Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

JUNE 17 2018

This week I have a guest, Sylvia Keesmaat. I cannot possibly praise her adequately: she is simply the best biblical scholar alive today. She is an adjunct professor of biblical studies at the Institute for Christian Studies and the Toronto School of Theology. She lives on an organic solar-powered farm in rural Ontario where she teaches gardening workshops and is involved in environmental education.

The Beautiful Creatures: Trees in the Biblical Story
This poetic essay was originally published in The Other Journal

by Sylvia C. Keesmaat

In the beginning, there were no trees. There were no trees, for there was no rain to nourish them
and no creature to tend them. In the beginning, there was the Voice. The Voice called the earth to
birth the trees. As the Voice called and beckoned, the earth brought forth and the growth began:
sap rushed up, limbs stretched, breaking the moist soil, reaching for the warmth of the sun. Roots
groped, stretched, moved through the crumbly earth, embraced and cleft rocks, drew nourishment. Buds
formed and leaves unfurled, fluffy and small, growing as the sun dried and warmed them and as sap filled
them.

The Voice said, “Be trees full of life, be strong. Grow fruit for the birds and the animals, and branches for
their homes. Be pleasing to look at, shout forth the grandeur of the Word. Dig your roots deep; draw
nourishment from the earth.”
And the trees became living beings.

Then the trees watched as the Voice called forth once again, as the Voice formed another creature out of the
earth. “This is the earth creature,” said the Voice, “who will tend you, who will dress your figs and prune
your young blossoms. This is the creature who will provide water in your youth and pruning in your old
age.”

Then the Voice spoke to two of the trees. “You are the tree of life,” said the Voice to one, “And you are the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” the Voice said to the other. “You are set apart for the covenantal
meal I will share with my image bearer—the meal that will bring life, and, eventually, knowledge.”

The trees rejoiced in their calling, but not so much that they didn’t hear the words spoken to the image, the
words that made the trees wonder at the gravity of their calling: “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you will die.”

The trees wondered at how it had all gone wrong so quickly. Oh, they knew what had happened, all right.
They had overheard the conversation as they surrounded the serpent, the woman, and the man. They bore
mute witness as the wisest of the animals discussed the words of the Voice with the woman. They watched
in silence as the image took the fruit, the fruit that belonged only to the Voice, and ate it. They knew that if
their gifts were taken at the wrong time, there would be no nourishment; they knew that grasping would
result in death, not life.

Before the Voice returned in the cool of the evening, the trees had already begun to mourn.
* * *
She was a young tree, as far as trees go, but she had already heard most of the stories of the land in which
she stood. Some were stories of care and nurture, of a time when the earth creatures had given rest to the
trees, when instruments had been fashioned from her wood to give praise to the Voice, when those who
bore the image of the Voice had ensured that the fruit was dressed and the pruning done. They were stories
of hospitality given under the shade of the tamarisk tree and shelter given in the shade of the broom.
But even in those stories, she saw the seeds of brutality. She had heard of Abraham, planting the great
tamarisks for shelter, providing hospitality in their shade. She had also heard of Hagar, sent by that same
Abraham out to the brutality of the desert, placing her son in the shelter of a broom tree as she waited for
his death. The deep sweet shade of hospitality and the desperate last shade of the starving and parched.
The young tree knew the other trees in Israel—the tamarisk, whose size and water droplets create a uniquely
refreshing shade; the white broom tree, whose fallen branches provide embers that never go out and bedding
for a night in the desert; the sycamore, whose fast growing branches sustain many harvests for light, strong
beams and whose dressed fruit provide food for the hungry; the saltplant, whose leaves provide a quick
meal; the yitran tree, whose bark makes strong and sturdy rope. She knew the yearning of the trees to freely
provide nourishment, shelter, and wood for the earth creatures who imaged the Voice.
But she knew that such gifts were scorned. She had heard how the king had conscripted forced labor out of
his people, how he had taken the men from the nurturance of the land and the trees to quarry stone for the
temple and palace. But not only were the people enslaved, so were the trees. No regenerative sycamore
from the land of Israel for the buildings of this king. Rather, whole forests cut from other lands and used for
walls and floors and roofs—cedar and cypress, the proudest of the trees of Lebanon. She had heard how one
of the king’s houses was called the House of the Forest of Lebanon—a forest sacrificed and re-created for
the splendor of the king.

The trees felt silenced, shunned not only for building, but also for praise. The king brought wood from afar
—almug wood—to make trusses and beams and steps, to shape into lyres and harps (I Kgs. 10:11-12; 2
Chron. 9:10-11).

The young tree knew that even though her fellow trees were not being shaped into instruments of praise,
they could still send forth praise to the Voice. And she knew that she provided sustenance and shelter for
many creatures besides those who bore the image of the Voice. But still she mourned, for there was more
than neglect. There was abuse.
She had seen the idolatry of those who ceased to nurture the trees but rather worshipped them, of those who
formed unwilling trees into the sacred groves. She had smelled the scent of the cakes, baked on reluctant
embers and offered to a god who had no voice. She had seen the practices of those who worshipped under
the young trees, in the groves. They did not allow the trees to fulfill their calling: providing shelter and
warmth and food. Instead, they carved the trees into unwilling images—the earth creatures who were
supposed to be the image themselves! They used the wood of the trees to make their false weights and their
short measures with which to defraud the poor. They used the wood for the stalls for their warhorses, and
the crafting of beds for their opulent leisure. And they took wood not to cook food, but to put their children
in the fire of sacrifice (2 Kgs. 16; 2 Kgs. 17:10 ff). The trees were no longer the sustainers of life, but the
bringers of death.

She did not hear the Voice, the word of life, through these people who neglected and abused her, who
brought death and not life to the land. The earth had become like iron and the sky like copper: no one
provided dressing for her fruit or tender pruning in the spring. No one granted the trees their Sabbath for rest
and glory. Her fruit withered on the limb. She cried out, groaned. So she was not sorry when the armies
invaded and the people of the land were taken away. The people were captured but the trees were free.

At first, the trees rejoiced in their newfound freedom. No more was the axe heard in the forest; no more was
the sound of sawing and chopping in the land. The trees enjoyed their rest; they grew to maturity once
again; birds inhabited their branches, and animals ate of their fruit. The trees clapped their hands with joy.
But then the land began to change. It turned from rest to wilderness. The thistles began to strangle out the
seedlings and the vines began to bind the branches, choking out the sunlight, soaking up the water. Limbs
that were unwieldy began to crack and drop. The shoots of the olive roots began to weaken the parent trees,
and the side shoots on the fig began to sap their strength.

The elder trees told the stories, then, of the earth creatures, made by the Voice to care for the trees, to cut the
vines and root out the thistles, to transplant the new shoots to places of space, and to prune the saplings and
weak limbs. The trees began to long for the coming of such creatures, for the return of those obedient to the
Voice (Lev. 26:34-26, 43; Isa. 64:10; Ezek. 6:14).

Then, one morning the trees heard the Voice once again. It was a voice of power, a voice of love, a voice of
gladness. But not a light gladness. The gladness of this voice was deep as if it had known deep sorrow and
suffering, yet once again saw reason to be joyful. It was like the beginning again. The Voice called to the
trees, “Awake, awake, awake.”

