Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

MAY 5 2018

ACCULTURATION (1)

The word ACCULTURATION speaks for itself, well, perhaps not quite. It’s not a word we employ every day. You recognize the ‘culture’ in it, which has ‘cultus’ as root, meaning ”worship”, so it has something to do with our religious way of life, the manner in which we live and the habits we take for granted.

What I try to explore this week and next, is whether our lifestyle conforms to biblical givens and for this I use some examples, both from contemporary scenes as well as from an episode found in Revelation, the last Bible book, in which Jesus sends a special letter to a church in Asia Minor, the present day in Turkey.

I read the word ACCULTURATION first in my ‘MAN’S RISE TO CIVILIZATION. There it is defined as “the change produced in one culture by the encounter with another”. The author uses the example of the first Europeans landing in America and meeting head on with the reigning lifestyle of the natives there.
Our First Nation sisters and brothers gave us a host of their foods, such as maize, potatoes, pumpkin, squash, avocadoes, chocolate and several kinds of beans, all sorts of medicine, such as quinine, but there the change stopped. We did not adopt their way of life. One look at the First Nation Reserves in Canada and the Indian Territories in the USA is clear evidence that not the original native, creation-friendly way of life prevailed, but the European, with disastrous results for both the indigenous crowd and the WHITE people.

The curious fact is that whites, when first encountering the native way of life, actually preferred the “Indian” way. When thirty cases of captive Whites were analyzed by an anthropologist, he found that they refused to be ransomed, preferring the native way of life of sharing and hospitality which was lacking in their own culture. The native sharing was all-embracive, included the natural treasures, such as the animals and the plants, which all were seen as an integral part of their existence. Where the invaders, the Europeans settlers saw trees as something to be exploited, saw the soil only as a medium to cultivate, the people they encountered in The New World had a totally different philosophy of life, treasuring the unity of their humanity with the environment.

We know only too well that the European way of exploitation prevailed and, by and large, the acculturation, the cultural transfer favored the invaders.

So where are we today?

Where in the “Indian- First Nation” culture, life was fully integrated with the environment, today everywhere the opposite is true, the dominating factor being MONEY, fiat money, money created out of nothing.

THE DEBT SITUATION.

The Global Debt situation, currently at the peak of $237 Trillion, means that every person on the globe owes $31,000, the poor peasants in Africa and India and the rich folk in North America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Europe. However, based on the immense difference between poor and rich, we, wealthy Westerners, on an average, are on the hook for more than $300,000 per head, or more than $1 million per family.

How did this debt situation come about?

If the financial institutions had not been able to turn debts into assets – mortgages and bonds – and sell these to investors, then debt creation could not have gone to such extremes and consumers would not have been able to borrow and spend themselves into a looming financial ruin.

If western consumers had not been able to borrow themselves so far into looming ruin, they would also not have been able to buy so many goods from Asia and other developing nations for a time. Asia and developing nations would not then have been able to mint so many new millionaires and billionaires in their governments and businesses who then funneled capital into western property markets, and western property markets would not have appreciated so far beyond domestic income gains.

If property prices had not increased so far beyond income gains, then households would not have had to borrow so much just to get a roof over their heads or obtain a post-secondary education.

If property owners had not been able to borrow so much, property prices, education and related services would never have been able to rise so much for so long, and become so unaffordable for the masses.

So, here we are: dug into a hole out of which there’s no escape.

William Butler Yeats (1854-1939) warned us in his poem The Second Coming that the world is upside down and that “the center cannot hold“:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…

Butler Yeats lived through World War I, saw the rise of Hitler and experienced The Great Depression.

Today we are on the verge of something worse. Here’s why.

The old need the young to drive productivity and innovation, pay taxes and support the social safety net. They also need the young to buy their assets (real estate, securities, businesses) when they wish to downsize and raise liquidity. If the young are broke: under-employed, over-indebted and under-saved, they cannot get a footing and the social contract becomes undone. That scenario threatens today.

Twenty years of central bank and government-enabled debt-driven asset bubbles, have broken long-standing laws of financial and social equilibrium. A total repricing cycle is necessary to break these inflated prices and return to “normal”.

Is return to normal still possible? When I took out my first and only mortgage in 1962, the ‘normal’ rate was 6 percent. SIX PERCENT today would kill everything.

For centuries cities have lured the young and ambitious in search of jobs and security. Now only the smart, brainy well- educated couples in finance and law can find a home there. Only they, earning is excess of $125,000, can assume the immense debt or afford the high rent of living in the city. Most other young people either flee or shun the increasingly unaffordable property prices.

Only a culture of debt has made city living possible. A culture of Debt always degenerates into a culture of Death.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” is a famous phrase said by Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. In it the character Polonius counsels his son Laertes before he embarks on his visit to Paris. He says, “For loan oft loses both itself and friend.”

ACCULTURATION further explained.

We live in a money culture, a culture financed by debt. It reminds me of Hitler Germany.

Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and in an amazing six short years he managed to build up a tremendous war machine, which, once it was set in motion, in the space of another 6 years conquered all of Europe except Great Britain.

On May 10 1940 the city I lived in, Groningen, fell, and after a 5 day struggle, the Netherlands too came under German occupation.

It used to be that in peacetime money is created when people buy homes and take out a mortgage or corporations build factories by issuing bonds, with the banks or bond byers providing the money. With the low money rates today – now as low as 3% – house prices almost everywhere in the world shot up, because the lower the rates, the more people can afford to buy property.

In wartime, money is created by government order for another purpose. Then the opposite happens: rather than financing positive developments, such as single family dwellings or office towers and museums or art galleries, that money is used in a negative way with fields littered with craters, with people killed and wounded, with roads destroyed and buildings demolished and children and their parents fleeing, often demoralized and depressed.

Today this difference is no longer true.

Now even in non-war times we experience war time conditions, because we are in a perpetual war against creation, where we exhaust water sources, where we deplete soil, where we pollute the air, where we change the weather for the worse.

As the universal war against creation worsens and becomes more violent, the planetary liabilities increase as deserts spread, seas rise, potable water disappears, lives are destroyed and infrastructure disappears: the inevitable result is inflation, money becoming less valuable. Wars always lead to stagflation, inflation combined with depression.

All this comes from creating money out of nothing, which fed our addiction to the money culture.

That’s how Hitler financed his 6 year war from 1939 to 1945: he just printed money. At his death, the Germans possessed 70 billion Reichsmarks in worthless banknotes and 380 billion in obligations of a regime which no longer existed. All of Germany had been converted into money and was totally destroyed, reduced to ZERO.

The JUBILEE effect.

In 1947-48 the allied occupation powers, the USA and Great Britain canceled all German debts, which was easy because most of the debts were owed to people who had been Nazis. Freeing Germany from debt was the root of its economic miracle.

