Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 21

John, the Irishman, more than a millennium ago, told us that God is in all things. There’s a man who knew the bible. Colossians 1:15-20 says exactly that: “He is before all things and in him all things hold together.” The Irish John said it in poetry: “God has not created everything out of nothing, but out of his own essence, out of his very life: That is the light that is in all things,
the light which is the light of angels,
the light of the created universe,
the light indeed of all visible and invisible existence.”
Again this Irishman: “the way to learn about God is through the letters of the Scriptures and through the species of creation.” He urges us to listen to these expressions of God and to conceive of their meaning in our souls. So it is no wonder that the national color of the Irish is green. They were the Green Party as long as we have recorded history.
The attitude of The Irish John and Celtic spirituality in general is diametrically opposed to the materialism we have in our world, shaped by Roman Catholic dualism, and equally evident in Protestant Christianity. The bible is very clear on this. Again Colossians 1:15 -20  is a passage exemplifying the Celtic Spirit more than any other. This is what it says: Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

The Gnostics deny Christ’s humanity. But Paul affirms it repeatedly because Jesus always introduces himself as The Son of Man, which simply means Human through and through. Paul sees Jesus as the ‘firstborn of all creation.’ Bible translators like to modify this because it doesn’t fit in with their presuppositions. The Greek plainly says ‘proototekos pases ktiseoos’ which translates not as ‘the firstborn over all creation’ as the NIV has it, but ‘the firstborn of creation’
What does this mean? It means that, when God planned the creation, he started with duplicating himself in the form of Jesus Christ, in the form of the ultimate in creation, the human beings we are. God Himself, in the words of the Son, is a spirit and we must worship him in spirit and in truth. But Christ is not a spirit: he is a man of flesh and blood, just like we are. He also is the prototype, the original human, the very first human being, the firstborn of all creation. We look like him because we are made in God’s image. Yes, we look like Christ. We, as women and men, as boys and girls, are the highest order in God’s creation, but we come from the lowest material, the original stuff of creation: clay. We are made of that material, that’s why we belong to the earth and will always be part and parcel of it. After all the word ‘Adam’ means clay. God fashioned us, the human race, from the clay of the earth, a mixture of dry dust and water. He, as the Master Sculptor, created us, fashioned us, shaped us, molded us, in the image of that perfect, divine creature, God’s alter ego, Jesus Christ. That is what verse 15 says.
Verse 16 continues in that same vein: “For by Christ all things were created.” Remember Christ, the first human being, did this. Made in his image, part of his body, we can read this also: For by us, as human beings, as the body of Christ, all things were created.
That’s what accounts for the tremendous accomplishments we human beings have achieved: we are of divine origin. That’s why God is also so outspoken when he warns us not to kill other humans because they are God’s image (Genesis 9:6).
However, because we have strayed from the path of Christ, have not seen creation as the First Word of God, have gone in exactly the opposite direction, a direction to which the Celtic Christians objected, the world now is in such a dire situation that soon we will need a complete overhaul, a total cleansing, a drastic process of burning all the rubbish that now defile God’s cosmos.

By and large organized religion has neglected this approach. Even worse, by placing so much emphasis on God’s world, they were persecuted by the church as the Irish John was, with the result that reason, doctrine, church dogma, human wisdom, became the measure of faith.
We now see the result. We see a world plagued with pollution, plagued with poverty, plagued with a plurality of pains. We see a world where the idol of economic growth takes priority over any creation friendly act so that we now occupy a planet depleted with whatever is precious.

Until now many preachers still read Genesis 2:15 as a license to ‘dominate’ creation. Actually, just as Jesus came not to be served but to serve, so this text too has that same intent. Early in human history, in the glorious days of the Garden of Eden, God charged humanity to look after God’s creation. The word that previous translations showed as ‘dominate’ or ‘lord over’ in reality means ‘taking care’, because the identical Hebrew word is found in Joshua 24:15, where Joshua, the man who succeeded Moses as leader of Israel, vouches “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Thus the same Hebrew word indicating ‘taking care of God’s creation’ and ‘serving the Lord’ means exactly the same.
This serving is reflected in the prayer of St. Patrick, the great Irish evangelist. His prayer is typical:
I bind myself today
The virtues of the star-lit heaven
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray.
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.
Again the closeness to creation, but also the sense that Christ is in everything, including ourselves, based on this very bible passage in Col.1:19, where it says that God was pleased to have all God’s fullness dwell in Jesus.
Christ be with me, Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
Celtic Christianity does not see a great gap between heaven and earth, no, the two are seen as inseparably intertwined.
The (Canadian) Presbyterian Record once had a review of a book called The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christians can reach the West.
The author, George G. Hunter III, outlined five proven Celtic Church practices he believes are needed today.
(1) We need to move from the ‘lone ranger’ approach in the church, where the minister is the all and in all, to partnership forms of ministry.
(2) We must create ‘neo-monastic church communities’ as places of formation for modern Christians.
I know that this is difficult in our subdivided world, where we all live in our own dwelling. Monastic means communal living, as in a convent or monastery, but then for families. It is something to which I will give more attention in a next chapter. Curiously in the October 9 2003 issue of the New York Review of Books which discusses The Human Web by Father and Son McNeil, the authors recommend the formation of primary communities:” Religious sects and congregations are the principal candidates for this role.”
(3) We must develop imaginative/ contemplative prayer patterns.
(4) Practice open and full hospitality as our prime response to those who are seeking.
We are all very private people and not prone to open our houses and hearts to others. In our busyness, we think we have no time for this.
(5) Rediscover that belonging comes before believing for those new to the faith.
These are new times. We see every day what the Roman Way of Christianity is bringing destruction and pollution to God’s world. In 1966 Dr Lynn White addressed the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. His topic: The historical roots of our Ecological Crisis. I quote: The church has taught that God planned this earth explicitly for man’s benefit and ruled no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asian religions not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.
We now know that this approach has been destructive for our planet. I sincerely believe that Celtic Christianity provides a better answer to today’s way of serving God than any church way yet confessed.
The Celtic cross plainly expresses this. The orb, the circle at the centre of the cross represents the sun and the light of the world, and expresses the desire to hold together the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in scriptures.
This is our Father’s world, which we will inherit as his children. Treat it as such, because it is ours to live in forever.

Here is a final Celtic poem:
DEEP PEACE OF THE RUNNING WAVE TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE FLOWING AIR TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE QUIET EARTH TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE SHINING STARS TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE GENTLE NIGHT TO YOU
MOON AND STARS POUR THEIR HEALING LIGHT ON YOU.
DEEP PEACE OF CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD TO YOU.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 20

How the Irish did it again.

 In 1995 Thomas Cahill wrote a book with the flattering title of How the Irish Saved Civilization: the untold story of Ireland’s heroic role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. In it Thomas Cahill outlined how the Irish practiced human sacrifice, because their gods were capricious, entrapped people and would only bless them in response to flattery, liturgical manipulation and sacrifice. That religious worldview produced a precarious sense of life; no Irishman was unfamiliar with the experience of cosmic terror.

When Patrick came – now the patron saint of Ireland evident in Saint Patrick Day – he preached the good news of a different God, a God not hostile, not capricious or self-seeking, but a God who loves people and all other creatures, and wants them free from sin and terror, a God who desires no human sacrifice, but whose sacrifice of his only Son for all of creation, makes human sacrifice forever unnecessary. Saint Patrick proclaimed a God who calls them not to die for him, but to live for him and each other.

