Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

         WE HAVE TO REDEFINE “CHRISTIAN”.

         All new truths are born as heresies

The idea that I would like to see the name ‘Christian’ replaced, came to me while reading a book by Carl Safina, an ecologist, who wrote a biography of an owl, which he found, almost dead, and nursed back to life, and saw it mature, naming his manuscript after her: Alfie & Me. 

My good friend George, with a master’s degree in biology, gave me the book which he had read twice before he handed it to me.

In Safina’s book he, on numerous occasions, mentions how contemporary Christians have succumbed to dualism, echoing Dr. Harold Bloom, a biblical Scholar, who wrote “The American Religion, the emergence of the Post Christian Nation”. There he says that “The American Religion masks itself as Protestant Christianity, yet has ceased to be Christian.

Just this past week Trump, speaking to his “Christian” audience, promised, when elected, to scrap any and all environmental regulations, knowing that Christians believe that heaven is their home, not the earth. That’s how non-Christians see ‘Christians’: earth-haters! Of course, this is not accurate all the time, but, by and large, this holds true.

Safina quotes a fellow ecologist, Dr. Lynn White Jr., who wrote, “Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s religions, not only established a dualism of nature and man, but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for its proper ends.” Safina continued: “As a Christian himself White put the blame on Christianity. But Christianity got its dualism from Plato”.

Plato and Descartes.

That brings me to that ancient Philosopher Plato, because I believe that Christianity, in its present form, owes more to Greek philosophy – Plato especially – than we dare to admit. The entire ‘HEAVEN’ idea is a direct throwback to the pagan notion that spirit is superior to matter. 

Prof. Dr. C. A. van Peursen, in his book, BODY, SOUL, SPIRIT, a survey of the Body-Mind problem, wrote that, “A couple of thousand years before Descartes, the Greek philosopher had already drawn a sharp dividing line in his philosophical system between soul and body… how superior the soul is to the body”. Descartes and, in general Christians, echo that sentiment, which basically is a pagan belief.

A new approach and a new name for ‘Christian’ are needed.

We need a new approach to Christianity, which now is almost exclusively geared to the soul going heavenward, while the body is refiled, evident especially in the USA, which calls itself a “city on the hill”, a nation others ought to see as a beacon of light.

What does the Bible say?

The Bible starts with Paradise, and ends with Paradise. In its centre stands the Tree of Golgotha, where Jesus, God’s Son was crucified to redeem Creation, plainly stated in John 3: 16. 

In that chapter Jesus told Nicodemus, representing the church then and now, that God’s primary love is for creation. In that passage Jesus uses the Greek word ‘Agape’, signaling God’s unconditional devotion to all of reality, to the entire COSMOS, to the total universe. This clearly indicates that those who try to love what God loves, must follow God’s example and go beyond the now degraded name of Christian, and assume a new designation, something like Cosmo-phile or Earth-Friendly. 

Jesus and religion.

When Jesus was 12 years old, he already had an encounter with the religious elite and, even at that young age, took its measure. His very last act, just before he died on the cross, was to rip the curtain enclosing the Holy of Holies in the Temple, from top to bottom. That very happening forever demonstrated that Christ’ message had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with LIFE, by opening the Holy to everyday doings: All of life is HOLY, including creation.

Jesus brought LIFE, not religion, which killed him.

The very centre of life today is Jesus’ love for LIFE, captured in the words he spoke to the Old Testament church representative, Nicodemus, in that private audience. Here the church and Jesus spoke heart to heart and mind to mind. Here Jesus revealed clearly and concisely without a shred of ambiguity that his love for creation, the COSMOS, was so all-encompassing and all-inclusive and all-comprehensive that he, as God’s only Son, was willing to give his own life, his flesh and blood, as the ultimate sacrifice to buy back God’s Precious world, now in the total grasp of God’s Opponent. Only believing that, by word and deed, would bring eternal LIFE.

That requires a re-birth, a rebirth for all of Christianity, now basically denying that “The Earth is the Lord’s”.

In order to emphasize that belief, the word “Christian” no longer conveys this commitment.

I am a Bibliophile: I Love Books. Others call themselves Anglophiles or Francophiles, expressing their love for the culture of these countries. 

My approach is to look forward and try to live the perfect life for which Jesus gave his totality: I am, in other words, a COSMOPHILE, an EARTH LOVER. That term should replace the term Christian, now no longer conveying God’s love for all that lives. Become Earth-Friendly. Follow Jesus’ example, and live forever.

February 6 2024                                                                      

Enduring Enchantment and Endless Consciousness.