Actually the Bible advocates such a move: every 50 years God had ordained that in the year of Jubilee all debts must be cancelled, giving all a chance to start a new life unencumbered by debts.

Today this is not possible because the debt is too huge: it would bankrupt all financial institutions and all governments.

Here’s what will happen.

Today our Age of Money is plunging the world into the most perilous instability. There are more than Seven Billion people in the world, increasingly huddled in cities that survive only by virtue of money. But money is to us as the potato was to the Irish people in the 1840’s: when money fails in its function – and with $237 Trillion of debt out there this is bound to happen – the cities of this earth, London, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Washington, Hong Kong, Beijing, will starve. Every city has a little Ireland in it, as Marx foresaw.

Money, far from being the harmless arena of human pride and joy, is the great destroyer. Because money is eminent desire, there’s no satisfaction in the external world unless it is conveyed in money.

Columbus landed into a money-less society, built on perpetuity. He then sucked out a thousand years of gold from the Caribbean in two or three years and extinguished all its human life. They were killed not by the musket, but by the more lethal invention, money.

Jesus, when he died on the cross, saw before his eyes not only the cosmos he had created, not only the people who had clamored for his death – and he prayed for them then and there – but he also saw with great clarity the thirty pieces of silver which had been the catalyst for the betrayal. He also pictured in living color, and in extreme detail the destruction caused by the human race, and the creational devastation, the result of the pursuit of money.

In our Western world everything is about money: the stock market, the strength of the dollar, the price of gold: three items mentioned in almost every newscast.
The word ACCULTURATION speaks for itself. It has the word ‘culture’ in it, which has ‘cultus’ as root, meaning ”worship”, so it has something to do with our religious way of life, the manner in which we live and the habits we take for granted.

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.

More next week. .
(Some of these thoughts I found in “FROZEN DESIRE, an inquiry into the meaning of money” by James Buchan.)

APRIL 28 2018

HAS THE GOOD NEWS BECOME FAKE NEWS?

The Greek word for THE GOOD NEWS is Eu-Angelos, from which we now have Evangel as well as Evangelism, the term to designate the act of bringing the Gospel.

It is my opinion that in the last few decades the essence of the GOOD NEWS has changed: under the influence of Gnosticism it has become a personal affair, relating solely to ‘me being born again.’ Many hymns not only laud going to heaven – another Gnostic heresy – but also emphasize that only we humans, are ‘washed in the blood.’ People simply don’t realize that Jesus’ blood and flesh was first hammered into the tree and that his blood first dripped into the earth, both blessing trees and earth forever.

That the major part of American Christianity has sided with Trump, a man who glorifies in being a ‘sinner’ is proof positive that American Christianity has ceased to be “Christian”, as Harold Bloom conclusively demonstrated in his book, THE AMERICAN RELIGION.

The American religion sees earth as evil, and denies Jesus’ humanity, in effect canceling the core message of the Bible. In other words, American Christianity in almost all of its denominational expressions has become a fake religion.

Where do I base this on?

Bonhoeffer in his essay “Thy Kingdom Come”, writes, “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond (he means heaven): rather he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children. ….We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean PIOUS, CHRISTIAN SECULARISM, not the godlessness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of THE EARTH.”

Eighty percent of white Evangelicals who voted for Trump see the earth as evil. That’s why Trump rescinded Obama’s environmental rules, and appointed Pruitt as his environmental secretary, a man who denies Climate Change, and encourages the use of carbon fuels.

J.H. Bavinck, Bonhoeffer’s contemporary, comes to the same conclusion. In his book, BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, ‘A Radical Kingdom Vision’, he writes,
“It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one over¬arching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck signal a radical shift from the generally accepted definition of SALVATION. Accepting this total package means adhering to a faith-life completely and drastically and fundamentally different from the generally accepted definition, basically signaling that the current idea of THE GOOD NEWS essentially is FAKE NEWS.

There’s also another factor.

Compared to the conditions when the Bible was written, we Westerners are the richest ever by far, having 100 energy slaves at our beck and call 24/7. This makes Jesus’ pronouncement about living so luxuriously quite scary. He said, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”. When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” (Luke 18: 24-25).
This rhetorical question, “Who then can be saved”, is found in all three Synoptic Gospels, and is today the burning question facing all churches, because our lifestyle is the highest ever in history.

This question is especially relevant for us: basically we no longer need God: we are too rich (taking highly polluting cruises is just one example). We also are too technically independent.

So then what is THE NEW GOOD NEWS today?

We live in different times. Everything is up for grabs. Our entire outlook of life is changing. Anything to do with carbon fuels – and that means 99.9 percent of what we consume – is now tainted, pushing us squarely toward extinction.

Last week I read an article by Dr. David Page, a terrestrial geologist with decades of experience. In ARCTIC NEWS he writes, “The dramatic explosion of Siberian permafrost mounds over the last four years has received worldwide media attention, igniting speculations of a methane “time-bomb” and a climatic threshold crossed.”
Once these methane mounds explode – and this can happen any day – he gives humanity a couple of years, a verdict echoed by Dr. Guy McPherson (Sam Canara).

Today, Anno 2018, reminds me of John the Baptizer, whose singular message was “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck state, based on the Bible, that not heaven but the renewed Garden of Eden is the Kingdom to come.

This means that churches have to make a radical shift, from Fake News to the Real NEW News, from individual redemption to the planetary, from personal to global, from heaven to earth.

That this involves an almost impossible U-turn is evident from Jesus’ own words, “Many are called, and few are chosen”, found in Matthew 22: 14. Luke 18: 8 confirms this, “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” The sad fact is that, just as ALL governments aim for Economic Growth which is the cause of Climate Change, all churches preach Heaven, at the detriment of Earth.

So…

Is the Old Testament here different than the New? Do both Jews and Christians differ on this point? Not really. The Jews still are the COVENANT people, still possess the real message.

The Christian viewpoint can be captured in one paragraph: All of Life is Religion, and since God made the earth, The Earth is Holy; life is of one piece, not a split between heaven and earth, not sacred apart from secular, not nature here and grace there: no dualism at all, because ‘EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.’

The Jewish faith.

This past week I read an essay by a Jewish Rabbi. Here’s what he, in part, had to say:

“Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the great twentieth-century theoretician of Jewish law (Halakhah) who died twenty-five years ago, addressed (some religious) questions within the context of his own tradition—though his answers are relevant to people of all faiths.

