Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

ON DEATH, DYING AND LIVING.

November 4 2020

Eighty years ago, in 1940, when I was twelve years old, I saw my first dead person: my maternal grandfather. He had lived all his life in Kornhorn, in the West Quarter of the Groningen Province, having been a farmer there – as were his ancestors – and, apart from the occasional visit to STAD (The City of Groningen), never traveled anywhere. Prior to his burial, his body lay in the annex of the church where he had been an elder. A large sheet of glass covered his coffin, where he lay fully dressed in pure black, including his favorite dressy cap. When I saw him, a large fly had managed to penetrate the enclosed box, which later was placed on a horse-drawn wagon, and we all followed on foot to the nearby cemetery.

Since then I have witnessed my father dying in 1977 at his home. I can vividly recall this. To be with death in the same room can be an uplifting experience. Just hours before, he had called us and said, “I hear singing and choirs: is the radio on?” Our answer did not register with him anymore. He kissed my mother and also his youngest son whom he had not kissed since he was a child. A tear fell from his eye – there really had been an age-gap, and it had pained my father greatly that the son who had been named after him, had left the faith of the fathers – and he fell into the sleep out of which he only will awake on the Day of the Lord.

It still took about five hours before he actually breathed his last. His lung intake became more and more difficult, its gurgling started to sound like a perking coffee pot, becoming louder and louder and then softer and softer, and his gasps of breath had longer and longer intervals, until it stopped altogether.

Dying at home does involve certain duties normally assumed by others. Shortly after he died, I took his dentures and fitted them into his mouth. My mother and I kept a towel tightly around his face to make sure that it would keep form when the rigor mortis, the stiffening of the body, would set in.

Yet another task awaited us: the preparing of the body. My sister in law, a nurse and I did this together. To me it felt as if his body wasn’t my father anymore. It seemed just a lump of sodden flesh. When we turned him over, took off his bedclothes and washed him, I suddenly realized that I had never seen my father naked in his life. We dressed him in his Sunday suit. Slowly his features relaxed: his face became younger.

To die at home and to be buried from there gave all of us time to take leave. My mother would go and sit with my father in the quietness of the night, and so became a little more used to him not being alive anymore, not calling for her to help him. His children – there were nine of us – and grandchildren would see him in his own bedroom, serenely, as if praying, with hands folded as in prayer, perfectly natural, yet dead.

Closer to home.

Now death has come closer to home: my wife, my companion, my spouse for 67 years and a long-time friend of my own family many years before that, died recently.

Our history goes back 88 years. I seem to remember the first time we met, far back in 1932. I can well picture the occasion. Her father, a ‘dominee’, a minister of the gospel, had accepted the call to our church, a large congregation, worshipping in a very plain building, with three enormous balconies, a large auditorium, seating more than a thousand, and filled to capacity twice on Sundays. It also had an impressive pipe organ.

On that first Sunday, when he had preached his inaugural sermon, the entire church council was invited to the official ‘pastorie’, the 4 storey dwelling next to the church for coffee and cigars. My parents too were among the guests. We children were let loose to play, and went ‘hide and go seek’. Diny, the minister’s daughter, my later wife, and I hid under an iron bed. I can vividly recall this episode.

Two dreams.

In my life I have two recurring dreams involving my wife. Up until recently, I had a dream where I was cycling past Diny’s house, just some 300 meters from where I lived, just to get a glimpse of her. You see at one time she ended our courtship and there I was feeling rejected and miserable.

In the other dream I was just married, and desperately wondered how I, totally unexperienced and never having worked before, would ever be able to adequately provide for a family.

That too turned out well.

DYING AND LIVING

I know, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death”, says 1 Corinthians 15: 26. Death has been my companion these past weeks. A farmer-member of our church, killed himself in the same week our family buried my wife, their mother and Oma.

I have been reading Bonhoeffer lately, a man who, in a German prison, was waiting to have his death sentence carried out for conspiring against Hitler. For years he lived with death. He wrote, “Life really begins when it ends here …..God says, they are at peace…His presence does not end even in death…..our death is in reality only a transition to the fullness of God’s love.”

Bonhoeffer has become my favorite theologian. He is so contemporary because he intimately experienced the End of his Days. In one of his sermons he said, “The hour of death is determined for each of us, and it will find us no matter where we turn, yet consent to death liberates us to live fully and wholeheartedly”.