That was the beginning of Celtic Christianity.Why do I single out Celtic Christianity? I single them out because the Irish are different. Their mindset was not influenced by Greek logic or by the Roman sense of organization and obedience to authority. The Irish were more like the people of Israel, if the Psalms are any indication. The Hebrew psalms show a wide range of religious experience, from exultation and doubt, from pain and persecution, from passion and aspiration, to fortitude, bitterness, despair and complaint, but also abundant gratitude and heartfelt praise. The Psalms reflect a deep humanity, that’s why they have remained a mainstay of the Christian life until this day.

And these very same traits are evident in the Irish. Perhaps they are the Ten Lost tribes of Israel, because there are many similarities between the Jewish mentality and the Irish character: both have given birth to great thinkers and outstanding scientists. Here’s how Thomas Cahill sees them: “They understood, as few have understood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things and people. They pursued the wondrous deed, the heroic gesture: fighting….drinking.. art – poetry for intense emotion, the music that accompanied the heroic drinking with which each day ended…All these are worth pursuit, and the first, especially will bring the honor great souls seek.”

Patrick, the apostle of the Irish, having spent many years there as a prisoner, understood their psyche and therefore was able to connect his message to their deepest concerns. Patrick knew their religious backgrounds, how their gods were an indifferent lot, and he could convince them that the Triune God of Christianity was receptive to their emotions. Patrick knew their love for artistic expression and he was able to give them the necessary outlets for venting their feelings through story telling, poetry, music, dance, drama and their indigenous gift for oratory. Celtic Christianity was so effective because it provided an avenue to release their deepest felt sentiments. 

Every branch of Christianity in the world is influenced by the prevailing opinions prior to it taking root there, even though Missionary work throughout the centuries has tried to impose a Western brand of Christianity on the native populations. We see the disastrous consequences of this especially among the indigenous population in Canada, where their native customs have, by force, been replaced with a Western brand of religion which has destroyed their own heritage and culture and left them empty and drifting.

That has been equally true in Asia, in China, in Africa, while Japan rejected this approach completely. Fortunately Ireland was spared this cultural holocaust because they have always believed that God uses all five senses to “speak” to people.

The Celtic cross is one example of Celtic expression. The orb, the circle at the centre of the cross, is said to represent the sun and the light of the world, and expresses the desire to hold together the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in the Scriptures. Together they reflect the practice of listening for the living Word in nature as well as in the Bible. A typical Celtic prayer is: “Almighty God, Sun behind all suns… in every friend we have the sunshine of your presence.”
That God is present in all creation was certainly the conviction of the ninth-century philosopher, John Scotus Eriugena, perhaps the greatest teacher of the Celtic branch of the church ever produced. His name simply means John, the Scotsman from Ireland.
He taught that Christ moves among us in two shoes, as it were, one shoe being that of creation, the other that of the Scriptures, and stressed the need to be as alert and attentive to Christ moving among us in creation as we are to the voice of Christ in the Scriptures. One of his prayer was, “Show to us in everything we touch, in every one we meet your presence.”
Like the Celtic Christian teachers before him, the thoughts of John the Irishman, were particularly shaped by the mysticism of the Apostle John, who tells us that “God is Love.” The realization that God is also a love affair is summed up in the doctrine of the Trinity. Celtic Christians, a 1000 years ago expressed this in this poem:
The Three who are over my head.
The Three who are under my tread,
The Three who are over me here
The Three who are over me there,
The Three who are in the earth near,
The Three who are up in the air,
The Three who in heaven do dwell,
The Three in the great ocean swell,
Pervading Three, O be with me!
When God created, he called it good after each phase, and very good when it was all completed. This basic goodness in creation is a special feature of Celtic Christianity. Says the Irish John: “God’s divine goodness is the essence of the whole universe and its substance. Evil is opposed to the existence of creation and where goodness is creative, evil is destructive.”
All this was written long before we experienced the evil of pollution, of global warming, of ozone depletion, which, we can now clearly see, is the devil at work.
As so often happens in the church, true reformers and true radicals are not tolerated by the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1225 the main writings of John the Irishman were condemned by the Pope and in 1685 they were placed on the Index, the papal list of forbidden writings. But the Celtic influence persisted. The people of the many islands off the Scottish coast, the Hebrides, living in isolation for centuries, retained much of the Celtic religion in their traditions.
There is a story of a woman from the island of Harris who suffered from a type of skin disease and was exiled from the community to live alone on the seashore. There she collected plants and shellfish, and having boiled them for eating, washed her sores with the remaining liquid. In time she was cured. She saw the grace of healing as having come to her through creation and so she prayed:
There is no plant in the ground
But it is full of His virtue,
There is no form in the strand
But it is full of his blessing.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu, who ought to be praised.
There is no life in the sea,
there is no creature in the river,
there is naught in the firmament,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu, who ought to be praised.
There is no bird on the wing,
there is no star in the sky
there is nothing beneath he sun,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu, who ought to be praised.
John the apostle had a fine ear for God’s creation. Listen to the opening words of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the word was God. Through him all things were made.”

That word is still speaking to us. If God were to stop speaking the whole created universe would cease to exist. In the rising of the morning sun God speaks to us of grace and new beginnings and the fertility of the earth is a sign of how life wells up from within, from the dark unknown place of God. Celtic love for nature springs from three roots. First, love for God’s creation is Biblical. Genesis declares the goodness and preciousness of God’s creation, the Psalms are filled with a sense of creation’s wonder, and Jesus taught that the birds and animals, and even the plants, matter to God. Second, from the Druid mature mysticism that preceded Christianity’s introduction, the pagan Celts already respected and revered nature; the Christianity that Patrick brought affirmed and “Christianized” their closeness to nature. Third, Celtic Christians lived in natural settings, so their experience reinforced their love for nature. What Christianity did was converting them from Pantheism, seeing nature as gods, to Panentheism, seeing God in all things. Romans 1 :20 affirms this, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – has been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

That text is one of the most telling passages in Scripture: simply looking around us in nature, up in the air, where the sun and moon and stars tell of God’s infinity, the miraculous interconnectedness of everything, has led to the Four laws of Ecology, as defined by Barry Commoner. They are:

(1) Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. The system is stabilized by its self-compensating properties, which, when overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse. Jared Diamond in his book Collapse uses the Easter Islands as a grim example of such an event.

(2) Everything Must Go Somewhere. Global warming is a current example of this law: when we burn fossil fuels the inescapable result carbon overload causing Climate Change.

(3) Nature Knows Best. We are sinning against that law when we introduce organic compounds that are foreign to nature. The result is harmful substances that lead to illnesses and air pollution. Smoking tobacco is a well-known example.

(4) There is no such thing as a Free Lunch. We are now discovering that we must pay the price for polluting: the longer we delay the true cost of our riotous living habits, the steeper will be the penalty. 

It would do well if preachers, rather than keep on telling Sunday School stories to an adult audience, bring home to them that God’s laws, including those of Ecology, are laws to live by, because they are valid for eternity.

More about this in the next chapter.   

The Church in Flux

Chapter 19

Another small step toward a possible solution

 The problem with the church is precisely that it is not “in flux”, is not evolving, is not changing with the times. The people in the church – average age of 60 years – also are simply too comfortable with the status quo. Of course that generation has benefited the most from the immense prosperity we have enjoyed, thanks to the Oil influx, which made everything possible. It generated unheard of wealth for even the poorest among us, as governments handed out, at least in Canada, ample support for those in need of help, especially the senior class.

Since it is the senior class that, by and large, is the mainstay of the church, and since they are well off, the members of the clergy see no need for change, because it is upsetting, so everything remains as it is, even while fewer and fewer people go to church.  That the sermons are mostly irrelevant, doesn’t matter either, because the after-the-service-coffee and pastries are good and the people friendly. So, the word ‘reformation’ is never heard, let alone pursued.  

