Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

MY BODY.

God has given me a special item to treasure and cherish, to nurture and preserve, to love and enhance, to exercise and keep from harm, to beautify and honor: I am referring to my body. Because it is God’s direct gift to me, my body is holy.

Some Biblical Backup.                                                   

Colossians 1: 15 tells me that: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 

Here is my unorthodox explanation of this text. In the first place: it is impossible to fully explain what this means, because nobody was present at the moment “God spoke and it came to be”, as Psalm 33: 9 casually remarks. We cannot possibly grasp this event, and so, I will only offer my thought, and my hesitant interpretation. 

To me “The Firstborn over all creation”, suggests that Jesus – not Adam and Eve – was the first human. Jesus, in the capacity of ‘being human’, created all things, as the verses 16-20 of Colossians 1 further explain:  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. These invisible items could   perhaps explain electricity, television, Internet – the invisible telecommunication system. 

Our basic holiness is further explained in: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own”. (1 Corinthians 6: 19). 

Back to My Body.

Through Jesus, as the first human being, in whom everything finds its origin, we too have immense power and potential. We still have that capacity, even though we are squandering our talents through pursuing selfish goals. Our bodies suffer, also because we have disregarded its holiness. Through omni-present pollution, our very existence is mortally weakened.

A few years ago, the British medical journal, estimated that the largest percentage of the global population suffers from some medical problem: indeed, world-wide health is widely compromised. Our bodies are no longer ‘holy’, that is purely perfect. I, have, by the grace of God, maintained good health, have had a lasting loving life, from birth to old age, through infancy through teenage years, through marriage till today, experiencing daily the love of my children and grandchildren and good friends. I feel God’s love daily. 

The puzzle I am trying to solve is why my wife – who I had known since childhood – suffered from dementia at least 10 years before she died. She was very intelligent, and wanted to study, but she grew up in a time of strict male/female divisions. Her older sister, when the matter was discussed, said: “She will get married anyway”. That was in time when the women, who were in the workforce, were expected to quit their jobs, and devote their lives – and bodies – to their husbands. I tend to think that this old custom has been a source of grief – mostly hidden – for many a married woman.

I now live in a senior citizen environment, where women outnumber men at least 2:1. This past week I started to participate in a gym class. There were some 15 women and only 5 men. It is interesting to speculate why women generally outlive their male spouses. I will ask some of them what they think about this inequality in life expectancy. Are women, through evolution, tougher and more life-enhancing? 

The End of Children.

The March 3 issue of THE NEW YORKER, had a long article with the title: The End of Children, with the subtitle: What do falling birth rates mean for the future? I wonder whether giving birth, within reason, prolongs life. Having children, loving them, caring for them, worrying about them, does this prolong life? 

Is the current state of no child or less than 2.1 child, a subconscious admitting that the future looks so bleak, that it is preferable to forego the likely hardship that awaits the next generation, facing resource depletion and climate change?

I don’t know the answer. It seems that my life really belongs to an older generation. Since my wife and I were born in 1928, a radical change has taken place. As I see it, all in preparation for the NEW AGE to come, where sex differences will have disappeared, where everybody will be equal, where discrimination based on sexual orientation will have disappeared. 

Luke 20: 35 tells me that: they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.

I am seeing more and greater signs that TIME is running out. Everything is becoming what it is, especially in the USA, always having been a leader in good and evil.

Make your constant prayer be: Maranatha, Lord, Come.

CHANGE

Change: real change.

Fifty Years Ago, I left St. Catharines, Ontario. I left the city for the country, far from the urban area, some 45 km north of the nearest small city, Belleville. 

In 1975, my family settled on 50 acres, in a passive solar, energy-efficient home, not far from a large pond created by industrious beavers, who build a huge dam in a small creek flooding hundreds of acres, resulting in a small lake, ideal for skating, and ducks: lots of them.

Now I am back in the Niagara Peninsula, with St. Catharines at its centre,

closer to doctors, specialists and hospitals, closer to the three of my children who live in Southern Ontario.

Change.

I am not quite sure why, at this time, I made the change. I believe that, somehow, the Lord wanted me to do so. In a sense I left St. Catharines 50 years ago, to avoid conflict, and to change the type of work – insurance – for which I was not quite suited. In these 5 decades of comparative solitude, I developed a radical new concept of what Christianity is all about. Dr. J. H. Diemer, who died in a German Concentration Camp in 1944-45, wrote in his book on ‘Miracles’, that God only hears a prayer when it furthers the Coming of the Kingdom. 

Think about this. It begs the question, “What is the Kingdom?” 

The Kingdom?

