Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

December 27 2022

WHEN WILL THE LORD RETURN? 

I have a curious habit. When I see a number, such as 2022, the year gone by like a shadow, then, to train my mental arithmetic, I add up the digits, 2+0+2+2, notice that they total ‘6’, see it’s divisible by 3, and know that, since it is an even number, also a multiple of 2. All this results in its ‘prime’ number: 2022/6 = 337. In my mind, this past year was ruled by ‘6’, the digit that symbolizes ‘the Devil’. 

How true?

Well, looking back, we still have the Russia/Ukraine war, a totally evil event. We have had two major Climate Conferences, COP 27 in Egypt, where the Devil came out on top, because nothing concrete resulted, and COP 15 in Montreal on Biodiversity, where only promises were made. 

Promises!

With a recession looming – meaning less tax income – with mounting obligations for healthcare – being sick is the new life-mode, with military threats on the increase – meaning greater need for weaponry, ever more complicated and expensive – with an aging population, meaning more money for old age pensions, promises might not be kept! 

Oh, did I mention ‘natural’ disasters? Who will foot the bill when the alarm bells toll for hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, drought, heat, cold, each year more intense and frightening? 

China! The world’s manufacturing hub. It may collapse, and when it does, brace yourself: shortages galore. The weather? El Nino succeeding La Nina? That would cause continuous calamity. 

So, what about the COP15 promises to give restitution to nations harmed by our carbon emissions? Maybe in Zimbabwe billions with inflation soaring and money devaluing.

A new “Silent Spring”.

When creation was complete, God called it very good: it all fitted together, the one species serving the other: complete symbiosis. That ‘inter-dependency’ has vanished.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, which looks at studies of some 32,000 species worldwide, vertebrate populations have declined on average by 69 percent since just 1970. In some ecosystems, the collapse of vertebrates has been even more drastic: In Latin America and the Caribbean, for instance, the studied populations have fallen on average by 94 percent since 1970, while the species that live in the world’s rivers and lakes, the estimated decline has been 83 percent.

As many as a million animal and plant species currently face the threat of extinction, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (I.P.B.E.S.), a figure that translates to about 13 percent of bird species, 25 percent of mammals and 31 percent of sharks and rays. Insects are dying off, too — possibly more than 50 percent of them since 1970 – endangering pollination. Also, the planet is experiencing a new “Silent Spring” of wildlife destruction because many wild birds are dying from avian flu: the past year has seen the most significant and sudden loss of birds in decades. 

I remember getting the book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in 1963: I gave it away without ever reading it. Oh, my. What kind of person was I in those days? No ecological concern al all! 

A new mix among mammals.

Already 62 percent of global mammal biomass is livestock — animals raised by humans for our consumption. Four percent is wild. Taken together, humans and their food represent 96 percent of all mammal life on Earth. Only 4 percent of global ecosystems remain intact. No wonder, the reigning mood at COP 15 in Montreal was LAMENT.

When will the Lord return?

The Bible tells me that when God had finished creation and reflected on what he had done, he called it ‘very good’. Everything was connected to everything else:  the grass blades fed the many different animals; the lions took care of the injured of the weaker species, the birds nestled in the trees: every part of the universe existed for the perfection of its totality. Divine goodness pervaded the earth, the skies, the seas. 

That is no longer the case.

Suppose you were an eminent artist and, through some queer quirk your total portfolio, once regarded as a ‘world treasure’, was slowly first, then rapidly destroyed, how would you feel? How would God, the greatest artist, feel today? No wonder we face God’s vengeance. The harm we have inflicted on God’s creation is backfiring on us. The species we have murdered, the forests we have leveled, the air we have poisoned, all this and more is threatening our wellbeing and sanity. Indeed:

It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
 (Hebrew 10:31)

That’s what’s happening today, because Creation is God’s primary Revelation. God’s works are God’s words. We destroy them at our peril. This could well mean that Christ’s return is imminent: his patience has limits.

December 21 2022

THE RISE AND FALL OF CHRISTIANITY.

Paul writes that there were few of noble birth and rich among the converts, still, quite early, Christianity penetrated into the higher stratus of society, even the imperial court. 

They were the few, but they occupied important positions. Some of Jesus’ most revealing words were directed to Nicodemus, a wealthy and wise cleric. (John 3). Joseph of Arimathea provided for Jesus’ luxury burial place. Influential women supported Jesus financially (Luke 8), so, yes, they were the few, but they played an important role among the early Christian, also because they were literate and could interpret Jesus’ words in a society where less than 10% were able to read.

