March 10 21013
The Future isn’t what it used to be
When I left the army in April 1951 – I was conscripted in 1949 and served for 18 months – I was engaged to my future wife, in my 23d year of life, in possession of a liberal arts education majoring in classic languages, and no idea what I was going to do. So I took the easy way out: on July 4 1951 I landed in New York on my way to Canada to work at a farm in Strathroy, Ontario.
I worked there for 2 months – $60.00 per month plus room and board, then moved to Grimsby to work in a feed mill for 8 months – 58 hours per week for 50 cents per hour. Within a year of being in Canada, I had a salaried job $175 per month with a financial institution. My training there proved very beneficial in my next step as an insurance agent: ‘there’s no man with more endurance than a man who sells insurance.’ Yes, I stuck it out, expanding from life insurance to general insurance in 1957, to real estate broker in 1963, sold out in 1975, moved to the country, built an energy efficient solar passive house while studying to become a commercial real estate appraiser which happened in 1978. Every year I saw my income – and our family – increase.
I was fortunate. The economy from 1951 to 1995 – when I retired – grew rapidly, thanks to cheap oil and a young population. I rode the boom, at a time when government hand-outs also ballooned. I remember receiving the first of the so-called baby bonus cheques: ranging from $4 per month for kids under 6 to $8 and $10 for older ones. A quick check tells me that it is now $270 per child per month. The same rapid increase also applies to Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan.
I once calculated the entire amount I had paid into the compulsory Canada Pension Plan. As a self-employed person I had to take care of both the employer and the employee portion. It was $75 + $75 = $150 per year initially and my last contribution was $750 + $750 = $1,500. Including 8 % compounded, my total contribution to the plan came to $32,000. I started to collect at 66 years of age and in 4 years I had used up that entire amount. From the age of 70 to my current almost 85 years old, I have benefitted to the tune of close to $20,000 – including Old Age Security – per year or $300,000 until now. How long can this largesse last? The government is in a deficit position and will remain so perhaps forever.
In the meantime the ratio of worker to recipient is decreasing: more and more retirees and fewer and fewer tax payers. This is going to be the great dilemma for the years to come because the future isn’t what it used to be.
Last week I read a nice line:
The veil that hides the face of the future was woven by the hand of Mercy.
I believe this applies to the lives of you and me. From day–to–day we don’t know what is in store for us, because what will happen to us tomorrow or next month is a mystery. And that is good. However, what is relevant on the personal level does not fit our world-wide trends.
Here are some irrefutable facts: government intake is shrinking; outlay for pensions and medical care is expanding, making business as usual impossible. We are also discovering that we live in a Finite World. We have built our infrastructure on the premise that the period 1950-2000 with plenty of cheap and easily accessible fuel will continue forever. We have pampered the population with all sorts of benefits based on the expectation of an ever growing GDP – Gross Domestic Product. We have borrowed money, banking on continuous growth so that interest payments could easily be met. We have granted pension benefits projecting 6 percent interest income and a stable mortality. All of these assumptions no longer apply, while the projections for Climate Change have been far too optimistic.
All this simply means that the Future will not be what it used to be. From 1951 on I had jobs in quick succession: then China was just a name for cups and saucers: now it is the manufacturing hub of the world. I built up a good business in a few years. Today this too would be very difficult.
And what about spiritual matters? When I grew up the future of the Christian was assured: we all went to heaven. Religion was straightforward. Not anymore. For one thing: heaven is out. I once heard Lewis Smedes say that going to heaven is boring: all those white robes and that constant singing. What about those who are tone-deaf and dislike choirs and like bright red or deep blue? Going to heaven would turn off any thinking and active person. Now even Time Magazine is “Rethinking Heaven” and Christianity Today, the mainstream Christian periodical, too has come around and sees The New Creation as the future of the confessing Christian rather than heaven, which is still a Billy Graham favourite, but then he hasn’t changed his tune since the 1950’s.