“On the one hand, explains Rabbi Soloveitchik, Judaism wants people to live full, natural lives, and the commandments pertaining to the physical side of existence—such as festive meals, conjugal relations, or offering first fruits—force people to involve themselves in the natural world. In this manner, one who follows the Halakhah can avoid the temptation of a purely ethereal, otherworldly spirituality, which leads to a dualistic affirmation of the spirit and rejection of the world.”
My comment, “That is my type of language: cuddle up to the earth, our natural habitat forever.”

“On the other hand, Halakhah demands that one actively sanctify one’s physical existence. This sanctification is attained through the observance of mitzvot (commandments), which affect every facet of a person’s worldly existence, from the moment of awakening until the moment of falling asleep.”
There again, my comment, “Sanctification means making holy: all of life is holy.”
“These mitzvot sanctify not just one’s personality (by asserting control over one’s physical drives), but one’s very actions and physicality. By infusing every area of life with meaning and purpose, the individual avoids a divided existence. The all-encompassing demands of the mitzvoth ensure that one will be conscious of God at all times. When one serves God by all means at one’s disposal, one consecrates one’s entire life to God, making one’s service of God integrated and complete.”
My comment, “Isn’t that beautiful!? It basically says that all of life is religion and must honor God.”
“What are the dangers of a religious posture that ignores the arena of one’s natural worldly existence, concentrating exclusively on religious feeling and contemplation? Rabbi Soloveitchik’s objections to such an approach can be grouped under five headings: This form of religiosity is otherworldly, unrealistic, purely subjective, overly individualistic, and undemocratic. Judaism, by contrast, believes that the world is “very good,” and frowns upon monasticism.
“With its pervasive psychological realism, Halakhah has recognized that ordinary mortals need to be jogged out of their spiritual lethargy, and that unless they are prodded to specific action, many will be quite content to neglect the religious life completely. Habitual observance ingrains moral and religious sensibility into the very fiber of the personality. It strengthens the inner power of spirit and, at a deeper level human emotion is profoundly affected by the very process of externalization. …
“The fact that it is more likely that actions will influence emotions than the reverse explains why Halakhah devotes its primary attention to actions. If religion does not provide man with an objective framework of action containing specific divine norms, it will—at best—be vague and transient. At worst, it will lead to the most horrible excesses.
“Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that it is not only undesirable for one to try to escape one’s corporeality, it is also impossible. Any ideology based on the premise that a human can become a purely spiritual creature is doomed to failure. By focusing solely on the person’s contemplative-spiritual side, it fails to acknowledge the strength of his or her inner drives and passions. Seeking to do the impossible, it fails to do what is necessary, namely, to restrain and channel one’s drives and use them positively. Freedom from the authority of specific norms, and from a sense of coercion in following them, leads to moral anarchy and finally degeneracy. By becoming concrete, objective, and specific, religion becomes strong enough to affect one’s entire life, to withstand temptation, to endure regardless of the individual’s mood, and to survive from generation to generation.
“A religion that focuses solely on inner experience may lead to an “extravagant religious individualism” that is not geared toward the formation of a community.”
My comment again: Going to heaven is based on pure individualism. This rabbi totally concurs with Bonhoeffer and Bavinck that formation of community is the aim of religion, as Bavinck unequivocally states, “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.

And as Rabbi Soloveitchik notes in The Halakhic Mind, “the force and effectiveness of religion grows commensurately with increasing participation of the entire society in the religious drama.

“Thus, in a normative religion such as Judaism, all individuals are equally able to approach God. A religion lacking this common basis of connection to God becomes stratified; as Rabbi Soloveitchik writes, it “gives rise to ecclesiastical tyranny, religious aristocracies, and charismatic personalities. And there is nothing that the Halakhah loathes and despises as much as the idea of cultic mediation or the choosing of individuals, on the basis of supernatural considerations, to be intercessors for the community.”

My comment: ”I sense here a hint to the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, with its historic hierarchy, which is not found in the Bible.”

HAS THE GOOD NEWS BECOME FAKE NEWS?

Yes, the traditional message of the church that Jesus saves our souls, and that we, upon death, go to heaven, is still the core of the Christian message in all denominations. It totally ignores God’s earth which he called ‘good’ repeatedly. The earth, as God’s Work of ART, is an extension of the Divine and as such is holy.

The REAL good news – which I call THE NEW-OLD NEWS is that God, the Earth and Humanity belong together, which will find its perfection in the New Creation to come: it is NEW, because the church strayed away from it: it is OLD because the Old Testament mentioned it repeatedly.

The NEW-OLD NEWS truth is foundational for both the Hebrew and the Christian Faith.

April 21 2018

WORLD WAR FOREVER.

Very few people will share my opinion that we have been engaged in a WORLD WAR against creation ever since Adam and Eve, a total war which I label WORLD WAR FOREVER. The reason that it started almost totally unnoticed, as a mere skirmish, is its innocuous beginning: no more than picking a fruit.
Nevertheless this conflict is now so intense that it threatens everybody and everything in the world and will lead to a total environmental collapse in a few years.

That WORLD WAR FOREVER was the immediate consequence of our disobedience, manifest in the growth of thorns and thistles sprouting everywhere – see Genesis 3: 18.

Why was and is this a global war? It is because all of creation, everything that existed including humanity, became defiled.

That’s the main reason why I see original sin in a different way: I perceive it as an attack against the totality of creation, symbolized in the first chapters of Genesis, by a fruit tree. There, I believe, the human pair plucked an apple or pear or peach or whatever, without asking the tree for permission.

That first act of defiance basically amounted to placing ourselves above creation. Rather than being its servant, we acted contrary to Jesus’ words, Mark 10: 45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That ‘many’ includes part of humanity and trees. That the Bible uses trees as examples indicates their importance in the Bible.

The Bible often refers to trees as symbols of perfection. In Psalm 1, for instance, an upright person is “like a tree planted by streams of water.”
And then there is the Tree of Life which indicates to me that the Tree represents Life.
When God gives the human pair a tour of the Garden of Eden he personally singles out some specific tree species, emphasizing first their beauty and then their usefulness. Later when the Satan follows the same route, he switches the order, mentioning first the utilitarian aspects of the fruit – good to eat – and as a second thought its aesthetic function.

Taking the fruit without permission marks the beginning of capitalism, which, from its very inception, has exploited the earth for human benefit, and so initiated WAR against creation, which has grown in intensity in exponential proportion to the growth of human numbers.

Jesus, growing up in a carpenter’s shop, was acquainted with wood from an early age. Luke 13: 7 shows Jesus’ practical bent, “So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?”
I think Jesus saw soil also as important, because he made us from soil, “Soil you are and to soil you will return”, is a famous quote.

Jesus, grown up with trees, died on one as well. His flesh and blood were hammered first into the tree before it reached the soil: forever blessing them both.

