Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK.

‘In the beginning”.

That’s how the Bible starts. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Then, untold many millions of years ago, everything was there in principle, ready to be deployed at the correct minute or hour, year or millennium.

However, after a glorious start in Paradise, we became impatient, and made a deal with the devil to speed development. That development has now taken its full course, and has resulted in degradation and dissolution, because what has a beginning, has an end, unlike God who has neither. 

In a sense, we are on a voyage; every voyage has a starting point, and a destination. How this adventure began is the concern of many a scientist, who will forever remain puzzled about ‘the beginning’ while offering plausible suppositions. They do agree that there is a beginning. The how and what remains a mystery to them.

The law of logic.

The law of logic suggests that whatever has an origin, also has an ending. That applies to individuals like me and you, it applies to everything we observe, and consequently, it applies to the world we live in. “In the beginning” indicates that there also is ‘the end’. And, it is my guts, my feeling, my intuition, my conviction, that THE END is much nearer than statistics or news reports or TV or politicians – who still push ‘growth’ – suggest, if they mention it at all. 

Enter Arctic News,

There is one exception, however: ARCTIC NEWS. It concludes that the Arctic’s terrestrial permafrost now emits more greenhouse gases than it stores, and the trend is likely to accelerate as temperatures keep rising, especially, in the Arctic. 

The highest carbon dioxide emissions over the 2000-2020 period came from inland waters and wildfires. Then the non-permafrost wetlands exhaled the most methane, and the dry tundra released the most nitrous oxide.

A drastic change is coming.

The prospect of further toxic releases looks dire. It is estimated that the upper three meters of the permafrost-tundra region stores 1,000 Giga tons– a Giga ton equals a billion tons – of soil organic carbon, while deeper deposits could store an additional amount of 1,000 Giga tons. The analysis concludes that the permafrost region is the largest carbon and nitrogen pool on Earth. Self-amplifying feedbacks and crossing of tipping points, as well as the loss of the aerosol masking effect and sunspots reaching a peak, could contribute to cause a further temperature rise from, say AD 1800, of over 10°C, in the process causing the cloud tipping points to get crossed that can push up the temperature rise by a further 8°C. 

We all die when it rises by 5°C. 

A sudden melting in the Far North where heat has accelerated beyond anywhere else on earth, that alone could do the trick. Out of sight, out of mind, but remember the first law of Ecology: Everything is connected to everything else. It may happen silently and gradual, and, just as collapse, it may happen suddenly. Altogether, the temperature rise may exceed 18°C by as early as 2026: as early as 2026! I believe: it’s later than you think!

Already a world in turmoil.

Economic anxieties are adding to divisions between rural and urban dwellers, unskilled and college educated workers, religious traditionalists and secularists. In France, Italy, Germany and Sweden, far-right politicians have seized on this dissatisfaction to promote nationalist, anti-immigrant agendas, while growth is slowing worldwide, making it harder to find solutions.

THE DAY OF THE LORD.

Don’t be surprised: 2,000 years ago, the Bible told us so.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 PETER 3: 10)

Enter Jesus and John.

That the end will come unexpected, is re-confirmed multiple times in the Bible. Jesus, in Matthew 24 – that terrible chapter – also points out its suddenness: verse 36: “No one knows the day or the hour, only the father.” A thought goes through my mind: if creation and the creator are identical, as Bonhoeffer suggests, then creation herself knows the tipping point, just as a person, about to die, feels it coming.

 And then there is John’s Revelation. It too reveals a detail about the ‘when and how’.  Here’s another quote: Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: “Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!’ 

Revelation 18 describes the present moment, 2024, when a surplus of luxury goods, thanks to cheap slaves, finds no market any more, and the system collapses.

Believe me: IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK.

BE A PEACE INITIATOR 

The title of Dr. Paas’ book, VREDE OP AARDE, I have tentatively translated as PEACE ON THE PLANET, rather than PEACE ON EARTH, which misses the rolling ‘r’s’ in the Dutch; I did this to maintain the poetic stance of the original title. Also, the ‘planet’ includes air, seas, and is thus more comprehensive.

Before I translate his conclusions, found on the last two pages of this 400-page book, a few words about God’s Kingdom. Jesus, on earth, embodied the Kingdom. When a storm threatened to imperil the lives of his disciples, he ‘rebuked’ the wind. The word ‘rebuke’ indicates sharp disapproval. He used the same word when curing Peter’s mother-in-law. Both destructive weather and diseases do not fit into the New Creation which Jesus represented.

