CHRISTIANISM
Many whom God has, the church does not have, and many whom the church has, God does not have.
Augustine.
Somehow the above quote reminds me of, “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant” (“Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you”).
These words were shouted by the gladiators, condemned to die, while entering the Colosseum, the immense arena in Rome, still today a tourist attraction. Their fighting to death provided entertainment for the masses, including the emperor. Any connection here to today?
Perhaps.
Some discouraging words of Jesus come to mind, such as ‘Many are called, and few are chosen’ (Mathew 22:14), and another one of Jesus’ pessimistic utterances, “Will I find faith on earth when I return?” (Luke 18: 38).
As a person not far from one hundred years old, born in 1928, my vivid recollection of my grandparents, born in 1870, 155 years ago, fills me with a kind of longing, the days before our carbon-powered society, living during a full century of world peace – 1815-1914. My grandparents, I know, were at peace with the earth, and humble before God. Today we, like the gladiators, are condemned to die, because of our Carbon Addiction. 2 Peter 3 comes to mind.
Now, 50 years after the appearance of Limits of Growth, in which the Club of Rome publication forecasted today’s turmoil, due to disappearing resources, the world is afraid: governments don’t longer want to hear about pollution and Global Heating anymore, hiding behind a cheap Christianity: no longer ‘the meek -those who claim nothing for themselves – will inherit the earth’, but the bold, those possessing nuclear bombs.
This time around, Anno 2025, the original Christian confession: Creation being God’s WORD, the belief that God and the earth are intimately connected – see the Belgic Confession – is regarded as nonsense. The New Testament text: “God so loved the cosmos, to the point of sacrificing his Son to buy it back from the powers of Darkness”, has been replaced with exploitation, a heresy which has given us Christianism, the false religion that separates God from his cosmos, and us from the all-knowing Lord.
Both Bonhoeffer and J. H. Bavinck are both boldly blunt: Salvation of the person, and salvation of the earth, are two sides of the same coin. No wonder the church father Augustine wrote: “Many whom God has, the church does not have, and many whom the church has, God does not have.”
The Trump cohorts abuse the Bible-teaching to justify their actions, and, by and large, Organized Christianity has failed to counter their claims, failed to openly, loudly, convincingly defy these heresies, degenerating Christianity into Christianism.
All this confirms Matthew 24:24: “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Think AI!
By and large Christianity has become an ideology, abused by the Right-wing adherents to herald their heresies, has become a sterile story: Christianism, just as Communism and Capitalism
Warnings Galore.
This past week, Arctic News suggested that next year, with an El Nino expected, the world temperature may exceed 3 Degrees C. – have a look at Arctic News– high enough to cause universal death. Another paper – see Ugo Bardi – established that the rise in CO2, from 280 to 420 will universally affect the cognitive capacity of all humanity: making us more stupid and unable to grasp the consequences of our sins against creation, against God’s Majesty, against the very existence of our being.
Almost everywhere you look, the spike of climate alarm that followed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, has given way to something its supporters might describe as climate moderation but which critics would call complacency or indifference.
Complacency or quiet piety?
I live in a Christian Retirement Home, in St. Catharines, On., a small city in the Niagara Peninsula, where I and my immediate family lived before, from 1955 – 1975. Then, tired of sterile dogmatic indoctrination, we moved away to be involved in a religious experiment, that soon faltered, and became intimately involved in the Tweed, (On) Presbyterian Church for close to a half century.
Now, after 50 years of absence, I came back to the Dutch Reformed church scene, and discovered that there are almost as many little denominations as there are people living in this area, all offshoots of the original church, Christian Reformed. The situation reminds me of a suburb of Los Angeles, Beverly Heights, when my middle daughter lived there. There I counted 10 different Jewish synagogues along its main street.
Christ did not bring religion: He brought us LIFE: John 10:10 shouts: “I have come to bring you LIFE, and that to the full”. Churches, through their doctrinal pronouncements, foster Christianism, cold, human, dogmatic, sterile, ideological teaching, a far cry from Jesus’ teachings.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11: 28)
When creation suffers, God suffers. We suffer. Maranatha. Beware of Christianism. Love God’s earth with all your heart, soul and mind. Its your eternal habitat!