Anybody who has a bit of an eye for the future must admit that everything needs a thorough overhaul: all governments are rethinking their finances; the weather will only get worse; the world has too many greedy customers. Science- which caused our present condition- cannot solve our problem of GHG – Green House Gases – which are pouring into the air in increasing numbers, thanks to China where, for the time being, we have parked our pollution problem. There the population is choking to death: they either must stop burning dirty coal – and cause a world depression – or kill us all. Capitalism prefers the latter because the main plank of its idolatrous religion is continuous economic growth, impossible in a finite world. The ultimate outcome is destruction, an overheated world going up in flames.
Is there an alternative? Yes. The only viable solution is The Kingdom: Speed its Coming. What in the world do I mean with that?
Peter, the apostle whose name is immortalized in the Saint Peter Basilica – now the centre of the world’s attention with a new pope to be elected – wrote about this in one of his letters, as recorded in 2 Peter 3:10 -12.
Here are some of his memorable lines. “He- the Lord- is patient not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear, the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. (That’s why) we ought to live holy and godly lives (be as green as possible) as we look forward to the Day of the Lord and speed its coming….. we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”
Time for a commercial. During the last few months I have been translating a book by Johan Herman Bavinck, a Dutch theologian. In it he also discusses eschatological matters, events that centre on “The Last Days”. I have given the book (soon to be available; you can order it here) the provisional title of The Kingdom: Speed its Coming. The Kingdom is another word for “The New Earth” that I believe is to come. Here are some excerpts from its third chapter, simply called
THE KINGDOM.
“Its main premise is that on the Great Day of the Lord, in the end–time, the Lord God will reveal his kingly power and on that Day he will permanently expel all decaying and destructive forces that have penetrated his creation. On that Day the indescribable glory of the new reality of the eternal Kingdom will appear in living colour, a reality in which all things will again have their rightful place.
The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering: its entire focus is aimed at the unique, powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom. (Wants to renew the world we now live in).
It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all?wise will of him who lives and rules for ever……
It has never been the burden of Scripture that the Kingdom would be confined to the human race. No, the Kingdom is always universal and cosmic in scope, benefitting the entire creation.”
Are you still with me? That we are at the edge of dramatic change is recognized by many others, mainly non-Christians.
Here’s what a blogger, Ian Welsh, has to say: “One day it will catch up to us, and it will push us to extinction, because we now have the means, and more than the means to destroy ourselves utterly. If we do not grow up as a species, if we do not gain wisdom, we may not be long for this world.”
John Michael Greer in his latest The Archdruid Report writes: “Over the decades ahead, the people of the United States and the rest of the industrial world are going to have to deal with the unraveling of an already declining American global empire, the end of a global economic order dominated by the dollar and thus by America’s version of the imperial wealth pump, the accelerating depletion of a long list of non-renewable resources, and the shattering impact of rapid climate change, just for starters. If history is any guide, the impact of those already inevitable crises will likely be compounded by wars, revolutions, economic crises, and all the other discontinuities that tend to crop up when one global order gives way to another. (My emphasis)
Dr. Robert Jensen of the University of Texas School of Journalism: “If we look honestly at the state of the world, it is difficult not to conclude that we are in end times of sorts — not the end of the physical world, but the end of the First-World way of living and the end of the systems on which that life is based.”
All three authors predict that radical changes are coming. I agree. Our current world order is at its last legs. The next order is “The Coming of the Kingdom,” whose coming, we are told, we must speed up. How do we do that?
In the first place we have to believe that particular line in The Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdom Come.” That really means that we must ask the Lord to come back and bring the New Creation. By praying this request and telling others about the glorious future of the Coming of the Kingdom we hasten its coming. After all, our life here is but a prelude to the Life to come. Our real life comes in a fully restored creation: no wars, no pollution, no sickness ever, no marriage, no depression, never any money worries, perfect food all the time, glorious health forever. All animals our friends, the lion and the lamb leisurely playing together, all species restored, the seas filled with fish, all waters fit to drink, the air so pure that everything flourishes. A situation totally opposite of what we experience now. The real miracle is that straight through all our trials and errors to arrive at a human?dominated empire, God re?establishes his eternal, unequaled Kingdom. That is the ultimate meaning of history. That is the Real Good News! That is the Future that is so different.
Next week: some tips on how to live in the ‘interim’ times.