Just as Jesus, we, his followers, represent the Kingdom. “Seek first ‘the kingdom’”, is Jesus’ direct suggestion to us. Without that aim, we miss the entire message. The Kingdom? Yes, the Kingdom, God’s Holy Creation.

With that in mind, I turn to Stefan Paas’ book, PEACE ON THE PLANET.

Here is what Dr. Paas writes, and I translate his last two pages:

“For what purpose is Christendom on earth? Why should people actually be a Christian? Why would I invite others to become Christian? These were questions I posed at the beginning of this book. Well, at the end of this enquiry my answer is: Christendom is here to establish peace. It does this to generate intimate connections, to search for righteousness in the service of reconciliation, in the hopeful expectation of God’s Shalom. In that mission the aim is not to make people Christians; the real purpose is for them to become priests in partnership with God’s creation, mediators of the covenant. To become priests involves a change: we must be saved from ourselves, and from the powers that oppose God’s Peace. This salvation is to be found ‘in Christ’, and this makes it materially possible for us to shape communities of love, justice and reconciliation – the very fields in which the good news finds fruition. It is the calling of these communities to devote themselves to reconciliation, and to teach people how they can learn to become priests for this mission of reconciliation. The Christian proclamation, the liturgies, its practises and disciplines, inherent in the Christian faith, their communities, the pioneer-projects, the experiments and innovations, the prayers, exorcisms, prophesies, healings, songs and expressions of praise – all these many-faceted expressions of devotions, attain integrity and unity when we observe that all this has as their aim to witness to God’s shalom, to shape people for this task of reconciliation, to bind them to each other and to their co-creatures, in order to combat the powers that hinder the attaining of peace, to make us sensitive for righteousness, and actively contribute to reconciliation and peace/shalom.”

“Just as Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom in the context of Roman occupation, violence, and apocalyptic tensions, in the same way every salvation-theology is a discussion with the world of the day. My proposal in this last chapter – and on last page I should add – is not meant to assert that this is the only possible narrative concerning the Christian ‘way of salvation’, the so-called ‘soteriology’. Yet, I do think that it is a viable option in a polarized society in the shadow of a universal ecological crisis. 

“What does it actually mean to talk about God in the current situation, to experience him redemptively, and to live in hope in the expectation of the arrival of his peaceable Kingdom? 

“Just as I mentioned in my introduction, I don’t expect that my interpretation will lead to a mass-conversion. My goal was to write something which would cause Christians to be inspired anew, and again feel embraced in God’s mission. I hope that this book be a tool for leaders in the church and other Christians to be able to explain why all of us need to change and provide them with the tools to do so, and what it means to be a community of peace, and how this book can provide direction for Christian societal activities and politics. Theology must be lived and the story of God’s “Shalom is a story by which we can arrange our lives. It is a story that relates how friendships, the search for righteousness, and feeling at home in creation are equally the fields of God’s grace, are avenues along we yearn for God and his future, dead places in which we are raised to life, spaces in which we experience ourselves immensely loved.

“Yes: happy are the peace-initiators.”

So far, my translation.

When we pray, Your Kingdom Come, we really pray for God’s New Creation, the ultimate time when there will be comprehensive Peace on Earth.

June 22, 2024

Where is God?

The USA is a religion-drenched country, worshiping the flag and the foetus, and though the word ‘God/Religion’ is front and centre (God bless America, a city on a hill, the Trump phenomenon) the country itself appears Godforsaken. 

 Why?

Much of Christianity there is either out-dated Old Testament or modern-day Gnostic. Just imagine: The state of Louisiana has made it mandatory that all public classrooms display the Ten Commandments! No wonder, its church structure, especially the Roman Catholic wing, is a pure replica of the Old Testament High Priest/Pope ordinance, with the St. Peter church functioning as its long -gone Jerusalem temple. 

And then there is the huge Southern Baptist/Pentecostal segment, and its yearning for heaven, seeing God’s creation, for whose redemption Christ died, as evil: Evil!

Where is Christ in all this?

Me, myself, I am deeply attached to the Son, Jesus the Christ, who indisputably said, (John 14: 6) I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. But the American Religion – soaked in ‘heaven’ talk and retribution– prefers a vengeful fellow up there, sees as their national objective to revert back to the God-rule, the strict enforcement of the “Thou Shalt Not” edicts, stoning those doing abortions, or are in same-sex situations just to name a few obvious examples. Jesus, on the contrary, substitutes the word “law”, with “LOVE”.

Enter the Old Testament Amos.       