The décor in my living room where I read and write, has been fashioned not by me, but by my late wife, who died on October 23 2020, in her 93d year. Her artistic and inspiring arrangement of original artwork, of paintings and embroidery, of wood carvings and colorful plants, and, of course, family pictures, assures her enduring presence, inspiring me every moment of the day, captivated by her enduring enchantment.

After her slow death, due to dementia and physical ailments, my spouse of 67 years appeared to me in a dream a while ago. I wanted to kiss her, but she told me that I had to wait at least three years. 

I believe that conversation to be true. I know that her body is dead; I also know that her spirit is still alive. Death is not the end: we humans are more than just body: we also are soul and spirit, and so retain consciousness.

Some biography.

Both my wife and I were born in 1928. She was the 8^th of 12; I the 4^th of 9. Her father, the only minister of a church with 1300 members, died a month before her 9^th birthday. Her mother, in the midst of the world-wide economic depression, was faced in 1937 with greatly reduced income, but was able to raise her 12 children – 5 female and 7 male – with almost all of her brothers attaining professional status. 

My wife’s parents were very gifted, and so was my wife who, because she and her sisters were female, and would surely marry, did not have the educational opportunities their brothers had, which she resented greatly, yet, due to her talents she became a Master Graphologist, an expert in hand-writing analysis.

My daily routine.

Each morning I settle myself in my Lazy Boy, looking south to the large window there, with red and green plants on its sill, while the West wall in my living/dining room is adorned with colorful art objects, including a large decorative glass painting, suspended in the fixed window there. On the east wall of my living room, I have a large bookcase well-proportioned, beautifully crafted, overflowing with books, of course, flanked also by original paintings from recognized artists. 

In a word, my writing and living space is inspiring, enchanting and restful: a constant reminder of my wife’s artistic arrangements. Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of having been married to her for nearly seven decades.

Endless Consciousness.

We all are part of this world, forever: Enchantment and Eternity and Earth belong together.

My brother Drewes in den Haag, the Netherlands, gave me a Dutch book, (it went through 9 printings in the first year) the title translated as Endless Consciousness, in which the writer, Dr. Pim van Lommel, a heart specialist, who in that medical capacity often witnessed death, relates how the Almost Dead Experience is a proven fact. I myself experienced it, when my father died, who, just before the end, said, “Is the radio on? I hear music.” That music continued, I believe, after his body expired.

In his introduction the author writes, and I translate: “I have concluded that endless consciousness always has existed independent of our body and will continue to do so. There never is a beginning nor an end to our consciousness. That’s why we seriously must consider that death, just as birth, is a transition to a different state of consciousness, while during life the body functions as an interphase.”

If that is true – and I am inclined to believe it – then this has enormous implications for life and the hereafter. And for theology as well. Jesus, on the cross, told his co-sufferer, that he would that day be with Jesus in paradise: he would join Jesus in his full consciousness, to be fully restored to life on the Day of the New Creation.

Where did we go wrong? 

We have allowed ourselves to live apart from nature, and often apart from our fellow humans as well. We are the poorer because of this loss of integration. We have been too anthropocentric and now we reap the harvest of our lopsided existence, scorning the holiness of all that exist, acting and believing that we are ‘superman’, above the mere irrational elements in creation which lack our rational powers. We are starting to realize that we now, more than ever, are dependent on a well-functioning earth, which provides us with our daily needs.

In the Lord’s Prayer there is a line: “Hallowed be thy name”. It is my considerate opinion that this phrase has nothing to do with God’s name – God is beyond a name – and refers to everything that carries God’s name, his signature, enchanted by his touch that is beyond AI comprehension.

Eternity is now: Life never ends. 

Endless Consciousness confirms that ‘nobody ever disappears’, that the good deeds of some will always be part of them (Revelation 14:13) while, that in others, pride will haunt them forever.

GOD, BILLY GRAHAM AND SHAKESPEARE.

January 31, 2024

In 1991 Larry King interviewed Billy Graham on CNN, and asked him, “What will happen when you die?” Billy did not miss a beat, supposedly quite ready to give a quick answer. So, what did he say? How did the great evangelist, the pastor to presidents, phrase his reply? How did this preacher, always seen with an open Bible in his hand, ready to explain the intricacies of the Christian religion, answer this secular interviewer, who was married eight (8) times, and feared neither God nor his laws? 

You’ll never guess. Billy Graham did not quote the Bible. Billy Graham did not look for a Bible passage such as Daniel 12: 13: “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.”  None of that. No, Billy, the bold Bible pusher said, “When I die, Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God.” Wow. Wouldn’t that be something! A private audience with the God Creator, much grander than a visit with the Pope! 