In an Easter sermon he declared, “The heart of Easter proclamation is: God is the death of death; God lives, and thus Christ lives as well; death had no hold over Him against the overriding power of God.”

For Bonhoeffer the hope of the resurrection is the central axis of Christian faith. God is present in life and in death. Resurrection is the pledge of his reality. Yet a belief in resurrection is not the solution to the problem of death.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death”. Death remains an enemy, even though God is the death of death.

On death, dying and living.

“Blessed are those who have lived before they die”.

Jesus did not come to establish religion: he came to teach us how to live. That ‘living’ centers on all of creation, all animals, all trees, water and air. John 10: 10 spells it out: Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” That means ‘LIFE’ in the fullness of creation. We cannot understand God without the world, and the world without God. What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.

Our society today is “the way of death”, death of species, death of trees. Life means total life, living in harmony with all creation.

I take comfort from Psalm 116, “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful”. Being ‘faithful’ includes loving creation. Blessed are those who have lived in ‘love’, love for God and love for the world God made.

October 20 2020

NEW TIMES, NEW FORMAT

Imagine a school where teachers only lecture, where students cannot ask questions, where they are taught only from one book, where there never is any homework or tests, where the outside world is hardly ever discussed or examined, where students sit facing one way only and, now during the pandemic, have limited interaction with others.

Well, that’s how most church services operate. No wonder it fails to attract young people, loses the middle age crowd, and basically becomes a geriatric assembly. In today’s cruel Covid-19 times, so suddenly different, the church needs a complete “metanoia”, a total revamping of its business plan. It begs to go back to the way Jesus brought his message. He first tried it the old way, by visiting his own church, but there they tried to kill him! For his home-crowd he was too unconventional, too ‘biblical’. He then already showed his disdain for organized ‘religion’, instead urged his physical neighbors and erstwhile buddies and blood relatives, to embrace LIFE and see God’s creation as holy. No luck at all: familiarity breeds contempt!

 Take “The Sermon on the Mount”.  But first some observations from a book, members of our church are discussing: “What CHRISTIANITY is Not”, written by Dr. Douglas John Hall. On page 56 he cites Karl Barth: “Doing Theology means having the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” illustrating that “the Gospel is not a fixed message,” especially now that we are approaching THE END. We have to recognize that we live in times where everything is different, where everything smells of finality, so the Message too must reflect this new situation: new times means new format. Away with the old, discredited, style of preaching.

That’s why we also need a new view on “The Sermon on the Mount”; that’s why need a new interpretation of what Jesus taught, sitting in the open air. Take note: Sitting ‘together’ outside creates intimacy with God’s created Word, and bonds people in multiple ways. Yes: church should be held outdoors, where possible, scattered in small groups, making dialogue possible, asking for immediate clarification, stimulating discussion. The old way smacks of ‘religion’ and ‘religion’ killed Jesus, and ‘religion’ kills the church.

Back to that ‘famous’ sermon. Let me single out a few lines:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

Today we must see the Scriptures in the light of the Suffering Planet, and the forthcoming New Creation, descending as the Kingdom from heaven. These three beatitudes quoted above today especially relate to the wounds we have inflicted on the human spirit and God’s earth. Add to this the current Pandemic, and deep sorrow fills my heart, mourning for those who have died and suffer. Yes, it’s fitting to shed tears for the species that have disappeared, to feel depressed for a planet empty of plenitude and deprived of diversity, but full of our toys. Also the lack of human touch, the extra stress on family and work situations, makes us less human.

There’s so much willful ignorance, so much indifference for the Climate Change phenomenon that affects mostly the poor. Church Buildings are energy hogs, total depending on the automobile for access. It is time for people to cluster, to buy homes near each other, so that real physical community is possible. Every day I walk or run on the Canada Trail that cuts through our village. There I encounter very few walkers, but plenty of ATVs. I always wonder what sort of enjoyment these people derive from sitting on a noisy, polluting machine, drowning out conversations, obliterating natural sounds, exposed to dust and poisons. Nothing ‘gentle’ about it!

