending to take the ferry across Lake Michigan, and just before reaching the hotel on the eastside of the lake, the heading came to me.
I was allotted 750 words, and I adhered to that, naturally. My column was stopped when the paper was sold, when, as a money saving measure, all local columnists were given the boot. In those days I also wrote for the Christian Courier, but when they went right – to please the increasingly Conservative readership – and I went left, our ways parted.
So I started my own blog and, having no editor to curtail me, I expanded my content to some 2,000 words.
So why do I write?
I have a mission in life. I am re-reading Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to chaos”. This Toronto professor in psychology writes, “If you’re reading this book, there’s a strong probability you’re a privileged person. You can read. You have time to read. You’re perched high in the clouds. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to stand your ground, you better have good reasons. You better have thought them through.”
All that is so true, “It took untold generations to get me where I am”. Indeed, I am the fruit of the thinking of previous generations. It is now up to me to make their lives, and mine, worthwhile.
And what is that makes my life redeemable? Have I thought through what my mission is so late in life? What is it that I try to convey, something that is so difficult that it had to gestate for centuries? I already know my vision creates animosity, even enmity. More than one person whose friendship I valued have become shall I say, unfriendly?
Yes, I have a mission in life. That mission started even before my mother was born, when her father, born 150 years ago, in 1870, experienced financial trouble.
Martje, my mother, born in 1900, was the oldest of 5 children, 3 girls, two boys. Raised on a farm, she adored her father, a lean wiry man, highly regarded in his community, a perpetual elder in his church, who had to abort his education when the family fortune vanished. His great-grandfather had been a regional leader, a member of the Provincial Parliament: a plaque honoring his achievements has for 200 years been embedded above the door of the church where my ancestors have been members for centuries, judging by the gravestones on the cemetery surrounding the church in Doezum.
So my Opa opted for farming, as did all his children, except my mother, who settled in the City of Groningen.
As then was the custom, children were named after grandparents, thus my oldest brother became Wieger, after my father’s father. My two older sisters were named after my father’s mother, Jantje, and the next one also a Jantje, my mother’s mother, which they changed to Jansje.
My turn came next, child number 4 in 5 years – and my mother was sure it would be a boy, to be named after her father. She told me that she wished that I would become what her father had failed to achieve: a minister of the gospel. So on October 14 1928 I, Egbert Drewes, was born, all of 5 kg, 11 pounds, giving me a healthy start in life.
In grade school I was a devoted student, blessed with good teachers, getting all A’s, even on handwriting, now so bad that I often can’t read what I have written.
Well, I am not a quitter. As a kid I must have displayed an early independence, a bit of stubborn streak, perhaps not a bully, but certainly not a boy to be bullied.
I remember a fight I had.
I went to the Christian School, while the Public school was a block away and those kids passed each day 4 times through our street. One particular brute pestered my neighbor’s boy who was not too bright and easily picked upon. I simply could not stand seeing this somewhat handicapped boy so abused, so I clobbered the much bigger bully, landing my fist on his nose which started to bleed. That was it: my first and last fist fight.
I always had and maintained a strong feeling for justice. Daring as many kids are, I was an initiative-taker, reckless perhaps to the point of danger. I remember climbing to the roof of our three-storey school to retrieve a football, clinging to the drain pipe.
Thinking about it now gives me the shivers. I guess children do what they know they can do, although accidents do happen. My right index finger still has a scar when I jumped off a bicycle shed where it got hooked into the barbed wire that lined its roof. I was in the hurry because I was pursued by a policeman. In those days cops patrolled on their bikes and especially used the back alleys. I was then perhaps 10 years old.
My careless life changed on July 27 1941 when I was in my 13th year. Why do I remember that date so clearly? Well, it was my mother’s birthday, and birthdays always were celebrated with festive gatherings, where friends were invited, the best of the chinaware displayed, the finest of pastry offered, fancy chocolates, called for a reason ‘bonbons’, made the rounds, the choice of cigars smoked, and the toasts were made featuring an assortment of alcoholic beverages, mostly gin for the men, advocate for the ladies, a strong liqueur, made with eggs and brandy: no expense was spared, which meant that in war-time the Netherlands a lot of barter had taken place prior to the birthday event: my father had a large quota of sugar for his bakery-supply business: a pound of sugar equalled a bottle of Bols Jenever –gin – and so on.
On that particular date one of the friends invited was the family doctor.