Billy, his voice like thunder, “Thus says the Lord!”, could not have been more wrong. “Jesus,” says Colossians 1: 15, “is the image of the invisible God.” Even more striking is Paul’s description of God – see 1 Timothy 6: 16: “(God) alone is immortal, who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see”. “Billy Graham, the great deceiver?”

God and Shakespeare: profound parallels.

Shakespeare: we know nothing of his age, his place of birth, where he died, how he looks like. His life-details are a mostly a mystery: we do know that he died in 1618; we do know that this most talented, and most celebrated playwright in the history of the literary world wrote 38 plays; we do know that his literary talents have mesmerized the theatrical world for centuries. 

But, why do I compare him to God?

Well…. Just like Shakespeare, the greatest bard in the last 500 years, we know God only by what he did: The saying goes, ‘by your actions we shall know you’. Of William Shakespeare nothing physical is known. Maggie O’Farrell, in her HAMNET, a book one of my granddaughters gave me, beautifully surmised the life of the great poet, but, brilliant as it is, it is fiction at its best.

So, I repeat, how do we know God? 

“How to know God”, asks the Belgic confession. “How to know Shakespeare”, ask the professors of English, where a play of the hero of Stratford and the Globe Theatre is required study in any university syllabus. “How to know God”, is also our perennial question, asked and explained in a million synagogues or church buildings or mosques in the world every Saturday or Sunday Morning. 

With Shakespeare the answer is simple: thousands of teachers and millions of students study the multiple plays written by this inspired man, and every year new dissertations are written, exploring a minute aspect of some play to gain a greater understanding of this literary giant, of which no photograph, no picture, no accurate biography can be found, but whose plays are better known than the Bible, which has become a forgotten book.

The simple explanation for Shakespeare’s life is through his works, his legacy, his handiwork, his oeuvre, his portfolio. 

So, back to the perennial question: How do we know God? You have guessed the answer: By and through his works. That’s why the Belgic Confession categorically states:

We know God by two means:

First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book in which all creatures,         
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20, ^“Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. 
So, they are without excuse. All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.

Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word. 

Simply stated: We know only about Shakespeare through his literary output. We also know only about God through his works in creation, which is his Direct and Primary Revelation, through his Son, Jesus Christ. The church basically has diluted THE MESSAGE, by intellectualizing God, through solely concentrating on the Bible, God’s Indirect and Secondary Revelation. 

No wonder the church and the world are in rapid and in inevitable decline.

January 24 2024

Sex in the new Creation, and why women are more committed than men.

Sex In the New Creation? Of course. “Be fruitful”, is the first command given by God in Genesis 1, a statement made before the Fall. I wouldn’t be surprised that Eve was pregnant when she ate the Apple and then promptly had a miscarriage. 

How about the New Creation? When?

That is the ultimate question today: WHEN? When will Jesus come back? When can we expect the New Creation of which the Bible speaks all the time?

One thing we know: We don’t know “the day and the hour”. That is a fact. But we do know the signs. We do know what it entails: a climate SO hot that it will consume all there is. The Scriptures are very clear on this. Malachi mentions ‘a refiner’s fire’, an apt description because only a fire can purify everything. Peter, the apostle, the Pierre, the Rock, writes that ‘the elements will be destroyed by fire’, and Revelation too forecast a series of calamities, among which ‘the fiery lake of burning sulfur’.  

A timely warning.

Arctic News – have a look at its website – paints exactly such a picture, and places the world’s demise at our doorsteps, within the next couple of years. It sees immense danger from the methane hydrates that lurk in the shallow Arctic waters, an incalculable, immense amount of rich carbon deposits, containing gases, by some calculations 100 times more lethal than our comparably innocent-tailpipe exhausts. Once these huge amounts of gases, now tightly compacted through eons of time, burst out in the open, they expand 130-140 times in volume, and cause a sudden spike in air temperature, making the atmosphere we live in, suddenly, spontaneously, and especially lethally, inhabitable, leaving no room for any living entity. “This rise in methane concentrations alone may suffice to cause the Clouds Tipping Point, at 1200 ppm CO? to get crossed. The resulting clouds feedback could on its own cause the temperature to reach more than 18°C above pre-industrial by 2026”, to quote Arctic News. 

It also notes: “humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise and most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise”. Please note: these are warnings given by bona fide scientists, peer reviewed.

So why do I write all this? 

It could quite well be that the world as we know it, the world in which we were born, grew up and matured, will disappear in a wink, as 2 Peter 3 verse 10, warns us. For those who are not familiar with the Bible, let me quote this passage: “suddenly, out of the blue, without warning, the elements will be destroyed by fire”. My paraphrasing.