Yet something drastic is going to happen, because, as I set out to say in the very first chapter, Panta Rhei, Oude Menei: Everything flows, nothing remains the same. The flow that goes on is like an underground river, and is undermining the very foundation of society and the church is no exception. 

In the past 18 chapters I have shown that we live in the Last Days. I have also pointed out that God has temporarily surrendered the cosmos to His great adversary, something which Jesus affirmed when he was tempted by the Devil as recorded in Matthew 4. This was also shown in Chapter 16 and 17 – dealing with Job – when Satan made a visit to heaven and God gave him permission to make life miserable for Job and, by extension, for the human race.

Actually for us life went to another extreme: because Job already lived a life of ease, he became an impoverished and detested outcast, and an AIDS sufferer as well. With us it went the other way: life in our time went from the hardships of the 1930’s depression to an existence of easy comfort, thanks to the temporary benefits of oil. C.S. Lewis once remarked that the road to hell is smooth, slightly sloping, no sudden turns. That’s the kind of life Satan has locked us into, courtesy our carbon-based society. It will be tremendously difficult for even the most sincere Christ-believers to extract themselves from this flick-of-the-finger luxurious living.

And where is the church in all this? Almost without exception, it has surrendered to a dangerous form of Gnosticism, which has caused the church to lose sight of its true mission, which Jesus outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, where he, in Matthew 6:33, said: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

That kingdom is the New Creation, and the most magnificent life style a person can ever imagine. Its righteousness is to seek what is right for the creation that God loved so much that he offered his Son’s life to buy it back from the Satan who had temporarily taken possession of it. Failure to ‘seek the betterment of the kingdom/creation’ has resulted in a dangerous form of dualism, where we go to Church on Sunday and for the rest of the week we fail to observe the laws of creation, something Lynn White has correctly pointed out, when he outlined that the ecological crisis originated in Christianity.  

I have repeatedly shown that the real mission of Jesus was to establish the Kingdom, a task to be assumed by the church when Jesus left to be with his Father in heaven. I cannot remember ever hearing a sermon on “seeking the Kingdom.” Yet this was an explicit command from Jesus. The concept of ‘kingdom’ is simply assumed to be fulfilled in the church: the church is the kingdom which needs no further explanation, and therefore this is never openly discussed. That’s also the reason ‘Kingdom seeking’ is never listed in their ‘mission statement.’

Another, equally valid explanation for not pursuing the Kingdom goal is that every church member, as an individual, is bound for Heaven: the church is there to facilitate personal salvation: everybody on their own, even though the Apostles’ Creed defines the church as “the communion of saints,” never mentions heaven and expresses its destination as “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Those too have become mere words.

If we really were to quiz people on heaven, and especially how they would visualize life there after death, we would hear a variety of answers, none of them definite, because the Bible gives no description of it: only 1 Timothy 6: 16 holds a clue, and it is not an encouraging one for the heaven-bound crowd. It says, “God alone is immortal, and who lives in inapproachable light, who no one has seen or can see.” But then the church people, who swear by the Bible, have often a totally wrong view on matters eternal. If they really were honest, they would admit that heaven holds no desire for them, because what does one do in heaven? Any full-blooded, active person delights in being human. Jesus always wanted to be known not as a heavenly being but as The Son of Humanity. Heaven-desire breeds passiveness, which is, indeed, the hallmark of the church. The kingdom is here. The kingdom is this earth which God called ‘good’ after each creation act and ‘very good’ when it was finished. God made no junk and will not junk what he has made.

But the church has a different goal: away from this beautiful earth for which we have been created, toward a heaven where life will be what?

No wonder the church is failing for want of defining its calling, as it now has little or no notion, what its real task is on earth. That heaven is so ingrained in people became clear to me when a good friend – a doctor in education – had her turn to read the Scriptures in our church. Her bible reading was Matthew 24, where, in verse 39, it says that “they – the people in Noah’s days – knew nothing about what would happen until the Flood came and took them all away.” When I asked her, after church, who were taken away to heaven and who were left behind, she said ‘The born again went to heaven’. When I pointed out that the ‘left behind’ were the ‘born again’, she admitted to having been brainwashed all her life.

The “Left Behind” crowd have read this passage totally wrong. In their videos the sinners are ‘left behind,’ while the ‘born again’ are taken away.

The church sees itself and calls itself: The Bride of Christ. There is another assumption which is not true. Isaiah 62:4 quite plainly says that: “the land will be married.” The church is not the Bride: the land is the Bride, and she will be married to the Groom, the human race, all believers, with Jesus as the ‘Primus inter Pares’, the First among equals.

That sort of language is not an allegory, is not a representation of a spiritual meaning through a concrete example. There are a few more incidents where creation is compared to a woman: Romans 8:22 points out that the whole creation – the land – is groaning as in the pains of child-birth. That too suggests that the land is female, and, actually is pregnant with the New Earth, whose birth is imminent. Jesus, as head of the New Covenant, as Head of the New Humanity, as the First Human Being, together with all those who have regarded creation as Holy, will be formally united in marriage with The Earth. Revelation 21:2 carried that imagery through when it says that “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” That statement is not an allegory but a concrete example of the New Creation being the Bride and the New Humanity the groom.

To the people of the church all this sounds totally foreign. For centuries the church has taught the wrong concept, has missed the boat as far as the Good News is concerned. The Good News is that we humans are humans, and will be humans into eternity. 

What is the ruling doctrine in the church is not The Kingdom proclamation but Gnosticism, as was shown, when discussing The American Religion. The ruling North American Religion, usually regarded as Christianity in North America, has, according to Dr Harold Bloom, ceased to be Christian, and instead has taken on the essence of Gnosticism, a false religion against which especially the Apostle John in his letters agitates strongly. The introduction to his letters, in the New International Version (NIV), has, under the heading of Gnosticism, the following explanation: “One of the most dangerous heresies of the first two centuries of the church was Gnosticism. Its central teaching was that spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil. From this unbiblical dualism flowed five important errors:

• (1) Man’s body, which is matter, is therefore evil. It is to be contrasted with God, who is wholly spirit, and therefore good.
• (2) Salvation is the escape of the body, achieved not by faith in Christ, but by special knowledge (the Greek word for ‘knowledge’ is gnosis, hence Gnosticism).
• (3) Christ’s true humanity was denied in two ways (a) some said that Christ only seemed to have a body, a view called Docetism, from the Greek dokeo (to seem) and (b) others said that the divine Christ joined the man Jesus at baptism and left him before he died, a view called Cerinthianism, after its most prominent spokesman, Cerinthius. This view is the background of much of 1 John (see 1:1; 2:22; 4:2-3)
• (4) Since the body was considered evil, it was to be treated harshly. This ascetic form of Gnosticism is the background of part of the letter to the Colossians (2:21-23)
• (5) Paradoxically, this dualism led to licentiousness. The reasoning was that, since matter – and not the breaking of God’s law (1John 3:4) – was considered evil, breaking of the law was of no moral consequence. The Gnosticism addressed in the New Testament was an early form of the heresy, not an intricately developed system of the second and third centuries. In addition to that seen in Colossians and in John Letters, acquaintance with early Gnosticism is reflected in 1,2 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Peter and perhaps 1 Corinthians.

By and large, almost without exception, the North American churches are influenced by Gnosticism. That is reflected in their ‘heaven’ goal which, as Dr Bloom pointed out, is a Greek heresy. Even though there are some churches which have modified their heaven orientation, almost all of their members still adhere to this teaching.

What then is a biblical approach to Christ’ teaching? More about that in the next chapters.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 18
Ponderings on a Parable.