So what was the talk among the gathering of a dozen friends? The topic was about the war, of course, where Germany had just invaded Russia. After a lull in the conversation – I can perfectly picture the scene – the doctor friend remarked that a few weeks ago he had enrolled his oldest son, Tom, a week younger than I, to attend the local university prep school, a semi-private institution. He wanted him to become a doctor.
That set my father thinking and my mother speculating. What if?
The next day Papa phoned the school. I did the entrance exam, and pronto, a few weeks later around September 1 1941 I was enrolled at the Willem Lodewijk Gymnasium, a 6 years course.
I have the memorial book published at the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1959. It lists all those enrolled since its inception. In my year, 1941, 26 students entered grade 1, 24 male, two female. Of these 26, 10 finished the school without repeating a grade. Of the 16 remaining six of them dropped out over the years: failing a grade twice resulted in an automatic suspension. It took me eight years to finish the school. My friend Tom, the son of our doctor, kept pace with me: we finished at the same time.
Once graduated in 1949, I had PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It took me 10 years before I read a serious book again, and many more years later before I stopped dreaming that I had failed to pass the final examination, which involved translating episodes in 6 languages, Latin and Greek among them, and solving problems in 7 mathematical and science subjects.
My diploma stated that I could without further notice enter the faculty of medicine, law or theology. The latter was the reason why I had been sent there in the first place, but the army had the first call, so I was conscripted, and trained to fight these poor people in Indonesia, who wanted independence. In 18 months I made it to sergeant, and then was demobbed. Left the army on April 1 1951 and was in Canada 3 months later.
There my real life started. Within a year I was independent: first as a life insurance agent, then adding general insurance. Within 2 years was married to my fiancée, whom I have known since 1932. In 1963 we built an 1800 square feet house with a built-in office; in 1965 – then having 5 children – I also became a real estate broker.
In the following years I was deeply influenced by two books – yes I had again become a voracious reader –
(1) by a Dutch minister, Sterven…. And dan? ( After Death….what) which changed my thinking from being heaven-bound to forever belonging to God’s precious earth. That was a real awakening, and a true conversion.
(2) THE LIMITS TO GROWTH, a rather technical book with all sorts of graphs and tables and computer projections, basically saying that in the future we will hit limits in mineral use and in agriculture. It brought home to me that we live on a FINITE PLANET even though we treat it as inexhaustible.
Later two people deeply impacted me: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johan Herman Bavinck, especially the latter whose “De Mensch en zijn Wereld”, I translated, appearing in English as BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION, published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids: a real good read!!.
Bavinck opened my eyes to the KINGDOM VISION, a concept almost totally missing in contemporary Christianity, and it is exactly here where I see my mission in life.
I guess I am a late bloomer. Had I become a minister I really don’t know how I would have developed. I have a book by Helmut Thielicke, “The Trouble with the Church: A Call for Renewal”. In it he wonders, KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN? (Can also a Pastor be saved?). James 3:1 comes to mind, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly”.
I am afraid that this would have applied to me: familiarity could have resulted in contempt.
Fortunately the Lord has given me a long life, a healthy constitution, an active brain and, after 40 years in business, and an equal time living among the trees, close to creation, He judged that this sort of training was better than pursuing theology.
All this reminiscing was fueled by a church service last Sunday.
The reader read Acts 1. In it Jesus appears for the last time and for 40 days he again spoke about “The Kingdom of God.” The preacher did not mention this: preachers hardly ever refer to the Kingdom, probably have no inkling what it means.
Jesus wanted once more emphasize the Kingdom concept. For three years he had talked Kingdom, often using parables, but his disciples had failed to grasp what Jesus really had in mind, so, during these very last weeks, Jesus again broached The Kingdom of God. And their reaction? The disciples were still obsessed by nationalistic desires: “When will you restore the Kingdom of Israel?” Oh, my!!
If Jesus couldn’t do it, who am I?
I’ve been hammering that Kingdom concept, and people simply don’t want to understand it. I repeat again: The entire mission of Jesus, his very purpose for coming to the earth, was to restore the cosmos to its original state.
That’s why when he returns he will bring back the NEW HEAVENS, cleared of all that space junk and CO2 and methane, and the NEW EARTH, similarly cleansed all of polluted items, so that THE NEW HUMANITY can have a fresh start, wiser, God’s law written on their hearts, fully mature.
If we are God’s children then we already are a NEW CREATION. 2 Corinthians 5: 17, “Therefore those who are in Christ, they are a new creation.” And live a New Creation LIFE!