In the very last Bible chapter there is that beautifully poetic line: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations”, which to me suggests that the sin against trees is at the root of sin in the beginning, because the destruction of trees heralded the demise of the earth: the absence of trees signifies the death of creation, robs us of a cure.

Universal War.

My point is that our war against trees and earth is the real WORLD WAR that has raged from the very beginning of human history and find its culmination today, spelling the End of civilization as we know it: that war began with a tree, will end with the tree, while the Tree of Calvary stands at its very centre to restore it all.

Politicians and generals love wars because it detracts from problems at home. That may over-simplify the situation but looking at what is called World War I – 1914-18, even now people wonder why it ever happened. But it did take place and changed the world, another hasty step toward the End.

In CATASTROPHE 1914 EUROPE GOES TO WAR, the author, Max Hastings, writes in his recent book that “It is a conceit of our own times to suppose that we are obliged to live, and national leadership to make decisions, amid unprecedentedly rapid change. Yet between 1900 and 1914, technological, social and political advances swept Europe and America on a scale unknown in any such previous timespan, the blink of an eye in human experience. Einstein promulgated his special theory of relatively. Marie Curie isolated radium and Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first synthetic polymer. Telephones, gramophones, motor vehicles, cinema performances and electrified homes became commonplace among affluent people in the world’s richest societies. Mass circulation newspapers soared to unprecedented social influence and political power.”

True, World War II – 1939-45 – was necessary: Hitler was a force for evil, which had to be removed, an outgrowth of the World War I.
Wars usually are unnecessary. There was no reason for the USA and Britain to go to war with Iraq in 2003. There was no reason for Germany and France to fight in 1870, beyond newly formed Germany to prove its military power. There was no reason for war in 1914, beyond the murder of an archduke in Bosnia. As A.J.P Taylor said of 1914, “Nowhere was there a conscious determination to provoke a war. Statesmen miscalculated and became prisoners of their own weapons. The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight”.

Anno 2018 we again are in an era of immense change, with the prospect that the world of WORK will see tremendous upheaval as Robots and Artificial Intelligence start to deeply influence – and perhaps mostly eliminate – work for a large segment of society, especially the male portion.

Our family often walks on a nearby old railroad track, made more than a century ago, all hills and valleys made smooth by shovel and pick, requiring enormous muscle power to accomplish it.
To finish the Cross-Canada-Railway thousands of Chinese were imported. Today, thanks to Carbon Power, physical labor is no longer needed, as the use of OIL has given each of us 100 slaves 24/7. Slavery always is an abomination, as we are discovering.

When politicians run stuck – and today they do – they become aggressive and talk war. With lunatics increasingly in the driver’s seat, the world situation looks grim. Both the state of the economy and the environment are precarious. The explosion of global debt is beyond anything ever recorded: the global debt is now $237 Trillion, or $30,000 for every living being on earth, including the 3 billion people who live on less than $1,000 per year. That amount grew $21 Trillion globally over the last year, roughly 10%, while global growth was a mere 2-3%, an impossible situation. That simply means global bankruptcy and that very soon. What will be the consequences? The current monetary situation reminds me of Paul, the apostle, writing to his friend Timothy (1 Timothy 6: 10), “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

Behind this crazy borrowing of money, now such an immense amount that it never ever can be repaid, looms the human future, one of strife, conflict, war, revolution, of which the Syrian situation is but a prelude. If the weather so far in 2018 is any indication, we are in for a most perilous year there too. As yet missing are severe earthquakes. Be prepared!

Additional perils

Basically the Syrian war is a result of
(1) Climate Change, where drought and desertification has threatened the livelihood of millions of farmers in the Middle East. This is poised to become a world-wide phenomenon, either too much water or not enough, and
(2) religious, a conflict between Muslims: Sunni versus Shias, between the supporters of kings, democracies, and secular governments, versus the Sunni arm of Islam, and the Alawites, Iran and Iraq. As such, it is extended across the entire Middle East, encompassing Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies on one side and Iran and its Shiite allies including the Washington supported government in Baghdad, the Washington demonized government in Damascus and the Hezbollah faction of Lebanon, on the other.

In one form or another, this clash has been going on for 1300 years, and is centered on the Middle East, far, far away from Toronto, New York, Paris, Melbourne and London. Geographically it has nothing to do with us, but since OIL is buried there, and OIL lubricates our wasteful lifestyle, we have an intimate interest in the region. That’s why the USA Fifth Fleet is there: the Trillion Dollar deficit in the USA annual budget mainly comes from its military expenditure, not really priced in into the world Oil price.

Just as in the period 1900-14, now 100 years ago, the nations are armed to the teeth, with the immense difference that the weapons are a thousand times more lethal.

And then there is the computer scare: the next war may simply be a war of wits: who can neutralize the other party first by sabotaging the entire Internet network.

The new face of war.

That means that “war” may mean anything from a trade war to cyber-attacks to an actual shooting war. Due to that broad definition of war we must be prepared all the time, because the overriding war is THE WORLD WAR FOREVER.

Our precaution must include everything from the basics (food, water, fuel) to holding some cash out of the banks (in case they stop working for some reason), to having a certain amount of physical gold and/or silver bullion handy.

The base level preparations we should have in place regardless of what sort of war comes along:
• A minimum of three months of food for your family plus others. You decide how many others that might be. A couple of close friends? Half your church?
• Water filtration devices capable of filtering one gallon per person, per day, for three months. You may have to buy extra devices and/or filters to accomplish this. If you do not have access to your own water (well, nearby pond, lake or stream), then stored water sufficient to last several weeks.
• Cash out of the bank that can cover three months of living expenses.
• A bug out bag pre-loaded with your most valuable documents, irreplaceable pictures, medicines, perhaps a cross bow and arrows, some cash and some gold/silver bullion. As the natural disasters of late have shown, you never know when you might have to pick up and flee with little/no warning.
• All the basics in case of a nuclear exchange or a grid-down event that causes nuclear plants to overheat and explode as happened in Fukushima. Dosimeters/Geiger counters, plastic sheeting, tape, and disposable coveralls and facemasks.

I installed a frost-free hand pump on our well. It came in handy when the pole carrying the electricity from the highway to our house, snapped and we were without power for three days.

A different world.

Today we live in a different world, where World Wars are waged simultaneously: today WW FOREVER is intensifying, to the point where this ancient war, started aeons ago, is the immediate consequence of our disobedience.

It started modestly, beginning with the growth of thorns and thistles sprouting everywhere, but is now threatening our very existence thanks to ABRUPT AND SUDDEN Climate Change.

All other wars – cyber and economic, even nuclear – pale into insignificance compared to the dangers of Methane Hydrates exploding in the Arctic: once this happens, we have less than a decade of life left.

