MARCH 30 2019
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW.
“The lesson of history is that no one learns anything from history.”
The Old Testament relates the history of the Jacob clan, the people of Israel. Time and again these blessed people rebelled, time and again God punished them, time and again they turned back to God….. until God said, enough is enough.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his book THE INGENUITY GAP set out to prove that deranged nature caused deranged minds. He didn’t quite succeed in accomplishing his goal, because it is the other way around: Hosea 4:2,3 observes how human conduct causes creational chaos,
“There’s only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery….. THAT’S WHY the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.”
So don’t expect success in the battle against Climate Change, because “everything is connected to everything else”: minds rule matter. Only a complete conversion of the entire human race can undo the dawning disaster. Only the church can prevent this. Will it? Can it?
One of the basic truths of Scripture – see Psalm 119: 105 – is that, “Your Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.”
This really means that we can’t have the one (Scripture) without the other (Creation). Scripture is like a mining light that beams a ray of light on creation: you can’t have one without the other.
That’s the fundamental TRUTH the church has neglected: before the END comes, all must be revealed, as the TRUTH must emerge, and with it THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW.
Basically this means that for the last 1500 years or so we have only experience a half-truth, which for a long time did not really matter because Creation remained basically untouched. Now, in the End Times, where insects and elephants, whales and turtles are endangered, Hosea’s words keep on haunting us:
“the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.”
That is the direct result of the half-truth the Church has proclaimed by failing to see that Creation and the Bible complement each other.
The Bible is very clear that “soil we are and to soil we shall return.” Genesis tells us that God used ‘earth’ to form to first human being, and, once given shape in the form in which you and I move and exist, God blew a life-giving entity into the form and made it whole.
Nietzsche, in his THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA wrote,
“I entreat you, brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not…… “To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence…”
We are earth. The earth supports us, feeds us, clothes us and provides us with beauty and splendor. When God made trees to come forth, he described them to the human pair as “beautiful to the human eye, and good for food.” Note, the aesthetic came before the economic (Genesis 2: 9). When the Great Seducer described the tree (Genesis 3:6) the order is reversed, the economic aspect precedes the beauty factor.
Ever since then Capitalism has conquered, and now we have the bitter harvest. Existing in an artificial world, we have lost our bearings and are blind to what’s happening out there, that’s why we are experiencing the REVENGE OF GAIA as James Lovelock phrased it.
When the people of Israel were kept as slaves in Egypt, and Moses asked Pharaoh to “Let my people go”, his plea fell on deaf ears: they were too valuable for the economy to be released from their bondage. It took TEN plagues to force them to leave, and then the Egyptian population was so glad to see them go that they loaded them with all sorts of precious items: the death of all first- born was the last straw.
We too are unwilling to abandon our energy slaves, even though the fate of our children too is in the balance. Again, “The lesson of history is that no one learns anything from history.”
We are in the home stretch.
I am a runner. Whenever the weather is too wet or too hot or too cold I run on my treadmill three times per week. I actually hate getting up from my comfortable chair, change into my running gear, but once I am going, I like it.
On my mill I gradually increase the speed, just as the human race, approaching the END, sees developments in the physical world accelerating, now rushing into dissolution.
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW.
The first words of the Bible are: “In the Beginning God created”. Its very last chapter, Revelation 22, says that in the End everything will be revealed. The End will show that we have learned nothing from history. Biblical history shows that the people of Old Israel failed to mend their ways, because they failed to REPENT. Will the church repeat this failure? “If history….”
TWO WORDS FOR REPENT.
The New Testament uses two different words for REPENT. The one is METANOIA which basically applies to our thinking. META indicated a change, while NOIA has as root Gnosis, or knowledge, and indicates a total change of thinking. Sermons are supposed to do that, by appealing to our intellect. It uses the Bible to justify that approach.
For the church today the Bible is THE ONLY source of wisdom and the ONLY way to salvation, that’s why it’s referred to as THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
I do not dispute that. Yet the Bible is a human book, written by humans, and only INDIRECTLY the Word of God. True, it is inspired; true, it is necessary, but for the longest time it was not available to God’s people.
The Old Testament did not attain its present form until during the EXILE some 500 years before Christ. Before that it existed only as rare rolls, to be perused by the few priests who only had access to them.
The entire Bible came into being at the Nicean Council in 325, some 1,700 years ago, with some books, such as the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes and Esther, barely making it when the vote came, with Constantin, the unbaptized Emperor, presiding over the proceedings.