Social Servicers.

When two severe epidemics struck the Roman empire between 100-300 AD, the pagans fled the city, but the Christians stayed behind, nursing the sick, andb especially, by their conduct, brought the Good News. 

In the 4^th Century their numbers swelled, and it became fashionable to be Christian. Christianity kept on flourishing for many centuries: monastic orders, through architecture and science, influenced society far and wide, with the result that, in Europe, the church dominated.

Jesus comes back.

A while ago I read “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky’s last book. It has an episode involving the church: it’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. Ivan, the atheist Karamazov brother, composed it and tells it to his younger brother Alyosha, the aspiring priest. In it, Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.” Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have you come to hinder us?” Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the Pope. The Church is the authority now.”
The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however, wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery.” 

Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor leaves. 

Freedom too difficult.

“Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is the essence of Jesus’ teaching (Galatians 5:1). That’s why the church of his day killed him. Today is no different. In the 17^th Century Descartes’ philosophy was embraced by the church. He said that the whole of nature is a machine, without a soul, inanimate, an easy faith. Exploit it: become rich! Keeping the laws of Creation is hard.

Today this dualism is the standard of our culture: another reason why the days of organized religion are over. Christ came to teach us how to live: and that to the full. (John 10: 10). Admit it: the church’s message is still gnostic: separating nature from grace.

Decline.

 I attend a small-town Presbyterian Church. In Belleville and Trenton, the nearest cities, their Presbyterian Churches closed. I remember Belleville having a music director and a large choir. I remember Trenton having a youth director. This year our church has added 3 families. Why? We have an environmental team that uses the yard around our Main Street location to grow food for the Food Bank- 1,000 lbs! – signaling that “The Earth is the Lord’s”. It certainly was not the preaching! Preaching is so 16^th Century, geared to illiteracy. Believers need more than words: need ‘body, soul and spirit’ healing, need meaningful fellowship, need genuine sharing, need discussion rather than lecturing.

Rabbi Heschel defines ‘sin’ as: “The human refusal to become what we are.” The church must be the place where we become what we are, before God. Ever realized that the word ‘liturgy’ means ‘the laity at work’! That’s how a church should function. 

Christianity rose because its membership had the freedom to become leaders. Christianity fell because its leaders failed to encourage the potential of its members, and failed to see Creation as God’s Primary Word. Everything is connected to everything else: God, Christ, Creation, the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, Humanity: you can’t have one without the other.

December 14 2022.

HOLY BODY; HOLY EARTH.

            
Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20)

We, as the top creatures, are by all indications, the only entity with a God-consciousness. In Colossians 1: 15-20, Christ describes himself as “The First born of all Creation”. That to me suggests that Christ, as the first human ever, made Creation possible, while we, as Psalm 82: 6 confirms, are “Gods, Children of the Most High”. Believe me: we are of the highest status among creatures.

“Everything is connected to everything else”.

When God’s Holy Spirit dwells in us, then this permeates our entire being, because everything is connected to everything else. That is the First law of Ecology. The others are, “Creation knows best”, “Nothing comes free”, and “Nothing ever disappears.” They too have become my rules for life.

This first law gives us special responsibilities, which means that we, in our daily lives, have to reflect the status of being ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’.

Our responsibility, owing to our high position, extends even further: not only are we of divine origin, we LIVE in a divine setting as well. 

 “Sacred Nature” traces how ancient religions always have regarded the earth as holy. Psalm 24 unambiguously states that “The earth is the Lord’s and all it contains”, affirming creation’s sacred status.  

Since life is a unity, my mind too needs cultivating so, for more than 30 years I have written a daily log of 500 words, based on the lectionary, in which I wonder and wander, give my imagination free rein, do this right after my breakfast every day. Last week, in my ‘first thing in the morning’ exercise of exploring the Scripture, I was confronted with 2 Peter 3: 10, “and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare”. 

That made me think of COP15, meeting this week in Montreal, discussing this very text: “Everything done in the created world”. That points to us and ‘biodiversity”. Yes, these 12,000 delegates there are discussing 2 Peter 3: “How to remedy the harm we have done to creation!”, because Biodiversity, the concept, indicates life in all its facets. 

