Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

FEBRUARY 11 2017

THE ARCTIC’S ACUTE AGONY

The late Dr. Barry Commoner coined the four laws of ECOLOGY.
They are:
1. Everything is connected to everything else.
2. Nothing disappears: there is no such thing as waste.
3. Nature knows best.
4. Nothing comes free: the bill always comes sooner or later.

When we see that the Arctic experiences a 30 Degree Celsius spike in temperature, then this has universal implications because “EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE”.

Way up there in the far North, we are distorting the nature of nature because for many millennia the Arctic has been a place where the seal and the polar bear had their play grounds which included a lot of ice. God created it that way.

Scientists now discover that the ice there and on Greenland is melting at a rate 600 percent faster than earlier estimates. The ice on Greenland rests on solid land, which means that its melting directly influences the world’s sea levels, endangering such low lands as The Netherlands and Florida, while in the Arctic the ice is free floating. There the danger is different. There, in the shallow waters, only 50 – 100 meters deep, are Giga (Giga is billion x billion) Tons of methane buried under the ice cover. This suggests that millions, perhaps billions of years ago, the region had a tremendous amount of vegetation – how else to explain the presence of this lethal gas? – but God, in his wisdom had decreed that the North- and the South Poles should leave that dangerous gas forever buried, because NATURE KNOWS BEST, which actually means that we must follow God’s plan for creation.

What then is God’s plan for creation?

God’s plan for creation is called ”The Kingdom of Heaven.”
This 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.

“In the beginning” in that Kingdom – which we might call NATURE – all parts of the world were attuned to each other: EVERYTHING WAS PERFECTLY CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE. Nowhere was there a false note, a dissonant that disturbed the unity, as everything fitted harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality.

We have undone that sacred plan. We went our own way, and now reap what we have sown. Just recently the Arctic, when there was not a single ray of sunshine, saw temperatures 30 Degrees Celsius above normal. Since EVERYTHING IS STILL CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE, this has dire consequences for all of us. We have upset the normal. We have transgressed the very laws of nature and must face the after effects. The unexpected rise in temperature there will harm the entire globe, will influence everything and everybody everywhere. How and to what extent the very near future will tell.

That sudden spike signals that something vital has died. Not only the polar bears and the seals; not only the myriads of other living matter that only thrive in very cold temperatures, it also introduces elements in these waters that always were foreign there, did not fit, were alien elements.

What are the consequences?

Death. The Bible says that ‘the wages of sin are death.’ Our distorting of God’s Holy Creation, is SIN, a sin that affects us as humans, but equally exerts a toll on the environment, influences everything that surrounds us as we breathe in the air, eat stuff grown on the soil, drink its water.

Our own body temperature normally is 37 degrees Celsius. We have a fever when it goes up to the 38-39 range and we die when it exceeds 45. Does an increase of 30 degrees above normal somewhere on earth also spell doom?

The law “NOTHING DISAPPEARS: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WASTE” sounds at odds with a world overflowing with refuse: everywhere municipalities have to cope with mountains of garbage, while discarded electronics are becoming a hazard, and what about the trillions of plastic particles saturating the oceans? Since our world is a closed system, from which nothing can escape, our throw-away-society is distorting ‘nature’ and signals again another symptom of our mounting sins against creation, another sign of ignoring the laws of ecology which also includes that “THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.”

Sooner or later the bill appears at our doorsteps, and, by all indications, the due date is NOW.

The greatest storage of waste is found in the air and in the oceans. Plastic there is a problem, but a much greater hazard is the warming of the world’s waters, increasingly evident in the ARCTIC.

IS THE END NIGH?

ARCTIC NEWS thinks so. It poses the question:

WILL HUMANS BE EXTINCT BY 2026?

A mere nine years?

Here is what it says:

“In the Arctic, vast amounts of carbon are stored in soils that are now still largely frozen. As temperatures continue to rise and soils thaw, much of this carbon will be converted by microbes into carbon dioxide or methane, adding further greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In addition, vast amounts of methane are stored in sediments under the Arctic Ocean seafloor, in the form of methane hydrates and free gas. As temperatures rise, these sediments can get destabilized, resulting in eruptions of huge amounts of methane from the seafloor. Due to the abrupt character of such releases and the fact that many seas in the Arctic Ocean are shallow, much of the methane will then enter the atmosphere without getting broken down in the water.

“What makes the situation so dangerous is that huge eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean can happen at any time. We can just count ourselves lucky that it hasn’t happened as yet. As temperatures continue to rise, the risk that this will happen keeps growing.”

The article then shows a graph which somehow I am unable to reproduce in my blog, but which I can transpose into prose. This illustration shows a number of feedbacks: extreme weather such as heatwaves causes fires, which generates CO2 emissions, which melts the Arctic ice, which makes ice and snow to disappear which allows the dark waters to absorb more heat which accelerates the heating process, which warms the shallow Arctic seas to the point where the Giga tons of methane are released, a gas up to 100 times as lethal as CO2, causing the Global temperature to rise by TEN DEGREES Celsius by 2026, less than 10 years from now.

Here’s how the ARCTIC NEWS describes this:

“This dangerous situation has developed because emissions by people have made the temperature of the water in the Arctic Ocean rise, and these waters keep warming much more rapidly than the rest of the world due to a number of feedbacks.

“One such feedback is the retreat of the sea ice, which in turn makes the Arctic Ocean heat up even more, as much sunlight that was previously reflected back into space by the sea ice, instead gets absorbed by the water when the sea ice is gone.

“Without sea ice, storms can also develop more easily. Storms can mix warm surface waters all the way down to the bottom of shallow seas, reaching cracks in sediments filled with ice. This ice has until now acted as a glue, holding the sediment together. As the ice melts, sediments can become destabilized by even small differences in temperature and pressure that can be triggered by earthquakes, undersea landslides or changes in ocean currents. This past week there were hurricane storms raging in the Arctic!!.

“As a result, huge amounts of methane can erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and once this occurs, it will further raise temperatures, especially over the Arctic, thus acting as another self-reinforcing feedback loop that again makes the situation even worse in the Arctic, with higher temperatures causing even further methane releases, in a vicious cycle leading to runaway global warming.”

What next?

Such a temperature rise in the Arctic will not stay within the borders of the Arctic. It will trigger huge firestorms in forests and peatlands in North America and Russia, adding further emissions including soot that can settle on mountains, speeding up the melting of glaciers and threatening to stop the flow of rivers that people depend on for their livelihood.

These developments can take place at such a speed that adaptation will be futile. More extreme weather events can hit the same area with a succession of droughts, cold snaps, floods, heat waves and wildfires that follow each other up rapidly. Within just one decade, the combined impact of extreme weather, falls in soil quality and air quality, habitat loss and shortages of food, water, shelter and just about all the basic things needed to sustain life can threaten most, if not all life on Earth with extinction.

