JULY 15 2017
IS GOD DEAD?
Here’s what I believe.
Climate Change is a result of us declaring God superfluous and his creation as disposable. Today we see this culminating in Global Warming which is humanity’s defining issue, affecting everybody and everything everywhere forever.
Here’s where I become controversial.
I believe that Organized Religion carries the blame for this global disaster by refusing to see creation as holy. That’s also the reason why the instituted church has never considered Creation as God’s Primary, Direct Word and has always insisted that the Bible is God’s sole revelation.
This sort of theology has resulted in the killing of creation and has led to the death of God. The Old Testament church killed Jesus. Is history repeating itself?
Suppose….
Suppose that by order of the authorities all Bach’s music were to be destroyed. Within a few years J. S. Bach would be forgotten, dead for all practical purposes. Suppose that all paintings by van Gogh would disappear: within a few years nobody would recognize his name anymore.
That’s exactly what we are doing to God. We are wiping out his creation and fashioning it in our likeness, and in the process we have eliminated God from creation, in essence declaring him DEAD.
The consequence is that we no longer live in the world God created. While initially creation was our ally, it now has become our enemy.
Danger ahead.
Curiously our greatest peril lies there where almost nobody lives: the tundra in Siberia and Canada, those regions where the heat is melting the ‘permafrost’ which no longer is ‘perma-nent’ as the methane-laden earth emits a much more dangerous Greenhouse Gas. Arctic News reported last week that temperatures at two locations on the Mackenzie River, which flows north into the Arctic, were 32.6°C or 90.8°F at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and another one of 34.7°C or 94.5°F further inland. Warm water from rivers substantially warms up the sea surface and thus melts the sea ice while warm rain melts the “perma” frost. There also are multiple 10 meters wide gaping holes where the tundra has exploded, spontaneously bursting into flames signifying the emerging of methane gases 37 times more lethal than the stuff we spew into the air with our car exhausts.
The world tries—- in vain
The entire world – except the USA Government – is taking measures to combat Climate Change. At one time America prided itself to be THE CITY ON THE HILL, the example for all nations to follow. It now is fast becoming THE CITY ON THE way to HELL, as it openly encourages to flout all Climate Change reduction rules, even though as a nation it is the largest emitter of Green House Gases in the world.
There is a saying “Come Hell or High Water”, meaning that no efforts will be spared to accomplish a goal. Well Hell AND High Water is exactly what is in store for much of the USA, as Hell means unbearable heat and forest fires, while high water signifies flooding, through an overabundance of rain, hurricanes and thunderstorms.
“Is God dead?” an idolatrous question?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wondered whether we should live ‘etsi deus non daretur’, as if there were no God.
I believe that Bonhoeffer always saw life in terms of eternity. In the New Creation God no longer plays a role because that pristine state fully represents God’s will for creation: everything is perfect, including the people, and since our life is a proving ground for eternity, this implies that “living as if God no longer matters”, is part of that trial process.
Bonhoeffer felt a great kinship with Nietzsche, who once wrote, “Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God is dead, and these sinners died with him. Today the sin against the earth is the most dreadful sin.”
Who is without sin in that regard? Admit it: we constantly sin against the earth to the extent that there is not a molecule left on the planet untouched by our sinful action: the oceans, the air, the soil all are contaminated: all divine influence has been compromised.
What does “the death of God” mean for us?
Romans 8: 17 tells us that God had to die. There it says that “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Only when the testator- God in this case – dies can the heritage be claimed. The heritage is the NEW CREATION.
The death of God assures that we will inherit the earth!! Sharing in Christ’s suffering means that we must love the earth and express that love in our actions. Those actions must be totally pro-Climate. Christians must be the most active Climate Change fighters and pro Climate workers, even to the point of SUFFERING. Are YOU going to forget about air travel, long automobile trips, cruises, all items that cause of lot of pollution, and start living as if God will come back tomorrow? Are you willing to suffer for that cause?
A new era
We already have entered a new era, where TRUTH is in retreat and the LIE lurks as the most believable.
We, as a society, Christian in name, are no longer able to gauge matters in the light of Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, of which Colossians 1 says that “ALL things were created by him (Ta Panta in Greek), which make “all things” holy.
In John 8 there is an example of the POST-TRUTH SOCIETY. Jesus points to the Devil and says: “When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 1 John 5:19 tells us that today he rules the world with lies and deceit.