Be always prepared to meet your Maker because that ancient, but enduring WORLD WAR FOREVER can suddenly intensify to total destruction thanks to the melting ARCTIC.

Post Script.
My mistake: a mere zero!

Last week I made an error: the debt per person in the world is $31,000. But, based on GDP per person, it is $300,000 for us Westerners, with a Gross Domestic Product of more than $30,000 per person, while in poorer regions it is a less than $1,000 per person, still a considerable sum for the average dweller in much of China, India and Africa.

APRIL 14 2018

THE WORD OF GOD.

When preachers talk about THE WORD OF GOD or THE WORD OF THE LORD, they mean THE BIBLE: Period. When common folk refer to the Bible, and some do occasionally, they always mean THE WRITTEN WORD.

A few weeks ago I read a magazine published by a Christian post-secondary institution. In it the author described the rationale for such an establishment, basing his reasoning solely on the Bible, honoring the maxim, SOLA SCRIPTURE, Scripture Alone.

A few months before, at that same college, I attended a lecture on the REFORMATION. There too the speaker limited revelation to the Bible, frequently mentioning the SOLA SCRIPTURA formula.

It is my considerate opinion that all churches – and I don’t know of any exceptions – have the wrong idea of THE WORD OF THE LORD. The same applies to Christians centres of learning, with the likely exception of the Toronto-based Institute for Christian Scholarship (ICS): they all see the Bible as their raison d’?tre only.

Yet these Reformed churches and Christian learning centres – and all our five kids attended Christian Schools – all state that they adhere to the Three Forms of Unity, (1) The Heidelberg Catechism, (2) The Canons of Dordt, and (3) The Belgic Confession.

The latter categorically states that we know God FIRST by his creation, making creation God’s PRIMARY OR DIRECT WORD, because it solely is God’s doing: no human involvement at all.

That makes the Scriptures God’s SECONDARY OR INDIRECT word, because the Bible as we know it came into being 1700 years ago. Yes, the Bible is an inspired human book, whose contents were decided in the Church Council in Nicaea in 324 by majority vote. The Song of Songs barely made it, and so did Esther, while the Gospel of Thomas was excluded.

Here’s what the Belgic Confession says about knowing God:
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
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, for God’s glory
and for our salvation.

If I see this correctly then the task of the church is twofold: it must strive to know God by
(1) instructing its adherents to learn about creation, and making them closely look at its greatness and harmonious design, and doing everything possible to safeguard Creation, because it is HOLY. Ideally a preacher to have a deep interest in nature, one who takes John 3: 16 seriously – as we all should.
(2) Getting to know God requires connecting Creation with what the Bible teaches: the two are like an ideally married pair, like the engine and its wheels, like the horse and the wagon.
Psalm 119: 105 combines the two when it states that “Your (written) Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path in the Created Word.” In other words, the Bible ought to shed light on our daily routine of life, in all its creaturely manifestations.

Calvin

We do well to listen to Calvin who was a wise man and was never tired of pointing out that in the bible God condescended to our limitations. The Word of God – the Bible – was conditioned to the historical circumstances to which it was uttered.

Take the creation story: it was written for an agrarian tribe with no knowledge of the intricacies of evolution and the slow natural changes due to different climate and habitat. The creation story is an example of what Calvin called ‘balbative’ or ‘baby talk’, which adapted immensely complexed processes to the mentality of the uneducated people – now, it seems comprising the vast majority of church goers.

In my opinion the Bible basically tells us how God created the cosmos, how, once in our possession, we sold it to God’s arch enemy, and how Christ, with his death, bought it back.
Creation points to God’s greatness and infinite wisdom, but it is absurd to expect Scripture to teach scientific fact: anybody who wants to learn about astronomy should look up, way up.

The Belgic Confession is correct: the natural world is God’s first revelation. Answers to such controversial matters as homosexuality and same-sex marriage, cannot be found in the Bible. For that we have to go to God’s animal world, where we can observe homosexuality among apes, for instance. When it exists there, then we can conclude that the same is true among humans and thus a natural occurrence.

What the Bible especially tells us is that we must love creation and its inhabitants unconditionally. Where Creation is – or was – perfect, the Bible is not. The very last verses in the New Testament point to the persons who transcribed the original documents, and warn them not to add or subtract anything. Of course humans being humans did that, made errors and spouted opinions – such as Paul did recommending wine for a stomach ailment and for women never to speak up – that make no sense today. Based on the Bible the Roman Catholic Church still sees women as second class creatures.

Many of those who see the Bible as literally perfect, not a word out of place, are yet Muslim haters, contradicting Leviticus 19: 33-34, “When aliens live with you in the land do not mistreat them…. They must be treated as the native born. Love them as yourselves.”
Of course these aliens had different habits. Of course these people were religious, and of course had practises that would be considered horrible today, yet the Bible preaches tolerance.

The Reformation was a good thing, but is also opened the door to many interpretations, so that we have scores of different denominations, all claiming to know exactly what the Bible teaches us.

The Bible urges us to get WISDOM. Proverb 4: 7 tells us that, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”

Getting wisdom is the wisest thing we can do! Of course, studying science is not the same as gaining wisdom: but both
require study, discernment, and hard work.

Centuries ago, when Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) observed creation, he felt that science was ‘more divine than human’. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who expanded on Copernicus’ findings was silenced by the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Even today there still is a strong anti-intellectual tendency in much of religion, especially among the so-called Christian-Right.

This anti-science mentality has come to a point where the earth is seen as evil, influenced by Gnosticism, a pagan practise severely condemned, especially in the letters of John.

Bonhoeffer categorically stated that God, Humanity and the Earth form an unbreakable bond. J.H. Bavinck wrote in the same vein, maintaining that redemption of creation and personal salvation are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have one without the other! You can’t say you love Jesus while consciously polluting the earth he created. (Colossians 1: 15-20).

In his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, “a radical kingdom vision”, Bavinck writes,
“In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
“This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation.”

This simply means that creation is HOLY.

The Bible affirms the two-pronged concept of THE WORD: John 1: 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word (LOGOS), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Psalm 33: 9 affirms that, “For he spoke – said THE WORD – and it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm.”
These texts do not refer to the Scriptures – it did not exist – but to God’s Creating Word.

Jesus died on the cross to buy back – redeem – creation that WE sold to God’s adversary. Jesus also saves us, but his primary goal was to restore Creation: John 3: 16 makes that abundantly clear. Only those who love Creation as Jesus did, have eternal life.

Dr. Barry Commoner, American biologist and educator, is an example of divine insight. He taught at Washington University and Queens College and came to the same conclusion as Bonhoeffer and Bavinck.

By studying creation Commoner fashioned Four Laws of ECOLOGY.