“Blessed are the gentle”; some translations say, “Blessed are those who claim nothing for themselves”. Of course, this applies to creation, to our natural world which we must treat with gentleness and utmost care, and which we will inherit when we NOW claim nothing for ourselves, because we will inherit this very earth. “Blessed those who are mourn”, because so much of our planet, including people, is dying unnecessarily.

We all have become immune to the cries of creation. Roman 8 comes to mind:

“consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of God’s children.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time.  Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies. 

There are some pronouncements by Jesus that have never caught on, such as “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. “For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.” (Matthew 19: 33-35).

I can imagine this having been the case in Jesus’ time when becoming a Jesus’ follower, when quitting the synagogue walk, when abandoning ‘the faith of the fathers’ created a terrible division in the household. Or, in the time of the apostle Paul, when people quit pagan worship and adopted Christ.

But today?

Yes, today too there is this same hostility evident.

The days, using carbon energy in abundance, are over.

The days seeing creation as holy and adopting a life-style reflecting this, are upon us: that creates tensions.

The religious days of going to heaven are over, and the days of gearing our actions toward the earth, are upon us.

The days of abundance, causing Climate Change, are over, and sobriety, wartime conditions, scarcity and insecurity everywhere, are upon us.

The days of gathering in large church buildings are over, and ‘small is beautiful’ also in worship, are upon us.    

All that creates animosity, tensions, divisions.

Yes, we live in a different era, where thinking outside the box is required to attain a degree of sanity. Hence, NEW TIMES, NEW FORMAT.

The days of the Christian Religion are over. The future of Christianity does not exist in denominations of any kind because they promote religion. The future of the faith community is in personal dialogue and small group discourse.

Jesus died to save us from religion too, to free us from its burden. Bonhoeffer – just before his death – predicted the advent of a non-religious form of Christianity. That time has now come: we must be ready for the New Creation, which, in the last Bible book, states that “There is no altar there”. The days of religion are over: the time to LIVE to the full in the creation renewed by Christ, is upon us. Augustine has said, “Many who God has, the church has not; many who the church has, God has not.” Another reason to meet in the open: easier for others to join.

NEW TIMES, NEW FORMAT.

October 7 2020

A LETTER TO MY GRANDCHILDREN

Dear grandchildren.

You all live in cities. There’s where the jobs are. You all are successful, live healthy lives, have good jobs, happy families, beautiful children, loving parents: in a word, you have made it. The last thing you need is a letter from a 92 year old man who happens to be your grandfather.

Talking about grandfathers: as a kid, 4-12 years old, I often stayed at my mother’s parents, who operated a farm, a small holding, about 30 acres, powered by one horse for work and bicycles for transportation. No electricity. A pig, a flock of chickens, a dozen milk cows, and some young cattle. My paternal grandparents had a grocery store and this Opa, in his horse-drawn wagon, called on my mother’s parents once a week, to barter eggs for coffee, tea, soaps, etc. Both my Opas were elders in the same large village church.

They all lived simple and sustainable lives. When my mother married in 1923, the only one of the five children to settle in the city, her father gave her in today’s currency the equivalent of $200,000, enough to buy everything the young couple needed to furnish a complete household, with enough left over for my father to start his business, buy a car and the machinery he needed to manufacture bakery ingredients.    

In 1934 I started to attend elementary school just around the corner from where we lived. I remember one particular lesson in 1938, the 100^th anniversary of the first steam-powered train in 1838, traveling from Amsterdam to Haarlem, a distance of some 15 km. The teacher told us that some people then called this new-fangled transportation a ‘devil’s device’. We all laughed: how could that be true!

Things have changed.

We now live in a world where a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. We live in a world where an elephant is worth more dead than alive, where a whale…..

When we moved to Tweed in 1975 from the city, the bullfrogs would wake us up in the morning, accompanied by the loud rapid-poor-will, often repeated for an hour. These sounds are gone. In the city you don’t notice these changes: here in Tweed, I do. They are no longer heard for reasons you know: it’s the economy!

That’s how the economy works: it will keep on destroying trees, keep on mining the earth, keep on pulling oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and leave a worse world for you, my dear grandchildren.

James Lovelock, an atheist scientist, now 100 years old, coined the word GAIA, his designation for a planet that is fully alive. In his important book, “The revenge of Gaia”, he maintains that our planet is fighting back: hence Climate Change and melting Poles.  

