Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

March 1 2010

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

I go to a movie perhaps once a year, so, when I saw Avatar my amateurish reaction was one of appreciation. I sympathized with these humanoids, who, with the help of animals, went to great length to protect their tree habitat from being destroyed by ruthless operators.

I may be entirely wrong but I thought I noticed some biblical themes: these creatures loved creation, which I think, is the best way, perhaps the only way, to express our love for God. It’s always been a mystery to me how church-goers claim to love their neighbours, yet have no qualms to despoil the soil, air and water on which their wellbeing depends.  At the film’s very end there was a statement that “very few chose to join them”, which made me think of Jesus’ words, “Many are called but few are chosen.”

The entire movie reminded me of The Tree of Life, a recurrent theme in the Bible which starts with The Tree of Life and the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, and ends with the Tree of Life, in Revelation 22:2 with a curious annotation “The leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations.” This suggests to me that trees have miraculous powers, perhaps beyond our understanding. It is well-known that patients who can see trees, recover faster than those who look out on a life- less scenery. Somehow experiencing God’s living world around us makes us live better and longer. Deuteronomy 20 warns us not to kill off trees, even when it might give us an advantage in war.

John the Baptizer compares trees to people. In Matthew 3:10 he says that “every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown in the fire.” Psalm 92: 12 tells us that “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree; they will grow like the cedar of Lebanon”, now all gone, of course.

In the very centre of Scripture is Jesus who died on a Tree. I think it is noteworthy that His blood and flesh was first pounded into a tree before His body-fluids ebbed away into the earth. We tend to limit Jesus’ redemptive act to us, humans alone, but Jesus’ death was necessary to redeem the entire world, including trees, perhaps the most abused single species in creation.

Trees are firmly rooted in the earth from which they derive their food and minerals. They stretch out their branches to heaven as in prayer, a sure sign that this world has been created by God. In Psalm 1 God compared his children to trees, because we too are firmly rooted in the earth.

What is so unique about trees that the Bible begins and ends with them? In many ways trees are like the earth itself. A strange thing about trees is that during its life nearly all of it is dead wood. As a tree grows, it has only a thin skin of living tissue underneath its bark. The wood inside is dead, as is the bark that protects its delicate tissue. More than 97 percent of the tree is dead before it is cut down. In that way a tree is very much like the earth itself. Around the circumference of the earth, on its surface, is also a thin skin of living matter, of which both the trees and we human beings are part. All rocks beneath is and the air above us are dead.

In the same way the earth on which we live, is like the tree. The earth too is a living, breathing organism, now choking on acid rain, running a fever on Global Warming, and angry, very angry, witness the earthquakes and the ever more violent storms. Romans 8 describes the earth as groaning with pain. Only when we perceive the earth as a living entity, can we become aware that we cannot treat it as cruelly as the contract soldiers did in Avatar and much of our industrial system. The earth is alive, because God is alive. If we treat the earth as if it were dead, then essentially we say “God is dead. He has no relevance for me.”

We all know that trees are our lungs: they take the CO2 from the air and breathe out pure oxygen, the very chemical on which our life depends: it requires the oxygen produced by 4500 trees to keep one person in the West alive.

Trees: regard them as your neighbours, love them the same way you love yourself, your family and your friends, hug them and pray for their continuous healthy state.

Bert Hielema (bert@hielema.ca) lives on 50 acres off mostly trees, adjacent to thousands of acres of crown land. Google ‘hielema.ca’ for more writings.

CO-OWNING THE EARTH

February  2010

In front of me, on my messy desk, I have a pile of books – let’s see,1, 2, there are 14 of them – all having one theme in common: Christian Stewardship. The writers are from the diverse crannies and crevices of the church: Roman Catholic- Father Thomas Berry; Lutheran – Larry L. Rasmussen; Christian Reformed – Calvin College sponsored; United Church of Canada, Presbyterian, and so on. One of the writers is Tony Campolo, who titles his book: ”How to rescue the Earth without worshiping Nature.”