This same theme also finds its way in one of the parables Jesus spoke: I am referring to the Parable of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Bridesmaids, found in Matthew 25, where it is told in the first 13 verses.

Somehow this episode reminds me of an encounter I had years ago with two dedicated environmentalists, when I spent a weekend Cross Country skiing in the Algonquin Park, Ontario’s largest provincial park.

In the lodge there I met a professor of Environmental Studies at an Ontario University who did not possess a car and biked to work. After talking together for quite a while, I asked him pointblank, “Given the present condition of the environment and the nature of humanity, not really willing or even able to sacrifice anything substantial for the plight of the earth, and seeing how our economic and political system usually chooses jobs and profit over ecological considerations, what are our chances to clean up worldwide pollution?”
His one word reply was, “none.”
“What about us, humans?” I then asked.
Answered his lawyer friend from another university town, and who did have a car, “That is not important. Humans have been on the scene for perhaps 20,000 years and the world can quite well function without them.” Said the professor, “as long as there is somewhere, say in Newfoundland a rock left with some lichen on it, a new start can be made and evolution can have a new beginning. Perhaps the second time around things will turn our better in, say, another 10 billion years.”
These two people, he a specialist in environmental matters, she a well educated woman, had no hope that the present brand of humanity would be able to rectify the mess we have made of God’s creation.

Almost every day we read about the grave dangers the cosmos faces, from Global Warming, to Fish stocks collapsing, to Greenland turning green again, to the ice in both the Arctic and the Antarctic melting so fast that the danger of flooding cities and entire countries becomes ever more real.
I think that these two professional people have a very valid point, a point I happen to agree with, a point that the Bible also makes, when it says that -Romans 6:23 – ‘ the wages of sin is death.’ When we sin against creation, death is certain to follow. The professor, certainly not a Christian in the church-going sense, nevertheless had a better grasp of the Christian duty to preserve creation than any person I know, and taught me that it takes extra-ordinary action, that it requires going against the stream, to do the right thing in God’s eyes.
This parable telling how 10 young women wait for the Bridegroom to appear has long puzzled and intrigued me. Off and one for decades I have tried to make sense of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. After reading about it, and doing a lot of meditating, I think I found the right solution.

First the occasion that prompted Jesus to tell this story. Jesus starts this curious tale with the words, “At that time.” That time refers to the previous chapter which deals with “the End of Days” in Matthew 24, the Day and Hour we don’t know, but whose approximate time we can somewhat establish. It is the time when the church has largely become irrelevant as a force for salvation, when “the Left Behind” heresy finds almost general acceptance, when many, if not most thinking people have lost a measure of hope. The “then” to which this bible passage refers, is “our day and age.”.
The parable speaks about Ten Bride’s maids, young girls, teenagers, I imagine, who are responsible for preparing the bride to meet the bridegroom.
If you were to film this scene you would see ten excited young women. They have been invited to an important wedding, and even better, have been asked to play a part in the proceedings. They are quite a relaxed bunch. The tension whether they would be invited or some other girls from among the bride’s circle of friends and relatives, is over. They made the cut and are happy.

When they gathered in the hall, they were no different from young women today: because there was no prescribed dress, each had done her best to look pretty, but, still a bit unsure how they would compare to the others, they entered the hall with some trepidation, and when they had seen how the others were attired, they felt better and actually quite pleased with themselves.
If we would have had an opportunity to watch these females, to us they all would look equally qualified. But somehow Jesus made a definite distinction in the group. Five he called foolish. Five he called wise. That’s one thing I found questionable. Why are the foolish called foolish? We know that the foolish are labeled that way because they had not taken extra oil along for their lamps.
Tell me: What would you have done had you been among the chosen Ten? Picture the scene; visualize it before your eyes: the wedding is in the afternoon, say three o’clock. They were all there at least an hour before that. The party is somewhat later, but certainly would be over well before midnight, because tomorrow is another busy day. The lights are needed for that short trip to the wedding hall, so, until that time the lamps are trimmed to a mere flicker. With a full tank there’s plenty of oil for the entire proceeding, with fuel to spare, plain common sense, and, because the Bridegroom was known to be a punctual man, why take along extra jars of that stinking and expensive kerosene? Suppose that the heavy crock pot would break and spill its contents all over the new dress. These containers weren’t like the metal or plastic ones we have:  no, they were frail, cumbersome and heavy. Mother was right: just to carry a lamp with a full tank would be enough. Also, with a heavy lamp to carry, how about the presents when one hand was needed to carry the lamp and another to carry extra oil? No, I agree with the so-called foolish maidens. Their action made perfect sense.
“But,” says Jesus, “the five young women who took the trouble of lugging these heavy jars with them, were wise.” Why would Jesus call them that? To me it makes little sense. How could they properly attend to their task preparing the bride, and also carry the extra wine and food? That smelly stuff could easily mix with the other provisions! Nothing could be more impractical. Those who Jesus called ‘wise’ do things totally beyond the call of duty, needlessly complicating their lives. To me the Foolish young women make much more sense. So why would Jesus call the practical teens foolish and the overcautious wise? Jesus must have a reason, so let me make a guess, and for this I will take a little detour.
Going to church or a Christian College is a bit like going to a wedding: we expect to meet the Bridegroom, and expect to hear about Jesus. The routine of Sunday, our hearing a sermon and attending a Christian Institution, can be compared to the normal supply of oil.
But we all know, there is more to meeting the Bridegroom than routine matters. That’s why the super cautious oil bottle bearing women are called wise. They are prepared for more, and they probably don’t even know what that more is. However, they find this out when the Bridegroom took long in coming.
We must see the context of this parable. It is set after Matthew 24, which has as its heading, “Sign of the End of Age” and “The Day and Hour of Jesus’ Return Unknown.” Jesus, after a long sermon on the final days of humanity, speaks this parable. He begins, “Then” or “At his particular moment, at the End of Days”. That could well mean ‘Now.’ Today too there are two kinds of people: foolish and wise.

I think that Jesus knew that at the End of Days Oil would again be a key element in the world. Jesus had a perfect overview of history from the embryo beginnings to the pollution- saturated end. It is a rather curious phenomenon that OIL has been the very cause of wars in the last decades. So, when the young girls, exhausted after extending their teenage chatter well beyond their usual bedtime – which was at sun down, as oil was too expensive to use for extended periods – the wedding feast turns into a slumber party. All ten are sacked out on couches and across the floor of the verandah where they were keeping a lookout.
Then, finally, at midnight, there was a cry, “There comes the Bridegroom. Wake up to meet him.”
The parable portrays the practical reality of life: the unexpected does happen. It happens all the time. Fish stocks collapse. Ozone layers disappear. Entire regions lose their pine trees to a tiny beetle. Arctic ice is melting at a record rate. Glaciers are disappearing.  Suddenly the doomsters have substantial evidence for their message. The unexpected does happen. Before you realize the Lord is there, still quite unexpected while we slumber the time away.
“Then all the maidens rose and trimmed their lamps.” They all straightened out their dresses, quickly combed their rumpled hair, turn to their lamps and five of them discover that they have practically run out of oil. They are not ready anymore to welcome the Bridegroom. All the wick-trimming in the world, all the shaking and trying is useless: their lights are dead. The unexpected did happen. The Oil is gone. The always reliable, punctual bridegroom was late for his own party.
So what must we think of all this? What does this all mean? I believe that the professor I mentioned in the beginning is right. God has taken so long to do anything that the world has dug its own grave. The lights are going out in this world. I also know that I am not the only one with this opinion: in the depth of their hearts many knowledgeable people realize this. The lights are going out for this world.

