APRIL FOOL’S MONTH (2)
CRISIS
The word ‘crisis’ is pure Greek. It means ‘decision’, it means stop and choose: going one way or another.
By now most of us know that the old way of burning carbon and so disrupting ‘nature’, was wrong. But is a new direction possible?
The VIRUS was no accident: it was a direct result of our ‘way of DEATH”. Ordinary life before the pandemic had already caused a deluge of desperation and exclusion for too many human beings, an environmental and climate catastrophe, an obscenity of inequality. Will the Virus change all that?
Crisis also means ‘opportunity’. We can make a new beginning.
I am a Christian. Let me explain that, because the term needs qualification today. To me the concept is captured in Jesus’ simple saying: “Love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves”. To me loving God is expressed in loving his creation, taking the cue from John 3: 16, “God so loved the world, the cosmos, everything that lives and moves and has a being; and that God bought it back with the ultimate sacrifice: the life of his beloved Son.” He bought it back from THE EVIL ONE. See 1 John 5:19. It means that Jesus died to reclaim creation, Paradise, not just us.
THE VIRUS IS US.
Yes, the VIRUS is a result of us following THE EVIL ONE, God’s arch-enemy, who has taken possession of God’s world: temporarily I should add. This CRISIS is the result.
I see it as my CHRISTIAN duty to oppose THE EVIL ONE because I believe that my life is divided into two stages:
- A short – 90 plus years perhaps – life under trying circumstances, on this side of eternity, and
- Eternal life under perfect conditions, in the New Earth under New Heavens, cleaned of all pollution and space junk.
My current life I could call my “proving ground”, my ‘testing period’, which determines my ‘after life’.
Ever heard that before? Of course you have: the Apostles’ Creed says it plainly: “I believe in the resurrection of the BODY and LIFE everlasting. But……….
We have been fooled.
April is FOOL’S DAY month. Ever since in 1972, when I read Dr. Telder’s Sterven en dan? (After Death, What?), my life has changed. Suddenly I saw that HEAVEN was a myth, a Greek fabrication, based on Socrates and Plato, who saw death as an escape from a sinful earth and believed that death provided a means to be with the Greek gods. These Greek philosophers, these ‘wise men’, saw spirit as good and matter as evil, the earth as disposable and heaven as perfect, a teaching now recognized as GNOSTICISM. Implied in this ‘heaven’ belief is that humans are no longer part of the natural world and can create an autonomous ecosystem, separate from the rest of the biosphere. Covid-19 is telling us we cannot.
Yes, going to heaven is a hoax: a pagan Greek invention. John 3: 13 unambiguously states – “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man”.
We have been fooled.
We fooled ourselves and this has led to our current situation, which will only get worse: our sinning against creation spells death.
I am writing this during the so-called HOLY WEEK, commemorating Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. In my opinion there is no such thing as one Holy Week: all weeks are Holy: all of life is Holy. To set aside 7 days per year as Holy smacks again of Gnosticism.
Love Creation
J.H. Bavinck, in his book Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Vision basically says that personal salvation and restoring the earth go hand in hand: to be a Christian means ‘loving God’s Creation’. Period. When we love creation and humanity, then we will be assured to inherit the KINGDOM, God’s restored PARADISE: perfection in a renewed world. Not heaven, for Pete’s sake, but a pollution-free, a totally cleaned cosmos, fit for eternity.
Why? Because we have been created for LIFE
We have been created for LIFE, and that to the full. Jesus came, not to found a religion, not to start a Christian church, but to teach us how to live. His opponents called him a ‘glutton’ and a ‘winebibber’. Jesus lived life to the full: his first miracle was making wine, ‘wine that cheers the heart’, said Solomon. These Pharisees and theological theorists, the Scribes, burdened the people of Israel of Jesus’ time with stupid rules and regulations and were so convinced that they did God’s work, that they killed Jesus when he flouted their ‘religious’ ordinances. They saw a stipulated religious life as one that could earn eternity by following the prescribed path. There still are denominations that follow these same principles: follow the rules and the church assures entrance to heaven. They even claim that ‘Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam’, no salvation outside the church. The VIRUS has other ideas. Now, perhaps for months, we will be unable to attend church services. Is the Lord teaching us a lesson here?
In the church’s erroneous claim that we go to heaven, the “KINGDOM” has totally fallen by the wayside, in spite of Jesus’ priority: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).
That spells it out. In our foolishness we have totally neglected that God’s Creation is his ‘beloved’ KINGDOM. By seeking its welfare, by promoting the well-being of ‘the natural world’, we also will gain everything else we require to LIVE. That is God’s promise, believe it or not.
So suddenly LIFE is different: a crisis is upon us!
The texture of everyday life is altering. A sense of fragility is everywhere. It is not only society that feels shaky. So does the human position in the world.
Crisis means decision time. Deuteronomy 30:19 says it so beautifully,
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.
Choose LIFE.
Decision Time. Obey the rules of God’s Holy Creation – Holy because God made
it. Obey God’s law of love.
Bonhoeffer was right when he wrote:
“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient is a believer.” (Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Hitler regime on April 9 1945, 75 years ago)
Obedience means living in such a way that CREATION thrives: that’s how we honor THE CREATOR. Acting differently spells doom, causes PANDEMICS, results in CLIMATE CHANGE.
That’s what this CRISIS is all about! The Lord called “The Heavens and Earth as witnesses against us”. They are now testifying. God knows that the fate of the Heavens and the Earth is the most affected because our sin is against CREATION. Our disobedience is against God’s handiwork.
Please note: the Lord treats the heavens and the earth as living entities. A sin against these is a sin against God. That’s what this CRISIS is all about.
(By the way: The Bible recognizes three heavens: (1) The area under the Ozone Layer where we live, (2) the place where the stars and planets are and above all that (3) there where God dwells. See 2 Corinthians 12.)