The sap began to answer, drawing itself up through the trees to respond to the Voice. Buds began to form
leaves and then blossoms. And with the blossoms, birds came, eager for a drink of nectar and a meal of
insects. Fruit formed, grew plump and ripe, and with the fruit, animals came, eager to take and eat. The trees
rejoiced in the calling of the Voice; they clapped their hands, and the Voice whispered the promises. “They
are coming once again. You will be tended and cared for; no longer shall the thistle choke your young and
the vine bind your elders. Myrtle and cypress will shoot forth. Stumps will give birth to branches and trees.
The dead shall bear life. There will be peace. You will provide shelter once more; the earth creatures will
sleep securely among you (Ezek. 34:25; Ezek. 36).

“And you trees,” said the Voice, “will have a new task. No longer will you be just for food. Your fruit will
be for food, but your leaves, your leaves, they will be for healing.
“My creatures are broken,” said the Voice, “they are in need of healing.” And the trees saw a great river
come from the Voice, and the waters of the river nourished their roots. And their leaves sprang out, green
and firm and tender—the leaves for healing.
The earth creatures began to return. The trees saw that they were broken. And they began to call as the
Spirit gave them voice, “Come, all you weary, we have healing for you” (Isa. 11:55; Ezek. 34:25-27, 36:22-
30, 47:3-12; cf. Ezek. 17:22-24).

At first the trees believed what the Voice had said. At first they trusted. At first the renewal seemed to come.
Sabbaths were practiced once again. The land and the trees were rested and tended. They were fruitful, and
they flourished. And then the wars began.
The trees saw their strongest and straightest taken for weapons, for barricades, for crosses. The trees were
once again instruments of oppression, instruments of curse. They groaned under the weight of the death they
were called to witness and to bear.

After a while, the war ended. But in peace, the reconstruction began: trees to rebuild houses, trees to line the
temple, trees to line the palaces.
Then there was war again. And then peace. But for the trees, peace or war, the violence never stopped. They
knew now that death, not healing was the only end to the story the Voice had told. The elders could not
even begin to whisper the promises of healing, or the story of the earth creatures who had imaged the Voice.

The night was very dark, and the shepherds avoided the darkness of the trees, keeping their flocks to the
plain. It was exceedingly dark. And then, in the darkness, there was light. Suddenly there was singing in the
spheres, the heavens alive and lighted and the music of the spheres singing, “Glory to the Voice and peace
on the earth where God’s favor rests.”

It was a song the trees had long forgotten. But after that night, they began to sing it once again, “Glory,
glory and peace.”
For years they sang it, and occasionally a tree would experience that peace, that glory. For there were
whispers that the earth creature had come, the one who would truly image the Voice, the one who would
tend and bring healing to the trees. There were stories that he had sought shelter in the desert under the
white broom trees for a time, along with the wild animals. There were stories of teaching he gave in the
shade of the trees. There were sycamore trees who provided sight when he came to teach.
Some trees had felt his presence, experienced his touch, felt bondage lifted when he spoke. The trees again
began to hope. And it truly was hope, for the brutality continued. The building progressed. The crosses were
shaped. But hope came.

And then one day the trees felt their branches seized, and they were caught up in the voice of the crowd as it
exclaimed, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” And the
song they had been singing since that dark night on the plain was finally sung by all of creation.
Until the day of the twilight of the world. The trees knew that a violence greater than any the world had
ever seen was in the air. They heard the plots. They were in the garden, silent witnesses as the image of the
Word prayed to be let out, let out of the violence. They were there for the kiss, the soldiers roughly leading
the image away. One of them was forced to be the instrument of torture. One of them was forced to bear the
death of the only faithful earth creature, the image of the Voice, the one who had called them to life once
more. Now they were complicit in the death of life itself. One of them bore the wounds, soaked up the
blood, stood firm and tall until death came. When the sun refused to shine, the trees were there, weeping.7
The trees were also in the garden at dawn. They saw the beings who rolled away the stones. They were
waiting when the creature, the image, emerged. But they saw that the creature was an image that had
changed. Like the trees, the image was wounded. And coming to the trees, the image began to tend them,
digging in the earth, shaping branches, touching wounds with his wounds. The trees knew that the ancient
promises were coming true after all. Death had come, and with it, hope was fulfilled.

Here was the image who had borne death, who still bore the wounds of brutality and violence, living and
giving healing. And the Voice came once more: “There will be a river of life from my throne, from the
heart of my suffering rule. Go, find nourishment in that river, stand on its banks, drink water without price,
draw its life into your roots, produce fruit in abundance, every month of every year. And your leaves, your
leaves will be for the healing of all creatures.
“My creatures are violated, raped, betrayed, killed, and tortured,” said the Voice. “They are in need of
healing.”
It was the promise of old. But this time it came after the death of the world, and the trees knew that life had
conquered.
As the image tended the trees, a woman came and recognized him as the gardener. The trees knew that he
was the gardener, for the Voice was one who tends and heals (Jn. 20:11-18; Rev. 22:1-2).

The trees have noticed a small difference. They have seen, here and there, those who share their groanings,
who want to end the violence, who are like that one who so completely imaged the Voice.

The violence has not ended. But the trees once again tell the story in hope. And in that story, their wounds
find a place in new life; they too bring life and healing. But even in that healing, they await the coming of
the one who will make all things new. And in that hope they rejoice, clapping their wounded hands (Rom.
8:18-25; Isa. 55:12).

Thank you, Sylvia, a most fitting name, to let the TREE speak to us so eloquently.

June 9 2018

DO ANIMALS AND TREES HAVE RIGHTS?

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or the birds
of the air and they will tell you; or ask the plants of the earth, and they will instruct you.
Job 12: 7-9.

One of my very good friends loaned me two books on Animal Rights: “Do Animals have Rights,” by Alison Hills, an easy read which gave a measured approach, and “The Case for Animal Rights,” by Tom Regan, a hard slog and much more radical. In it he refutes the still current view that the animals we eat, hunt, and experiment on are, in the words of Ren? Descartes, “thoughtless brutes.” Regan’s opinion is that animals are sophisticated mental creatures who have beliefs and desires, memories and expectations, who feel pleasure and pain and experience emotions, and like us, animals have a basic moral right to be treated in ways that show respect for their independent value.

Is he right?

We all know that chickens are kept in cages and cows in confined conditions, not unlike people in faraway countries, packed in favelas, in shantytowns, and other make-shift slums. A few years ago a fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, killed hundreds of people because they could not escape their packed places. We condemn it where it concerns people. Should we also agitate against the same situations for animals?

There is a curious passage in Genesis 2, where God named the first couple Adam and Eve. Later that same human pair were given the right to name animals. It seems to me that this signifies that we have a certain power over animals, which is plain in later biblical episodes.

At first, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve apparently were vegetarians, eating only from the plants and trees. Later, with Noah, this changed. Abraham provided (Genesis 18:7) the Lord with meat from a calf, tender and good. The same happened when the Prodigal Son re-appeared. Jesus ate fish. Also the Bible is full of animals being slaughtered for ceremonial purposes.