I believe that, even the best churches – and I rate them by their inclusiveness and their genuine belief in Christ – have little notion how to proclaim the reality of the Kingdom. For me, John 3: 16 “God so loves the world”, has become my life’s motto, and the beacon by which I steer my life. In my simple – and perhaps simplistic – opinion: “Creation is God’s primary and direct word”. “Seek first the Kingdom”, Jesus tells us. 

It is not my aim in life to discard the Written Word – every day I write a short meditation on a text of the lectionary – but I still see the Bible as God’s secondary and indirect word, while the church, even the most orthodox – perhaps especially those – see the Bible as the church’s special and only domain to salvation.

The key word for Christians is LOVE. Tolstoy has said: “If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you are a human being.” Just add to the words ‘other people’s’ ‘all created matter’: the pain of animals – one reason why I am a vegetarian – the pain of trees, the pain of earth, especially since, basically “Earth we are and to earth we shall return”, something the Bible tells us in its very first chapters.

Pain and Suffering.

We live in a time of immense suffering. Unnatural disasters are multiplying, hitting poor and rich alike, witness the immense fires in the Los Angeles region. Today we experience the trauma of creation. Romans 8: 22 comes to mind: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

This is so true: Today we experience that intense suffering, the birth-pangs, of the New Creation: AI = Artificial Intelligence, is part of that pattern.

During World War II, the race was on for the creation of the Atom Bomb. The Allies – the USA and Great Britain – won. This time AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the world’s target.

Russia and China are already using this technology against the USA, and the US brains are tooling up to address the threat. Just as the A and N Bombs, the new technologies are dangerous. The only solution to stop AI abuse is to use AI, so the reasoning goes, no matter what the costs are, even the destruction of the entire world.  It’s about a world turned upside down – a dark, fretful, more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, where principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. It’s an ugly, disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals and brazen lies. And the US president is setting the example.

An old song comes to mind.

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

If there ever was a time when change and decay prevail, it is now, Anno 2025. Are God’s people ready? Or are they, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls them: “Pious Secularists”?

Change is needed. Kingdom Change.

HE’D RATHER DESTROY THE WORLD, THAN ADMIT HE IS WRONG.

Confusion, incoherence, close to collapse: a psychopath in power.

 In my long life, always having a keen interest in global happenings, I’ve never observed so much global turmoil, political, economic, and ecological as today. 

Yes, I should add religious as well. In my opinion, the real message of Revelation, the last Bible book, is that ‘Everything becomes what it is’. The effects of the Enlightenment, which brought new thinking, and reshaped the way people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights, have worn off. Now the true human nature is being revealed, acutely evident in US politics, and increasingly also in the Western World where the swing toward authoritarian attitudes, in recent elections, indicates that people want easy answers to complicated, and basically insolvable issues. 

Frankly, we have painted ourselves in a corner. 

We have avoided dealing with the giant in the room, Climate Change, now rapidly accelerating, and there is nothing we can do anymore to stop this phenomenon. We just went through a La Nina weather event, always a time when global temperatures decrease. Not this time, an ominous sign. Now we are on the verge of a El Nino event: brace yourself. 

Why?

The Arctic is warming at four times the global average, and glaciers across the world are shrinking rapidly. As they melt, together with polar ice, more methane is released, creating a positive feedback loop—where warming melts glaciers, releasing methane, this in turn traps more heat in the atmosphere and accelerates further melting. More Global Heat brings, in the Western World, more air conditioning, resulting in more pollution, and the cycle accelerates. 

Then there are wars.

If all else fails, fight. If anything causes more weather turmoil, it is war. Trump alone, in his arrogance, poses an ultra-danger for the world through his authoritarian edict to abolish all precautionary practises to lessen the elects of Climate Change.

My obsession?

I know, sorry, this has become not quite an obsession with me, but certainly something that occupies my mind almost every day. Trump has ordered that no mention ought to be made of Climate Change. Ignoring it, will only cause more surprises.

Back to total extinction, something we now face.

This past week I read somewhere that when the Parousia, Christ’s Return, happens, all creatures, humans – you, I and all our loved ones – plus all animals, as they too need oxygen continuously, will be, globally, deprived, of that necessary ingredient, and cease to exist within a few minutes. 

Then, no more life, followed by the Great Clean-up.

ARCTIC NEWS.

I am not alone in this. For the last few weeks, ARCTIC NEWS, a website devoted to conditions on both of earth’s extreme top and bottom, the North and South Poles, has started a daily string of news items, devoted to – yes – the end of the world as we have fashioned her. 