1. Everything Is Connected To Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. Humans and other species are connected/dependent on other species. With this in mind it becomes hard to practice anything other than compassion and harmlessness.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature, and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown. Everything, such as wood smoke, nuclear waste, carbon emissions, etc., must go somewhere.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, likely to be detrimental to that system.” The Creation, one can argue, has an intelligence, and to tinker with that “unintellectually” we get global warming pollution, etc.

4. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

Chaos everywhere.

Today nature/creation is disintegrating, and, since everything is connected to everything else, this affects all of life.

The election of Trump is merely a symptom. Sociological CHAOS made this happen: the rich too rich, the poor too poor. This week I am reading FIRE AND FURY by Michael Wolff, and am astounded by the ignorance of the current US President, who is nevertheless the champion of some 40 percent of the US electorate.

It comes as no surprise that the chaos in God’s Created Word is reflected in the chaos in the political field and in the economic sphere.
What we observe today is the waning of the nation state. The state is caught in an impossible situation, expected to be everything for everybody: healthcare, life-time pensions, total security.

Once the debt-trap springs, ($237 Trillion world-wide debt divided by 7.5 Billion people equals $300,000 for every living person on the Globe!!) most people are caught without reserves: riots will be the result, as Trump’s FORTY percent will rebel: they have the guns.

THAT COLOSSAL DEBT WILL DO US IN.

When the recession hits, the rise in unemployment will further reduce personal savings and the ability to consume. It will further strain an already burdened government welfare system as less and less people will pay taxes while there is a swelling pool of aging baby-boomers dependent on government assistance in pensions and medical costs.

History is rushing to its END. The good news – and it is GOOD NEWS for those who honor BOTH WORDS- is that the next “crisis,” will be the “great reset” which will see the COMING OF THE KINGDOM, because all possible disasters will converge: Nuclear War, Climate Change, Pandemic, Earthquakes, just to name a few because ‘everything is connected to everything else’.

It is striking that Revelation 21: 22 specifically mentions the absence of a place of worship, “I did not see a temple in the City”, the New Jerusalem, the restored Garden of Eden.
No temple means no church; no temple means no Bible. God’s Kingdom only includes THE EARTH, fully restored to its pristine state.

Treasure the EARTH as your dearest possession, because only the CREATED WORD will prevail.

APRIL 7 2018

WHEN WILL IT BE OUR TURN?

When I was born, in 1928, I had 2 billion people as cohabitants on Planet Earth. Some scientists now claim that this number is the ideal goal to go back to. Back to Two Billion? That will hurt.

I vividly remember 1937 when I contracted a bladder infection – that was the time before penicillin – and was consigned to bed rest for 6 weeks, with the doctor visiting me twice a week. It helped that his father, a retired minister, lived next door.

During my period of convalescence, I read 100 books: nothing too serious I presume as a 9-10 year old lad. My bed was placed in front of a large window – three stories high – and I had a bird’s eye view of the street scene, where every day a number of milkmen came calling delivering their milk, eggs, butter, even readymade buttermilk porridge. I also each day noticed several bakers on their three-wheeled cargo bikes, and many different horse-drawn greengrocers with elaborate displays of fruits and vegetables.

I was always fascinated by the daily street cleaner, removing the horse manure and other litter, saw with awe the policeman on his bike patrolling the neighborhood, and, of course, was jealous how my buddies played their various games, and the grown-ups walked and biked to work, and everybody came home for lunch, which actually was the main meal. Only the doctor had a car, all the others either had foot or peddle-power or had horse-drawn transportation.

All in all, while being bed-bound I never had a dull moment. It was like experiencing Live TV on the all-day street-scene, constantly observing the minute by minute changing panorama from my elevated position. Oh yes, I should not forget that my teacher came once or twice a week to bring me homework and pick up my assignments.

Back then life was simple, non-polluting, basically body-powered and permanently sustainable. Churches flourished, political rivalry prominent, book stores everywhere, tobacconists on every city block, grocery stores always near, and so where butcher shops, with cow carcasses visibly displayed, with your desire meat cut cleaved out while waiting.

So how does 2018 compare?

During my lifetime the world population grew from 2 billion to 7.5 billion, an increase of 375 percent. Precaution passed away together with God, who vanished with the ascent of the Carbon Age. Today that same street is now a parking lot. No kids, no vendors, still walkers and still bikers, however.

The same is true outside the city. Where once horses prevailed now giant tractors do the job, world-wide. The result: today, anno 2018, more than 75 percent of the Earth’s land areas have lost some or most of their functions, undermining the well-being of the 3.2 billion people that rely on them to produce food crops, provide clean water, control flooding and more. These once-productive lands have either become deserts, are polluted, or have suffered flood damage beyond repair.

Today the real question is HOW LONG CAN WE LAST?

Someday soon there will be a TIPPING POINT, because we have discarded the Precautionary Principle.

So what is that principle?

One of many definitions, the 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle says: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

The ancient Romans also knew a thing or two. They coined:
Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem:
Whatever you do, do cautiously, and look to the end.

That’s what the Precautionary Principle is, something we can all intuitively understand. The Bible is also a guide here, in the words of Jesus, (Luke 14: 28) “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?”

We should care not so much about money (we can create that out of nothing while, in Jesus’s days, money units had real value, such as gold). What we should be concerned about is ‘respice finem = look to the end’, the ultimate result of our actions, that’s why Jesus called himself an ‘Anthropos Teleios’, reminding us always to keep the ‘telos’ the END in mind.

Take our inaction on Climate Change: in 2017, the United States spent as much in disaster relief — for floods, wildfires, drought, and storms — as the total comparable spending from 1980 to 2010.
It could well be that 2018 would set another record with ominous results for the debt situation in the USA and the poor people who will lose their homes and livelihood.

In the Precautionary Principle you act without knowing exactly what will happen, but look ahead and weigh the possibilities. Insurance is a precautionary action. If we first want scientific proof that some action or product can be harmful to humanity and/or the natural world, we run the risk of inflicting irreversible damage before that proof can be delivered.

Take CLIMATE CHANGE.

Don’t tell me that Climate Change could not be predicted. In 1896 Svante Arrhenius – one of the first Nobel Prizewinners – stated that burning carbon products might very well heat the planet to heights outside all human experience. Now 120 years later he has been proved right.
Just this past week ARCTIC NEWS sent a new observation:
Arctic News
How much warmer is it now?

The IPCC – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – is strongly downplaying the amount of global warming that has already occurred and that looks set to happen over the next decade or so. The ‘First Order Draft of the Summary for Policy Makers’ estimates that the global mean temperature reached approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels around 2017/2018.

That is today pure politics, catering to the USA. It acts like the Tobacco Industry when it denied a link between tobacco use and human health: that’s what the USA is doing regarding Climate Change.