Can our mass-production of animals continue? The on-going production of Tar-Sand oil and fracking are real signs that the easy energy has been used and that EROI or Energy Returned On Investment becomes ever smaller, with the result that the fuel price creeps up, and air-and water pollution grows by leaps and bounds, heralding hard times ahead.

As an aware Christian I believe that we should welcome the days when chickens revert back to their natural pecking order and contended cows roam the vast expanse of prairies where they belong.

But back to my original question: Do animals have rights? Yes, they do. Do chickens and other incarcerated animals have rights? Yes, they do. Just as the people in Bangladesh and elsewhere have the right to be housed decently, and live comfortably, so, if my Bible is true, animals too have the right to exercise their freedom of movement. Job’s words thousands of years ago are still relevant today. What we have lost is the wisdom animals can teach us. We no longer have the ability to understand what the birds are trying to tell us. We no longer know how plants can enlighten us. We are paying lip service to the knowledge that in God’s hands are the life of every living being – animal, birds, plants – and the breath of every human being.

It is exactly our ignorance of “the wider world out there” that has led to the mechanization of animal production.

However, our first duty is to see that people everywhere in the world live in humane conditions, as God has named them and they are made in His image. As long as this is not the case, we cannot demand that animals have priority over humans.

So how about trees? Do they have rights?

Some time ago I read Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I was struck by one sentence, “I entreat you, brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

Another sentence stayed with me, also decades ahead of his time: “To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence…”

Nietzsche`s rebellion against the church originated from the preaching of the Heaven Heresy, still almost universally seen as the gospel truth. The much maligned Nietzsche was a genius. His father and both his grand fathers were Lutheran preachers, one even a bishop. He was also slated to join the ranks of clergy but, seeing that the church was dead and so concluding that God was dead as well, he changed course and at a very young age became a professor of classical languages.

Nietzsche loved the earth, loved animals. He lost his mind when he saw a poor horse whipped to death. He wanted to remain true to the earth and saw pollution and mistreatment of animals as blasphemy.

So how about trees?

I have long maintained that the original sin included taking fruit from a tree without asking permission. Simply we ignore the tree-mendous importance of trees in human life: they are our counterparts. They take in CO2 – a greenhouse gas –and breathe out oxygen, the very element we need every second of our lives.
When I accidentely brush against a tree, I always ask the tree for forgiveness. I see trees as my neighbors, and love them as such.

Last week the Globe and Mail had an article by Maria Banda, an international lawyer and the Graham Fellow at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She wondered whether Trees have Rights. Here’s in part what she wrote:
“I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” These words, spoken by a small orange creature in a Dr. Seuss children’s book, point to a more fundamental question. Should trees and other voiceless elements in nature have rights? Courts, legislatures and communities increasingly say they should.

“An extraordinary legal revolution is unfolding around the world. Last month, in a historic ruling, Colombia’s Supreme Court declared that the Amazon (river) is a legal person with rights – to be protected, conserved and restored – and ordered the state to reduce deforestation.
“This past year alone, from India to New Zealand, four rivers, two glaciers and a sacred mountain have been granted legal personhood. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the regional human-rights treaty protects the rights of the environment as such. U.S. municipalities are joining in.”
This is the opening statement of Ms. Maria Banda.

She concludes with:
“The road will not be easy; there will be implementation challenges along the way. But rights evolve. And, over time, a healthier world may emerge.”

Trees really matter.

Trees really Matter: no trees, no LIFE. Dying trees mean death for humans. Nietzsche was right: “By killing creation we are killing God. Remember Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings. There talking trees were a decisive factor in the last battle against the evil empire.

North America’s ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.

The common factor has been hotter, drier weather. And drier weather means more fires, and more fires fuel hotter climate. Last May was the hottest EVER.

It always strikes me that, when in Genesis 2 trees are described, the beauty aspect is mentioned first. That also points to our original mandate of beautifying creation. It is my considerate opinion that the early humans mentioned in the Bible lived so long because the main cover of the planet was trees, breathing out super-rich oxygen.

Trees: yes, we take them for granted, but they are a near miracle. Photosynthesis trees turn one of the seemingly most insubstantial things of all — sunlight — into food for insects, wildlife and people, and use it to create shade, beauty and wood for fuel, furniture and homes.
For all of that, the unbroken forest that once covered much of the continent is now shot through with holes.

Humans have cut down the biggest and best trees and left the runts behind. What does that mean for the genetic fitness of our forests? No one knows for sure, for trees and forests are poorly understood on almost all levels.

What we do know that what trees do is essential: they clean up our garbage, not only CO2 but also our oil spills. Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrive, so does the rest of the food chain.

In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.

Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phytoremediation.

Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.

In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call “forest bathing.” A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system, which fight tumors and viruses. Studies in inner cities show that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower in a landscaped environment.

Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature.

One of these substances, taxane, from the Pacific yew tree, has become a powerful treatment for breast and other cancers. Aspirin’s active ingredient comes from willows.
Trees are greatly underutilized as an eco-technology. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.

Trees are also the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. The Texas Department of Forestry has estimated that the die-off of shade trees will cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars more for air-conditioning. Trees, of course, sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures.

When we built our current house in 1975, I planted soft maples, fast growing trees, now shading our house to the extent that we hardly ever need the air conditioning. I also planted 4000 pine trees.

Luther once said, “even if I knew that the Lord would come back tomorrow, I still plant a tree today.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or the birds
of the air and they will tell you; or ask the plants of the earth, and they will instruct you”.

We need ever closer contact with creation. Dying trees, forest fires, earth quakes, violent storms indicate a broken relationship with creation.

Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tells us, “I entreat you to remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

At the root of all heresies is the notion that we go to heaven when we die, which makes sinning against the earth an acceptable act. It, in essence, means that we, by killing creation, we kill God also. But the Bible tells us that God, creation and the human race form an organic whole. That wholeness includes animals and trees.
Yes, they do have rights.

Next week some excerpts from Sylvia Keesmaat’s poetic essay on Trees.

June 2 2018

ALLIS WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

I was struck by a line in David Brooks’ column in the New York Times on May 25. He wrote, without further elaboration, “We’re in the middle of some vast historical transition, and it’s very hard to know what to believe in”.

Brooks has difficulty to find a cause to believe it. I do not. I believe that we are rushing to the END. Bonhoeffer, in his book CREATION AND FALL, which deals with the beginning – Genesis 1-3 – quite paradoxically starts with the total opposite: ”The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end.”

That is so true: we don’t really know how creation started. We do know how it will end: Christ will return and make all things NEW. Yes, all is well that ends well.

Those of us who believe this, have something to go by, and shape their lives accordingly. Those who believe this also see matters with different eyes: the real vast historical transition – and very few believe this – is from a man-shaped planet – which is quickly collapsing – to a renewed world remade according to God’s intentions: that will be extremely exciting and the REAL GOOD NEWS.

BUT………

People who have followed me know that I am a Collapsitarian, a person that is convinced that we are on the cusp of something totally different, totally ominous, totally catastrophic. The signs are out there, and I see the state of American politics as just another sign of a historical transition.