I remember the year 2,000 when I was at COP 5, held in The Hague, the Netherlands. I then wrote a weekly column for the Belleville, ON based The Intelligencer. Then already the Inuit – the Arctic based indigenous representation – effectively showed how the temperatures in their home region, were far higher than normal, while just this past week New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico, had freezing temperatures: something unheard of there.

A possible scenario.

I have tried to imagine how a sudden change in the world’s air chemistry, could happen. Today, we need oxygen in ever greater quantities. I think that ‘hydrogen bombs’ could be the catalyst: their need for oxygen to fully ignite, could well cause both the final conflagration, while sucking in the world’s total oxygen supply.

I translated J. H. Bavinck’s book on Revelation, published under the title: And On and On the Ages Roll. Dr. Bavinck suggests this also. 

End-Times?

Well, it looks like the endgame. With Trump in the saddle, anything can happen. He would rather destroy the world, then admit that he is a loser. Yes, the hydrogen way of war is MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. In this mad, mad world, the impossible is now possible.

When God caused The Flood and gave Noah the chance to start a new humanity, God vouched never to do this again, fully well knowing that this time WE would do the job.

With a madman in charge, and the rest of the world basically leaderless, with the hope of stopping Climate Change disappearing – in spite of unrealistic, optimistic, talk – the impossible now seems possible.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. (2 Peter 3: 10)

EARTHQUAKES: MORE THAN ONE KIND.

More than one kind?

Well, I am in a generous mood. Why limit an earthquake to a terrestrial upheaval?

I believe that any event that is ‘earth-shaking’ resembles an earthquake, so I have chosen three fields that, in my opinion, qualify:                                       

• EARTH
• ECONOMY
• AI

Reading the Bible, I have repeatedly seen a reference to ‘earth-quakes’. Take that terrible chapter Matthew 24, where Jesus outlines the very times we now, anno 2025, experience. There it says in verse 7: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” 

Well, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it. The great divider, the ‘warmonger’ now dictating from the White House, has caused, by his distorted vision of the world, to speed up the implementation of this text. (Awkward wording, but so what!) Luke 21: 11 simply confirms this: “There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven,” adding a COVID-like event to the mix as well as more and stronger hurricanes. 

I know that Revelation, the last Bible book, is never shy in outlining the worst: “At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.”

I have noticed that there are a lot of earth-rumblings out there in the tortured upper crust of our habitat. Does the above text from Revelation 11: 13 indicate the imminent implosion of a densely populated area of the Western World? The BIG one? L. A. California? 

We all agree that today anything ‘bad’ is possible. 

Donald Trump acts anti-Christian.

What really irks me no end, is Trump’s total disregard for any ‘scientific’ findings concerning Climate Change: he purposely enhances the conditions that cause it. I wonder whether this amounts to ‘the sin against the Holy Spirit’. In Genesis 1 it says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. It seems to me that this implies that God’s Spirit was instrumental in creating, while Trump and his plutocrats are doing the opposite. You may recall that there is no forgiveness for ‘sins against the Holy Spirit’: Good thing I am not God.

Then there is the economy. 

Another lesson of history is that it is often circular. The Dirty Thirties brought Hitler and the Nazi Regime, now almost 100 years ago, and with it the deaths of scores of millions, including 6 million Jews.

The return of Mr. Trump and the rise of the European far right seem to suggest that the lessons of history are not being learned. Where is another Churchill when we need one? 

Yesterday’s Jews under Hitler – 1932 till 1945 – are now the poor Gaza occupants: how callous, how cruel, how criminal, how capitalistic is Trump’s intention to displace these people to make it another Riviera, with Trump Hotels and Trump-run Towers. How cruel, how criminal, how capitalistic is Trump and Netanyahu’s treatment of these Arabs.  It purely smacks of Old Testament justice – 1 Samuel 15 – when King Saul was required by God: ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 

But we no longer live in the pre-Jesus times. Now LOVE is the driving factor. Jesus has come, and will come again.

Yes, the economy.

Today the dangers to the economy are acute and imminent: Climate Change is God’s answer to our continuously expanding greed, our insatiable need for more and more minerals, to the point where shortages of all sorts, threaten to stop our free ride exploiting God’s treasures and put the world economy in reverse. That means INFLATION, big time. Add a growing world population, more people gaining a better standard of living, while supplies of cereals are constantly threatened by unfavorable weather conditions – too hot, too cold, too much water, not enough moisture – and it does not take much to make food more costly.

Add Trump’s adventurous tariff impositions, and the precious economic equilibrium, now so carefully crafted, will throw a wrench in the world’s financial system, depending on stability.

