FEBRUARY 1 2020
TELL ME IF I AM WRONG……
But first…..
Mere hours, after I had posted my 1,000th blog, I fell ill: a confluence of burn-out ( I had looked after my wife, suffering from dementia for more than a decade), and a potent stomach bug that lay me flat for a week, dehydrating me completely, lowering my blood pressure to a dangerous level of 90/60 for days. (My normal is about 140/65). No fever, no pain, just fatigue. It took me more than 4 weeks to regain a level of energy.
I had great intentions for the year 2020. As usual I had bought a diary – I’ve kept a diary for more than 40 years – and intended to write a daily journal based on the Bible Lectionary. None of that happened: for the first time in decades I have not recorded one line in either book.
In the meantime the local Long Term facility – only 10 years old – phoned that there was an opening for my wife. In less than a week she was to move out and into an institution. After more than 66 years of marriage, this still takes a lot of emotional adjusting. That too has now happened – a bit of dying for both of us. Fortunately her room is light and airy, facing south, looking over forests. Our five children, from far and wide, came for various lengths of stay, to ease the transition.
MOIRA PLACE with 128 beds, and employing 150 full-and part timers – is less than 7 km away, making it possible to bike there, even though at time of writing, in the heart of winter, and still recovering, this seems remote.
My time of illness drained me also intellectually: my mind – always active – was closed. Yet my unconscious remained focused, helped by a book I read on and off, written by Jacques Ellul, MONEY & POWER, which proved disappointing. Usually I am a great fan of Ellul, but here, trying to determine the real poor in the world, I don’t think he offered a solution. I believe part of the reason is that it was written 70 years ago. The afterword of 1980 did not help.
DOUBLE OR NOTHING?
But, in a negative way, it made me concentrate on what the real poor are today, and I discovered that I am among the poor, even though by worldly standards I am rich.
That calls for an explanation. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: they shall inherit the kingdom…..Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the EARTH.” (Matthew 5, the opening words of THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT).
Over the years the conviction has grown in me that we must completely reorient our religious thinking: from catering to the ‘inner man’ to embrace the entire personality. This has been forced upon me by a new concept of salvation I found in J.H. Bavinck:
“Personal redemption and the redemption of creation go hand in hand.”
That pure revolutionary! But John 3: 16 affirms this: “God so loved THE COSMOS: all that is, and moves, and has a being………”
You cannot have personal salvation without consciously working for the full restoration of the natural world. The entirety of Jesus’ most famous speech must be seen in that light.
I see ‘the poor’ as those people who see Jesus’ death on the cross not only as redeeming them, seeing Jesus as their savior, but with equal force and conviction believe in and act for the restoration of CREATION, the process thwarted by humanity in the GARDEN OF EDEN.
To them – to me – the continuing and accelerating destruction of the cosmos is becoming such a source of agony that it is resulting in mental anguish, being ‘poor in the spirit.’
The ‘meek’, or as some translations have it, ‘those who claim nothing for themselves’, see polluting the air through airplane trips and automobiles as sin– and ask for forgiveness each time they engage in these polluting actions.
The totally misunderstood and much maligned Friedrich Nietzsche, a former cavalry officer in the Hapsburg Empire, and a full professor at 22, completely lost his mind when he witnessed a horse being whipped to death. He embraced that dying creature, and for 12 years prior to his death in 1900, never uttered a word again, or penned a line.
Nietzsche was a devoted environmentalist, totally at odds with the church. In ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA he 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.” Another sentence stayed with me – also decades ahead of his time: “To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence…” Nietzsche truly was ‘poor in the spirit’, a man who knew his bible as no other: both grandfathers were bishops. He too was trained to become a minister like his father, but was so turned off by their ‘heaven’ talk that he totally turned against organized religion.
Because of the church’s unilateral approach to salvation – brother are you born again, or any variation thereof, catering only to ‘the inner man’ – the church today resembles a car without functioning rear wheels, without a functioning creation – preserving/enhancing policy. Pushing on the accelerator – concentrating on ‘the soul’ – results only in digging itself deeper in the mire.
The German church under Hitler fully endorsed this Nazi monster even though he killed 6 million of God’s Chosen People. Today the US church widely sides with Trump, the professed killer of creation.
Salvation means double redemption, is both personal and creational, but organized Religion has a vested interest in the personal aspect only: its entire structure prevents change.
Jesus knew that. His last act, just before he died, involved ‘religion’. “At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked and the rocks were split”. (Matt 27:51).
That indicates to me the end of religion: all religion. The earthquake affirmed this. Religion killed Jesus. Religion is killing God’s creation.
Jesus taught us ‘how to live’, how to enjoy
life to the fullest. That’s why his first miracle was making the best wine
possible. His opponents called him a glutton and a winebibber.
Religion is the curse of humanity. The Crusades; the entire Middle East is at odds because of religion. The most disastrous European war in the early 17th Century pitted Roman Catholics against Protestants. India is still at odds with Pakistan because of religion. Capitalism, still the reigning economic religion, is now dying, because it has killed all natural life.
Of course, especially the apostle Peter stuck with the Jewish rituals until God showed him. Now we are on our own: no divine intervention. It takes guts, but with divine help…………..
Creation is crying! The church is dying! Should we not be trying? TELL ME IF I AM WRONG…… TELL ME IF I AM RIGHT……
(From now on I will post a shorter blog once a month.)