How much have temperatures risen and how much additional warming could take place over the next decade?

I repeat:

The article signals that, because of the different feedbacks and reinforcing elements the potential global temperature rise by 2026 from pre-industrial levels could be as high as 10 degrees Celsius.

So far scientists intimately involved with the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been extremely cautious and this has given the world a false sense of security. The ice melting on Greenland is one example, where it now appears that this process has seen a 600 percent increase. None of the reports even mention methane as a danger, because the rapid acceleration there is seen as too alarming, and TRUMP, no doubt, will label such a news item as FAKE.

There is nothing FAKE about the Bible which repeatedly states that the DAY OF THE LORD will come as a thief in the night. Just look up 1 Thessalonians 5: 2 or 2 Peter 3: 10 or Matthew 24: 43.

Revelation 18 too hints at that, where the merchants, AMAZON, WALMART, COSTCO, all with their warehouses full with merchandize, are “terrified that this is happening” (verse 15-17). Suddenly they all are stuck with billions of dollars of unsold stuff. The owners and operators of these retailers are completely caught off guard: there were no news reports that this would happen. Everything seemed totally normal.
A TEN DEGREE Celsius increase makes true the words of 2 Peter 3: 10-13, where Peter saw this happening, without really knowing what he was talking about. He wrote (verse 12) “That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt in the heat.”

That’s what a TEN DEGREE jump in the world-wide temperature will do to everything. The Arctic’s Agony is our agony. When one part of the body that is our earth suffers, the entire body suffers. The agony is so acute that it will spell the end.

That’s why the earth needs total purification. We have so thoroughly distorted God’s GOOD creation, HIS KINGDOM that only an intense world-wide holocaust will cleanse the earth, and all it contains, from the damage we have caused and increasingly inflict.
Still the laws of ECOLOGY hold true. In spite of total conflagration NOTHING WILL DISAPPEAR except sin. The essence of whatever is or was will remain. From the ashes will arise – see Revelation 21 – “A NEW HEAVEN” to replace the one that was saturated with undue amounts of CO2 and Methane, and “A NEW EARTH” replacing the one that was filled with garbage, Monsanto seeds and all the human detritus that has made living a God-honoring existence nearly impossible.

Peter, this same apostle who had denied Jesus three times when the chips were down, was nevertheless chosen by Jesus to play an important part in the coming of the Kingdom: he had learned his lesson, as is evident from his concluding remarks: (verse 14) “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”

That ‘peace’ includes shedding tears for the Arctic’s Acute Agony.

FEBRUARY 4 2017

A CLUELESS LEADER AND HIS SOON TO BE DISILLUSIONED FOLLOWERS.

The fellow must have writer’s cramp by now from signing all these executive orders. Not too long ago the spineless Republicans condemned Obama for doing a miniature version of this in his last months in power: this fellow enjoys every minute of displaying his ill-gotten authority, well, let him. In my humble and unworthy opinion it seems that he is speeding up the coming of the Kingdom: also the most powerful man in the world occupies an important place in God’s service, even though he sees himself as God. In rambling speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump jabbed at immigrants and religious freedom and reassured Americans that he will save the world, “THE WORLD IS IN TROUBLE…..I WILL FIX IT!!”

As the self-proclaimed God he is yet constantly afraid: one handshake will cause dangerous bacteria to sicken him. He is afraid of the media, afraid of the intelligence community, afraid of Mexico and China and now Iran, afraid of Muslims, afraid of terrorists. I think before he goes to bed, he looks under it: who knows some danger might be lurking there.

However he not afraid of a big Mac or Kentucky Fried Chicken. If I were him –God forbid – I’d afraid for my health. He already is overweight and is under constant pressure to prove himself, not very good for his heart, but he regards himself beyond the powers of nature by a most unhealthy and heart-rending eating regime that simply invites a direct assault on his blood circulation. Mens sana in corpore sano means a healthy mind in a healthy body. Mens insana in corpore insano means the opposite. That’s what we see in what is called the most powerful person in the world, a sure example of the insanity of our entire system, both financial and environmental.

And he is not alone.

I read last week in the Globe and Mail that nearly half of U.S. men have genital infections caused by a sexually transmitted virus and that 1 in 4 has strains linked with several cancers. No wonder almost 20 percent of the US GDP – the Gross Domestic Product – consists of medical expense, the highest in the world, but the outcome is poor: on a world-wide scale the health gauge is not even among the ten top. Blame vested interests as well as a fanatical faith in private enterprise stemming from a fearsome loathing of government intrusion. All this, combined with a TV-saturated sedentary life fed by a fast-food diet is a recipe for bodily disaster. If there is any country that needs universal health care, it is the USA.

The real reason why tens of millions of men, between the ages of 25-54 have dropped out of the job market is partly their poor health, which, in turn has led to suicide and drug dependence. Idleness breeds devilish conduct. Also, due to automation and jobs migrating overseas, these men have lost the opportunity to do meaningful work. Now they no longer are able to function as meaningful members of society, no longer can prosper, and lack the satisfaction of succeeding at something. It is precisely these legions of men – soon to be disillusioned – that secured Trump’s victory in the battleground industrial states of Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In today’s state of automation it will be impossible to create 25,000,000 new jobs and health coverage for all at a fraction of the cost of Obamacare. Both promises will backfire badly.

We live in a new world dominated by the machine.

According to some reliable reports, the American economy is already at full employment. True, there are these millions of idle hands, mostly men, who want to work, but, unfortunately, people to dig ditches, milk cows, and cut down trees with a two-man saw are no longer needed. A long time ago those were the jobs for the unskilled. I remember how, during the Dirty Thirties in the Netherlands a new company was formed with the (Dutch) name DE HEIDE MAATCHAPPIJ, The Heather Company. This government agency was charged to overturn these stubborn tracts of heath, converting them with pick and spade into tillable soil. This had a dual purpose: to provide work for thousands of empty hands and serve the larger good by making the soil ready for cultivation.

Most men in our Western world today would be incapable of doing hard physical labor. The USA army already has a recruitment problem, because only 1 in 4 qualifies because of the strict regulations, such as no criminal record, no tattoos, no health problems and at least a high school education.

Many of these unemployables, in their innocence, and ignorance, voted for Trump. True, change was needed, just as a lifestyle of no-smoking, no soft drinks, plus lots of exercise and meaningful work is also needed. However in the existent economic situation, with good pay going to fewer people and the increasing loss of the middle class employment, the drift toward service jobs in bars and fast food outlets, cannot be reversed.

I am reading AVERAGE IS OVER, a book by Tyler Cowen, an economics professor.