Compare their previous actions with their current policy.
In 1917 the USA entered the war zone in Europe, and this turned the war around in favor of France and Great Britain. It did the same in 1941 with the same result. Now in 2018, in the WAR TO END ALL WARS, the world versus God, it has joined THE GREAT ENEMY OF GOD, making sure that God’s earth will be destroyed: all precaution has been abandoned.

MONSANTO.

A good example of that war is MONSANTO. The very name gives me shivers. MON means ‘mine’ in French. SANTO has overtones of saintly and healthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The name could mean MY HEALTH, or even MY HOLINESS. No wonder I almost puke when it see the word: Mon Morte is a better word: my death.

Monsanto seeds.

If there ever was a need for the Precautionary Principle then it applies to the so-called GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms. To allow them to be introduced in our eco- and food systems creates unknown risks that we have no way of overseeing, because these risks may cause irreversible damage to the very systems we rely on for survival.
Dow-Dupont, ChemChina and Bayer Monsanto are not ‘seed companies’. They are ‘seeds-that-need-our-chemicals-to-grow’ companies. And they are out to conquer the entire world: a 100-times worse version of Facebook. And our governments subsidize the use of their products.

We have no clue how bad GMOs will turn out to be, a very good reason to ban them. Once they spread, they can’t be stopped anymore. Then the chemical boys will own all of our food. But we do know how bad the pesticides and other chemicals they produce are.

Monsanto et al must prove that their products do no harm. They are unable to do so, which is why they have, and need, huge lobbying, PR and legal departments.

What is the result of all these chemicals in our food and the food chain? DEATH.

INSECTS

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said. The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.

The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research. “Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

BIRDS

Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in a pair of studies – one national in scope and the other covering a large agricultural region in central France. “The situation is catastrophic,” said Benoit Fontaine, a conservation biologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History and co-author of one of the studies. “Our countryside is in the process of becoming a veritable desert,” he said in a communique released by the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which also contributed to the findings.

The common white throat, the ortolan bunting, the Eurasian skylark and other once-ubiquitous species have all fallen off by at least a third, according a detailed, annual census initiated at the start of the century. A migratory song bird, the meadow pipit, has declined by nearly 70%. The museum described the pace and extent of the wipe-out as “a level approaching an ecological catastrophe”. The primary culprit, researchers speculate, is the intensive use of pesticides on vast tracts of monoculture crops, especially wheat and corn. The problem is not that birds are being poisoned, but that the insects on which they depend for food have disappeared.

WHEN WILL IT BE OUR TURN?

With Climate Change accelerating beyond all predictions, with insects numbers plummeting, and the resulting premature deaths of birds, with species disappearing faster than ever recorded in the long history of the earth, with soils being degraded everywhere, poisoned so much that soon the crops grown will become pure poison rather than pure food, with the economic situation so precarious that the slightest rumor can cause stock markets to tumble, with debts amounted to scores of trillions of dollars, the question of total collapse is not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’.

COSMOCIDE

We are the last generation, guilty of COSMOCIDE. Whatever happens to the air, the soil, the water, the animals, will happen to us, because everything is connected to everything else.

The words of Revelation 18: 4 come to mind,
“Come out of her , my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues, for her sins are (literally) piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.”

That’s what we do: we are sinning against God when we harm his HOLY creation, which could well be THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT: “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” Mark 3: 29.

Oh, my Calvinistic credentials, so stern!!

March 31 2018

ARE YOU FOOLISH OR WISE?

Ponderings on the parable of the five foolish and five wise young women.

That parable, found in Matthew 25, starts with, “At that time”. That’s the time just before THE FINAL JUDGEMENT, soon to come.

This passage definitely suggests that THE END comes out of the blue: no advance notice. People are at ease: not a cloud in the sky: we all know that weddings take place when people feel confident and upbeat. It’s also an elaborate wedding. Just imagine: TEN bridesmaids!

Jesus starts it with, “At that time.” That sets the scene.

What time is that?

It’s the time when the organized church has largely become irrelevant, when “the Left Behind” and “Rapture” heresies finds general acceptance, when extinction is so common that nobody pays any attention on this sort of un-creation.

So what does the Parable tell us?

That parable is pretty straightforward. Ten Bridesmaids, young girls, teenagers, I imagine, who are responsible for preparing the bride to meet the bridegroom.

It so happens that teenagers have featured prominently lately, agitating against gun ownership, high school kids who, according to the latest surveys, have almost en mass stopped going to church.

Well, here it is different.

Picture the scene. Imagine ten excited young women; they all been asked to play a part in the proceedings. They are quite a relaxed and happy bunch, no different from young women today. Each had done her best to look pretty, but, still a bit unsure how they would compare to the others, had entered the hall with some trepidation, but when they had seen how the others were attired, they felt better and actually quite pleased with themselves.

To us they all would look equally qualified. But somehow Jesus made a distinction in the group. Five he called foolish. Five he called wise.

That’s one thing I found questionable. Why are the foolish called foolish? We know that the foolish are labeled that way because they had not taken extra oil along for their lamps.

Tell me: What would you have done had you been among the chosen Ten? The wedding is set for three o’clock. Of course most of them were there at least an hour before that, the party is somewhat later, but certainly it would be all over before midnight, because tomorrow is another busy day. The lights are needed for that short trip to the wedding hall, so, for the time being the lamps are set on low-low. With a full tank there’s plenty of oil for the entire proceeding, with fuel to spare.

Plain common sense.

The Bridegroom was known to be a punctual man, so why take along extra jars of that smelling and expensive fuel? Suppose that the earthen crock pot would break and spill its contents all over the new dress. These jars were not like our plastic cans, no, they were frail, cumbersome and heavy. Mother was right: just to carry a lamp with a full tank would be enough. Also, how can you carry the presents when one hand is needed to carry the light and another to carry extra oil?

I agree with the so-called foolish maidens. Their action made perfect sense.

“But,” says Jesus, “those who carried the heavy jars were wise.” Those who Jesus called ‘wise’ do things totally beyond the call of duty, needlessly complicating their lives. To me the foolish make much more sense.

Can you think of one reason why Jesus calls the practical teens foolish and the overcautious women wise? Jesus must have a reason, so let me make a guess, and for this I will take a little detour.

Going to church is a bit like going to a wedding: we expect to meet the Bridegroom and to hear about Jesus. The weekly habit of attending church on Sunday and perhaps participating in a Bible study during the week can be compared to the normal supply of oil.

But we all know, there is more to meeting the Bridegroom, more to being a Jesus follower, more to going to church than routine matters. That’s why the super cautious, extra oil bearing women are called wise. They are prepared for more: they have taken PRECAUTIONARY measures (more on that next week), just in case!