AI = Artificial Intelligence

Let me be short. I compare AI to THE TOWER OF BABEL, an attempt to ‘be like God’. It is the pinnacle of human endeavor, always present in the entire human history, a constant effort to replace God’s perfect wisdom with human know-how – fallible and ultimate imperfect – aiming to equal God. 

“He who sits in heaven, laughs.” (Psalm 2: 4) 

Summary

The Greek word Hubris comes to mind, which means: conceit, conceitedness, haughtiness, pride, vanity, self-importance, self-conceit, pomposity,  feeling of superiority.

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION. SO, WHAT IS IT?

Christianity is not a religion, even though, over the years, it has been called this. 

Here is what makes religion ‘religion’: A religion has rites, a religion has buildings, a religion has functionaries, a religion resembles the army, where a general compares to a pope, colonels to cardinals, officers to priests, soldiers to laypeople. 

Is the church really similar to an army?

Well, religion has songs celebrating its aim, such as: “Like a mighty army moves the church of God”. And the equally unbiblical: Stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross, or, Onward Christian Soldiers. Really?

In essence, today’s Christian religion resembles more the Old Testament than the New. Religion has official feast days, just like the good Old Testament times, when everything was stipulated, and we knew exactly what to do, and when and where. Also compare how Religion has prescribed vestments, for instance: the Pope wears white, the cardinals red. Usually the Protestant clergy are dressed in black. For a reason?

New Testament Christianity has none of that. 

The adoption of Old Testament rituals leaves the impression that observing some rules will earn salvation. Old Testament rules mangle the Message. Look at Jesus, God’s Son. He dressed as a common citizen: nothing distinguished him in appearance. Certainly, no clerical collar. 

And then there is Jesus’ very final act. Mark 15: 37-38 tells us that when “Jesus with a loud cry breathed his last, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Just imagine, just picture the scene, and connect it to John 3: 16, which tells us that the reason for his death, was not that we, poor sinners would be saved, but that creation, the cosmos, the animals, the trees, the entire human race would be restored to Paradise Prime! Jesus in a cry of acute agony visualized how the church would degenerate into a pietistic portrait of non-relevance, many shamelessly adoring the Trump cohort whose devilish conduct is bent to destroy the cosmos for whose total regeneration, Jesus Christ gave his life. 

Yes, Christianity today, basically, is a continuation of the Old Testament church, and when Jesus objected, when he went against the established rules, the then church killed him.

What then is “Christianity?”

 How can I word that? How can I make that convincing? How can I get that across? First: Christianity is a constant struggle, because Christianity has no fixed rules, because Christianity always is exploratory. 

The basic message of Revelation.

The basic message of Revelation, and thus of Christianity, is that “Everything becomes what it is”. That is its ‘lesson’. All truths and lies will be exposed. Trump’s traumatic attempts to rule the economic world, will backfire, because his opponent here is God/Jesus. 

Colossians 1: 15-20, places special emphasis on Ta Panta: All Things. Since God created ‘all things’, then, as a matter of consistency, ‘All things are holy’. Karen Armstrong, with her book, Sacred Nature, shows this clearly. 

The world is becoming a dangerous place. The latest readings from the “Doomsday Clock”, which notionally measures proximity to global catastrophe, suggest that it is now at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to the theoretical point of annihilation.

The reasons are familiar: the risk of nuclear war, pandemics, disinformation, new technologies. Perceptions that the world is spinning out of control are heightened by environmental and health disasters like the recent Los Angeles wildfires,  outbreaks of Ebola and other lethal, infectious diseases. 

Animals too, look forward to the New World.

When Jonah went to Nineveh, God expressed special concern for the many animals there. Today the Die-off of wild creatures is rapidly accelerating. Look at the North/South Poles where polar bears, seals, penguins, will soon disappear, due to Global Heating. God made them. God loves them. 

So, what is Christianity?

Christianity is NOT a religion. Christianity is ‘a way of life’. Religion separates soul from body, but God is in the midst of everything. Religion has heaven at its goal, pure pagan preaching. Jesus tells us that ‘the meek will inherit the earth’, those who claim little or nothing. We want everything. 

Our bonds with the earth are so strong that we cannot imagine existing apart from the earth. We await Paradise, a Paradise with Jesus. Paradise is the unspoiled world where the total harmony of all creatures entwines everything into intimate cohesion. Paradise is the KINGDOM as seen by God on the morning of creation, when he saw all he had made, and concluded, ‘it was very good’. 

When Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come”, that’s what He had in mind. That’s why Christianity is NOT a religion: It is a Way of Life, simulating the perfect creation to come.