You know by now that I am quite the opinionated old man, so it may come as no surprise to you that, in my, at times, not so humble opinion, all these men, and one woman, Sally McFague, no two, Aileen van Beilen worked on the Calvin project, miss the point. Dr Campolo’s book title already suggests that we can be the victor in fighting pollution. So no wonder that he writes that “with some help from St Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, we just might make it.” Make what? Learn to live so that Jesus does not have to return to’ make all things new?” In his concluding remarks he writes that “The environment has an awesome resilience if we just give it a chance.” Granted he wrote these lines 20 years ago. Maybe today he has a different view.

In EARTHKEEPING, Christian Stewardship of Natural Resources, ( also an ancient book) all by people of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship with such writers as Calvin De Witt, Loren Wilkinson, Aileen Van Beilen and others, I detect a similar optimism. Here is what these good people conclude: “Yet Christians have the power in Christ to redeem the human character from its perversity and lead it into a new life in which stewardship, husbandry, and nurturing vulnerability is ‘natural’….. Only then can we hope to become good and just stewards of the creation which God has placed under our care”. Don’t we believe in ‘original sin’ anymore? This sounds very much like Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and also a geologist, and taught that humanity is in a continuous process of evolution toward a perfect spiritual state. His writings were later banned by the Vatican.

I wonder “Do the Calvin people mean that all of earth-dwellers will become One Hundred Percent Green- Christians? Or do I read this wrong? Since this was written I have often heard Calvin De Witt speak, and have questioned him closely, as recently as two years ago at a conference at the University of Minnesota. He still leaves the impression that human action can safeguard the future.

So how does a Roman Catholic Priest view all this? Father Thomas Berry has written The Dream of the Earth, a book of which Dr Donald B.Conroy, President of the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology, says that “This volume is quite possibly one of the most important books of the twentieth century”. In some ways Berry reminds me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in his essay Creation and Fall: “In my entire being, in my creatureliness, I belong completely to this world….God, brother and sister and the earth belong together,” except that with Berry God is not included.  Berry and Campolo openly base their optimism on Teilhard de Chardin who has had a tremendous impact on many people, including the former PM Paul Martin, even though the Roman Catholic Church declared him a heretic.

Some of my other books are: Caring for Creation; The Earth is the Lord’s; Project Earth, Preserving the World God created; Cherish the Earth: The environment and Scripture; Earth Community, Earth Ethics; God as Nature sees God; Cherish the Earth; Life Abundant; God is Green. They all offer good tips how to live as Christians, but strikingly, none point explicitly to the New Earth under a New Heaven, so vividly described in Revelation 21. Campolo hints at it, but, it seems to me that the Heaven thing is still uppermost in peoples’ mind.

No wonder: I too was spoon-fed on heaven. Already in Kindergarten I sang “Sluit U aan, Sluit U aan, wie mee wil naar de hemel gaan,”  “Get in line, Get in line, then follow the ‘to heaven’ sign.”

What I miss in all these books is “The Kingdom” concept.

Only two writers make this the centre of their thinking. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed by the Gestapo days before the end of World War II, in his “Thy Kingdom Come,” wrote that “The function of the church is to witness to the resurrection of Christ from the dead……and to the power of God in the new Creation.” I find that theme also in Dr J.H. Bavinck, who said, “The Bible shows on every page that the meaning of creation is focused on the one overriding theme: that creation is dominated by one marvelous motif, the motif of the Kingdom of God…It is in the End Time, in the Great Day that is coming, that Yahweh will reveal His kingly-powers when He will forever banish all influences which have had such destructive and ruinous effects on His beloved world.” To me this means that “Where there is no Kingdom vision, the people perish.”

Bert Hielema lives in a solar passive house, with 10 active solar panels. See https://www.hielema.ca/. Comments to bert@hielema.ca.

via NYRblog – Bolivia’s Parched Future – The New York Review of Books.