History is important. We have seen instances of ‘historical transition’. Luther’s Reformation, his courageous fight against the all-powerful religion of his day heralded a historical transition, something that did not happen in isolation, but was fueled by such inventions as the printed press, which gave people the ammunition to form an opinion.

In setting the stage for this Cultural Revolution, THE BLACK DEATH acted as a preparatory element, a full century and more before Luther made his monumental move. Otto Friedrich in his THE END OF THE WORLD, in his chapter on THE BLACK DEATH, which killed 30-50% of Europe, writes: “If anything had been learned during the Black Death, it was that the church and its priests were helpless in fighting the plague…..Some tribute to it not only the general decay in papal authority but the growth of the Lollards and the Hussites and all the other dissenters and rebels whose impassioned demands for a new way ultimately burst forth in the REFORMATION.

Carbon Power, the use of coal, oil, natural gas to fuel machinery, starting at the end of the 18th Century, heralded another age, an age now harboring calamities exceeding the ravages of THE BLACK DEATH, such as epidemics, floods, hurricanes, unbearable heat, disastrous economic conditions, water wars, droughts, and territorial disputes. Throw in religious fanaticism, raising its ever-more ugly head, and my premonition of imminent disastrous times, appear to be completely justified.

Some similarities to today.

The Black Death in the mid-14th century coincided with a schism in the Roman Catholic Church, with two Popes in power, one in Rome, and one in Avignon, southern France. Today we see similar religious strife in all branches of religion: Pope Francis is the most hated prelate of all times because of his relaxed stance on such controversial phenomena as divorce, homosexuality and related sexual matters. The Protestant wing is deeply divided along these same lines, while Islam experiences immense differences between moderate and fundamental wings.

The times they are a’changing.

Stability is gone, yet uncertainty in economic and political fields seem to have the opposite outcome in religious matters: in times of financial and social troubles, institutions of faith seem to become more rigid, with reasoning being abandoned, dialogue suspended and hatred and animosity ruling the day.

Yes, we live in times of some vast historical transition, and for many people it’s very hard to know what to believe in, so they dig in and stick to the ‘old-time-religion’.

It so happens that, what I believe is at odds with the general teaching of the church, which still is almost exclusively ‘heaven’ oriented. Will the carbon-carnage make a difference? Will a universal plague ameliorate or harden the hearts of the people? If the BLACK DEATH is an indication, disastrous times will make people more rebellious.

A timely warning.

On May 28 the Globe and Mail had an article with the heading,

“Will we be prepared for ‘Disease X’ – the next pandemic?”

TOM KOCH, professor of medical geography at the University of British Columbia and the author of Cartographies of Disease and Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground, wrote:

Ebola is back, again active in Africa. Influenza is about to begin this year’s march in Australia. Measles outbreaks are broadly reported and the list goes on. What’s next in the world of infectious diseases?

The World Health Organization calls it “Disease X,” a previously unknown pathogen that likely will cause the next pandemic. It will be new, spread quickly and, if history is a guide, carry a mortality rate greater than 30 per cent.

Every century has had its Disease X. There was plague, of course, recurring periodically between the 14th and 19th centuries. Then there was yellow fever, which in the 18th century decimated eastern U.S. cities. In the 19th century cholera was the global threat. More recently, it was influenza in 1918 and polio in the 1950s. AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, West Nile Virus and Zika: all evidence of rapid evolution in the microbial world.

Because the new bug will be, well, new, we will be largely unprepared. Nor should we be surprised. Since influenza first spread globally from domesticated poultry in China in 2,500 BC, certain conditions have always presaged the arrival of a new pandemic disease. All are present today.

First, there is deforestation – the destruction of natural ecosystems to provide housing and food for cities. Bacteria and viruses are displaced and must survive by migrating to new places and populations.

Deforestation is powered by urbanization – the growth of dense settlements that become reservoirs for the migrating microbes – new destinations for the bacterium or virus forced out of its niche by human advance.

Then there is the trade that supports those evolving cities and their industries. Microbes are mostly homebodies. They don’t travel on their own but instead move with travelers and the goods they carry. Once, that meant sailing ships that spanned the globe and locally the ox carts of local providers. In the 19th century cholera travelled from New Orleans up the Mississippi River in steam boats and then new trains that linked southern and northern cities. Today, modern microbes circle the globe with us on airplanes, either caught in cargo, captured in the wheelbase or with infected passengers on board.

Income inequality has always been a boon to the bacteria and viruses that have plagued humanity. Impoverished people who are ill-housed and ill-fed are stressed. Their immune systems are weaker and their environments insecure. They become the perfect vehicles for disease propagation.

Finally, there is nothing like war to promote the advance of microbial legions. Troop transports assured 1918 influenza would spread from the United States to Europe where the First World War created hugely distressed populations that were the perfect targets for the new disease. Troops returning home carried the virus with them.

In our defence, experts are increasing surveillance while scientists strike to create “platform technologies,” broadly designed medicines and vaccines that in theory can be modified to target new microbes once they are identified. Still, even with a vaccine almost ready, it took more than a year for an Ebola vaccine to be developed and tested. By the time it was ready for distribution the West African epidemic of 2014 was mostly over.

Even with the most advanced technologies it will take weeks, and probably months, to isolate the precise nature of Disease X, months if not years then to engineer a vaccine or cure. It then takes months if not years for a new drug or vaccine’s testing, commercial patenting, manufacture and then distribution. By then it will be too late.
All this is the failure of our successes, the downside of our modern achievements. The only answer is to assure that public health organizations – from city-health departments to international agencies – have the funding and support they will require to react when Disease X emerges. Unfortunately, we are, in most countries, more concerned with health efficiencies than health preparedness. WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have had their budgets cut in recent years. To prepare and to insure our health and survival, we can and must do better.
And so, we wait for Disease X and, too, the tools to fight it.
So far Tom Koch.

Laurie Garrett in 1994, in her THE COMING PLAGUE said essentially the same: “The extraordinary, rapid growth of the Human population, coupled with its voracious appetite for planetary dominance and resource consumption, has put every measurable biological and chemical system on earth in a state of imbalance.
“Extinctions, toxic chemicals, greater background levels of nuclear and ionizing radiation, ultraviolet penetration if the atmosphere, global warming, wholesale devastations of ecospheres – these were the changes of which ecologists spoke as the world approaches the twenty-first century”.

Neither Koch nor Garrett mention the melting of the Arctic where pathogens may be uncovered that have been hidden for thousands of years.

I have long maintained that next time when disaster strikes, it will be accompanied by an array of other calamities.

“We’re in the middle of some vast historical transition, and it’s very hard to know what to believe in”, writes celebrated columnist, David Brooks.

What does this signify?

“It is hard to know what to believe in”.

Politicians will not tell us. They never predict a difficult future. They never mention Climate Change in a bad light. They always see the sunny side, such as the immense potential of renewable energy. They always promise more economic growth in a finite world.
Don’t look to churches to tell us. They most certainly will not tell us to prepare for a New Earth and start living that condition now.