Sex in the NEW CREATION.

So, what has this to do with SEX IN THE NEW CREATION? How does this chive with Jesus’ statement that ‘there will be no marriage there’? 

Fecundity

We identify sex with human intercourse. Actually, it’s much more than that. Thomas Moore writes in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, “There is no reason why our surroundings should not be places of beauty, intimacy, pleasure, and desire – all sexual values.” 

Sterile Churches.

When God said, “Let there be”, he made a sexual statement. When I place seed in the ground in the Spring, that is a sexual act. “Creating” beauty is a sexual act. This reminds me of the Protestant churches, often lacking in intimacy, pleasure and desire. The church service should be full of cosmic sexuality.

Close reading of the Older Testament and God’s instructions for the Tabernacle and Temple, reveal that their walls were decorated with images of palm trees and flowers; in other words, the temple depicted the world in a nutshell, a microcosm, with the deity living at the centre. 

Our churches lack these sexual symbols, lack ‘the fruits’ of our imagination, lack the results of our artistic input. The sterility of our edifices has resulted in a general spiritual malaise, incurable if present trends persist.

Sex and us.

Yes, today we see sex strictly in bodily terms, strictly as a form of satisfying a physical desire. The entire economic world is centered on that: bodily enhancement has become a growth industry, with enticing glimpses of female nudity.

Job’s daughters are a good example of Biblical beauty.

The Bible is no stranger to female beauty. It is revealing that the book, simply called JOB, appearing just before the 150 Psalms, ends with: “Nowhere in the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters.”  The curious part in this section is that, where his sons are not named, Job’s daughters are, indicating that the Old Testament sees women as more committed than men, because they bear the means of fruitfulness. Mary, too, was a woman blessed above all. Joseph more or less acted as an appendix, fading into oblivion, just as Job’s sons, while his daughters, in contrast with the lack of female rights in those days, were full heirs to Job’s immense wealth.

Women and Jesus.

Women financed Jesus’ mission. Women stayed with Jesus till the bitter end, while the men chickened out. Jesus appeared to women first after his return to LIFE. Yes, women play a larger role in Christianity than men. True then, and true now.

January 16, 2024

THE IRONY OF WATER.

Some happenings are uncanny and unforgettable. One of them is my emotional experience, standing in front of Lake Louise, in Banff National Park. There, in a sudden, uncontrollable outburst of elation and exultation, tears sprung into my eyes, my throat seized up, and my whole body reacted to the immense natural beauty unfolding in front of my eyes. God’s Spirit through his handiwork filled my being. It to me signified that ‘nature’, God’s creation, is both us and in us.

A similar feeling, however much shorter, went through me when a dear friend, about to die, talked of his future in the New Creation that awaited him, and with him I experienced a shared feeling of felicity, that touched my very soul.

I think the proper word for these happenings is ‘enchantment’, a feeling of the divine in me, the presence of God’s Spirit, ‘chanting’ melodiously, impacting my physique, pushing teardrops into my eyes, reminding me that my body and the world around me, are mostly water.

Water?

Rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Our very bodies consist of water in that same proportion.

 Rather than calling our globe ‘earth’ – which, after all, is only a minority stake – we should really call our world ‘water’ or ‘aqua’ by its Latin name. 

What have we done with ‘water’?

“Astounding” ocean temperatures in 2023 supercharged “freak” weather around the world as the climate crisis continued to intensify.

The Flood, in which Noah played a prominent part, was purely ‘an act of God’, who promised not to repeat his interference. And God hasn’t. It is increasingly becoming obvious that we, as the human race, have assumed God’s role of inflicting punishment on ourselves.

The watery oceans.

For millennia the sea was a mystery for the human race, unaware that ‘the universal ocean-waters’, determine the steadiness of the atmosphere, a state of affairs we now have disturbed, of which we today face the consequences. We have done what has always been seen as impossible: the trillions of tiny explosions occurring every second under the hoods of our beloved automobiles, have now heated up the incalculable universal molecules of H2O in adverse ways, robbing the atmosphere of its predictable constancy.

Our Greed for Speed 

Our Greed for Speed has accelerated the Parousia, the Second Coming. That’s the Good News. It reminds me of Yeats timely poem:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Bethlehem has come and gone. 

The Second Coming is at hand, as even the church’s stance, in its largest expressions, has turned to a new Messiah, Trump, turning the Good News – Eu-Angelist – into the Bad News – Kak-Angelist, perfectly in line with Matthew 24.

Water: An ironic twist.