I was at a conference on Peak Oil in Boston a few months ago. The theme was: “Peak Oil has arrived: it’s all down hill from here.” The prudent ones, those with the common sense amount of oil, are sunk. We, in North America have built our entire society on the premise of cheap and unlimited oil. Unless there is something other than the wisdom of the world to help it, there is no way that the world can straighten out the mess, politically, ecologically and economically.
So, what do we do? Ignore the signs and go on as if nothing is the matter? What else must we do as Christians? That is the real question we face.
Well, listen to the rest of the parable.
“And the foolish said to the wise, “Give as some of your oil, for our lights are going out.” But the wise replied, “Perhaps there will not be enough for both us and you. Go to the fuel dealer and buy some.”
How is that for a Christian answer? Aren’t we supposed to share things with others? Try to buy some fuel at midnight!
That was another mystery for me. For a long time I really did not know what to think of that rather snotty reply of the Five Wise Women. Now it seems to me that this answer suggests that there comes a time, and perhaps has come, that we have to shrug our shoulders and go our own way. Time does run out as it always does in real life. “There is a time for everything, a time to be born and a time to die,” says Ecclesiastes 3, “a time to share and a time to refrain from sharing.” The parable suggests to me that a day will come when it will be too late to reform society.

Could it be that we have reached a point in world development where it is too late to turn to ecological balance in the world, too late to reform the ecclesiastical situation, too late to revamp the economic structures, too late to change the political system? I have no unrealistic notions that this writing will make an iota of difference to the church. IT will continue to go on as if nothing has changed, as if the Lord never will return. It seems to me that matters everywhere have their own inevitable momentum, leading either to total chaos and anarchy or to complete redemption.
It’s on that note that the parable ends. “While they went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who were ready, those who had the extra oil, went with him into the marriage feast and the door was shut. Afterwards the others came, knocked and said, ‘Lord, open up.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I don’t know you’.”
Isn’t that a strange reply? The Lord doesn’t say, “I have never called you”, or “I have never loved you.” No, he says, “Listen, you have never bothered to get to know me. You never really took the time to seriously find out what I really stand for and what my creation is all about. You spent your time getting ahead in the world – nothing wrong with that. You developed good social skills. Good. You even dabbled a bit in theology. I’ll forgive you. But what about striving for a real close relationship with me? What about living your life in such a way that the entry into the Kingdom, the renewed creation, is not a shock, but makes it the next logical step in your life? Since you did not understand that to be my follower is to love creation for whose redemption I died, that’s why I now reject you. You were so caught up in the system and assumed that the commonly accepted, pragmatic solution was the norm, that common sense would triumph, that it was business as usual, that’s why I now don’t know you.”
It’s difficult to learn about God’s Kingdom/Creation. In this age of instant solutions, instant heating and cooling, we expect instant salvation and an instant Jesus. I don’t believe that life works that way: a marriage, a faith, a friendship, one’s life in Christ takes a long time maturing. That’s why Jesus has given us lots of time. He has come late to give us more opportunity to discover what is good and what is bad in this world, so that we can avoid errors later.

In this late hour of our present civilization, the remaining time is of the utmost essence. How do we utilize this last hour before entering the wedding hall?
I try not to waste my time on unproductive dialogue, whether with government, business or within ecclesiastical structures, fully expecting that this venture is nothing more than a cry in the wilderness, a howl against the wind. It seems to me that it is too late in history to effect structural changes in society. Still I try to live a creational responsible life, in preparation for the New Earth to come, because I see this life as an experimental station for eternity.
I emphasize again that curious word in the last verse of Matthew 5. The Greek word there is teleioos, which is translated as ‘perfect: “Be perfect as my Father is perfect.” Of course, we can’t be perfect. But we can be ‘teleioos’, of which a better translation is ‘all inclusive’, ‘holistic’, having the ‘telos’ the End of matters in mind. In everything we do we must contemplate its final destination: will it pollute and so help Satan who wants to destroy creation, or will it help the coming of the Kingdom, the New Creation.’ Make ‘teleioos’ your life motto.
There is hope for this world. That hope is more than a piece of lichen on a rock somewhere in Newfoundland: it is the New Creation, a renewed Earth under a heaven cleaned of all the space junk. I believe that now, as never before, is the appropriate time to share with others, people of all walks of life and from all denominations and no church affiliation that Jesus is All and in All things. Colossians 1:15-20.  We must, with others, explore ways to understand the creation-killing life style we are engaged in – and which leads to death for all – and try alternatives, so that we can prepare ourselves for Life Eternal.
Perhaps thinking about it, talking about it, trying to comprehend what we are doing and have done to God’s earth, and ask for forgiveness, is all we can do.

We, as children of love, must show that we love God and thus his creation, and love neighbors as we ought to love ourselves. Those are the great commandments. The rest all rest on that given. Only when we show our love, will we know Jesus and will Jesus acknowledge us. That requires unconventional actions, such as taking along extra oil, be prepared for all eventualities, going against all accepted wisdom.

In practical terms that may mean to limit traveling by car or plane, or more positively, grow your own food, build an energy-efficient house or install solar panels. It does imply that we must consciously prepare ourselves for a life of eternal permanence, to live as if we already are in the renewed creation.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 17

More on Job.

Earlier we saw how Job underwent a drastic conversion. The word conversion in the New Testament is metanoia, which really means that he had a change of mind, had a new paradigm to work with, a new model for life, a totally different view on God and his creation. Conversion is much more than claiming to be born again. Yes, it means that too, but then in a literal sense of not only thinking differently, but also living differently and acting differently. Suddenly a ‘born again’ Christian also become a Greenpeace supporter, and an environmentalist, and very concerned about poverty and discrimination.

That’s what happened to Job.  Basically he had changed from an ego-centered man to an eco-oriented creature. The word ‘eco’ also is a Greek word, indicating ‘oikos’ the world we live in, the ‘house’ of creation, God’s Kingdom. What Job really discovered was that to have the sole emphasis on ‘personal’ salvation was not enough: his life, our lives, have to have as focus the “Coming of the Kingdom.” That’s why Jesus told us something we seldom hear in church: “Seek first, foremost, before anything else, the welfare, the betterment of Creation, in line with John 3:16, which commands us to love the Cosmos as God loved the Cosmos.” That’s the sort of conversion Job underwent. That’s the sort of conversion we have to undergo, and the church as well.

Today the North American Church resembles Job’s three so-called friends, later joined by a fourth. They fanatically believe in the North American dogma that being rich, enjoying prosperity is a sign of God’s favor, and that all we have to do is abide by the books of Moses, and all will be well: obedience to the Law will get us there. Their reasoning was that, when we don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t sleep with another woman than your wife, then they will prosper, and poverty and sickness will be avoided, which, when they do occur, are a punishment for sin.  Throughout the book of Job these orthodox friends stubbornly stick to this party line, and are later soundly chastised for this line of thinking.

Before his suffering Job too had adhered to this conventional teaching which he too had held as the gospel truth. However, after his bout with unexpected mishaps, Job changed his mind: “No”, he defiantly tells God, “No, I have not sinned. No, God, you are making a grave mistake.”