The title says it all: only if you have above average intelligence, come from a functional family, have a good work ethic, or are a math whiz, familiar with current technology will you be a financial success. The rest will become an underclass, doing minimum wage stuff.
The book ends with the prediction that society will split in two classes, the high brainy earners, and the rest. The rest means, by and large, the products of the USA educational system, which has been sabotaged by the Republicans who wanted to reduce taxes and consistently voted against increases for education.

How to fit into the new way of life.

The crucial problems today concern the way technology and globalization are decimating jobs and tearing the social fabric. All the big things that were once taken for granted are now under assault: globalization, capitalism, an American-led global order, on the one hand, and mechanization, computer-driven work and robotic explosion on the other hand. All thanks to AI – Artificial Intelligence – which is changing everything in every workplace.

That will simply make it impossible for President Trump to generate 25,000,000 (Twenty Five Million) new jobs during his 4 year term as he promised. Also how he will revamp the Medical system, having promised coverage for all at drastically lower cost, is another big question. Here too his re-election will depend on this.

In my reading I often turn to PROJECT SYNDICATE.

Simon Johnson of MIT Sloan and the Peterson Institute for International Economics writes that “Trump’s economic-policy priorities are reflected in his proposed cabinet, which represents a dramatic shift to outright “oligarchy: direct control of the state by people with substantial private economic power”. Trump seems determined to lower income taxes for high-income Americans, as well as to reduce capital-gains tax (mostly paid by the well-off) and nearly eliminate corporate taxes (again, disproportionately benefiting the richest).”

Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, believes that the political consequences for Trump’s off the cuff promises will be disastrous. He writes that “Experience shows that this trickle-down “story does not end well for Trump’s angry, displaced Rust Belt voters,” who will be tempted to seek even more aggressively for scapegoats once they realize how profoundly Trump has betrayed their interests.

America in the lead – down.

Frankly I believe that Trump is the last gasp: America is quickly becoming a failed state. A country is the sum of its citizens. Already American innovation first began declining or narrowing as far back as the late 1960s, owing to “a corporatist ideology that permeated all levels of government. True, Silicon Valley created new industries and improved the pace of innovation for a short time”; but now it, too, has run up against diminishing returns.

No amount of Trumpian rants will restore America’s greatness, and his erratic behavior will make people all over the world think twice to settle there and invest money. Trump is the last desperate attempt to revive a dying nation.

America has always been ahead of the pack, first in leading the world in development, now in being in the forefront of decline.
This has everything to do with ENERGY and its use. Where the USA has some 5 percent of the world’s population, it uses 25 percent of the world’s carbon products, thus causes a quarter of all Green House Gases, and can expect natural disasters at an equal ratio. Better move away from the most hurricane and earthquake prone coast lines, exactly there where most people live.

Yes, urban North America- and, sorry to say, I have to include Canada here as well – is built on an infinite supply of liquid fuels, the stuff we get when we say “Fill’er up”. In the next decade subdivisions, a single family house on a large lot with lots of green lawn will become the white elephant of the cities: too spread out to economically accommodate mass transit, it will remain dependent on that 2,500 pound monster that conveys a 120-170 pound individual from home to far away work or shopping.
Europe, at least, had the sense – mostly because fuel was so terribly expensive – to build cities up some stories rather than each in its own little domain. Too late to change this now, because, believe it or not, the gasoline age is rapidly coming to a disastrous close.

Some reliable reports now calculate that we may soon be spending more energy on getting the energy that is required to keep the cogs and wheels of modernity turning.

This is due to dreaded Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI). That ratio is increasingly becoming out of whack. Before we fill up our beloved automobile, let me recite some of the steps fuel has to take before we can burn it.

Take the Alberta tar sands. We all have seen the gigantic shovels that load these dwelling-size dump trucks with oil-laden sand. There already a lot of energy is expended to manufacture this equipment and these trucks with tires that dwarf a mere human and cost more than an individual earns in a life time. Also these monstrous machines burn many a gallon of fuel a minute.
That sand – and that’s what it is – is then saturated with water, an ever-more precious commodity. The viscose mixture is boiled – just imagine the energy this takes – and the sand is separated from the tiny bit of oil that is attached to the sand, which is discarded because it remains too contaminated for commercial use.

The tar-sand-oil is then pumped into pipeline, mixed with water because it is too stiff to flow, on the way to a refinery. Every step takes lots of energy. The refinery makes it into a usable product from where both pipelines and tanker trucks bring it thousands of miles to service station where it is pumped into our fuel tanks, causing GREEN HOUSE GASES all the way.

That process is now coming close to a point of no return: already 85% according to some calculations. Once that process is equalized, when Energy Return EQUALS Energy Invested, we cease to be a functioning society. There is not much that even Mr. Trump can do about it, other than seize the entire Persian Gulf which Cheney and W. Bush tried to do with disastrous results.
True, the new regime in the USA, put in place by a minority of voters, is a clear sign that people want change. True, the old order was found wanting. It also is true that the future looks grim, because THE AVERAGE IS OVER, which means that the majority of people, because they don’t have the right genes, are becoming surplus, are strictly needed as consumers, but no longer needed as producers.

It also is true that a society which requires 10 carbon calories to deliver one food calorie doomed and is totally out of touch with the essence of Christianity whose aim is “YOUR KINGDOM COME”.

John 3: 16 “God so loved the cosmos,” requires us to live and move and think and sleep the welfare of the world we live in. That must be our thought when we get up, when we eat when we work when we play: it must dominate our life 24/7.

January 28 2017

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL

You may remember the OLD tower of Babel, as related in Genesis 11. Here’s what the Bible says: ”Now the whole world had one language”, not unlike today I might add.

These people felt on top of their world, so they boasted: “Let is build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we make a name for ourselves.”

The Lord never likes boastful language (not even from presidents), musing (verse 6) if this Babel crowd pulls this off “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

So the Lord simply confused their language, which now has resulted in world-wide geographic and scientific progress so that there is not a place on earth not touched by human enterprise.

Today we know too well that this development has not all been favorable. All human actions have had destructive side effects such as Climate Change, acidifying oceans and decimated wild-life. And now its scientific section is starting to modify what it means to be human.

This brings me to the NEW TOWER OF BABEL, not just a gigantic physical structure but, far worse, threatening the essence of our psychical, spiritual and mental makeup, reminding us of God’s earlier thought: “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

The Last Frontier?

HOMO DEUS is the title of a new book, being published in North America this week, but which has been a best-seller in Great Britain since the fall of last year. The title, HOMO DEUS, says it all, if you know some basic Latin. A few weeks ago I saw the imported book for sale at CHAPTERS, for $40.00, but then I found the entire book on line for free.

Yuval Noah Harari, an Israel based philosopher, is also the author of an earlier book SAPIENS. Sapiens is also a Latin word, stemming from the verb SAPIO which means “be sensible, be wise”. Thus SAPIENS can be translated as MAN COME OF AGE, to speak in Bonhoeffer terms.