Biodiversity is essential for the processes that support all life on Earth. It keeps us healthy. It keeps us fed. It keeps our economies running. In fact, half of global GDP is dependent on nature, according to a report from the UN Environment Program. Food production depends on pollination. Construction depends on timber. Infrastructure and energy production depend on reliable water sources that flow from healthy ecosystems. Yet, ironically, how these sectors operate is also suffocating biodiversity by depleting natural resources, spoiling forests and seas, and crowding out and killing native species.

“Human kind cannot bear much reality”, writes T.S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral.

We are what we eat. What we are physically, depends on our diet. What we are spiritually, is often the result of our upbringing. By the grace of God, I was born in a devout, extended family. As grown-ups, we are on our own, attacked from every possible angle by material and spiritual forces. It is almost impossible to develop a balanced life, and yet we must. We must do everything possible to maintain the holiness of our status: that means striving for a long and healthy life, which includes diet: it is our duty from Day 1.

The five pillars of a longevity diet are:

1. Whole grains like corn, rice and oats (complex carb)
2. Greens
3. Tubers, including potatoes and yams (complex carb)
4. Nuts
5. Beans (complex carb)

Ever since I read (45 years ago), “Diet for a Small Planet” my wife (now deceased) and I have followed a vegetarian diet, based on the five points outlined above. I see it as my holy duty to treasure my body as holy. Fortunately, I still am able to cultivate a large vegetable garden, so that most of what I eat is homegrown.

To stay physically fit, I walk each day for about an hour, almost always in a forest setting. Again, I am fortunate there as well, a choice we made in 1975 moving from the city to Eastern Ontario.

All this has not been my doing: I believe in divine guidance and thus adhere to: Psalm 119: 105: Your word – Christ, Prophecy, Scripture – is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (in God’s holy creation).

Yes, I believe in divine guidance: I believe that we are here for a purpose, perhaps an impossible purpose: To be a holy person in a holy earth, in preparation for perfection to come.

December 7 2022.

OUR MARCH OF FOLLY

Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

—Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin'”

I have this book, bought in 1985, The March of Folly, by Barbara W. Tuchman, already famous for her The Guns of August and A Distant Mirror, the calamitous 14^th Century.

In her March of Folly, she wonders why governments throughout history have pursued policies contrary to their own interests, noting how already in antiquity the Trojans took the wooden horse within their walls, assuring their defeat; how the Renaissance Popes provoked the Protestant secession; how the British lost America through their own stupidity and America betrayed herself in Vietnam.

Since 1985 we have witnessed an identical phenomenon in the 20-year war the USA waged in Afghanistan, a country with a history of failures for Alexander the Great, the British, and the Russians.

So, what about today? More of the same?

Now, almost 2023, we have arrived at a turning point in history, where again folly takes place, now in the fast lane. In earlier times, conflicts were between nations. Today our foolishness is altogether different: we now openly combat God, by waging war against his creation, in which we all, with very few exceptions, are eager participants. Isaiah 24 describes our situation perfectly. Have a look: the Bible is relevant for all times.

Ample warnings.

It’s not that we have not been warned: already Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, 125 years ago, suggested that the use of coal and oil would lead to global warming: since then, with James Hansen leading the way, the United Nations have had 27 conferences, each one with more urgent warnings.  

Folly in the fast lane: Three ultimate dangers.

Our self-inflicted and unwinnable war is resulting in three predictable events: (1) Permanent Inflation and famine, (2) shortages of necessary components, stalling the economy and causing unemployment, and (3), financial turmoil leading to collapse.

Permanent inflation and famine. 

Weather related events and regional conflicts will decrease food supply, cause inflation, as the easy to exploit natural resources have been used first, making new supplies more costly to obtain.

A possible world-wide depression.

Depression as occurred in the 1930’s cannot be ruled out. Increasing demand for government funds to compensate for floods, heat, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, new weaponry, will deplete government funds, aggravated by stalled or diminished tax revenue. 

Financial Collapse.

Directly tied in with this is financial collapse as the entire economy is a Ponzi scheme: when one sector collapses, the entire structure stumbles.

How can we cope the best?

No simple answers. Our energy addiction is impossible to kick. Go back to a church where like-minded people seek refuge in community, prayer, and mutual support. Revelation 18 points to an economic situation with inflation and sufficient supply of luxury goods, but no demand: in other words: “Stagflation”. It also points to a very sudden end for all. Don’t get caught unprepared.

Is there really a solution?

Frankly, we have painted ourselves into a corner. We have erected a society totally dependent on fossil fuels. The efforts by the United Nations, through Climate Change Conferences – 27 so far – have proved fruitless. 