I, my generation, started this unraveling process. That is my legacy, and I beg you for forgiveness. The short-term thinking of my generation based on the RELIGION of profit at all cost is at the root of it all: now I see that WE are the severed tree, WE are the dead whale, WE, my generation, were the initiators.

My grandparents, born 150 years ago – the 1870’s – in rural Groningen, knew how to live: community-entertainment thrived. Yes, no penicillin, people died younger, but there was genuine fellowship, music bands, choir, theatre groups, church. All gone, together with the frogs and birds. Yet, I believe that some of this ‘living close to nature’ is still in you, after all we are products of our forebears, still partners with the air, soil and water around us.

What I hope you will do is cultivate a planetary consciousness: we all are the earth; we all are the air; we all are the water: embrace the natural world around you and in every action work for her welfare: truly a full-time job. Love the earth; love her unconditionally. Question every one of your action for its consequences, every step for its ultimate result.

You are smart young people. When you more closely examine what goes on out there, you will re-discover the unity and order that is evident everywhere, because everything on earth is somehow harmoniously connected to everything else. The one species influences the other and the one creature depends on the other. Plants cannot exist without the earth that feeds them. Animals, on the other hand, cannot function without the plants as these often are the sole source for their food.        

The phenomena of day and night, of summer and winter, of rain and drought, of heat and cold, all are part of the grand chain of happenings, depending on where the sun happens to be and from where the wind blows. The one event influences another and yet the one cannot be without the presence of the other.

A closer look will show that the order is full of purpose. The great connectedness of all these entities is at the same time the reason why the totality is served by it as well. We don’t even need to explore everything too deeply to discover the amazing fact that behind everything there is an invisible set of natural laws: the butterflies serve the flowers just as much as the flowers serve the butterflies. The sun is itself not conscious that it from a distance of millions of miles brings light and warmth, yet it is the sun that maintains life on earth, causing plants to sprout out of the moist earth. If the sun had a mind if its own, then perhaps it would muse: I shine because that’s my nature: I delight in it; it’s the joy of my life. But it knows not that a law mightier than the sun has included it in the beautiful law of serving. The sun, that so superior sun, serves that tiny, tiny plant that full of life expectancy courageously stretches its stem to absorb its rays.

That little plant cannot think beyond its nature. It winks at the sun and dreams of the joy that awaits it in a life of light and sunshine. But it has no inkling that it serves just as much as it is served by others. It serves the miniscule seeds it now carries and that later will form new plants. It serves the animal, looking for food, or is needed to help another plant using it as a crutch to climb higher. In manifold ways it serves other creatures, who need support or shade or nourishment or moisture.

When you look around with open eyes and minds then there is one thing that time and again touches to the core: it’s all about serving. The law of serving is at the heart of every creature: it is the overarching purpose for every being. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist. Every creature thinks that it is there only for itself, but in final analysis it is nothing else but a servant for others. To be alive, to exist at all, finds it destination simply in serving others. Without that law nothing else can be.

Yet that law of serving is remarkable in more than one way. What is so truly amazing is that, as a rule, no creature is there for the sole reason of serving, as they all think that self-help is their sole goal. All that serving goes automatically, is not a conscious act. It is as if a mighty hand brings all this in motion and, in spite of itself, stimulates this self-less serving. This serving, therefore, is not a sacrifice, not a duty, but in-born, without compulsion, without intent. Each single being is there according to its nature, but everything together is so oriented that the existence of the one supports the other and maintains it.

How about us?

With us humans, service is simply different, is infinitely richer, but because of that also more difficult. It is self-evident that the afore-mentioned natural instincts are also present with the human race. There too the care for children; there too a touch of the ‘specimen-egoism’. But these powerful instinctive forces are here recognized as such. Humans know exactly what they do and why they do it.

As a consequence, humans have much greater opportunity to serve. Every category in society serves the other, a world can’t do without medical helpers, but it also needs arborists and food inspectors, and even video-makers.

The trouble with us humans is that the inclination to only serving OUR needs is both stronger and more dangerous, promoting OUR welfare at the expense of our fellow citizens and especially all other species. Even though we are more conscious of what we do, are able to gauge the needs of others, we also can easily ignore the plight of our neighbors and the care for creation.