In HOMO DEUS he turns his focus toward humanity’s future, and the quest to upgrade humans into gods. Yes, you read this correctly UPGRADE US TO GODS, as the title HOMO DEUS means HUMAN as GOD. It comes with the subtitle: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW. Actually Psalm 82: 6 sort of confirms this: “You are gods, you are all children of the Most High, but you will die”. Homo Deus, however, aims for eternity.

An ambitious claim

Harari first traces human development, lauding its achievements. Thanks to penicillin we have managed to limit deadly infections. Also, thanks to fertilizer and irrigation, more people are dying from eating too much than from starvation. Unfortunately, thanks to depression, more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.

This new book explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the 21st century, in which – so says the author – we will overcome death and create artificial life.

In what he calls The DATA RELIGION the author claims that our upgrading into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings.

He writes that “Though the details are obscure, we can nevertheless be sure about the general direction of history. Now, in the twenty- first century, the new big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo Sapiens – man come of age – into Homo Deus – man become god. We want the ability to re- engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what else we might do with such ability?”

In other words: science has a new agenda: attaining divinity and eternal life.

When one phase stops, everything stops.

As an aside Yuval Noah Harari, a professor in Jerusalem, claims that science has become so complicated that no one understands the entire system, so no one can stop the progress that is being made. If it is stopped somehow, he says, our economy will collapse, along with our society.
He, in a later chapter, asserts that the modern economy needs constant and indefinite growth in order to survive. If growth ever stops, the economy won’t settle down to some cozy equilibrium; it will fall to pieces.

My comments: everything is connected to everything else: one of the laws of ecology.

That’s why today politicians everywhere want GROWTH AT ALL COSTS (in a FINITE WORLD!) That is why capitalism encourages us to seek immortality, happiness and divinity: only when we are truly GODS can we overcome finiteness. An economy built on everlasting growth needs endless projects – just like the quests for immortality, bliss and divinity. Computers powerful enough to understand and overcome the mechanisms of ageing and death will probably also be powerful enough to replace humans in any and all tasks.” Welcome to a Brave New World!

He continues: “Whereas believing in multiple gods (theism) justified traditional agriculture in the name of God, humanism has justified modern industrial farming in the name of Man. Industrial farming sanctifies human needs, whims and wishes, while disregarding everything else. Industrial farming has no real interest in animals, which don’t share the sanctity of human nature. And it has no use for gods, because modern science and technology give humans powers that far exceed those of the ancient gods. Science enables modern firms to subjugate cows, pigs and chickens to more extreme conditions than those prevailing in traditional agricultural societies.

Cogito Ergo Sum: I think therefore I am.

This theory was upheld by the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, who coined “I think therefore I am”.
In the seventeenth Century Descartes maintained that only humans feel and crave, whereas all other animals are mindless automata, akin to a robot or a vending machine. When a man kicks a dog, the dog experiences nothing. The dog flinches and howls automatically, just like a humming vending machine that makes a cup of coffee without feeling or wanting anything. This theory was widely accepted in Descartes’ day. Seventeenth-century doctors and scholars dissected live dogs and observed the working of their internal organs, without either anesthetics or scruples. They didn’t see anything wrong with that, just as we don’t see anything wrong in opening the lid of a vending machine and observing its gears and conveyors.”

I may add that today, in the early twenty-first century there are still plenty of people who argue that animals have no consciousness, or at most, that they have a very different and inferior type of consciousness.

Yuval Noah Harari, the author, argues that “if we think in term of months, we had probably focus on immediate problems such as the turmoil in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe and the slowing of the Chinese economy. If we think in terms of decades, then global warming, growing inequality and the disruption of the job market loom large.

“Yet if we take the really grand view of life, all other problems and developments are overshadowed by three interlinked processes:
1. Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms, and life is data processing.
2. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.
3. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.

“These three processes raise three key questions, which I hope will stick in your mind long after you have finished this book:
1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What’s more valuable – intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves? “

He continues:

“Religion and technology always dance a delicate tango. They push one another, depend on one another and cannot stray too far away from one another. Technology depends on religion, because every invention has many potential applications, and the engineers need some prophet to make the crucial choice and point towards the required destination. Thus in the nineteenth century engineers invented locomotives, radios and internal combustion engines. But as the twentieth century proved, you can use these very same tools to create fascist societies, communist dictatorships and liberal democracies.

Indeed: LIFE IS RELIGION

“Without some religious convictions, the locomotives cannot decide where to go. On the other hand, technology often defines the scope and limits
of our religious visions, like a waiter that demarcates our appetites by handing us a menu. New technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods. That’s why agricultural deities were different from hunter- gatherer spirits, why factory hands fantasize about different paradises than peasants and why the revolutionary technologies of the twenty-first century are far more likely to spawn unprecedented religious movements than to revive medieval creeds.

Islamic fundamentalists may repeat the mantra that ‘Islam is the answer’, but religions that lose touch with the technological realities of the day lose their ability even to understand the questions being asked. What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks?

“What will be the political impact of a massive new class of economically useless people?
What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty?
What will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?

“You will not find the answers to any of these questions in the Qur’an or sharia law, nor in the Bible or in the Confucian Analects, because nobody in the medieval Middle East or in ancient China knew much about computers, genetics or nanotechnology. Radical Islam may promise an anchor of certainty in a world of technological and economic storms – but in order to navigate a storm, you need a map and a rudder rather than just an anchor.

Hence radical Islam may appeal to people born and raised in its fold, but it has precious little to offer unemployed Spanish youths or anxious Chinese billionaires. True, hundreds of millions may nevertheless go on believing in Islam, Christianity or Hinduism. But numbers alone don’t count for much in history. History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses.

“Ten thousand years ago most people were hunter- gatherers and only a few pioneers in the Middle East were farmers. Yet the future belonged to the farmers. In 1850 more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants, and in the small villages along the Ganges, the Nile and the Yangtze nobody knew anything about steam engines, railroads or telegraph lines. Yet the fate of these peasants had already been sealed in Manchester and Birmingham by the handful of engineers, politicians and financiers who spearheaded the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, railroads and telegraphs transformed the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons, giving industrial powers a decisive edge over traditional agricultural societies.“

End of quotes.

Again the words of Genesis 11 come to mind: “Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Also Satan’s work has a place in God’s design and is made to serve the Coming of God’s Kingdom.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 26 tells us that “The last enemy to be destroyed is death”. Satan has the same goal, but enslaves all in his service. Christ by dying on the cross has guaranteed eternal life for his followers, but grants them full freedom.
HOMO DEUS means HUMAN as GOD. It comes with a subtitle: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMORROW.

Here’s how the real history will unfold. The Lord will put a virus, codename ISAAC, which means LAUGHTER (Read Psalm 2: 4) into ALL computers world-wide, destroying them completely. This will cause our world, the world of THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS, to totally collapse, ensuring the fall of the SECOND tower.