Co-owning the Earth January 6 2010

During the last week of last year, when we harbored and fed 22 of our children and grandchildren for a couple of days, I still found time to read in Gone with the Wind, that famous book by Margaret Mitchell. It took me well into the New Year to finish all 1024 pages and I could not help comparing it with today’s circumstances.

The story starts describing the picture-perfect opulence Scarlett O’Hara and the Southern landowners enjoyed prior to that terrible war between the Northern States and the South, which lasted from 1861-1865, and was won by the Industrial north.

That conflict destroyed the idyllic life of the plantation owners who relied on the services of hundreds of ‘blackies’ doing the cotton-picking work while the white elite partied. Of course the macho young men there were eager to go to war and teach the North a lesson in manners, life style and warfare.

Today our way of life resembles the pre-civic war Southern luxurious conditions thanks to the hundreds of energy slaves we employ 24/7, a situation too good to last. Just as the defeat of the Confederation of Southern States created a situation not unlike Zimbabwe today – chaos without the expertise of the white farmers, and millions of blacks helpless without guidance – so we too, the rich of the world, dependent on the energy provided by the black gold contained in oil and natural gas, will be unable to cope when our sources of slavery, energy derived from Oil, will have disappeared, and Climate Change and declining fuel supplies will make life as we know it, impossible.

Oil and war are two sides of the same coin. Our current ‘oil-war’ is not a conflict between North and South, between industry and agriculture, is not the rich West against the poor rest. No, our struggle is a much more total and truly global crusade. We all, almost without exception, are soldiers fighting in World War III: everybody in the world battling creation, the utmost unholy war, a war we can never win.

The decade from 2000 through 2009 has been 10 years with triple and double zeros in their numbers. These zeros were also evident in zero gains in the stock market, in wages, in job growth but with unprecedented advances in climate-related incidents and terrorists acts.

I was at the UN climate conference in The Hague in 2000 where nothing was resolved. Last month we witnessed the latest Climate Conference in Copenhagen where again, nothing was resolved.

CC stands for a number of things: It also stands for Climate Change, Carbon Credit and Copenhagen Cop-out, where the mighty of the world tried to do the impossible: pursuing a political solution to a physical phenomenon: they might as well have attempted to repeal the Law of Gravity by a majority vote.

Climate Change is a planetary problem that has now gone beyond the human will to remedy. Climate Change simply comes from too much CO2, Carbon Dioxide, in the atmosphere. Every time we turn the ignition key in our so adored automobile, we increase Green House Gases just a tad and heat up the air just a tiny bit more. Already in 1896 Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, and one of the first Nobel Prize winners, explained in the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine: “we are evaporating our coal mines into the air…Eventually this change might very well heat the planet to heights outside all human experience.”

That was 114 years ago. Nothing much has changed. Still more than 50 percent of all electricity is generated by coal. The Copenhagen Cop-out reminds me of The Gadarene Swine Rule Theologian Douglas Wilson has coined, which goes as follows: “Just because a group is in formation, it doesn’t mean they know where they are going.”  This rule, based on Matthew 8:32, tells us that an immense herd of pigs rushed down a steep bank and drowned. In a similar fashion our world too is rushing head over heels into a Climate Change Catastrophe.

Already 2000 years ago Paul wrote that “the Lust for money is the root of all evil.” The Copenhagen Cop-out tells me that, thanks to our lust for money, we can kiss goodbye Africa, kiss goodbye south Asia, places where we send our missionaries. I wonder what their message is. Our lust for money means that we can kiss goodbye to glaciers and coral reefs and rainforests.

We Christians are traveling to an everlasting re-new-ed earth under a re-new-ed heaven, both ‘zero emissions’ zones. Our fight – see Ephesians 6: 12 – is against the powers of this dark world- which condones Global Warming – is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens, which directly refer to Climate Change.

If we want to be part of that Resurrection life and enjoy Life Everlasting- as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed – we Christians face an enormous challenge. Our new CC, our Cosmic Challenge, is to consciously live so, that our transition to that Zero Emission Life – which ought to be today’s mission of the Church – is smooth.