In short: serving is for most of us something we are reluctant to do, driven by self-interest, the ‘I come first’ instinct. That ‘I come first’ inclination often overwhelms all other feelings, stifles them, and comes out on top. With us humans the urge of ‘me first’ usually takes priority over conflict, the struggle, the concept of serving.

Given this weakness, we humans have been given a command: serve one another, serve creation! This serving, so ‘naturally’ accomplished by all other segments of the world, by instinct as it were, we humans have to implement in full awareness of what we are doing.

That’s why we must cultivate a Global Awareness, a Planetary Consciousness because we all are connected from bottom to top to each other and all living matter.

My wish for you, my dear grandchildren, is that this multi-level serving will be an integral part of your daily life.

Yours, with all my love, and a tear in my eye,

Opa   

THE VISIBLE CHURCH: ITS DECLINE AND DEMISE.

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)

Asking the question is answering it.

Of our five children, four are church members, while one belongs to a Sikh group. We have 11 adult grandchildren: maybe one belongs to a church. The two minor ones go with their parents.  

Last week, in a casual conversation with a friend, she mentioned that her sister, an ordained minister, had resigned because the members of her church, settled in their historic situation, seeing the church mainly as a social institution, showed no interest in hearing about Jesus and his work of salvation.

Professor Dr. Harold Bloom, in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION, categorially states that, especially North America’s Baptist and Pentecostal churches have ceased to be Christian, instead they have completely adopted Gnosticism, the basically paganistic doctrine that all material matter is evil – earth – and only spiritual thinking is good – heaven – spawning the ecological crisis.  

And here I start to become controversial: “Generally speaking, the Bible has become a liability, open to many different explanations, the church, as institute, by its structure, is becoming an obstacle to salvation and the ministers, unwilling to offend, hardly ever mention “the coming of the Kingdom.”

That calls for an elaboration. First: “Faith what is that?”

Hebrew 11: 1 offers a simple definition: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.

The letter to the Hebrews was sent to the early Christians, who all lived in the immediate hope of Christ’ return. Today that hope basically is missing, even though signs everywhere point to a collapsing ecosystem. Last week in the Toronto Globe and Mail I read this line: “Smoke from forest fires combined with the pandemic, it did feel like end times.”

Of course, Faith thrives. Economists tout Economic Growth, showing absolute faith in an impossibility. It’s all around us. President Trump has a lot of faith, faith that the VIRUS will suddenly disappear, faith that the vaccine will do away with Covid-19, faith that he will be re-elected.

However, the author of the letter to the Hebrew Christians goes deeper, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible”. In other words, Faith and Creation go hand in hand.

The Bible is there to connect us to creation: Psalm 119: 105 tells us that “God’s Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path”. It’s like a miner’s lamp shining ahead on the earth, God’s Kingdom.  The task of the church is to preach “The Coming of the New Creation, God’s Kingdom”. Jesus’ explicit command in Matthew 6: 33 is, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”.

That relies on FAITH. His Kingdom is the creation in which we have been allowed to live. When we live responsively in Creation, loving it, then God will provide! It basically means that our goal in life is to enhance creation, his kingdom! That is our explicit task: when we do so, our needs – food, shelter, clothing, will be met.

The Belgic Confession, one of the mainstays of Reformed faith has this to say: “

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.
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,
as much as we need in this life.

This crucial statement of faith spells the end of Christianity as we practice it, because nowhere do I see the church treat creation as holy, as God’s Primary Word.

Just as prior to Jesus’ mission, the LAW ruled ancient Israel – as it still does today in Jewry – and resulted in his death on the cross, today the Bible has become a liability, subject to many different interpretations, a talisman and crutch: the church has been reduced to Pious Secularism, to quote Bonhoeffer, failing to “preach the Kingdom”, failing to prepare for Christ’s return. That’s why Jesus wondered about ‘finding faith’ upon his return.    

Don’t get me wrong: I read the Bible every day. I start the day with it. Just as “we were not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for us”, to quote Jesus, so too we were not made for the Bible, but the Bible was made for us, to prepare us for eternal LIFE on earth. Upon Christ’ return both the Bible and the Church will disappear. We have to get ready for this event.