In this way the book of Job eases us into the revolutionary prospect that we can argue with God against God, that this is our god-given duty. The book does this in both a beautifully written but also in a somewhat mysterious manner.
Not convinced? Suppose this book – and here I come to my second option – is interpreted allegorically, as a sort of parable? It is quite well possible, almost certain, that Job never lived, so why is this book in the Bible?
As I have argued in the previous chapter, the reason is that Job represents not only the people of Israel, but the entire world. There is no real Jewish connection evident in the book of Job at all. In other words, God is saying that Israel, as a nation, is no longer an exclusive people, but that everybody in the world is included in his plan for salvation.
That would be a drastic change. Thus the writer of the book of Job points to a new relationship between humans and God, one based not simply on obeying God’s laws as outlined in the books of Moses, the Torah, but much more on a living, all-inclusive lifestyle, expressing a deep appreciation for creation, and thus acting in such a manner that the care for creation is constantly considered.
Thus God wants all people, not only Jews, to be saved, a thought that met with a lot of denial and resistance in the pre-Christian church, so much so that 700 years later, when Jesus appeared on the scene, his disciples still had not fully absorbed these new emphases and still thought that he would make Israel a world power again.
I have already dealt with that Satan figure, how, in the New Testament Satan showed Jesus all the glories of the world, the Greek Parthenon, the splendor of Rome, the Inca institutions, the marvelous temples in Indonesia and Asia, and offered the entire world and its glories to Jesus, on the condition that Jesus bow down and worship the Satan, how this foreshadows the power of Satan today, as evident in the Holocaust, Rwanda, AIDS, and Global warming, just to name a few Satanic acts. That Satan is in charge today also explains why this book is not popular with the theologians: it is simply too controversial. Increasingly organized religion is in trouble. Where it still flourishes, it has become stagnant, judgmental and uncaring, condemning rather than exploring and adverse to any innovation.
When finally God speaks to Job, he opens Job’s mind to some radical new thinking. The book tells us that we are never able to rest on past achievements, that there simply is no retirement for us ever.
Already the word “the land of Uz” gives an indication of this new meaning. Dr David Wolfers, the author of Deep Things out of Darkness, a 550 page book dealing exclusively with Job, translates the word “Uz”, (the physical location where Job supposedly lived) as “the Land of Council.” He thinks that the book asks us to look at the Bible with a critical eye, to weigh its ideas carefully and consider them to see whether it expresses the right view. In other words, he recommends that churches, mosques and synagogues everywhere, meet to discuss, probe, investigate and discover what the gospel means for us in this millennium. No longer are matters clear-cut: we have changed, circumstances have changed, the world has changed.
And then there are the four friends. Dr Wolfers, himself a Jew who devoted 20 years of his life to the study of Job, thinks that they may stand for three or four ethnic minorities within the Jewish nation, with their different types of worship, all centering on a faulty view of God. Transposing the scene to the religious world-wide spectrum today I believe it could well be that the first three friends, in our time, represent the three major orthodox religions: Judaism, based on the Old Testament only, hierarchical Roman Catholicism- insisting on papal infallibility and male dominance- and Islam, later joined by the fourth in the form of conservative orthodox Protestantism, the so-called Christian Right, all based on the false doctrine of either good works or a stagnant view of God.
Although Job replies to the first three speakers, he wisely does not enter into dialogue with the orthodox Christian Right, which, he thinks correctly, is a waste of breath.

The most liberating element about the entire book of Job is that here is a human being who is not a good and patient and pious God-fearer, but a person who fights God with all the passion he can muster. The New Testament speaks of such a person as one who is blessed because he or she hungers and thirsts for righteousness and is willing to die for that ideal.
Job is suffering because God wants to teach Job something. God wants to teach Job that he must let go of some of the ideas he has about God, taught by previous generations, true for them in their time, perhaps, but not true for Job now.
Only when God had personally spoken to Job, only then did he understand for the first time in his life- and his suffering was the turning point- that God was different than he first had imagined. He expressed this when he said: “I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you.” Job’s idea of God was based on the oral traditions: what his ancestors had told him. But now something different is forming in his mind, some new thoughts and some new ideas. The eye of his mind is seeing a new God and also, looking inward, is seeing a new Job.
And what is it that Job starts to see?
Well here we come to the central point of the book, which makes it one of the most profound sources of contemporary spirituality. The accusing Angel believed that Job was only obedient to God because God had made him rich and prosperous, and so the Satan thinks that Job will curse God if his blessings are taken away. However, there the Satan miscalculated. True, Job was initially very much concerned about himself and his family. He figured that, because he was so rich and so blessed with possessions, he was the centre of the universe.
Job’s sin, the sin of Israel and our sin, is Anthropocentrism, the arrogant and deluded belief that the earth and the universe were designed for our benefit and control.

When God talks to Job He says: “Job, I’ve got a few questions for you. Where were you when I planned the earth? Tell me if you are so wise. Were you there when I stopped the waters as they issued gushing from the womb?”
For verse after verse the voice in the whirlwind rages on, outlining all the interdependent elements of creation- the winds, clouds, thunderstorms, the lightning, lions, antelopes, oxen, ostriches, horses, hawks, vultures, bulls, serpents. The voice lashes out at Job’s and our narrow self-centeredness, admonishing that he can never understand the complexity and the functioning of the planet and cosmos. “Have you been to the edge of the universe? Speak up, if you have such knowledge.” Such scolding is very applicable today when the Hubble spacecraft probes ever deeper into the universe and the pictures become ever more baffling, or when Mars is being explored and the questions multiply.
What we see here is the very opposite of a universe built for us to manipulate as we will. Instead of being given dominion over plants and animals, or a license to subdue creation, Job is told- and we with him- to bow down and be humble. He and we are required to understand absolute humility before the face of God and thus Job says in the end: “I have heard of you with my ears (heard the Torah, heard hundreds of sermons) but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.”
The Hebrew word for ‘dust’ here is exactly the same word used in Genesis 2, out of which God fashioned Adam, whose name actually means ‘dust’. So the rebirth of Job is akin to becoming Adam. He is the prototype of the New Humanity. As a parable Job represents the New Adam, the New Humanity, fully at ease being human, being of the earth. Dust we are; ‘Adam’ we are and to dust, to ‘Adam’, the New Adam we shall return.
His ultimate surrender is not the sort of mindless obedience often required by orthodox religion. It is the kind of surrender that is “the whole-hearted giving of oneself,” a surrender to God’s creation, His Universe, arising from a humility that leads to wisdom instead of self-centered pride. Job is born again, converted from an ego-centered person to an eco-centered consciousness based on awe for God and His great creation. That is the basic message of the book of Job. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Theologian killed by the Hitler crowd in April 1945, just before the end of World War II, says in Schoepfung und Fall (Creation and Fall): “God, brother and sister, and the earth belong together.” That is the real Trinity. We are not here to maximize personal consumption and to glorify individual greed, the basic message of the gods of our age. As citizens of the world we must, following Job’s message, progress from being ego-centered to becoming eco-centered.
We know what happened to Job. The story is well-known how he received double his capital as well as his family back.
Consider, especially the following – and I address this to all denominations, especially the Roman Catholic Church: the most curious detail in the epilogue is the mention of Job’s daughters. In his new world in which Job now lives and which is humanity’s future, these fair women are not inferior to the brothers and do not have to go to their brothers’ houses for the annual celebration. Indeed, they are given the same honor by receiving a share of Job’s wealth as their inheritance. Each is named, while the seven sons of Job remain anonymous. The names themselves- Dove, Cinnamon and Eye-shadow- symbolize peace, abundance and a specifically female kind of grace. The story’s centre of gravity has shifted from righteousness to beauty and the focus is now the manifestation of inner peace. Virgina, you with your mental problems, would have liked that! And something else:
“And in all the world there were no women as beautiful as Job’s daughters.” There is something enormously satisfying about the prominence of women at the end of Job. Here they are especially included. The lesson here is that Job, and in Job, all people, have learned to surrender not only their erroneous ideas about God but also their male compulsion to control. The daughters have almost the last word. I think that even though now women are still secondary in many cultures, especially in religious institutions, in the new world they will be more than equal. And in the entire world there were no women as beautiful as Job’s daughters. What this parable also tells us is that in the world to come there will be great appreciation for beauty, including female beauty.