The good news is that the efforts to alleviate the effects of Climate Change through solar and wind power, will bear fruit in the New Creation, evident from Revelation 14: 13, as ‘our good deeds will follow us.’

Admit it: as church, we have been foolish. We have followed the wrong track, believing and proclaiming that salvation was a matter of the soul, able to enjoy  the ‘carbon-derived luxuries’, and then sail beyond, leaving our messy earth behind. Bonhoeffer calls that “Pious Secularism.” He was entirely correct when he stated that Christ came to teach us ‘how to live.’ 

Johan Herman Bavinck in his book, Between the Beginning and the End, a radical Kingdom vision, categorically wrote: “Salvation of the self and salvation of the earth go hand in hand: you can’t have one without the other.” 

Yes, the times they are a’changing.

When representatives from more than 190 countries assemble in Montreal this week to try to negotiate a landmark agreement on global biodiversity, their focus will be on creation, called “Mother Nature” by scientists. However, their point is wrong. The real obstacle is our human nature. It is too late to change our ways. 

But it’s human nature that will determine the outcome.

Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

We must prepare ourselves for radically different circumstances. It no longer is a purely physical matter: it is a spiritual change that is needed. We are on our own. The old ‘oil-based’ economy is killing us. A new mindset is needed.

November 30 2022

DOOM HAS GONE MAINSTREAM

I subscribe to the New Yorker. Each week a 90 pages issue arrives in my mailbox on the highway where I live, some 5 km – 3 miles – from the hub of the village. The November 28 issue, with a cover of an angry, gigantic wave about to overwhelm high-rise complexes, silhouetted against an ominous sky, caught the essence of its contents: Journey to Doomsday; Annals of a warning Planet; The Coming storm. Truly biblical warnings. 

I was born a down-to-earth Northern Dutchman, one of those known for the sober, even somber, outlook on life, not given to superficial banter, and empty conversations, but direct and to the point. When I look around, read behind the headlines, cast my eye on the world at large, observing the ecclesiastical rites, the lukewarmness, the lack of direction, the downright tomfoolery there, the dearth of basic knowledge of the elements of Christianity, then my prayer is, “Lord Come, what’s the use of prolonging this empty ritual”. 

It seems to me that the roles have been reversed: not the church is telling us that the end is near – even though it is her task – but the world has assumed that task. The church is preaching the half-truth message that Christ died for our sins, and repeats this ad nauseam, while the total truth includes that Christ really died to restore Creation. It is plain from John 3: 16, that God’s love for the world must be the church’s central aim. 

Yes, Creation is at the very center of the Gospel. It so happened that the first religious-conscious human pair sinned against creation when they defied God’s explicit command about the importance of the TREE. Trees are our lungs: trees can live without us, but we cannot live without trees. 

My bio.

I came to Canada in 1951, now some 71 years ago, as a young man of almost 23 years. My fiancée came a year later. Those seven decades coincided with The Great Planetary Ponzi plot, when we borrowed from the planet to enrich ourselves, we, the Christian West. The 27 UN COP meetings were intended to make restitution, but they all proved useless, assuring doom.

It all started with theft. We stole the land from the indigenous people, who had lived sustainably in tune with the rhythm of creation, killing some 56 million, about 90% of their population, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated. We paved over their land, mined their mountains, dammed their rivers, and relegated a ragged remnant out of sight and out of mind.

The punishment of these murders is now visiting us. Elizabeth Kolbert concludes her book, The Sixth Extinction, with the words, “Extinction “will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust and giant rats have – or have not – inherited the earth.”

These words were written almost 10 years ago. Today, Anno Domini 2022, in this week’s New Yorker, her final paragraph is, “Climate Change….is not going to have a happy ending….or any ending at all. Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.

I have this book: Sacred Nature, by the religious writer Karen Armstrong, who, by researching ancient religions, discovers that they all believe that nature is of divine origin. Of course, it is: it will take eternity to even glimpse what is hidden there. That’s why it is becoming increasingly clear that ‘personal salvation and salvation of creation go hand in hand.’ Jesus, in his so well-known Sermon on the Mount said that, ‘the meek shall inhabit the earth’. Another translation translates it as, ‘those who claim nothing for themselves, shall inherit the earth’. We, in our arrogance have disregarded Jesus’ advice, and have claimed everything for ourselves. When God pointed out the Tree of knowledge to the first spiritually aware couple, the text says, (Genesis 2:9), “Trees pleasing to the eye, and good for food.” In the next chapter, (Genesis 3:9), “The tree, was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” Here the order is reversed: there’s where the Ponzi problem began, and the origin and death of Capitalism. The Bible has something to say on that, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”, writes Paul. (1 Timothy 6: 10).