All this reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche, who in So spoke Zarathustra wrote:

“I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes!

They are poisoners, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dread-fullest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!”

Nietzsche condemned the heaven believers in no uncertain terms. He was trained to become a preacher, in line with his father and both grandfathers, but the ‘heaven heresy’ was for him a stumbling blog. He became a full professor in classical languages at the age of 23.

I think we have come to the stage described in Jeremiah 51: 9, “We would have healed Babylon (The current world), but she cannot be healed……….her judgement reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the clouds.”

That brings me back to the question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Jesus knew the future. When Jesus died the heavy curtain shielding the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple ripped from top to bottom, signifying the end of the Old Testament Church, and warning his followers to refrain from establishing a formal religion. Ripping that curtain was Jesus’ very last act on earth: it signaled the death of all institutional religion!

The early church expanded rapidly through house-churches, through neighbors inviting neighbors. Rod Dreher in the Benedict Option (2017) recommends the same. That lack of formal church organization conquered the world in 300 years. Then Emperor Constantin became a Christian and the church – as it is now – officiated in public functions and started building. No longer was creation seen as holy: now elaborate buildings with spires pointing to heaven, became sanctuaries. Then the hierarchy was instituted, fashioned on the imperial structure: Emperor-Pope; Generals-Cardinals; Colonels-Bishops; Officers-Priests; Soldiers-Laity. There’s where the church started to decline.       

Jesus loathed religion: it killed him! Instead he taught us how to live a full human life, totally relying on God the Father and not on the human institution of church. That experiment is now over.

Remember Nietzsche: Remain true to the earth! Those who advocate heaven are ‘poisoners’ and ‘despisers of LIFE’.

Learn how to live eternally, because that’s what we will do when Jesus returns.

P.S.

The Tweed Horticultural Society (of which I am a member) has more active members than my church, and plays a larger role in the municipality. A speaker from Queen’s University at one of its meetings inspired members from our church to grow flowers and vegetables on the church grounds: a basic witness, providing the food bank with produce each week and beautifying the main street.

September 16 2020

MERRY CHRISTMAS?

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning  

Merry Christmas in September? Three months from now? Oh, how I wish by then we would see ‘normal’ times again: no more fires, trees healthy and happy, Washington ready to install a new president, political parties no longer at odds. People, mask-free and worry-free shopping. The Arctic happily frozen over, as it should be.

I am a forward-looking man. I am not sure who coined the expression, but I am of the opinion that “The future belongs to those who prepare for it”, and right now, September 2020, I believe that now, three months before December 25, I see a totally different scenario. I hope I will be wrong.

TRENDS

I am a great believer in trends. We can only prepare for a future event when we have a clear vision what’s going on right now, these last weeks of September 2020. Of course, there always are unforeseen events; of course, in detail we don’t know what will happen in the next minute, so I am not predicting whether it will be a white Christmas or what is in store for me tomorrow.

What I am interested in, what makes me confident that I can foresee certain events, is the general direction of current phenomena that will play out in the near future.

Take El Nina, the counterpart of El Nino. According to people who probe the weather, an El Nina is shaping up in the Pacific Ocean which will make the Atlantic Ocean more prone to have hurricanes.

That prediction is based on past experiences. Every day I look at the website of the National Hurricane Center. Now, Mid-September 2020 I see there a string of danger signs, stretching from the African coast all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. I can safely predict that the USA East Coast will be hit with a major storm, balancing out the dangers posed in the American West Coast where, due to ultra-dry years, fires are consuming vast sections of forests.

ARCTIC NEWS.

One of my favorite websites is ARCTIC NEWS. Some 20 scientists, having studied that region for decades, have discovered that this month, September, the North Pole is practically ice-free: never, in human history, has that happened before. Whatever has never happened before creates hidden dangers, can only have ominous consequences. No ice means an erratic jet stream and unpredictable and severe weather events.

Today insurance companies work in the dark: even the best of actuaries is at a loss what to advise their principals. Brace for higher insurance premiums.

THE ECONOMY.

Already before the Pandemic appeared, the general feeling among the money men was that a recession was overdue, and an economic depression could not be ruled out. Due to the Pandemic merchants were late ordering for Christmas, totally uncertain how it will pan out. People are in a frugal mood: ordering too much would ruin the store owners: ordering not enough will cost them sales. On line sales?