That’s the situation we are in today. To deny Climate Change is speaking the language of the devil and by doing so we obstruct Jesus who said in the same chapter: “The Truth shall set you free” John 8:32.
REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH!
Nietzsche in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA writes, “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…”
Nietzsche`s rebellion against the church originated from the preaching of the Heaven Heresy, still ruling the church today. The much maligned Nietzsche was a genius. His father and both his grand fathers were Lutheran preachers, one even a bishop. He was also slated to join the ranks of clergy but, seeing that the church was dead and so concluding that God was dead as well, he changed course and at a very young age became a professor of classical languages.
“Remain true to the earth!” is certainly a timely reminder. Our downright cruelty to the earth is overly clear. Most people see the earth as something to be exploited for personal gain, resulting in shrinking soil fertility, disappearing potable water, and climate change, signalling immense future problems.
This past week I again was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew that his time was short: at the age of 39 he was killed by the Gestapo (Geheime Stats Polizei or Secret Police) weeks before the end of WWII. One statement really stayed with me: “God cannot be understood without the world, nor the world without the God who has entered it in Jesus Christ.”
That makes sense. We cannot understand Bach without his music or van Gogh without his paintings. That’s why we cannot understand God without his creation. The Scriptures have been given us to make that possible. By killing creation we are killing God. Here I hear an echo of Nietzsche’s words: Remain true to the earth!
Why did Bonhoeffer write that it takes creation to understand God? In his CREATION AND FALL, dealing with the first three chapters of the Bible, Genesis 1-3, he writes, “The human being is the human being who is taken from earth…. The earth is its mother…. It is God’s earth out of which humankind is taken….. Its bond with the earth belongs to its essential being. Human beings have their existence as existence on earth.
Johan Herman Bavinck says essentially the same. In his Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision he writes,
“A long time ago, the Bible tells us, God fashioned the first human pair from the earth. The Hebrew word for soil is Adamah, from which Adam comes. The word adam reminded the Israelite immediately of the first Adam who was taken from the soil of the earth, hence the well-known saying: soil we are and to soil we shall return. Just as we have red clay and black soil, we too have people of different colors. The word ‘adam’ typifies the human race in its unbreakable unity. We all come from the earth and we all go back to the earth. Earth-bound we are, forever. We, the human beings, are adam, and belong to adamah, the life-bearing earth. With every sinew of our exis¬tence we are tied to the earth, which bears us and feeds us.”
Back to us humans who, by and large, regard soil as disposable. We trample on it, pave it wherever we can, and, stupidly build our cities on its most fertile sections, because that sort of earth is good for digging and drainage, so we abuse it: it’s only dirt after all. Yes, soil is treated as dirt that’s why we regard it with contempt. Yet all human life depends on it. Ancient Sanskrit texts have warned us: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it”. Yes, destroy the earth and we destroy ourselves, and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
In these Last Days.
In these LAST DAYS we have to implement the words of Psalm 119: 105: “Your word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (in creation)”. With the two divine words at the ready – Creation and the Scriptures – guided by the Living Word that came to us in Jesus Christ, we have to outline a life that reflects God’s will now and for eternity, meaning that the current format of the church service has to change from the exclusive elaboration of the written word to a meaningful integration of both the created and the written word, fully recognizing that the created word, God’s direct revelation, has priority over God’s revelation in Scripture, his indirect word.
For most people God means little or nothing at all. For the bulk of those who go to church their quest is centered on heaven, but since we are of the earth, and eternally bound to the earth, this simply means a life lived in denial.
This is all too evident in the USA, the most ‘Christian’ of the Western world. There Christianity has become so distorted that people like me are almost ashamed to call myself Christian. Nowhere in the world is the ‘world’ more abused and more reviled than in the USA where the average person generates 15 tons of CO2 per year, while the world average is less than 5 tons.
Bonhoeffer’s words, stating that we cannot find the God who has entered into the world in the form of Jesus Christ, unless we see and treat the world as originating from God and thus holy, are today more true than ever. Even though there may be churches that proclaim that truth, hardly any hymns reflect that belief.
The church, by preferring heaven over the earth, in essence says that God erred, that he made a fallible earth, which no longer matters. A fallible God is a dead idol.
But Jesus lives! He has overcome death and we live with him and through him.