In the new world to come the saints will pick up creational development from there, because the Spirit of God will continue to cause new things to appear within the framework of his world order wherein they are potentially enclosed.

Says Revelation 14: 13: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”

January 21 2017

EXODUS: come out of her.

Abram left his ancestral home not knowing where he would end up. The people of Israel, by leaving Egypt, made the word EXODUS a by-word. So it is no surprise that we too are called to do the same, judging by: “I heard another voice from heaven say: ‘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. Revelation 18: 4.

Last week I wrote that “We must create ‘neo-monastic church communities’ as places of formation for modern Christians.” And my comments were: “I know that this is difficult in our subdivided world, where each is on his/her own in their separate dwellings. Monastic means communal living, as in a convent or monastery, but then for families. It is something that need to be explored and, who knows, the future may impose this sort of living on us. Curiously in the October 9 2003 issue of the New York Review of Books, discussing Father and Son McNeil’s book, The Human Web, the authors recommend the formation of primary communities: ”Religious sects and congregations are the principal candidates for this role.”

I believe it is time to seriously think about this. It also is advice given to us in both Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jeremiah 51: 9 is quite explicit: “We would have healed Babylon but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to his own land, for her judgement reaches to the skies, and rises as high as the clouds.”

That Babylon – the present world – is a failure beyond healing is evident from the Trump victory: it signals the definite end of the present political and economic systems. America and our entire Western world have been built on creational domination and exploitation of the most vulnerable. These crimes are now backfiring on us. Trump’s assertion to “make America great again” is nothing else but an empty and evil boast. Yes, our present situation, our total economic system is beyond repair. The rise of Trump, the eager ally of the Antichrist, makes this abundantly clear.

The employment situation is a case in point.

In THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY Jacques Ellul, the eminent French philosopher and astute Christian, accurately describes the present state of affairs. He writes that “technique has become indifferent to all the traditional human ends and values by becoming an end-in-itself…..which has nothing human in it to which we must accommodate ourselves as best we may…… In the technological society we humans are but a single tightly integrated and articulate component.”

Now in 2017 we are, indeed tightly integrated into The Technological Society. I blame this on another product of the Technological Society: Television.

Neil Postman in his classic AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH has phrased it correctly. In our Brave New World Postman writes “we are moving toward some preordained paradise, and technology is the force behind that movement.”

Technology’s march is indeed relentless, but the “paradise” paradigm is no longer possible because there is no leisure without work: television has robbed people of the ability to live. There simply is no across the board solution to the unemployment situation: their brains had become dulled by the BOOB TUBE and now even more by the incessant silly chatter on the many media tools.

This is not the first time.

It happened before in the early 19th century. That’s when the first generation of workers had the experience of being suddenly thrown out of their jobs by automation. But rather than accept it, they fought back—calling themselves the “Luddites” – and staging an audacious attack against the machines.
In the first decade of the 1800s, the textile economy in Great Britain went into a tailspin. A decade of war with Napoleon had halted trade and driven up the cost of food and everyday goods. Fashions changed, too: Men began wearing “trousers,” so the demand for stockings plummeted. The merchant class—the overlords who paid hosiers and croppers and weavers for the work—began looking for ways to shrink their costs.
That meant reducing wages—and bringing in more technology to improve efficiency. Huge factories were built where coal-burning engines would propel dozens of automated cotton-weaving machines. And the owners grew rich. The Luddites were not so much against progress: they revolted because the owners made millions while the workers starved.
Today is no different: the rich have grown richer while the poor now have TRUMP, the ultimate conman. Today the redundancy of labor, supplanted by efficient machines, will create an enormous “useless class”, without economic or military purpose. So what will happen to this human surplus? Cannon fodder as was the case in the 1930’s?
Trump boasts that he will create “Twenty Five million new jobs”. How about the loss of jobs of the same number!

TRUMP and his illiterate legions hotly blame foreigners and immigrants for taking their jobs, and that is true to some extent, but the real culprits are Robots and computers which are taking over the work place where once humans toiled. So will TRUMP outlaw robots and computers?
We simply cannot set back the clock to the 17th Century when wind and water fueled economic life. Yet eliminating fossil fuels has become necessary: increasing its use – as the now TRUMP regime wants to do – will hasten the Day of Reckoning.
The new man in Washington wants to implement across the board tariffs and fines, cajoling companies with threats and empty bombast, which may actually have the opposite effect, upsetting the delicately balanced economic system and the carefully calibrated international agreements. It may suddenly bring on the day of reckoning, paying the price for unprecedented pollution, and negation of the human spirit caused by as Postman so aptly phrased it AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH.
We live in a world gone mad.

Let’s not fool ourselves: we are in for the most terrible of times. The rumblings are all too evident, in the weather, in the economy, in the deteriorating state of the global health, in the TRUMP tragedy, in the irreparable Middle East drama: it’s time for the people of God to extract ourselves from political, economic, self-destructing circumstances that inevitably will lead to total disaster.

Yes, let me be honest: my Calvinistic tentacles, my Bible-based opinions tell me that we will self-destruct. I now suspect that Climate Change is the deciding factor with the Arctic holding the key, the place where untold trillions of tons of methane are about to emerge. Before the final denouement, before our entire world will go up in flames, we will experience wars, famines, mass migration and state failure. These are the Horsemen of the coming Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

The Titanic to come.

Just as in the case of RMS Titanic, when this ship called industrial civilization sinks there will not be enough life boats, and those that there are will not be fully utilized. That is the reason why we must leave before everybody tries to do it at the same time.

Leave? If not, what?

We are back to the ABEL-CAIN situation.

That needs some clarification. So let me take an example from the Bible.
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 among the most ferocious.

Cain fled and we read that he built a city, signifying that the human desire to exclude God from creation is the prime motive behind the founding of the city.
Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, is the first city builder. He called it Enoch, which means a New Beginning.
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.

Ellul 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 beginning with Enoch, we have a sure starting place for all of civilization. Paradise becomes a legend and creation a myth……..Cain takes possession of the world and uses it as he wishes…….It is man’s highhanded piracy of creation that makes creation incapable of giving glory to God. Cain bends all of creation to his will.”
Today we see this clearly in the aims of Trump: no consideration of nature whatsoever.
In his book 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”, eloquently described how a small Frisian village lost its tradesmen, its specialty stores, its very soul, when commuters bought its houses, and relied for their purchases on city-based big block merchandize, so effectively killing the village’s economy. The same is true everywhere in the Western world.

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.”
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, a city the exact opposite of the city Cain founded, and in which we now live, which has to be destroyed, as she was and still is the representation of human security and human thinking and human intentions.

In the new city, the City of God, the Lord’s presence will be constant, his spirit all pervasive. And promises 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, will be a world where communion with God is perfect and for all who live there.