The real message for the church here is that organized Religion has lost the Gospel of the Earth. No wonder it is stagnating and losing its youth. Those who want to find this ‘gospel of the earth’ need look no further than the Book of Job.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 16

We live in New Times, that’s why everything will change.

That’s a bold statement, isn’t it! We live in new times, the Last Days as I have indicated earlier. Therefore everything will change. And if we resist, then circumstances will force us, because, as 2 Peter 3:10 indicates: in the End “Everything will be laid bare,” which basically means that all the good things we did will be revealed – a rather tiny list I imagine – and all the booboos we committed – quite a long series I am sure – will also be made public, for all to see. No wonder the Bible Book Apocalypse translates as Revelation.

Something is already happening out there. The fact that I tackle the issues of the church and lay bare the unmistakable givens that the church, as an institute, must be drastically reformed to conform to the New Testament idea of church, and prepare itself for the Kingdom to come, is, in itself, an indication that we live in the Last days.

Of course, as had become plain in an earlier chapter, there are many signs to that effect, such as Global Warming, the desperate attempts to avert an Economic Crisis, and the undisputed power of The Evil One. The Lord has promised that before the End would come the Tidings of Great Joy will be made known everywhere in the world. That too is now happening, thanks to the World Wide Web, where every thinking person in the world can access everything else, including this writing, so that even these whispers will wind their way everywhere.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to tear down and a time to build” a quote from the well-known words in Ecclesiastes 3. Today we live in a  world where we must tear down everything that carbon-based living has made possible, because it has become the curse of everything, including the edifices, both in mega-churches and in commerce our predecessors have erected in the way of super-structures.

Actually there is one Bible book that contains, in essence, most of what I have written so far. No, it is not the last Bible book, that mysterious book of Revelation. It is found smack in the centre: the book of Job.

Here’s, in brief, how I view that book. I see Job representing the church in general, a pious man, god-fearing, devout. His possessions, his immense flocks, his many servants embody the world. Job was rich and prospered, as did the church today and its people: they thrived in the 20^th Century as never before, and multiplied as never before: more than tripling during that century.

Just as evil ruled during the last 100 years -disastrous wars, the Holocaust, Rwanda and Cambodia, with much more to come when Peak Oil bites, because Satan had free reign -so too did evil happen during the life and times of Job. When God shows Job the real picture – something we too are slow to grasp – then Job is converted from being ego-centered – personal salvation -to being eco-minded – seek first the Kingdom. The book concludes with the coming of the New Creation, when Job’s fortunes are restored. That’s the story in a nutshell. Here’s more detail.

For some reason Job is a favorite with poets and philosophers but not with preachers. Although I am neither, it’s also my bible book of choice. I don’t understand why so many people get turned off by God in this book. Perhaps it had something to do with his encounter with that mysterious figure called the Satan, who, out of the blue, appears in heaven and when God asks him, “what are you doing here?” says, “Oh, I was going out for a stroll, saw the door open and decided to say hello.” And then curiously, as if it were a common-day matter, the Lord says, somewhat flippantly may be, to the Satan, “Say, you get around. In your wanderings have you noticed Job out there in the land of Uz? I tell you, no better person anywhere in the whole world.”
“No wonder,” replies the Satan: “look, you have given him special protection and have favored him above everyone else. I bet you that if somebody were to ruin him financially and kill off his immediate family, he’ll curse you to the face.”
The Lord says, “Alright. It’s a deal. He is in your power. Don’t touch his body, though.”
And so it happens. Job loses everything and has no clue about the wager God made with the Accuser. Now, what is at play here?
I’ll offer two complementary options. Let me begin with the more literally explanation, the more conventional, and a look at Job’s religious background, the ruling philosophy of his day.
Job believed, with all people then and many today, that being rich in possessions was a sign of piety. And evidently the Satan is of that same opinion because he figures that, as soon as Job would lose his personal and material treasures, he would deny God.
However, even though Job is reduced to utter poverty, his faith remains steadfast, evident from his famous words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Quite the statement, that. Just imagine that we, you, I, in one day, see our immediate family killed in a car accident, a drunken driver being the cause; then lightning strikes, our house burns up and we have forgotten to renew the insurance; next, due to a market crash, our portfolio is wiped out, our job disappears, and all we have left are the clothes on our body. What would our reaction be? Like Job? Not likely.
And that is only the beginning. Again a mysterious Satan visit. Again God gives him permission, this time to affect his health. So Job becomes an AIDS sufferer, quarantined, placed in isolation, somewhere in nowhere. There his wife approaches him and angrily shouts, “Do you still cling to your pious ways? They are no use to you now. Curse God, if he exists and then die like a man!” But Job remains unperturbed: “Shall we accept the good from associating with the God, and the evil not accept?” Job manly refutes her words, but the real agony starts when his close friends arrive.
Of course the big news about Job’s misfortune had spread rapidly through the land (imagine Bill Gates gone broke!), and three friends from far away heard it too and made ready to pay him a visit. Weeks must have passed for this to happen. They often had been Job’s guests at his lavish banquets where they had enjoyed vigorous but agreeable discussions ranging far a-field. When they see Job in the distance, sitting on a small hill, they stop, sit down and look at him for 7 days and 7 nights, without saying a single word.
Job too remains quiet, even though his mind is in overdrive. Somehow their body language reveals to him their thinking before they even utter one word. And as they sit there and he sits there, he gets madder and madder, because he is utterly at a loss. Job tries to fathom why he is suffering so much. Somehow he could bear it as long as nobody sees him. But now he has become a public spectacle. Continuously his mind revolves around the basic question: “God is doing this to me. No, God can’t do this to me. Yes, it is God. No, it isn’t.” He is going crazy. His mind, already weakened by his sickness, cannot think straight anymore.
Of one thing he is sure: he already knows what these three are going to tell him. A long time ago – at least it seemed a long time ago – when they talked, often till deep in the night, they agreed, God’s favor is reflected in a multitude of offspring and material blessings. And, of course, the opposite is true as well: personal calamity spells sin: the greater the punishment, the more serious the crime against God.
Then he had thought like them. Not anymore. What is happening to him has not happened because he has sinned. No. No. With all his power in his weakened body he now denies this theory. And yet, he still does not know the alternative, he just can’t grasp why God is treating him this way.
As his friends sit there for what seemed like an eternity, silently and disapprovingly staring at him, it dawns on Job that they are his friends no longer, because people who do not understand your deep-seated anguish, are friends no more.
Suddenly his mind snaps, his patience gone. Who ever said that Job was long-suffering, had it all wrong. He burst out in a fit of total anger: anger at himself, anger at his own uncertainty, anger at his friends for their cold orthodoxy, their Calvinistic certainty, anger at God for whatever. And he burst out: “God curse the day I was born and the night that forced me from the womb”
The entire third chapter is one long condemnation. Job: “Why couldn’t I have died as they pulled me out of the dark. Now I would be at rest, I would be sound asleep.”
His outburst opens a flood of words. First Eliphaz. Not a word of pity. Only more hammer blows: “These words will perhaps upset you” so he starts optimistically. “Once you brought relief to the comfortless, but now, when disaster comes to you, you rebel. Tell me, whoever perished, being innocent?”
That’s how the first friend starts: pious words; cruel words; conventional words. This fellow knows exactly what God thinks or does.
But Job does not buy his line. No longer. In Chapter 7 he challenges God and demands an impartial judgment. Job knows that in his particular case, even though God has caused him all this misery, only God can be the true judge. So it is no wonder that Job screams at God, “Why have you made me your target? How come that I am in this miserable condition?” Here Job plays an dangerous game. He thinks, correctly in my opinion, that he can honor God only through fighting with God. That’s a new angle: Praise God through battling with him. Arguing with God about what has happened to us. Not just meekly say: “OK God, I take what you give me.” No, Job is different.
And then comes the next speaker: Bildad: Of the same stripe as Eliphaz, only more so, and even less honorable. He makes a snotty remark how Job’s kids were spoiled brats. Says he “Your children must have been evil: he punished them for their crimes.” In his further remarks he shows that he actually is afraid that whatever happened to Job might happen to him as well. His insecurity is best portrayed by his vision of God. He tells Job: “listen, this is what God wants, because God never betrays the innocent.” To Bildad too God is an open book: for him no reserve, no real fear of the hidden God.