Today our Planetary Ponzi Problem is backfiring on us. As Elizabeth Kolbert wrote, “Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.”  

1972 was an important year in my life: two books led to my conversion: “Limits to Growth”, now visible; and “After Death, what?”, dismissing the “heaven” myth. 

The Planetary Ponzi attempt will end as Ponzi schemes always do: Planetary Collapse.

November 23 2022

SOCCER: THE SELECT FEW. 

When I was in elementary school in Groningen, an old University City, I played soccer in two ways. We played a game called, ‘putje’, where the street on which I lived, was the soccer field, the ball a bit bigger than a tennis ball, and the goals were the cast iron, four-holed drains – putjes – some 50 cm across, built into the curb of the sidewalk on each side of the paved street.

Just imagine, playing on the thoroughfare, where then – this was 1930’s – the traveled road was basically free of automobiles, and the only traffic was the baker’s three-wheeled ‘bakfiets”, a carrier-tricycle, and the horse-drawn-wagons of the fruit-vegetable vendor and milkman. No fast-driving cars or trucks. Lots of bikes and pedestrians, of course. The streets were safe, the air, well? There were the street cleaners, scooping up the horse manure.

No TV, outdoors all the time: inventing games, annoying neighbours, playing hooky. No worried parents, always at some sort of game, and, of course soccer, always soccer. 

We were very fortunate: a very talented fellow lived just around the corner: a teenager, who started a real soccer club, on a real field, with a real soccer ball and real goalposts in a nearby recreational park: he was so good that later in life he became the goalie for the Dutch National team. My younger brother and I became member of that neighbourhood club. So, yes, of course, soccer is in my blood, even though I never became a good player. Broke my right-foot big toe, maybe that’s why. It still hurts when a kick a ball.

QATAR, the world-wide soccer host.

Some $300 Billions have been spent in getting Qatar ready for the soccer tournament: new roads, shopping malls and subway stations, six stupendous stadiums of course, all built by workers mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, toiling for up to 16 hours a day in intense desert heat; often no rest or days off; living conditions usually shantytowns without air conditioning or even the most basic of services. Reliable sources suggest that thousands died on the altar of religious soccer. A tournament built on blood.

Soccer and Church.

When I see the turnout for soccer/football games on television – where else? – the tens of thousands of people, mostly male, and younger, and then look around in my church, the few there, mostly female and seniors, then I wonder: “What is more important, momentary thrills or eternal destiny?”

I know, it’s not a fair comparison. Soccer games are a work of art, an endless enterprise in human physical skill, a cluster of cooperation, a summum of intense training and tactical expertise and tenacious teamwork, fascinating to watch. 

Comparing it to ‘religious routine’ is grossly unfair. Or is it? 

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize”, writes Paul to his people in Corinth. (1 Corinthians 9: 24).

Hey! Am I engaged in a race? The apostle Paul thinks so. A race? Yes. Christians are in a competitive battle that requires much more than physical agility. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, Ephesians 6:12 tells us.

That is a comprehensive battle. It seems to me that this text foresees the evils of TV, “the spiritual forces we pull out of the air around us”, including the soccer games, financed by the advertisers who have no regard for air quality and cause climatic deterioration. It is ironic that COP 27 almost overlapped the Holy Grail of soccer, both only possible through oil-based flying and oil-based climate control. An economy built on blood.

The struggle Paul had, converting from being a Pharisee, living by the ‘law’, to becoming a participant in the freedom in Christ, was common to all converts. Just imagine the transformation, from a worshiper of idols to living as a Christ follower, alienating family, community, friends, losing one’s livelihood, customers, business associates, changing one’s diet, persecution. A church built on blood.

Being a ‘Christian’ is a 24/7 affair: we love God through the world, and we love the world as a function of God, the creator of all things. With that same intensity we love our neighbor as we treasure our own wellbeing, evident in eating real food and doing everything possible to ‘live’.

Playing world-class soccer involves total training and the utmost of devotion. Out of millions of players, less than 900 were selected, to go to Qatar. “Many are called, few are selected”, tells Jesus (Matthew 22: 14). That also applies to those who call themselves Christians.