So, yes, the Bible is a human book. It is God’s secondary or INDIRECT Word, basically appealing to the Metanoia, the Mind Business. No wonder when Paul spoke on the Areopagus, the place in ancient Athens in the year 40 AD, where the brains of Athens were gathered and people debated all day long, the word `metanoia` was used.
Acts 17: 22 attests to this: “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious,” pointing to the number of gods, including one dedicated to The Unknown God.
HOWEVER.
The philosophers in Athens – especially Socrates and Plato – had one thing in common: they welcomed death. Plato depicts Socrates’ last words before his death, “I’ll no longer stay put, but will take my leave of you and depart for certain happy conditions of the blessed”. Socrates died to celebrate death, and his followers adopted this philosophy: death and heaven were to be preferred over life.
So when Paul mentioned RESURRECTION to them, they stopped their ears because resurrection clashed with their belief. That’s why Paul uses the word Metanoia: their minds had to change, but since Paul’s words were contrary to their pre-conceived notions, a mind change proved to be impossible. Paul’s mission to Athens was a failure.
Well, this heathen heaven notion has pervaded the church until this day. It originates right there on the Areopagus, where Paul failed to convince these wise men there that not heaven, but a resurrection life awaits us on the earth.
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW
The Church of Tomorrow must celebrate LIFE ON EARTH now.
That’s why there is another word that Paul uses: EPISTROPHE which indicates a NEW EARTHY LIFE STYLE, which brings me to what I refer to as God’s Primary or Direct Word: CREATION.
By God’s act of creation “Ex Nihilo”, out of nothing, God spoke and it came to be. That’s why in the Lord’s Prayer, the first line after the invocation is, HOLY IS YOUR NAME referring to the Created Word, the WORD and WORLD that carries his signature.
Wherever else the apostle Paul brought the good news he proclaimed the need for a total change of life, from pagan rituals to a Christ-centered belief, as expressed in the Creation Word, God’s DIRECT or PRIMARY Word. He always started with God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Living God.
And THE CHURCH?
In the church of tomorrow we need both. We not only have to attain a different mind-set, metanoia, a turn toward biblical thinking, but also a Creation-centered commitment, a new way of acting away from Carbon-Based luxuries and atmosphere-despoiling habits, to an earth-loving life that is valid for eternity.
| TO BECOME THE CHURCH of TOMORROW THE CHURCH TODAY MUST CHANGE. Change won’t be easy. No wonder Jesus lamented, “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”(Matthew 22: 14), and (Luke 18:8), “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” I find it striking that in Revelation 21: 22, where the Holy City is described, there’s a total absence of religious symbols: no church building, no altars, no bible. This suggests to me that we must slowly chuck the church and more and more steer toward the lasting life-style mode, because there’s where eternity is at play: the conversion to total permanence and complete sustainable living. Our entire world now pivots on that very matter. It is again a sign that we are approaching the END when it becomes more evident by the day that the way we live and move and have our being, must end, and be replaced with creation-loving actions, where our entire mindset and our complete plan of action is geared to permanence. As Christians our only goal in life today, now, and tomorrow and the day after must have THE HOLY CITY in mind, the future of the church, which ceases to be church, but becomes life living to the full. That’s why now, Twenty-Four/Seven/Three Hundred and Sixty Five (24/7/365) our LIFE must be geared to Holy Living, in line with what we expect in eternity, and what the Bible tells us, in The New Creation. Paul encountered heaven talk on the Areopagus in Athens which prevented him from bringing the gospel of the Living God, the Creator who had made heaven and earth. The only RELEVANT message today is to preach and practice PERMANENCE, by setting the example for all to see. How then shall we live? That’s the burning question today. Perhaps we must start a variation of the AMISH way of life. Perhaps we must initiate a sort of Benedict Monastery life for families. Perhaps we must imitate what the early Christians in Jerusalem did by sharing so that all have enough. Perhaps it is none of the above, but merely a desire to do what is possible and feasible in these fractured times where we have painted ourselves in a corner, and have been lulled into an existence where the only way left is to pray for forgiveness. Perhaps the Lord will forgive us when there only is a will to change, because all other options have become impossible, because we have been sucked into a way of life from which any escape has been eliminated. Perhaps all that is left is TO PRAY: FORGIVE US OUR SINS against Creation and against our fellow humans. What we can do and must do is to have days of Atonement, fervently ask for forgiveness. However, “the lesson of history is that no one learns anything from history.” |