The Bible, however, pulls no punches: Matthew 24 makes the startling claim that the coming disasters will be so totally devastating that (verse 22), “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive!”

That’s what is in store: the final judgement is upon the world in the form of natural disasters, earthquakes, pandemics, all happening simultaneously: neither technology nor medical science can prevent it.

The final judgement over this terrified world will reveal itself in its inevitable self-destruction of the culture.

Emperor Nero set his own capital, Rome, on fire. He had no clue what he was doing. We too have not the faintest idea of the horrible fate that today threatens the entire human civilization.

Humanity, totally estranged from God, has become drunk on its own technical prowess and mesmerized by its own grandeur: this same human race will end itself through its own radical self-delusion, polluting itself into oblivion, destroying whatever it has built, in a spontaneous act of suicide.

World history is, indeed, a continuous series of suicide; world history is an always repeating leap into the abyss. That is what humanity does without prompting: God does not have a hand in all this.

Just as THE BLACK DEATH by all accounts led to THE REFORMATION, so it could well be that all the disasters that now are brewing and will burst forth in all their ferocity in the near future, will make people pause and wonder whether there is a God and whether this God is of any use.

Yes we are in the middle not only of a vast historical transition, but we are on the very last gasp of human sinfulness.

The Black Plague brought the worst out in people. The coming series of the ultimate disasters will do the same.

But ALL IS WELL THAT ENDS WELL: Revelation 21: 1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth!”

MAY 26 2018

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE.

I once preached in our church on Jonah, and not finding a song about him I made one. Singing it on the tune of Psalm 8, “Lord, oh Lord your glorious name”, was a lot of fun.

JONAH IN THE WHALE

REFRAIN
Whale oh whale in all the sea
The greatest whale
With its double-steepled tail
Swallowed Jonah in travail:
Oh what a tale!

1. God, the Lord to Jonah said:
Go to Nineveh the bad
Jonah did not like the charge
Instead to Tarshish did he march
Set out to sail. REFRAIN

2. Jonah caused the storm they got
Sailors then did cast the lot
In the sea they threw the male
And at once it stopped the gale
But not the whale! REFRAIN

3. In the belly of the fish
Jonah made a fervent wish.
Then the Lord spoke to the whale
Who spew Jonah on the shale
So pale and frail. REFRAIN

4. On the Nineveh he went
Telling all now to repent.
When they did he got so mad
Calling God e’vrything that’s bad
How sad, how sad. REFRAIN

5. Jonah tired and angry
Sat himself under a tree
Which the Lord for him supplied
But the tree grew sick and died
And Jonah cried. REFRAIN

6. Then the Lord to Jonah said
If one dead tree makes you so mad
Don’t I then have equal right
To be concerned for Nineveh’s plight:
Don’t be so trite! REFRAIN.

In verse 11 of the last chapter of the book of Jonah, the LORD said, “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left, as well as many animals?”

No doubt ancient Nineveh was a huge city, also because people farmed within the confines of its limits: that’s why it was so huge and had many animals. That indicates that cities in the very early antiquity were basically self-sustaining: they had to be.

The city of Rome changed that pattern. During its heyday it was totally depended on the countryside, needing ever greater distances to find food and wood. Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his book THE UPSIDE OF DOWN, writes, “The Empire needed more and more energy, and in the end it could not find enough.” That was the end of Rome.

And we?

Ever wondered why there are so many trucks on the highways? Many of them are there to bring food to the millions of city dwellers who want three square meals per day: food from all over the world. We waste a lot of that food, enough to feed the poorer 30 percent of the world.

By now it’s becoming quite clear that in North America, trucks and the cars have fashioned our cities, an unsustainable situation. Walrus Magazine, in its May issue, with as subtitle, “The FUTURE OF almost everything”, emphasizes this again when it points out that, “If we are currently doing a poor job of building them (the cities), it is because we insist on catering not to the need of city dwellers, but to the demands of cars.”

One of the curses of modernity is that North America’s cities have been weaned on the automobile: the entire economy depends on having a personal vehicle: our subdivisions, our shopping malls and our box stores all are car-dependent. Not so much in Europe. There the cities are centuries old and came into being before the advent of the automobile.

WALRUS really sees the North America’s future in terms of UTOPIA, wishing for a car-less, walkable, bicycle-friendly city. Dream on! The problem of suburbs and accommodation for the poor does not magically go away: we are stuck with the ‘sins of our fathers’ in more than one way. Not only did we welcome the ‘car’, we also gutted all public transportation, seeing salvation in carbon slaves. Even now governments on all levels subsidize automobile manufacture to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The same is of true of energy production. Where will the money come from to build subways at a rate of $1 billion per mile, as we all are already overburdened with debt?

I already quoted one example from the Bible. Let me take another one, even far earlier.

You may recall how the two first sons of Adam and Eve were quite religious and made an offering to Yahweh. God accepted Abel’s gesture of devotion, but rejected Cain’s, because he was not sincere in his approach to God. This infuriated Cain so much that he killed his brother. Religious strife is still with us and is often the most ferocious.

Cain fled and we read that he built a city. This is a clear sign that the human desire is to exclude God from creation and is the prime motive behind the founding of the city. Oops, that hurts: the city is not a product of God, but of his ever-present opponent.

Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, is the first city builder. He called it Enoch, which means a New Beginning.

French Law Professor Jacques Ellul in his book THE MEANING OF THE CITY mentioned that it was Cain’s intention to re-make the world over again, with not the Garden of Eden but the City as the new paradise.

He also wrote: “Cain has built a city. For God’s Eden he substitutes his own, for the goal given to his life by God, he substitutes a goal chosen by himself.
The city is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and of his own refusal to accept God’s protection. ….The city is opposed to Eden….God’s creation is seen as nothing. Cain made a new start, a start no longer seen as God’s beginning, but of human making.

And thus Cain, with everything he does digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. With Cain’s founding of Enoch, we have a sure starting place for all of civilization, with the result that Paradise became a legend and creation a myth. Cain took possession of the world and used it as he wishes. We do the very same: it is our highhanded piracy of creation that has made it impossible for creation to give God the glory.

Today we see this all too clearly in Trump who has no consideration for God’s creation whatsoever, enthusiastically supported by the majority of “Christians”.

Country versus City.

Ellul does not glorify the country over the city, because, today, by and large, the countryside simply has become an extension of the city. Geert Mak in his Dutch book “How God disappeared from Jorwerd” (Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd), eloquently describes how a small Frisian village lost its tradesmen, its specialty stores, its very soul, when commuters bought its houses, and relied for on city-based big block merchandize, so effectively killing the village’s economy.

The same is now true everywhere in the Western world on a much grander scale. We have gone to Asia for making things, while the old manufacturing cities are losing their soul: doing exactly what happened to Jorwerd. Just look at Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Lansing, Welland and Windsor: there too God has disappeared, paving the way for Trump.

Once our financial house collapses, the same will happen to New York and Toronto, to London and Frankfort.

Ellul mentions that too when he writes that, “Babylon is not A city, it is THE city……..When the wrath of God is loosed, she is struck first…. She is the very home of civilization and when the great city vanishes, there is no more civilization, a world disappears…..The very fact of living in the city directs a person down an inhuman road. They are taken into the service and worship of a somber goddess.”