I believe that it is later than we think. The Bible also says that the collapse will be sudden and unexpected. ARCTIC NEWS keeps on raising the alarm. Here is what this blog says, dated January 16: “The outlook is terrifying. As I calculated last year, surface temperatures of the atmosphere could rise by some 10°C or 18°F within a decade, i.e. by 2026,” making true 2 Peter 3: 10-13, I might add.

Last year, 2016, the global temperature was well above 1.5°C. At the North Pole in December 2016, it was 6.58°C (11.84°F) warmer, already releasing mega amounts of methane!

“‘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. Revelation 18: 4.”
We have to reorient our goals, away from the City of Man to the City of God where SHALOM reigns, where full harmony within all spheres of life and within all humans, animals and plants will be universal.

Can we still form communities where we are at peace with God, his creation and each other? Can we still create ‘neo-monastic church communities’ as places of formation for modern Christians? Or is it too late? Is the seductive power of the CITY too great?

Pray without ceasing and may our works follow us into eternity.

CELTIC CHRISTIANITY

Belgic Confession.

You probably have never heard of that confession. Actually it is one of the mainstays of the Reformed Faith. Here’s what it says about us knowing God: “We know God first by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book…. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20: “all these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.”
Wow!! Looking at creation and seeing God at work there is more important than the Bible.
So how does the church go about ‘knowing God’? Does it encourage creational knowledge? Does it tell the world that dishonoring creation – driving a car, for instance – is enough to damn people? Does the church encourage field trips in to nature? Does it give seminars on specific aspects of creation, all to encourage “knowing God”?

We know the truth. The church has fully implemented Descartes’ dictum COGITO ERGO SUM, I think that’s why I am: logic before observation. It has promoted intellectual reasoning – sermons – over direct creational engagement.

It was not always so. Enter CELTIC CHRISTIANITY.

In my church, St. Andrew’s Tweed, hangs a large Celtic Cross, crafted by one of our parishioners. As Presbyterians we are acquainted with this religious symbol, but do we know its significance?

The orb, the circle at the centre of the cross, is said to represent the sun and the light of the world, and expresses the desire to hold together the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in the Scriptures. Together they reflect the practice of listening for the living Word in nature as well as in the Bible. A typical Celtic prayer is: Almighty God, Sun behind all suns… in every friend we have the sunshine of your presence…

That God is present in all creation was certainly the conviction of the ninth-century philosopher, John Scotus Eriugena, perhaps the greatest teacher of the Celtic branch of the church ever produced. His name simply means John, the Scotsman from Ireland.

He taught that Christ moves among us in two shoes, as it were, one shoe being that of creation, the other that of the Scriptures, and stressed the need to be as alert and attentive to Christ moving among us in creation as we are to the voice of Christ in the Scriptures.
One of his prayer was, “Show to us in everything we touch, in every one we meet your presence.”

Like the Celtic Christian teachers before him, the thoughts of John the Irishman, were particularly shaped by the mysticism of the Apostle John, who tells us that “God is Love.” The realization that God is also a love affair is summed up in the doctrine of the Trinity. Celtic Christians, a 1000 years ago expressed this in this poem:
The Three who are over my head.
The Three who are under my tread.
The Three who are over me here
The Three who are over me there.
The Three who are in the earth near.
The Three who are up in the air.
The Three who in heaven do dwell.
The Three in the great ocean swell,
Pervading Three, O be with me!

When God created, he called it good after each phase, and very good when it was all completed. This basic goodness in creation is a special feature of Celtic Christianity. Says the Irish John: “God’s divine goodness is the essence of the whole universe and its substance. Evil is opposed to the existence of creation and where goodness is creative, evil is destructive.”

All this was written long before we experienced the evil of pollution, of global warming, of Climate Change and a melting Arctic, which, we can now clearly see, is the devil at work.

As so often happens in the church, true reformers and true radicals are not tolerated by the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1225 the main writings of John the Irishman, were condemned by the Pope and in 1685 they were placed on the Index, the papal list of forbidden writings. But the Celtic influence persisted. The people of the many islands off the Scottish coast, the Hebrides, living in isolation for centuries, retained much of the Celtic religion in their traditions.
There is a story of a woman from the island of Harris who suffered from a type of skin disease and was exiled from the community to live alone on the seashore. There she collected plants and shellfish, and having boiled them for eating, washed her sores with the remaining liquid. In time she was cured. She saw the grace of healing as having come to her through creation and so she prayed:
There is no plant in the ground
But it is full of His virtue,
There is no form in the strand
But it is full of his blessing.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!

Jesu who ought to be praised.
There is no life in the sea,
there is no creature in the river,
there is naught in the firmament,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!

Jesu who ought to be praised.
There is no bird on the wing,
there is no star in the sky
there is nothing beneath he sun,
but proclaims his goodness.
Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!
Jesu who ought to be praised.

John, the apostle, had a fine ear for God’s creation. Listen to the opening words of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the word was God. Through him all things were made.”

If God were to stop speaking the whole created universe would cease to exist. In the rising of the morning sun God speaks to us of grace and new beginnings and the fertility of the earth is a sign of how life wells up from within, from the dark unknown place of God.

John, the Irishman, a millennium ago, also tells us that God is in all things. God has not created everything out of nothing, but out of his own essence, out of his very life. That is the light that is in all things,
“the light which is the light of angels,
the light of the created universe,
the light indeed of all visible and invisible existence.”

Says this Irishman: “the way to learn about God is through the letters of the Scriptures and through the species of creation.” He urges us to listen to these expressions of God and to conceive of their meaning in our souls. So it is no wonder that the national color of the Irish is green. They were the Green Party as long as we have recorded history.

The attitude of The Irish John and Celtic spirituality in general is diametrically opposed to the materialism we have in our world, shaped by Roman Catholic and Protestant dualism. The bible is very clear on this. Take Col.1:15 -20, a passage exemplifying the Celtic Spirit more than any other. This is what it says: Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

What does this mean? It means that, when God planned the creation, he started with duplicating himself in the form of Jesus Christ, in the form of the ultimate in creation, the human beings we are. Christ is the first human being, the firstborn of all creation. We are his image. In other words, we look like Christ. We, as women and men, as boys and girls, are the highest order in of God’s creation, but we come from the lowest material, the ‘Ur’ stuff of creation: clay. We are made of that material. The word ‘Adam’ means clay. God fashioned us, the human race, from the clay of the earth, a mixture of dry dust and water. He, as the Master Sculptor, created us, fashioned us, shaped us, molded us, in the image of that perfect, divine creature, God’s alter ego, Jesus Christ. That is what verse 15 says.
Verse 16 continues in that vein: “For by Christ all things were created.” Remember Christ, the first human being, did this. Made in his image, part of his body, we can read this also: For by us, as human beings, as the body of Christ, all things were created.