Bert Hielema lives in Rural Tweed, Ontario. His blog is https://www.hielema.ca/. He can be reached at bert@hielema.ca.

Co-owning the Earth (2)

Call me a heretic and I’ll say ‘amen brother’ (or sister), because the word heresy comes from the Greek word ‘hairesis’ which means ‘to go one’s way.’ That’s what I try to do, not conform, not crawl along with the crowd, not complacently comply: no, I am busy “working out my salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil.2:12).

For me working out my salvation is a constant struggle between how I live and how I should live, because new times need a new approach. A Dutch theologian, Dr J.H.Bavinck, wrote in his book De Mensch en zijn Wereld – and I translate – “we cannot imagine a greater contrast than that between the compelling and concordant composition of creation as it came forth from the hands of God, and the now by demons dominated domain, the place where our haunted human tribe abides after the fall into sin.”

Why is this man so outspoken? Here is his answer: “The Kingdom is kaput. That is the deep tragedy, a disaster much greater than creation’s broken harmony: the earth’s meltdown means that God has surrendered his work of art to the Devil’s powers whose only aim is to abuse and destroy what God has made.”

I am afraid that too often I also am his willing ally: each time I drive a car or switch on a light, I aid in creation’s destruction.

Bavinck continues, “The kingdom includes all plants, animals, people, angels; it means that sea and earth, mountain and valley, past, present and future are part of a powerful and meaningful entity, in which everything has its perfect place and in which every tiny item functions properly and deploys its inherent power in total unity and in complete symbiosis with its surroundings. That peaceful stability has been broken.” So far Dr Bavinck.

The Copenhagen meeting earlier this month was a feeble attempt to restore a bit of balance. I believe that James Lovelock was right when he wrote in his The Revenge of Gaia, Earth’s Climate in Crisis and the Fate of the Earth: “We have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human time scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up.”

Frankly I cannot understand how John 3:16 “God so loved the world,” is almost always understood to mean that God’s love is restricted to the human race. However, the Greek original says, God so loves the “cosmos,” the totality of life. If God loved all that lives, shouldn’t we do the same? Shouldn’t we also love trees, seas, air, animals, with every fiber in our bodies, every day, every hour? Shouldn’t that be the focus of our lives, the essence of ‘being born again’?

If it is sin to kill and to steal, then surely it is a sin to destroy carrying capacity – the ability of the earth to support life now and in the future. To give back to God the gift of creation in a degraded state capable of supporting less life, less abundantly, and for a shorter future, is surely a sin.

I know it’s much easier to believe in heaven, to escape this earth and its wickedness than to conduct ourselves as co-owners and so treasure the earth as our dearest possession. It requires fear and trembling to live so today that when Christ returns we have no trouble fitting into the new creation that is about to come.

In these end-times a new religious focus is needed. The world realizes already that we live in the last days. During November two movies were released, and next January two more will be, all four films dealing with Apocalypse.

(1) 2012. Massive shifts in the Earth’s crust lead to earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves, all in keeping with Mayan prophecy, a movie already wildly successful.

(2) THE ROAD. An unidentified cataclysm, possibly nuclear, plunges the earth into darkness and cold, eliminating most of life on earth: also to great acclaim.

(3) DAYBREAKERS. A plague has put vampires in charge of society, but their greedy, unsustainable corporate-hunting practices have almost destroyed the food supply.

(4) LEGION. God has become tired of all ‘our BS’ and decides to exterminate humanity by sending his angels – insect-like humanoids with extendable limbs and expandable claws – to kill us.

Here is a thought from a Christian historian, John Lucacs, who wrote: “The fear or anticipation that something may happen may cause it to happen (a view of ‘a future’ may cause ‘ present’)”. In other words, the fear that the earth may experience a tremendous upheaval, as these four movies try to tell us, may bring it about.