Strong language and utterly scary.

Is that the end? Does Ellul in his THE MEANING OF THE CITY offer no hope?

He does. He points to the NEW CITY to come, the exact opposite of the city Cain founded and in which we now live. In the new city, the City of God, the Lord’s presence will be constant, his spirit all pervasive. It promises in Revelation 14: 13, “Our good deeds will follow us there”.

Writes Ellul: “The new city is founded in humility, constructed in the acceptance of God’s decisions. ……….Just as the new city is the accomplishment of what we humans were never able to realize, she is also the exact opposite of the earthly city….and the exact counterpart of what we humans had wanted to do.”

Properly speaking the new world to come will totally reflect God’s will. It will be a world where communion with God is perfect, expressed in total symbiosis with all, humans, animals and plants.

The City of the Future.

Today water has become a curse: rising sea levels, unstoppable rains, more severe hurricanes have made water-side properties an insurance nightmare.

Not so in the City of the Future. There the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, starts with “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the City. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” Isn’t that beautiful: the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations!

That tells a lot. In the City of the Future, water is as pure as God. Trees are there too: the very trees which had become inaccessible after Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden: the Trees of Life, trees that provide a variety of fruits continuously.

It seems to me that we can visualize paradise as being situated on a high plateau with the fountainheads of mighty rivers. It suggests to me that these four rivers represent the streams that irrigate the major countries of the world and so provide the world with riches and life.

Paradise is the source that provides the world with precious water. It lies at the centre of the world. Paradise discloses the secret of the well being and beauty of the world: it is here in particular that God reveals his presence.

Revelation 21 gives a description of the New Jerusalem. Streets of gold? Well, I don’t particularly buy that. I believe that John tries to convey here the utter uniqueness of the coming Kingdom. That singularity is so different, so totally contrary to what we see the city today.

So what how will The City of the Future be like?

The City of the Future, the new paradise, is like the old paradise, with rivers flowing, with the trees of life growing in the heart of the world. From these the world receives its life.

In Revelation 21, John has a view of the new city. He looks closely for a temple there, but sees none. Not seeing a temple there he concludes that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple: the divine law written on our hearts. Gone are the churches, the preachers and the Bible.

The Good News.

The City of the Future is already happening today. Churches are changing. I am a member of our church’s Environmental Team. We are converting the lawn around our church building into “Bee and Butterfly friendly flower beds”, and intend to raise vegetables there as well for community use. We also have special services at outdoor beauty spots. On June 23 this will take place at our own property at our huge Beaver Dam.

We’re in the middle of a vast historical transition. Now is the time to prepare for Life after life. Now is the time to prepare for the City of the Future: the complete oneness of humanity with creation.

If you want to live in The Eternal City to come, seek a church community or start one that practices the holy unity of God, Humanity and the Earth.

MAY 19 2018

SOME PERSONAL STUFF

My roots.

I am city-bred, first generation. Both my parents were the first and only ones of their combined six siblings to leave rural life and move to the city. There my aunts, uncles and grandparents visited us quite frequently when shopping for items not available back home.

My father’s parents operated a grocery store, while my mother’s parents were small-time general farmers: cows, pigs, chickens and a horse, farming some 20 hectares of good soil, most of it surrounding the homestead. The immediate neighbors had similar holdings: nobody rich, nobody poor.

Both my grandparents were elders in the same church, sincere devout people, deeply committed to the Christian faith in its then rather uncomplicated expression. They were an example for me in their piety and simple trust. For generations they had lived their quiet lives in the Netherlands’ most northerly province, Groningen.

Urban Groningen was known as ‘the city’ or in Dutch, ‘de stad’, nothing more. People planning to visit the cattle market, or buy new clothes, simply said that they were going to ‘stad’.

I grew up in that city, an ancient one, dating back well before the 11th Century, the date when construction of the Martini church was started: the immense blocks of squared rock of its 100 meter high steeple-tower came all the way from southern Germany, some 500 km away, signifying the people’s tenacity, devotion and willingness to sacrifice some 1,000 years ago.

I attended educational institutions there for 16 years, the second half studying Latin, Greek, German, French, English, Dutch, plus various science subjects, all compulsory. The only option was Hebrew, and I now regret not taking it.

One of my ancestors was a delegate to the provincial council. A plaque above the entrance of his rural church honored him some 300 years ago for faithful service to the province and the Royal family, the house of Orange.

I was named after him, Egbert Drewes, the same as my maternal grandfather. Even though I was born and raised in the city, and once in Canada, settled in 1951 -23 years old – first in Hamilton for 4 years, then in St. Catharines for 2 decades, my staying often at my Opa’s farm as a kid, gave me a lasting desire for the country side. Having always been self-employed, first in insurance, then adding real estate, in 1975 I sold my agency and moved to rural Ontario, moving into an uncertain future.

That move was motivated both by the oil-crisis in 1972-3 and by reading THE LIMITS OF GROWTH, which deeply influenced my thinking and kindled my desire to attain a degree of self-sufficiency for our family. In the 1970’s there was a lot of scary talk. The sudden spike in the oil price threw the entire global economy in turmoil, and it surely affected me as well.

So I looked for a location far from large population centres, where land was still affordable. I bought 50 acres of mostly trees and rocks but enough cleared land to build a house, just about 200 km from both Toronto and Ottawa, 5 km north of the small village of Tweed. A pretty safe location, I thought.

Before we started building a well-witcher came who with his witching rod followed one underground stream, and then another, and where they crossed he told us to drill. He also told us how deep, and lo and behold, exactly where he had indicated a well was drilled, giving us 150 liters of pure ground water per minute, sufficient for 10 families.

We built some 150 meters from the highway. With the highway under re-construction, the company needed to dispose of large amounts of earth: they were happy to construct a driveway to my building site, an advantage to both of us.

Our dwelling.

I had designed a 2 storey house, with on the north one story – built into a hill, and a small window – and on the south 2 storey with four large windows, catching the sun, constructed with 2×6 studs, R20 insulation and extra foam insulation as well: a passive-solar house.

The first floor contained a three piece washroom with a shower, 2 bedrooms, and my office as well as a utility room, a root cellar, completely surrounded with earth, and a pantry for food storage.

I later added a one storey addition expanding the office space, a foyer, and making the bedroom bigger. On its roof section I installed 10 solar panels, an additional power source. On the second level I placed the bathroom in the centre, so that the heat generated there would be retained. Also the masonry chimney had 2 flues so that I could have a wood stove on both levels. Later, with more efficient wood stoves I only used one large wood stove on the first floor.

Once the house was ready, by living frugally I studied for 3 years to qualify for Real Estate Appraiser, taking courses at York, Trent and Queen’s Universities which also required the completion of three master theses, 100 page reports on Single Family Dwelling, on a 12 unit apartment building and a commercial building before I became an AACI, Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute. This allowed me to appraise a full range of properties, such as the Picton airport – a former RAF fighter training center – several river dams, a 5,000 acre former Weston retreat just east of the Algonquin Park, a uranium mine in Bancroft, and the entire Bruce Peninsula, 500,000 acres, for an Indian land claim, just to name some of the more odd pieces of real estate I evaluated. I did a lot of work for all levels of governments, federal, provincial, and many municipalities.