To Job God is a mystery. God is THE mystery. That is His essence. After all, a god we can understand is no god. A crucial point of the book of Job is the relationship between God’s revelation on the one hand and God’s hidden-ness on the other. The paradox both Christians and agnostics face, is how God can reveal Himself when He is hidden, when He is the Totally Incomprehensible One, Mystery Incorporated. Job, before his ordeal, had a clear picture of God: if he behaved properly, God would bless him. It was just that simple. An article in TIME on the Mormons said unashamedly that “material achievement in the USA remains the earthly manifestation of virtue.” That’s why we will have a depression, probably worse than The Great Depression.

To Job that idea of prosperity being a sign of God’s blessing, has been shattered. His earlier notions about God have been found wanting. With Bildad and his companions, their concepts about God have become their god. For them there are no divine secrets and no sudden surprises, no mysteries. They know exactly what God has in mind for Job and so their awe for God has disappeared and their so-called piety has become a form of godlessness.
We see this phenomenon a lot in orthodox religion, where the law is more important than love. The friends are the typical, judgmental orthodox believers, be they Christians, Muslims or Jews who sense exactly why Job is in this state: it is God’s punishment. Period. True, when Job was rich and healthy, his friends valued his opinion, but not anymore. Now something has changed and it is not they. It’s Job. His suffering has made him a different person. Now the God Job relies on is a totally different God. Who is right? Job honoring a mysterious, unknowable God or his companions who revere a God about whom they know everything?

Eliphaz bluntly tells Job in Chapter 15: “Job, you are undermining religion and crippling faith in God.” Buddy Bildad dooms him to hell in Chapter 18: “Brimstone will be strewn on your household.” But Job stubbornly clings to his faith when he says in Chapter 19:25: “I know that my Redeemer is alive and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. He will plead for me in God’s court; he would stand up and vindicate my name.”
Those are truly amazing words. Unbelievable what suffering can do to people: it can totally change them. The Satan had not counted on this sort of conversion, a conversion brought about by the suffering God inflicted upon Job. He had figured that Job’s theology would be stagnant, a theology teaching that religion never is for nothing.

I once heard a radio preacher say that the road to prosperity is simple: “start everyday with prayer, go to church, tithe, of course give to his radio or television program and read the bible.”
The Satan wanted to score a fast one with God, and prove once and for all that Job would deny God as soon as he had become a welfare bum. But he failed in Job, because this sort of tit for tat is the theology of the devil.
Job’s story tells us that there are no immediate rewards to religion and by this I don’t mean that being religious does not benefit people now. It does. Religion, any living and evolving religion, gives people in general, a moral focus, stability, security and a purpose in life.
Suffering teaches us wisdom. Faith finds expression in wisdom and in Chapter 28 we see the continuation of Job’s conversion, because conversion is always a slow process, just as acquiring wisdom is. Here Job confesses his basic ignorance. He, who once was a very rich man, now confesses that being well-off can hinder the development of wisdom, something we, prosperous Westerners, forget at our peril. In his suffering Job’s conclusion is wonderful: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to shun evil, that is understanding!”
After all these torrents of words, silence. “What next?” these former friends wonder.
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of a whirlwind. God Himself answers Job personally. The Hidden One remains hidden, but not completely. God addresses Himself to the one person who has asked constantly “Why”. The other four men knew the answers, gave the pious platitudes, were comfortable, and avoided the touchy issues. Job, who had suffered, and wondered why, to him God directed himself.
The curious thing about the Lord’s sayings is that they all come as questions. “Where were you when I founded the earth? Who determined its measurements – if you know? Do you know the seasons of the mountain-goats? Have you marked the calving of the deer? “Do you give the horse its strength” Do you cloth his neck with thunder? Do you understand the sea and can you grasp from where all these waters come and what purpose they serve? Have the portals of Death been rolled back for you?” No wonder John 3:16 is the key passage in the Bible, showing God’s love for his creation, his Kingdom.
Now it dawns on Job that his suffering, which he had made the central point of the universe, is nothing compared to God’s greatness, to his over-arching wisdom. While God hurls these questions at Job, a strange peace descends on him. He starts to realize that part of the secret of salvation is that God does things just for the sake of doing things. He now starts to see that all of life is a miracle which needs neither a reason nor a cause but no other ground than God’s creative act, no other purpose than His own glorification, in which salvation is included.
His suffering has sharpened his thinking and he discovers to his amazement that in and above all other useful, moral, beautiful goals, rises the one great given that God be known, be lived, be confessed, and believed as the only Godly being. His Essence is nothing else but to live and to give life.
God’s aim for humans is to have all people participate in His fullness. We, humans, are not the only focal point. We are not the totality of creation, although we often think so. John 3:16 explicitly says: God so loved the world, the cosmos that He sent His son. In the world we ask for reasons, but when ask for a reason for the world there is only one answer: the answer is that the pivot of life is God and God alone, and the Kingdom He has created, whose welfare must be the goal of all Christians. We may think that we are powerful with our tools and brains. We are not. Writes one of the greatest brains in science, John Wheeler of Princeton in The End of Science, “As the tiny island of our knowledge grows, so does the great shore of our ignorance.” We, at the height of our scientific powers, are discovering that the more we know, the more we discover we don’t know. The real Answer, the key to the Universe is now as elusive as ever and more and more scientists are admitting that. What God wants Job to understand is that God is infinite in His creative powers, infinite in the beauty of creation, infinite in the design of His work of Art. God wants Job to marvel at His ingenuity. He wants Job to be astounded by the revival of nature in the spring, by the multitude of flowers which adorn the landscape, by the erratic flight of the swallows, the steaming heat of the summer, the almost plaintive sounds of autumn, the stark dignity of the winter landscape. He wants Job to affirm that his first duty in life is the enjoy God forever, and this pleasant duty starts with marveling at his creation.
When God is finished, all Job can do is to exclaim in utter surrender in Chapter 40: “How can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I cannot answer; even twice, but I can no more.” His conversion is affirmed when he confesses in chapter 42:
“I know you can do all things and nothing you wish is impossible.
Who is this whose ignorant words cover my designs with darkness?
I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite.
Listen and I will speak. I will question you: please, instruct me.
I heard of you with my ears; but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.”
Job did not find a solution for his questions, but he did find deliverance from his questions. Job never saw God but his new-found comfort was that God saw him, because Job came to Him with questions: “Why did you do this, Lord? Why did that happen to me, Lord?”
The meaning of the book of Job is not that Job could solve the problem of his suffering in his life or that we can solve the pain and injustice in our lives. One of the basic truths of the book of Job – and also the thrust of this book – is that we must not take generally accepted truths for granted but that the most commonly accepted ideas about God and creation have to be probed and questioned without ceasing.

We never arrive; we never can say: we know enough. As long as we live we have to keep up our search for Truth, and we joyfully must accept this: semper reformanda, always keep on reforming! Especially now as we live in new times: that’s why everything must change. More about that in the next chapter, which continues the Job saga.