Where God punished an incurably sinful world with the FLOOD, today the uneven spread of rains has brought on ‘drought’, which threatens the world’s food supply, affecting a quarter of humanity, causing food inflation, hunger and migration. Also, Global Heating warmed the entire earth’s waterbodies, an unbelievable feat, judging by its global percentage, to the extent that the world’s weather is out of kilter, as its stability has been jolted. Here again the unbelievable magnitude of our disastrous conduct spells nothing but current and near-future chaos.

I know, those are no proof of God’s existence for the sceptical minds, but for me they are real. That I live under divine protection became again evident to me a short while ago, when, in a dream I was alerted to a certain danger that could have mortal consequences, and when, the next day such a happening did take place, I was warned in advance.

Back some 80 years.

As an 18-19 years old young man, in the glorious summer of 1947, for 7 weeks I sailed the seas, as a guest on a 500 tons Coastal Vessel, paying $1.00 per day for food, traveling from Rotterdam to Exmouth in South England – where I stayed 4 weeks – and from there through the Kiel Canal to the Baltic, where minesweepers were still clearing safe paths through the  ‘Ost See’, on my way onto Sweden and Finland.

Some happenings are literally unforgettable. That ‘sea-trip’, now almost 80 years ago, has made me love the waters which cover almost all the globe’s exterior.

January 9 2024

Has my disciplined life made me guilty of manslaughter?

The Bible is big on discipline: the word appears 124 times there, most often as a reminder that the Lord ‘disciplines’ a person who swerves away from his Law, which, today, we experience in Climate Change. However, Proverbs sees it as the basis for erudition, as in Proverbs 12: 1: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.

In the Newer Testament, Jesus’ immediate class of students are called ‘disciples’, people, in this case all men, eager to know ‘the Way of the Lord’, making true the biblical rule for ‘wisdom’: “The fear of the Lord is the onset of wisdom.” 

 A person can have an immense amount of knowledge, but lack wisdom. AI – Artificial Intelligence – comes to mind, which, to some extent, is the  summum of all knowledge, but cannot possibly instill wisdom. To attain wisdom we need guidelines, which we find in God’s Words, coming to us in three indispensable and inter-related ways. Wisdom is a gift from God, obtained by observing creation and its structure and coherence, and seeing divinity there: that is the beginning of wisdom. Romans 1: 20 is worthy of quoting again: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 

In other words: observing the way of ‘nature’ is the divine directive for instilling wisdom, aided by reading the ‘written’ Word, and both deeply determined by Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh, by God becoming a human being, our example to follow. So, yes, just like in the Trinity, GOD’S WORD too, is a threefold given. 

Live by wisdom.

That’s the kind of wisdom I try to live by most of my life. By the grace of God, I should add. The entire body of mere human knowledge has led us to the ‘state of doom’ we are in, and it takes ‘divine wisdom’, to extract us from that situation. That’s not easy! Perhaps impossible.

This also indicates that we are responsible for who we are.

Yes, we are responsible for who we are. Christian parents are charged to bring up their children ‘in the fear of the Lord’, and I am thankful that my parents tried to do that through example, to the best of their ability, as their parents did for them, and I did for my children. But there always comes a time when the responsibility shifts, when maturity is reached, and the children go their own way. 

All this applies to us, creatures of the 21^st Century. We, as, the human race, also have grown up: God has allowed us to pursue a path apart from him. Deuteronomy 32: 20, makes that clear: “I will hide my face from them,” God said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful”.

Note: God still sees us as his children. In a sense, we never fully mature: we always have to be open to new ideas, new insights, not going back, but forward, to the New Creation, not dependent on and glorifying in new technical stuff, almost always powered by creation-destroying carbon-based fuel, but always aiming for ever expanding insight into matters that really matter, such as ‘why we are here’.

I have been self-employed, since 1952, for more than 70 years. During these decades I have driven at least a TWO million kilometres, first as an insurance and real estate broker, and finishing my career as an accredited commercial real estate appraiser, in a region in Eastern Ontario, from Picton to the Algonquin, from Peterborough to Smith Falls, some 200 km x 150 km, often traveling 300 km a day. 

“What have I learned?”

An article in the latest Economist, entitled THE GREEN MAN’S BURDEN, tells me that I am guilty of causing death. It says, “In 2011 John Nolt, a philosopher at the University of Tennessee, estimated that a typical (North) American, born in 1960, would be responsible for enough Green House Gas emissions over his or her lifetime to cause between one or two deaths.”

Born in 1928 I certainly qualify! I wonder: “Has my business life made me guilty of manslaughter?” Yes, Ephesians 2:3 is correct: by nature, we are children of wrath. All too plain today!  

We need God’s grace, now more than ever.