Thanks to the Pandemic a totally different mentality has arisen. Earlier this week I saw this little ditty in the New York Times:

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own

People are depressed. Not only the change in seasons but especially the waves of wanton events, the fires, the Pandemic, the looming election, the string of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Our doctor was visiting my wife in her room at Moira Place, the new local Long Term facility. She had people yell at her, overwrought.

Yes, I am worried. The long-term trends are ominous. Climate Change has become too tame a word: climate CHAOS looks more appropriate, and the Pandemic is far from over.

I am especially worried about the aftermath of the USA election. The current White House occupant is not a gracious guy who will respect the outcome. He also denies Climate Change, as do the pious “Christians” who, en bloc, voted for him.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

The basic trouble with our societal set-up is that we live with the “Christian” mindset that supposedly allows the dominating of creation. Yet “Earth is crammed with heaven”, that’s why we must heed Jesus’ own words. Matthew 20:28 spells it out, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

We now see the consequences of the wrong direction Christianity has taken, serving the God of Economic Growth. Deuteronomy 5: 9: “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”. We’re in that stage now.

The Earth is crammed with heaven: God made it and therefore it is holy.

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own.

It’s too late for that too. We live in this world and cannot escape it: there no longer is “the country”. Everything has become The City, Babylon, from where we receive our money, our food supply, our electricity, our Internet, our fuel supply. We stand and fall with The City.

Merry Christmas?

It’s only three months away. A fatal Tipping Point is more likely.  Secular Christmas is all about a baby who never grew up. This same little tike, however, did grow up, and said, referring to TODAY, in Matthew 24: “For at that time there will be great tribulation, unmatched from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be seen again. If those days had not been cut short, nobody would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.”

We now live in The Great Tribulation, and there won’t be Rapture. What will come is the REAL Christmas, the real Christ-Mass, the real Tipping Point. Creation is suffering beyond its capacity: A world-fire-map shows that fires are everywhere where there are trees: Central Africa, the Amazon region, Siberia, Indonesia, Europe. We may only see the US West ablaze, that’s because there are TV cameras close by. Every tree that burns accelerates the CO2 count and speeds up Climate Change. The Tipping Point is near.

The Real Christ-mas comes when Christ returns, restores creation and claims his own.

Be among them.

DOES THE CHURCH HAVE A FUTURE?

September 2 2020

From my rural, old folks, perspective, I see the institutional church dying, Covid-19 accelerating the process. Of course, the invisible church will prevail, as outlined by the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints”. It is the only one of the 12 articles that needs an explanation in the form of “communion of saints”. That, invisible and undefinable church will last till the End when the Lord returns to make ‘the communion of saints’ a visible reality.

To bring me in the ‘church’ mood, first a bit of history on the Role of the Church in my early life, my base, so to say. Of course, I was baptized there as an infant, in a large edifice, seating more than a thousand people, where my father was a frequent church officer, first as deacon and then as elder, repeatedly serving the three – year limit. Then deacons did the rounds to the poor in the church, bringing financial support as times were tough in 1928 and beyond. Then elders made home visits, questioning their parishioners about their faith commitment. Children were part of these interviews.

Thinking back decades ago: church then was the center of life, with Sunday School, followed by doctrine instruction on The Heidelberg Catechism by the minister himself, then called “Dominee”, from the Latin ‘Dominus’, meaning ‘Lord’. My goodness what a name! I eagerly attended young people meetings, teenager gatherings, male always separate from female, adult men- and women societies. On Sundays two services, often 2 hours long. People were faithful, even young people committed. Then society was sharply delineated between Protestant and Roman Catholic, between Socialist and Free Enterprisers. Our allegiance to Christianity was there for all to see because of a stratified society.

That was then. Today matters are different. God has gone private and become a scarce commodity, no longer visible in society, except in a distorted way in the USA where Trump has achieved God status.

Why the change?

I think it has something to do with us: we white Westerners, found a way to dominate the natural world: thanks to fossil fuel we have unleashed unlimited luxuries, infinite travel to so-called exotic destination with all the conveniences common at home. We no longer needed God. If all the churches everywhere were to disappear overnight, society at large would not notice. God is no longer up there: we are gods thanks to our miraculous inventions, our skidoos and jet skis, our flying machines and Benzes and Bentleys, our cool-and heat devices: we have mastered nature.