We are on the verge of a New Year. Not yet 2012, but 2010. Perhaps the Lord will come back this coming year. We, of course, don’t know the Day or the Hour, but all signs point that his coming is imminent.

This and other writings can be seen at https://www.hielema.ca//; Comments to bert@hielema.ca.

CO-OWNING THE EARTH  (1)

I start this series with some trepidation, because I know that what I will write may sound unfamiliar to many. I am reading Karen Armstrong’s new book The Case for God in which she continuously stresses that what we believe needs constant updating. It is my sincere opinion that we live in entirely new times, where the old answers don’t work anymore. I am comforted by George Bernard Shaw’s remark that “all evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy.” So, in starting my new column “Co-owning the Earth”, expect some unorthodox opinions. I trust that if I stray too far, no doubt you will rise in brotherly – sisterly – love and gently correct me, giving valid reasons, of course, where I have erred.

I state that we co-own the earth, that we are not stewards, but owners. I base that on Psalm 115:16 which says that (NIV) “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man,” which means that we live in a huge condominium where we together are responsible for its wellbeing.

But, you will object, doesn’t Psalm 24 say that “The Earth is the Lord’s”? Not so fast. I don’t deny that. Suppose I have a very valuable painting, say a van Gogh. Its my personal possession and I can do with it whatever I want, maim it, neglect it, even sell it! However, though I own it, it still is a ‘van Gogh.’ That’s how it is with the earth: it still is the Lord’s.  He is still the creator, the architect, the maker of heaven and earth. But he gave it to us and – here comes the tragic news -“We sold it.” Writes Dr J.H.Bavinck in De Mensch en zijn Wereld, and I translate (page 53) “God has surrendered his world to vanity, to destruction with the result that we humans who wanted to be kings no longer live in a world that as God’s beautiful kingdom no longer wants to be subject to Him. Something happened in creation, something we can’t fathom, but which we experience daily in the form of terrible happenings. Demonic powers have thrown themselves onto nature, onto humanity, onto the radiant creation.”

Henri J. M. Nouwen echoes this when he writes that “Indeed the powers of darkness rule the world. We should not be surprised when we see human suffering and pain all around us. But we should be surprised by joy every time we see that God, not the Evil One, has the last word.”

We, as the human race, in the Garden of Eden, changed partners, and pledged allegiance to the Great Adversary, and, instead of relying on God, mortgaged the earth, in effect, sold it to Satan, who now calls the shots. Jesus acknowledged when He called him “The Prince of this World.” Matthew 4:8 proves that conclusively.

So it’s not surprising that we, as co-owners have not done a very good job: we have eaten the seas, mined the mountains, wasted its waters, ruined its rivers, and now are changing its climate.  We are on the way to hell. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “The road to hell – the road away from God – is the gradual one, the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without mile posts, without sign posts. The road away from God is the do nothing road.”

We have been on that ‘do nothing’ road thanks to our fossil fuel slaves. That has to change. When Christ returns and claims his kingdom we must be ready for Him. That means that we, as much as is humanly possible in this inhuman world, live a pollution-free life, so that our transition to the holy state of the Kingdom, is smooth.

We often pray, “Your Kingdom Come” perhaps not fully grasping the implications of that request: it is a prayer for the speedy arrival of the New Earth. Writes Isaiah – and here comes another possible heresy – (Isaiah 62:4) “No longer will you be called Deserted, or name your land Desolate, but you will be called ‘My delight is in you,’ and ‘Your land “Married,”‘ for the Lord will take delight in you and your land will be married.” Married to whom you may ask?  Revelation 21 picks up that theme, where it says that “The Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Yes, the land will be married to us. The Bride is not the church, the Bride is the Land, the New Creation, to which we, the human race will be married, together with Christ – the Son of Man, humanity personified, as the Primus inter Pares, the First among equals.

Enough heresies for one column.

This column and many other writings can be seen at https://www.hielema.ca/. Comments to bert@hielema.ca