I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! Revelation 3: 16
I once had a book, a Dutch book, with the title – in Dutch of course – “Letters from Heaven” directed to the 7 churches in Asia Minor, roughly the area of Turkey today.
The last one was sent to ‘lukewarm’, ‘Lackadaisical’ Laodicea: ‘Lackadaisical’ fittingly indicating lack of enthusiasm and determination, neither hot nor cold.
The footnote, in my study bible, gives an interesting comment: “Laodicea was the wealthiest city (in the area) during Roman times. It was widely known for its banking establishment, medical school and textile industry. Its greatest weakness was the lack of an adequate water supply.”
The writer of that letter could be talking of us today, 2025: Even the climatic conditions are similar: Laodicea was an advanced society, much like ours, including a threatening lack of natural resources, and failure of genuine faith, because prosperity pushes prayer away, and propels passivity. That’s why we must “Pray without ceasing” because we too suffer from lukewarmness.
“Pray without ceasing” is found in 1 Thessalonians 5: 17. Prayer usually means having a dialogue with God. To me it has become a more direct activity, encouraged by Bonhoeffer’s Life. Dr. Sabine Dramm, in her book: ”Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to his thoughts”, summarizes Bonhoeffer’s belief as, “Specific to the Christian Faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”
That makes sense to me, echoing the Belgic Confession, which says: “We know God first of all through his creation”, just as we know Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, by their works: therefore “Pray without ceasing” to me really means that we constantly must have the welfare of creation in mind: No ‘lukewarmness’ allowed! Harming God’s ‘work of art’, constitutes lèse majesté, the insulting of a monarch, in this case the Creator.
Goliath’s Curse.
This brings me to a new book whose summary appeared in the (British) The Guardian a few weeks ago. It was published in the USA on September 23, and I ordered it right away.
Here are some of my initial impressions:
Cambridge professor, Dr. Luke Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 15,000 years. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, taking advantage of general apathy and lukewarmness.
He writes, “Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and will lead to the worst possible societal collapse. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.”
He cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events.
“First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons.
“Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall.
“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.”
Kemp says his argument that Goliaths require rulers who are strong in the triad of dark traits is borne out today. “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a confirmed autocrat.”
What will happen?
“The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity”, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.
He believes the first outcome is the most likely, but says escaping global collapse could be achieved. “First and foremost, we need to create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths.”
“That means running societies through citizen assemblies and juries, aided by digital technologies to enable direct democracy at large scales. History shows that more democratic societies tend to be more resilient”.
Is that believable?
The short answer is “No”, confirmed by the events described in Revelation 21, the last Bible book. Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Thank you, Jesus, for vanquishing the Goliath’s Curse!
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