So we thought.

While my fingers are busy on the keyboard, my thoughts go to LAURA, that sudden horrendous hurricane. I see this monster as God’s creational counter attack on Capitalism, the great disruptor of nature. I have come to believe that in an era of ecclesiastical irrelevance and Biblical ignorance, God is asserting himself through his creation: Creation is his Primary and Direct Word, while the Scriptures are his Secondary and Indirect Word. Both are needed to gain an understanding of God. Not seeing creation as of divine origin (Le Milieu Divin) illustrates the entire ecclesiastical emptiness.

This creation aspect is something new again: in Old Testament times – read Psalm 8 or 19 – that’s where God made him/herself manifest. Now, with the natural world constantly under attack, the creation angle is becoming prominent. That’s why Romans 1: 20 is in the Bible:

“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.”

Read that text again; it’s a serious indictment for you and me.

Still I believe that mGod understands our situation: I believe that a gracious God takes into account that we, for thousands of years have been waylaid by the church preaching the Heaven Hoax, seeing the Earth as disposable, giving birth to Capitalism. We now are cornered, but life goes on, which made Luther say, “Sin Bravely” (Pecca fortiter).  

Fact is that, in the end, the Bible and the church as visible entities, will disappear. We are approaching the end, but creation will always be there, that’s why God is primarily known through his creation. That’s why, today, the only effective way to promote The Good News is shown in John 3: 16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Today ‘Loving creation’ is the pre-eminent calling of the church! The word “world” is a translation of the Greek word “Cosmos”, which involves the entire creation, all that lives and moves and has a being. Our love for God is best expressed in love for creation in word and dee d. Where the church, by and large, solely proclaims the Bible as God’s Holy Word, the Bible itself sees it differently: it sees Creation as the best expression of God.

The lesson for today is different.

There is the ‘lesson’ Covid-19 teaches us. There is the lesson LAURA teaches us. There is the lesson the church has to teach: in a world estranged from the usual God concept, based on the Scriptures, so open to all sorts of misinterpretations and false premises, there is this lesson: the CREATION Word is unambiguous: love it unconditionally: all our actions, from the rising in the morning, to our retiring at night, ought to be dominated by ‘love for God’s creation’. When we do this, we also love the creator, just as loving the St. Matthew Passion, implies loving its composer, J.S. Bach. How can we say we love our neighbor, when our actions conspire to undermineth and wellbeing and that of our fellow creatures?

  
How to worship today?

Worship – loving Creation – is a 24/7 affair. The Virus has exposed the utter frailty of the ecclesiastical structure: we now are on our own. God is letting us loose in a fractured world rushing to disintegration. Just as God is hiding his face to see how we will cope (Deuteronomy 32: 20) so we too have become faceless. Masks are a symbol of how insignificant we have become: we are no longer in control. We have lost it. Now the raw elements of ‘nature’ dominate our lives. It reminds me of Psalm 29:

Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders;
the LORD is heard over many waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful.

The voice of the LORD
strikes with flames of fire.
and strips the forests bare.

This Psalm tells us how to worship: in the splendor of his holy creation. That’s exactly what we have not done: we have not worshiped him in his holy creation, have failed to see the sanctity of the world. So now, instead of ‘worship the Lord in the splendor of his holy creation’, we hear his voice in Hurricane LAURA, stripping the forests bare, we see the voice of the Lord in the flames of fire in California and Siberia, because of our failure to heed his voice, as is plain from Romans 1: 20, “we stand condemned not listening to God’s Word in creation.”

Conclusion.

I now believe that, by and large, the institutional church with its trappings and hierarchies has become irrelevant, yet Community, totally ecumenical, is more important than ever. We must meet and have ‘communion’, and so preach the Lord till he comes; we must meet to pray and read the Bible. But no sermon. Sermons are a holdover from Medieval Times, when people could not read. Sermons belong to the past, and ministers and priests prevent us from becoming who we are: we can’t delegate our salvation. The church only has a future when it morphs into the attributes of the invisible church: “God so loved the world”, the truly divine world we will inherit.