My garden.

I moved to Tweed to become more self-sufficient, that involved not only building an energy-efficient dwelling but especially having a large vegetable garden.

That was a lot of work: the soil was basically pure sand, and to make it more fertile, I went over to the neighbors some 200 meters away, and was allowed to cart away in my wheelbarrow age-old black earth, saturated with cow manure, too rich for growing, but mixed with my sandy loam it became good garden material. I forgot how many loads I transported, but 43 years ago I was that much younger, so I invested a lot of sweat into that undertaking.

I also constructed a simple 8`x 8`compost bin. Since we became vegetarian, almost each day we generated a bucket of green stuff. Since friendly near-by farmers were willing to provide us with manure, the last 5 years I did not touch the accumulated compost.

But in this past week I found the extra energy to completely empty our compost enclosure and carted 25 wheelbarrow loads to our vegetable garden of some 2,000 square feet: beautiful black, airy loam, promising us a good crop for the season to come.

FOOD

A recent article in WALRUS dealing with the FUTURE, suggest that “the production of whole foods – milk and meat, spices and flavouring, even fruits and vegetables – might soon become unnecessary and even irresponsible. The article expresses the belief that all these food items can be manufactured today brewing the same chemical compounds that give fresh summer peaches their taste. Given the scarcity of land and water synthetic food might soon become the only reasonable choice. Well, color me old-fashioned, but I don’t buy this at all.
May 19 2008

The best thing you and I can do to save the world, and, at the same time benefit our families, is to start to grow your own food, because today we don’t eat food, but oil. With oil barreling toward $100.00 (Can), edibles will become ever more expensive. That means that we have to get our guts in gear and start digging, something good for body and soul, as manual labor promotes peace of mind, improves physical well-being, while home-grown produce provides healthy nutrition.

The world now has now close to 7.5 billion with ever more demanding mouths, while food supplies per capita are about to shrink, signaling food inflation. The only way to keep this in check and furnish basic food for your family is to engage in “subsistence gardening.”

Today we burn 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but in 20 years annual production will be less than half that amount, while the number of people in the world will have increased by 50 percent. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that with drastically reduced amounts of oil and chemical fertilizer, our future will feature growing food shortages. Alternative energy sources will do little to solve the problem. Our main energy will be pure body power: we and our shovel, we and our hoe, we and our weary back, which, by the way, will save us sleeping pills.

In our ‘wisdom’, we have turned prime farmland into subdivisions and big box stores, have allowed pollution to poison our pollinators, are burning food in our gas tanks instead of fueling our muscles, so, no wonder that finally, after some 210 years, the fear of global famine, expressed by English parson Thomas Malthus in his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” will come true.

The old is new again. The best security is an old-fashioned vegetable garden. The cost is minimal. And now – May-June – is the time, as plenty of rain has softened the earth, making digging a lot easier. Get a sharp spade, one with a short handle. This way you lift with your hips, avoiding a ‘back-breaking’ experience.

Choose a sunny patch, away from trees. Cut the grass there to the very roots, which makes turning the soil a lot easier. Shake out the sod, releasing the good earth into the dug portion. Put the grass and roots into a compost bin. Compost must be an important ingredient of your soil. If you don’t have a compost bin, start one today: put in leaves, grass cuttings, left over food, peals and all organic material. Keep the contents wet so that they disintegrate easier.

Where I live spring time comes with one obstacle: black flies. Let them bite you. After a few years you will become immune to their sting at least that is my experience. God made everything for a purpose, perhaps black fly bites strengthen our immune system, but they certainly help as pollinators and with bees in short supply, even black flies can be a blessing.

Once you have dug that patch, braved the pesky flies, endured that tired back and blisters in your hands and loosened the soil, you are ready to plant. For a start I would recommend green beans, onions, red beets, carrots, as well as a variety of cabbage plants. If you have room, plant some potatoes as well. Of course, tomatoes and squash plants are a cinch.

Remember that variety is essential. Any meal should have three colors: green salads, red beets, and orange carrots, for instance: the more colors on your plate the better. Michael Pollan, in his book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” says, in a nutshell, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” He also says that much of what we buy in the store is not food as much as ‘foodish’, quasi-edible substances made for long shelf-life rather than nutrition and taste. When you grow your own, you know what you get.

Most vegetables are easy to grow. Green beans need little care. Carrots need a sandy soil and, since the seeds are so tiny, constant watering until the greens break through the surface.
Potatoes attract Colorado potato beetles. I handpick these creatures and if there are too many I dust the plants with a friendly pesticide, which I also sprinkle on my broccoli and cabbages. Kale, a very healthy dark green plant, is the least trouble-prone.
So do yourself a favor, engage in a wholesome exercise, grow your own and prevent a lot of polluted air from happening, while enriching your table with nutritious fare. An all-around win-win situation.

I am city-bred, first generation. All our kids are in the city, Toronto, Hamilton, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Greater Kitchener area: for them the city begs as the jobs are there. I was fortunate to make a good living away from urban North America.

MAY 12 2018

ACCULTURATION (2)

Last week I ended with,” The ‘cultus’ of today is MONEY. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: the woods are paved, the mountains mined, the seas eaten, species eliminated: all because of money. More than half of all wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years because of money. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. Today we are selling God’s creation to serve us as slaves, 24/7.”

This week I continue this topic, and for this I turn to the book of Revelation, where Jesus sent a letter to a city called Thyatira as recorded in Revelation 2: 18-29. There, 2000 years ago, ACCULTURATION came to a head: the cultus of Christ versus the cultus of pagan gods. A very similar scenario is happening today.

Of the seven letters sent, this was the longest, the reason being that the situation there was quite complicated, resembling very much the economic scene today where a Christian institution – the church – exists and operates in a pagan world, a world bent on destroying God’s creation. Is the church up to it?

A few words on Thyatira itself.

Thyatira was a city of commerce and industry, a place well-known for her guilds or labor unions or business associations. Everyone who did business there or operated a company was automatically part of one of these social organizations. It even was compulsory to belong to one of these outfits on peril of being boycotted by all others: everywhere and constantly all were dependent on these powerful social organizations dominating the totality of social life.

For instance, it was simply impossible for an honorable Christian carpenter to ply his trade on his own, no matter how hard he worked. If he were not a member of the trade union then he simply was regarded as unqualified and ran the risk that nobody would call on him for work.

In other words in Thyatira persecution was not the result of political tensions generated by the way the church functioned, but in this city the entire structure of society imperiled the existence of the church there. Hmm…Sounds familiar.

It so happened that the church of Thyatira consisted primarily of small businessmen, people who for their daily bread depended on the cooperation of their clients. That meant that they had no option but to seek contact with the existing social network if they were not to perish financially. That was exactly the great question the church there was wrestling with.

Of course we can argue that the church there had to face reality, accept the consequences and simply venture out into the business world. This implied that the Christians were to become part of these labor associations and join these existing social structures.