And they proved right because the Bridegroom’s coming was delayed.

We must see the context of this parable. It is set after Matthew 24, which has as its heading, “Sign of the End of Age” and “The Day and Hour of Jesus’ Return Unknown.”

Jesus, after a long sermon on the final days of humanity, speaks this parable. He begins, “At That Time” or “At this particular moment, at the End of Days”.

Today there are, indeed, two kinds of people: foolish and wise, dumb and smart, people who live by the day, and those who are prepared for the real FUTURE, and think ahead.

I think that Jesus knew that at the End of Days OIL would again be a key element in the world. Jesus had a perfect view on history and knew that the END would be an oil-saturated situation.
It is well documented that OIL has been the very cause of wars in the last decades, and now is THE MOST SINGLE ELEMENT in the WAR against Creation, evident in Rapid Climate Change.

Oil in those days came from olives, a tree very abundant in Jesus’ time, and came in various grades. The lowest grade – usually rancid – was burned in lamps, while the highest quality was used for medicine and ointment purposes. Our word OIL has its origin in OLIVE.

Still all oil was expensive, one reason why the young girls, exhausted after extending their teenage chatter well beyond their usual bedtime – which was at sun down – turned the lights to low and so the wedding feast became a slumber party. All ten were sacked out on couches and across the floor of the room where they were keeping a lookout.

Then, finally, at midnight, there was a cry, “There comes the Bridegroom. Wake up to meet him.”

The parable portrays the practical reality of life: the unexpected does happen. It happens all the time. Fish stocks collapse. Ozone layers thin and go. The Arctic ice mysteriously melts. Most dangerous: insects disappear and Climate changes. Suddenly the doomsters have substantial evidence for their message. The unexpected does happen. Before you realize the Lord is there while we slumber the time away.

Then all the maidens rose, straightened out their dresses, quickly combed their rumpled hair, turned to their lamps and five of them discovered that they have practically run out of oil. They are not ready anymore to welcome the Bridegroom. All the shaking and trying is useless: their lights are dead. The unexpected did happen. The Oil is gone. The always reliable, punctual bridegroom was late for his own party.

So what should we think of all this? What does this all mean?

It means that God has taken so long to do anything that the world has dug its own grave. The lights are going out in this world.

We, in North America have built our subdivision-built society on the premise of cheap and unlimited oil, making public transportation impossible. Electric cars have less than One Percent of the market. The CO2 count is increasing, and Arctic Methane is exploding.

Unless there is something other than the know-how of the world to remedy the situation, there is no way that we can straighten out the mess we have made, politically, ecologically, religiously and economically because PRECAUTION was ignored and WISDOM went by the wayside.

So, what do we do now? Shun the signs and go on as if nothing is the matter? What else can we do as Christians? That is the real question we face.

Well, listen to the rest of the parable.

“And the foolish said to the wise, “Give as some of your oil, for our lights are going out.” But the wise replied, “Perhaps there will not be enough for us and you. Go to the fuel dealer and buy some.”

How is that for a Christian answer? Aren’t we supposed to share things with others? Try to buy some fuel at midnight!

For a long time I really did not know what to think of that rather snotty reply of the Five Wise Women. Now it seems to me that this answer suggests that there comes a time when we have to shrug our shoulders and go our own way. Time does run out as it always does in real life.

The parable suggests to me that a day will come when it will be too late to reform society. This is the case today. We have reached a point in world development where it is too late to return to an ecological balance, too late to reform the ecclesiastical situation, too late to revamp the economic structures, too late to change the political system.

It’s on that note that the parable ends. While they went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who were ready, those who had the extra oil, those who had practiced PRECAUTION, went with him into the marriage feast and the door was shut. Afterwards the others came, knocked and said, ‘Lord, open up.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I don’t know you’.”

I don’t know you??!!

Isn’t that a strange reply? The Lord doesn’t say, “I have never called you, or I have never loved you.” No, he says, “Listen, you have never bothered to get to know me, simply practiced routine religion. That wasn’t good enough, because you never took the time to seriously find out that I died to REDEEM CREATION and to restore everything I made in the beginning, but you never did anything to prevent extinction, lived the merry life of INFINITY NOW in a Finite world.

There’s a right way and the wrong way.

In this age of instant solutions, instant heating and cooling, we expect instant salvation and an instant Jesus. I don’t believe that life works that way: a marriage, a faith, a friendship, one’s life in Christ takes a long time maturing.

That’s why Jesus has given us lots of time. He has come late to give us more opportunity to see what is good and what is bad in this world, so that we can avoid errors later.

In this final period of our present civilization, the remaining time is of the utmost essence.

How do I utilize this last hour before entering the wedding hall?

There is hope.

There is hope for this world. That hope is the New Creation, a renewed Earth under a heaven cleaned of all the space junk. I believe that we have to, somehow, take distance from our capitalistic, ‘growth at all cost’ society, and to share with others, people of all walks of life and from all denominations and no church affiliation that Jesus is All and in All things.

Perhaps thinking about it, talking about it, trying to comprehend what we are doing and have done to God’s earth, and ask for forgiveness, is all we can do.

We, as children of love, must show that we love God and thus his creation, and love neighbors as we ought to love ourselves. Those are the great commandments. The rest is of relative unimportance. Only when we show our love, will we know Jesus and will Jesus acknowledge us.

That requires unconventional actions, such as taking along extra oil, be prepared for all eventualities, going against all accepted wisdom: be totally precautionary.

In practical terms that means to consciously ready ourselves for a life of eternal permanence, to live as if we are already in the renewed creation because that, and only that, opens the door to THE WEDDING HALL.

Something totally different.

Here’s something different, more in line with Easter.

While I was running on my treadmill last Saturday afternoon, I was musing on my next blog. My thoughts went back more than 75 years, to 1943 or thereabouts, when, on a glorious Easter morning in German-occupied Holland, I, then 13-14 years old, woke up early, went to our pump-organ, and played and sang:

Daar juigt een toon, daar klinkt een stem
Die galmt door gans Jerusalem
Een heerlijk morgen licht breekt aan
De zoon van God is op gestaan.

Want nu de Heer is op gestaan
Nu vangt het nieuwe leven aan.
Een leven door zijn dood bereid
Een leven in zijn heerlijkheid.

Nu jaagt de dood geen angst meer aan
Want alles, alles is voldaan.

Here’s my free translation:

A sudden sound, a vibrant voice
summoned Jerusalem to rejoice.
A laser-like light illumined the cave
That caused our Savior to rise from his grave.

Now death forever will disappear
For new life comes, life without fear
A life forever in his presence,
A life where joy’s the very essence.

Now Death no longer has a hold
Forever abolished as Scripture told.

That, indeed, is the message of EASTER.