To me the Bible/Jesus tells me so: John 10:10: I, Jesus, have come to bring LIFE -24/7 – and that to the full. Live life. All the time, Live LOVE, as God loved the world. Loving Creation in all her aspects, including humans, of course, in all her expressions. and trying to care for their welfare is equivalent to “Praying without ceasing”. (1 Thessalonians 5:17): That’s what Christianity is all about.

Parousia, the Coming of the Lord, will be a total surprise.

Fifty Years ago.

I did some soul searching this past week. Fifty years ago, January 1975, I made a radical decision: I decided to leave our comfortable 2,000 square feet, home with built-in office, in St, Catharines, Ontario, located on a major city thoroughfare, and move away. This also entailed selling my General Insurance business, surrendering my Real Estate Brokerage, intending to relocate some 300 km east, halfway between Toronto and Ottawa, with the intention to join a ‘Christian’ community there. 

It was my decision, mine only (male dominance at work): My wife and my five children were hardly consulted in the matter, the oldest already in university. I did give hints: I do remember that my wife and I visited there before moving.

Why?

Several reasons, one, being disaffected with my minister, who later left the denomination. He wanted to apply church censure to me, because I had refused to send my children to Catechism, disagreeing with his right-wing views. Also, after 20 years of selling insurance, I was fed up with the increasing detail work. Then my excellent secretary left. 

Then, as now, the times were testing, with the global upheaval of the early 1970s, with wars raging from the Middle East to Vietnam, and an oil crisis looming: an era of tension and uncertainty. 

There were spiritual reasons as well. In 1975, I was an idealist. I imagine I also was naïve, perhaps stupid to leave good security to face uncertainty, not having any manual skills, yet set out to build an energy-efficient home, passive solar, intending to live closer to ‘nature’ within a group of dedicated, though unconventional Christians, all of similar Dutch Reformed Christian background, well educated, 2 having been school principals.

That small group had earlier acquired a 200-acres working farm in Tweed, Ontario, and I bought 50 acres from them. I also promised them $10,000 to kickstart a communal enterprise. 

Why: again. 

Well, in early 1972 I had submitted a 5,000 words article to the Real Estate Institute of Canada JOURNAL. Every year it held a contest selecting the best article related to Real Estate, for publication in their Journal, offering a substantial money prize and a free trip to their annual convention, that year held in Vancouver. My article was entitled, THE CITY KEY TO SURVIVAL, an Essay on Ecology and Urban Living. To my great surprise, in a Canada-wide contest, including universities, my submission was selected.

In retrospect, I believe that this award influenced my thinking on leaving the city and trying to live a more ‘creation-friendly’, ecologically responsible life. 

Back to 1975-80.

For my wife and me, the change was a challenge. The community and the house church lasted 5 years, the break-up caused by disagreement on basic matters.

 So, in 1980, we joined the local Presbyterian Church which now has aged, the services basically unaltered for decades, even though the world has changed radically. 

All is well that ends well. 

My ‘early’ retirement – in 1975 I was in my 48^th year – gave me the opportunity to re-educate myself to become a Commercial Real Estate Appraisal. I took several university courses, and prepared the required three 100 pages proof appraisals on (1) a single family dwelling, (2) a 12 units apartment building, and (3) a commercial complex.

I attained my designation in 1978, and launched a new company called, HASTINGS APPRAISAL SERVICES, covering the entire county of Hastings, an area ranging from Lake Ontario to the Algonquin Park, some 150 km, with suboffices in the North and South, while centrally located Tweed became the administration office, with a former bank manager in charge. 

I sold the business in 1993 when I turned 65.

In my 50 years in Tweed, I have learned that the village is a civil place, with a lot of good people, but with a fading religious faith – two churches closed, two more are struggling – the Christian commitment more historical than based on personal relationships with the divine. In that the area differs little from the urban population: by and large, the Christian church is basically comatose, with no vision on eternity. 

Now what?

Next month I am going back to my home denomination. Will I find it changed? Will I find deeper thinking there, based on eternity? 

Over the years I have learned to be more defined in my views, more understanding of the reigning tendencies in society. 

I do believe that there is a growing awareness of the coming collapse of the current system, yet there still exists a baseless faith that human ingenuity will triumph.

I have come to believe that the church ought to prepare us for eternity, lived here on God’s renewed earth. The major challenge today is the swiftly changing climate, and our total inability to stop its rapid march to human oblivion. Yes, I believe that the End is near. Trump will not triumph: The evil he is doing will speed up earth’s destruction and hasten the Lord’s return.

That’s why Parousia, the Coming of the Lord, will be a total surprise.