But there was more to it than that. These bodies were outspokenly pagan. They had special high days involving solemn ceremonies, all of a non-Christian nature. These days were connected to the name of some patron deity and involved sacrifices to his idol. Fully integrated with this were elaborate banquets, always accompanied by a variety of pagan rituals. As a rule these festive meals degenerated into debaucheries, with strong drink and disorderly conduct creating additional havoc.

So to join all this was by no means an innocent affair. If these people would really get themselves involved in all this then they had to go whole hog, and that meant that they could not possibly shun these ceremonies and festivities.

The problem also was that there simply was no alternative. If they did not join then they could not make a living, and thus were doomed to begging for bread. And if they did join, then, in essence, their entire Christian life was imperiled. Between these two perils they had to choose.

In other words Christians were forced to adopt a pagan culture.

So what about today? Is it any different?

What was fundamental for the Church in Thyatira is today of equal relevance for the church of Century 21.

This time also the church exists in a world which breathes a different spirit. This time also the church cannot withdraw, cannot isolate herself and cannot retreat to an island: it has to remain right in the center of the world.

But to stay there means that it constantly encounters conflicts. The congregation of Thyatira was too small to exist on its own and so be self-supporting, could not be independent from society at large: it was simply too tiny and too insignificant.

The real question was: on what basis should she build her modus operandi, her total life`s goal? This was a conscious choice: either participate in the public domain, or fundamentally refrain from any of these civic activities.

Yes, this 2000 year old dilemma is very current today!!

Apparently there were those in Thyatira who emphatically proclaimed that they could join these pagan organizations, because the alternative would be destitution. Common sense must prevail. If these people were motivated by declaring that it was their irrefutable duty to renew these pagan labor unions from within, then and only then they could have some ground for discussion. But then their intention to join these pagan bodies had to immediately be followed by the cautionary cry that under no circumstances would they do anything that would go against the Lord’s commands and the holy will of Jesus Christ. They would vouch to always remain true to your Savior!

It is clear that in pagan surroundings, a young church is always involved in all sorts of social problems, because it often is simply impossible to sever all community ties. But it would be imperative to emphatically state that they would never allow to be seduced by pagan practices. That, however, did the preachers in Thyatira fail to do.

On the contrary, they concocted a new sort of theology, a set of religious rules that seemed to justify cooperation with paganism. This theology was based on the premise that these heathen gods really did not exist at all, and that throwing a bit of incense on their altars posed no real problem at all. They would argue that this would constitute a harmless act because the recipients, those idols, didn’t even exist.

If they, with this empty gesture could guarantee an economic place in society, then, well, go ahead. They even went a step further: even these orgies and the subsequent sinful conduct were glossed over. It’s not so bad, during these nocturnal guild celebrations, to give in to one’s ‘primeval nature’. It does no harm to give full rein to the desires of the flesh because only then do you learn to know the depths of Satan.
That even sounded pious! You forget yourself in the filth of sensuous passions, and the next morning you wake up with a terrible hangover, but that is especially what you need because then you can, with full force, glorify in the grace of Christ.

Isn’t that a marvelous theology! Isn’t that a true miracle because it’s also very profitable! It allows you to be a carpenter, your pagan fellow citizens regard you as a congenial fellow, somebody who can join into the fun, and they order new chairs and table from you. Your business flourishes, and all is fine and dandy. And your Christian conscience is at rest.

That sort of theology is thoroughly practical and enables us to have the cake and eat it too. You become a successful businessman, you are in no time rich, you have the occasional fun-filled evening and happy-go-lucky night, and to top it off you can discover ‘the depths of the Satan”. It’s a perfect set-up.

In Thyatira the instigator of this new theology appears to have been a woman who is only identified with the less flattering name of Jezebel.

This woman presents herself as a ‘prophetess’. So, supposedly, she has her theology straight from the Holy Spirit. That’s a smart move because it wouldn’t be easy to base her ideas on the Scriptures. It’s, of course, much easier to appeal to prophetic inspiration. At the same time that part of the church that has not bought into the new theology is labeled as unspiritual. They are the literalists, those who adhere to the text of the Bible and are afraid to be swayed by power of the Spirit.

But she, Jezebel, has no such compunction, and she openly proclaims her theology. She does have adherents. She also has children and they side with their mother. Together they constitute a dangerous group in the midst of the church in Thyatira.

Are there Jezebels today?

Are there such people in the church today? Most definitely. There are many who deny that the earth is holy, who believe that nature is evil, and teach that Jesus never became human.

Today GNOSTICISM reigns. Trump is seen as the savior of Christianity. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell are the modern day Jezebels. They claim that oil is not polluting, and that prosperity – Joel Osteen – is a gospel-given. They see the earth is evil, so thrashing it poses no harm.

Punishment.

In Thyatira Jezebel and her followers receive a harsh but justified sentence. She will become seriously ill, her children will die, her adherents, the proclaimers of the ‘new theology’ will suffer severe suppression. They had embraced this new theology precisely to escape economic hardship and live a life of luxury, and now exactly the opposite is happening.

It is striking that Jesus calls himself one who searches the hearts and the minds. He exposes the ‘new theology’ as being essentially nothing else but cowardice, greed and a despicable compromise.

I believe that almost all of religion is affected by this teaching. Paul gave a warning to Timothy (1 Tim. 6: 10) “For the love of money is a root of all evil: and some whose hearts were fixed on it have been turned away from the faith.”
To bring that into a contemporary context, “For the abundant supply of fossil fuels is the root of all evil”. Carbon-based components supply all of us with the 24/7 service of 100 mechanical slaves.
But we are on the earth to serve creation and not to be served in such a way that creation dies.

“Hold on to what you have until I come”, are Jesus’ very words. That may involve some temporary hardship, but eternity is long.
That is the great requirement extended to all churches, also today.
Hold on: embrace what we have received from Christ: those are not matters we can bargain with. Live creation-friendly lives!

How the church in Thyatira dealt with the entire pagan situation, how she found her place within that pagan structure the Bible does not tell us. But one thing is clear: nothing that truly belongs to the gifts Christ blest us with, may ever be abandoned: the earth is holy, because it is a divine gift. We must treat it as such.

The last few verses of the letter to Thyatira forcefully speak of what is to come. “To those who overcome and do my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations”.

Acculturation today.

The ‘cultus’ of today is MONEY in the form of black gold. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. Today we are selling God’s creation to serve us as slaves, 24/7.”

How do we deal with the problem of our energy slaves which spell the end of creation?
That is the burning question today.
Thyatira withstood the temptation and got its reward: it got THE MORNINGSTAR, the Risen Christ and his new creation. Thyatira shunned the immediate reward to earn the eternal reward.

Our problem is much more difficult than what is related in the letter to Thyatira. We ARE fully compromised, we ARE totally integrated with the secular, earth-destroying, planet-polluting economy.
How we live today determines how we will LIVE tomorrow in the New Creation.

A note:
Some of the above has been translated from “En voort wentelen de eeuwen” (On and on the Ages Roll), by Dr. J. H. Bavinck.