However, because we have strayed from the path of Christ, have not seen creation as the Real Word of God, we have gone in exactly the opposite direction, a direction to which the Celtic Christians objected. For this reason, by placing so much emphasis on God’s world, they were persecuted by the church, with the result that reason, doctrine, church dogma, human wisdom, became the measure of faith.

We now see the result. We see a world plagued with pollution, plagued with poverty, plagued with a plurality of pains. We see a world where the idol of economic growth takes priority over any creation friendly act, so that now many people see a world depleted with whatever is precious. All this rests upon the wrong interpretation of Genesis 2:15, where God gave humanity the charge to look after God’s creation. Curiously the word here for ‘taking care’ is the same as in Joshua 24: 15, where Joshua, the man who succeeded Moses as leader of Israel, vouches “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The same Hebrew word that of taking care of God’s creation and serving the Lord is used in both instances.

This serving is reflected in the prayer of St. Patrick, the great Irish evangelist. His prayer is typical:
I bind myself today
The virtues of the star-lit heaven
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray.
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

Again the closeness to creation, but also the sense that Christ is in everything, including ourselves, based on this very bible passage in Col.1:19, where it says that God was pleased to have all God’s fullness dwell in Jesus.
Christ be with me, Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Celtic Christianity does not see a great gap between heaven and earth, no, the two are seen as inseparably intertwined.

A long time ago Presbyterian Record had a review on a book called: “The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christians can reach the West.”
The author outlines five proven Celtic Church practices he believes are needed today.

(1) We need to move from the ‘lone ranger’ approach in the church, where the minister is the all and in all, to partnership forms of ministry.

(2) We must create ‘neo-monastic church communities’ as places of formation for modern Christians.
I know that this is difficult in our subdivided world, where each is on his/her own in our own dwelling. Monastic means communal living, as in a convent or monastery, but then for families. It is something that need to be explored and, who knows, the future may impose this sort of living on us. Curiously in the October 9 2003 issue of the New York Review of Books, discussing Father and Son McNeil’s book, The Human Web, the authors recommend the formation of primary communities:” Religious sects and congregations are the principal candidates for this role.”

(3) We must develop imaginative/ contemplative prayer patterns.
I have been a member of our prayer group for years and recommend this.

(4) Practice open and full hospitality as our prime response to those who are seeking.
We are all very private people and not prone to open our houses and hearts to others. In our busyness, we think we have no time for this.

(5) Rediscover that belonging comes before believing for those new to the faith.

These are new times. We see every day what the current way of Christianity is bringing to the world: destruction and pollution. In 1966 Dr. Lynn White addressed the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. His topic: The historical roots of our Ecological Crisis. I quote: “The church has taught that God planned this earth explicitly for man’s benefit and ruled no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asian religions not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.”

We now know that this approach has been destructive for our planet. I sincerely believe that Celtic Christianity provides a better answer to today’s way of serving God than any church way yet confessed.

The Celtic cross expresses this to plainly. The orb, the circle at the centre of the cross represents the sun and the light of the world, and expresses the desire to hold together the revelation of God in creation and the revelation of God in scriptures.

This is our Father’s world, which we will inherit as his children. Treat it as such, because it is ours to live in forever.

That, perhaps, means that we must go where we can live close to the soil, that God-given substance out of which we were formed, rather than the city. The nurture of the soil brings us closer to God. Have the entire family engage in growing food, rather than factory-stuff. Engage in low tech and localism.
The closer we are to green spaces the healthier our life and more open we are to the voice of God in our lives.

DEEP PEACE OF THE RUNNING WAVE TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE FLOWING AIR TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE QUIET EARTH TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE SHINING STARS TO YOU
DEEP PEACE OF THE GENTLE NIGHT TO YOU
MOON AND STARS POUR THEIR HEALING LIGHT ON YOU.
DEEP PEACE OF CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD TO YOU.

JANUARY 7 2017

THE CHURCH AND CREATION

It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.” – Mark Twain
That church development is often derailed is not surprising, given that it is a human institution, yet discovering that all churches today, in 2017, are basically off track, took me a long time to fathom.

Actually, this is not surprising, considering history.

Some 2500 years ago the elite of Israel, its nobility and the church officials were deported to Babylon, led as hostages away from the Promised Land because the people of God had forgotten about God, even though ‘religion’ was thriving. Fortunately, some of them, such as Daniel and his friends managed to take the religious treasures with them, the old scrolls and the ancient papers that related their history.

There, far away from Jerusalem, they saw it as their holy duty to record what had happened to the Chosen People in the past, tracing their version of history all the way back to the days of Creation. Oral transmission too was used.

To these farsighted people we owe much of the Hebrew bible, because there, in the solitude of their exile, they had the time, the means and the opportunity to think and reflect, guided by the Holy Spirit. During that 70 year sojourn, somehow the true gospel became clear to them. There they recorded it and prepared the people of Israel for the coming of the Messiah.

Back from the Babylonian exile, again in the trusted environment of their own country, they really tried to live by the Law of Moses, restoring the Year of Jubilee, as the Lord had commanded, but soon formalism and church law prevailed and they again fell into the old trap of relying on outward adherence to the Laws of Moses.

Is there a lesson for us today?

In some way the same happened with the Dutch emigrating from the Netherlands to Canada in the early 1950’s. They too in their relative isolation, through their church communities blew new life in the religious heritage of the pre-war days in the Netherlands.

Now, it seems to me that in Canada among the Reformed community forward thinking has stalled, just as what happened soon after the exiles returned to the Promised Land after 70 years exile in Babylon.

The rise of Christianity.

Looking back 2000 years, we know that the Old Testament Church had grown stale. It took Jesus three years to convince a few people that the time was ripe for a change. That certainly indicates to me that it’s not easy to steer people in a different spiritual direction.

Fortunately, after Pentecost, and with Paul’s conversion, Christianity was preached world-wide. However, it soon became affected by Platonic thinking, while the church, thanks to its success, organized itself along the lines of the Roman Empire: Pope, Cardinals, Archbishops, bishops, and priests resembling the political structure of that day.

This year it is exactly 500 years that Martin Luther challenged the then Universal Christian church. We call it THE REFORMATION. By and large Luther brought the Bible back to the masses. Just as Paul could bring THE WORD, thanks to the PAX ROMANA and the koine dialectos – the universal language then – Luther too was blessed with the onset of the printing press and the subsequent rise of mass reading, which greatly accommodated the spread of the Reformed gospel.

Today: where are we?

We now are in situation similar to the time Jesus came, and Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Wittenberg church. Pietism has triumphed: the banner of heaven has been hoisted high. People are so sure that they’ll end up high up there, that no argument, no ‘proof text’, no concrete evidence will convince them. BUT…………It’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”
Last week I sat across from a lady – a devout Christian – to whom I tried to explain that ‘cosmos’ – the word mentioned in John 3: 16 – means all things created. Her reply was: it applies only to people. It has nothing to do with animals, with trees, with flowers.

So: WHAT IS THE GOOD NEWS TODAY? Is it THE OLD TIME RELIGION, GOOD ENOUGH FOR ALL?

The old time religion is purely heaven-oriented, and/or so institutionalized that it amounts to the same thing.

A new approach is needed, made possible by Jesus, who called for combining the created word with the written word, in preparation for our future, the new creation.

A book by Dr. J. H. Diemer “NATUUR EN WONDER” or “Nature and Miracle”, points that way.
Diemer joins the ranks of Bavinck and Bonhoeffer by equating THE KINGDOM to the original Garden of Eden, and to the NEW EARTH which Jesus will bring with him when he returns, establishing a ‘religion-less Christianity where all dogmas, all confessions, all statements of faith are discarded, including church buildings, all ranks and offices, as the true sanctuary is the universe, God’s Holy creation.

Diemer was a biologist who died young, at age 40, in June 1945, just after the war, from malnutrition and punishment suffered in a German prison camp.
He wrote in Dutch and I paraphrase to avoid his academic language: “Faith in God motivates us to assume leadership in the created order of all things.
“Adam, at his new birth, powered by God’s word written in his heart, had the mandate and the desire to look at the exact nature of everything created. Infused by God’s Spirit, he was enabled to see the possibilities inherent in all created beings and structures. The cultural task of the first human pair filled with the Holy Spirit was to see the place of everything created, animals, trees, weather, and assign what fitted where.
“That was the cultural task God gave Adam in the beginning. That task is still ours today. God gave creation to us as the human race to serve, to maintain and to develop as God’s Kingdom on earth.
“In Paradise the human race was perfectly fit for this task. Their faith simply made that possible. They obeyed God’s Word to the letter, and, empowered by God’s Spirit, all of nature responded to Adam’s leadership. In this way all happenings in nature were directed toward service of God’s Kingdom.”
So far, so good. Then….

“Through the fall into sin, all of nature from the low amoeba to the highest form fell away from God and the fallen creatures became sinful trespassers, offending God’s basic law.
“From now on the law of sin became nature’s dominating force. The functions of all created matters were separated from the divine directions based on the laws that God had given through faith in Him. Sin redirected human ambitions to operate as independent forces which resulted in fights among themselves to gain the upper hand. Instead of serving and building and maintaining God’s Kingdom we served the kingdom of darkness and were engaged in destructive, estranging and dissolving activities, threatening to destroy God’s Kingdom.

“That is the curse that now hangs over the earth because of sin, all too evident today.

“In Christ all of nature has been radically redirected to God’s service. Christ has again placed God’s Kingdom in the hearts of the believers. That belief must be re-activated in our time of environmental distress, because through the fall into sin we no longer want to obey the directions prescribed by God, and so become willing servants of the Satan. We withdrew from our original mandate and convinced ourselves that we could function independently from God.
“Now we have disorder instead of order, exploitation instead of normal development, destruction instead of construction, decay instead of unity, chaos instead of cosmos.”
So far the Christian biologist, Dr. J. H. Diemer.

This struggle is out in the open but the outcome is assured, thanks to Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Bonhoeffer and Bavinck also affirm this, stating that “Christ did not bring a religion: he brought us LIFE.”

Our life must be fully lived in the context of THE KINGDOM. In spite of what Rome tells us, the church is not the Kingdom. In spite of what Reformed thinking tells us, the church, school, family, do not comprise the Kingdom.
Christ’s kingdom is on the way, already faintly present in our life. God’s kingdom, perfect in the Garden of Eden, will again be perfect in the New Earth to come.

The word ‘church’ comes from the Greek ‘kurios domo’, the house of the Lord: a misnomer because the universe, the cosmos, is the house of the Lord.

Today one of the most thriving businesses is to decommission church buildings. The Actinolite United Church – just north of where we live – is now ‘the Marble Art Centre’. The word ‘marble’ points to its marble stone structure, at one time mined in that hamlet. The former Tweed Anglican Church is for sale. The church we attend can seat 300 people, more than double the total gathered in the 4 other churches on a typical Sunday. The only time young people are possibly exposed to prayer and Bible reading is when their grandparents are buried.

Today, in our post-modern world, church buildings, by and large, have become an anachronism, no longer in tune with the times. Their high ceilings – reminiscent of heaven – make them energy hogs; their hymns are often in praise of heaven; their sermon approach is outmoded, dating to the pre-TV era; these monologues promote sheep-like attitudes, devoid of incentives to foster maturity; their parking lots are an ode to GMC and Ford and Japan; their organizational setup smacks of authoritarian tendencies; their Sunday worship an incentive to sever nature from grace, promoting an unhealthy and thus unchristian dualism.”

We have to go back to our original mandate which is that we were charged to develop God’s creation in such a way that it honors God, the creator, who, in the Bible is often described as the creator of heaven and earth.
Our task is the same as Adam’s: to beautify Paradise and enhance her possibilities. It is not a one-dimensional matter of singing and praying: it’s task is all-embracing, getting dirt under our nails; lovingly tending God’s soil, out of which we were shaped.
In these days where one calorie of commercial food takes 10 calories of carbon, growing one’s own food is not only creation-God- friendly but an act of worship. By inserting a seed into the earth we commit a holy act because the earth is holy. The entire Lord’s Prayer is a fervent prayer for ‘the kingdom to come’. In that prayer our plea to ‘forgive our trespasses’ refers to our constant sins against creation, while the line “as we forgive those who trespasses against us” is a recognition that we all are caught in the-trespass-against-creation trap.

Our worship should never pause. Reducing our carbon footprint should be a continuous concern. Sunday gatherings should be much more community minded, where singing, praying, sharing wholesome living tips, bringing produce and exchanging news a regular feature. The old – Acts 2 – is new again, which today means that, with churches often far away, we should meet in each other’s homes, and, where congregations are large, split it in units of 20 or so, with emphasis on walking to certain central points.
Today, using the Internet for spreading the Good News of the Kingdom has two original advantages combined: borderless like the Roman Empire and English as the universal language.

Again we all should be continually carbon footprint conscious, and always try to picture ourselves in circumstances visualizing our eternal life in THE NEW CREATION. There is that old saying: the future belongs to those who prepare for it.
Mark Twain coined “It’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”, but
Hebrew 11: 1 tells us: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
Today we see a creation in its last phase, because of sin. Christ has promised us a new earth where harmony and shalom is guaranteed forever.

P.S.
You do well to look at ARCTIC NEWS and listen to the 20 minutes interview with Dr. Peter Wadhams who is an ‘expeditionary’ scientist and Emeritus Professor of Ocean Physics from Cambridge. Peter Wadhams’ observations of the Arctic ice for over 4 decades makes him one of the worlds authorities on the subject.