It reminds me of Amos, that farmer – an Old Testament fighter, relevant still today. I once made a song about him. Here are a few lines:

   There once was a prophet, Amos by name,                         

a farmer sent out by the Lord to proclaim                       

that Israel, chosen from all human kin                             

will surely be punished for their severe sin.

They think that God will not observe what they do;
that He will not see the sins they pursue:
the widows they trample, the poor they despise,
while rich become richer through fraud and through vice.

“The noise of their music and songs God detests
He hates and abhors their religi-ous fests;
their pious assemblies they cause Him to dread:
Let Justice roll on like a river instead”.

Back to God.

A lot of people in the USA want the vengeful God to come back. Be careful what you wish! God also is the Old Testament bringer of the Flood, the destroyer of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Creator who made the ten tribes of Israel disappear without a trace.

The US Supreme Court.

Now, Supreme Court justices have become caught up in the debate about the sort of Christianity America should have. Several of them embrace the Old Testament view, including Justice Alito, who is pushing back against the declining power of Christianity as a majority religion in America, and underwrites these outdated concepts. Cadres of true believers inspired by Donald Trump, and by the religious movement that sees him as divinely ordained, are seizing the Republican party from the bottom up.

Where is God in all this?

I have this book: “The Hidden Face of God”. I bought it more than 25 years ago, and is one of my favorite ones, written by Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman, a professor of Hebrew, and Bible translator. He writes that gradually, from Genesis on, there is a transition from divine to human responsibility for life an earth. Here is a direct quote: Adam disobeys God. Abraham questions God. Jacob fights with God. Humans are confronting their creator, and they are increasing their participation in the arena of divine prerogatives.

Where is God?

Paul in his letter to his friend Timothy -1 Timothy 6: 18 – writes, “God lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.”  Yet we can be near to God. Dr. Friedman ends his remarkable book on this note: “There is some likelihood that the universe is the hidden face of God.”

It is truly remarkable that Bonhoeffer, whom Friedman quotes several times, came to the same conclusion.  Dr. Sabine Dramm, in her book, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an introduction to his thought”, concludes, “What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one, and the perception of life that has its wellspring in this world in God, and in turn proceeds from this world back again to God.”

Karen Armstrong in her recent book, Sacred Nature, also sees creation as divine.

Where then is God?

He is never hidden. He is all around and in us. All of life is holy. When we abuse God’s creation, we abuse GOD. I wonder whether this is the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’, for which, says Jesus, there is no forgiveness: Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Matthew 12: 32. 

Is God then in and all around us?

EVERYBODY, EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE.

In several non-fiction books I have read lately, grandfathers feature prominently. My life story too follows that pattern.

Take my maternal grandfather, who, born in 1870, died in 1940. His entire life he lived the way his forefathers had done for generations. Well, no, not quite. He had a bicycle, while his forefather used horses. My paternal grandfather, also born in 1870, died in 1960, just before the great societal and religious upheaval everywhere. 

Is this my nostalgia showing? 

True, the 19^th Century was largely peaceful and static mostly. Both grandparents represented stability, sincere piety and frugality: nothing was wasted: They truly lived ‘holy’ lives. Perhaps that’s why I treasure them: my own life is so full of fakery: it is now impossible to live the way they lived, because ‘everybody, everything, everywhere’, has become unholy, contaminated, out of whack.

Everything is different. 

“Make America Great Again! MAGA. An empty slogan. We cannot go back, because everything is different. That ‘everything’ also includes everybody, church, society, family formation, sexual orientation. With right-wing politics, Trump leading the way, even democracy is at stake. It seems that evil is becoming more pronounced, and even encouraged.

Everything is weird and everyone is wrecked. This is maybe the biggest and least acknowledged truth of life in the United States and a lot of places beyond. It’s the pandemic; the eight years of Trumpism; the distortions, disruptions and corruptions Silicon Valley has promulgated and other looming menaces, including climate chaos. We all know this, because we’re living it, but maybe we should talk more about the fact that our political catastrophes are inseparable from widespread psychic devastation, that the public and private, political and personal, are entangled – or rather that the former has wrought havoc on the latter.

Evil everywhere.

A while ago I had a unique experience. I suddenly was confronted with personal pure evil. It has become so commonplace, because our entire lifestyle is based on God-denying, Creation destroying substances, now integral in our mode of living that both stopping and continuing Carbon-based substances would lead to total economic collapse. Here pops up my Calvinistic basis: “we are conceived and born in sin, and therefore children of wrath!”, now more and more evident in wars, in deteriorating climate, in billionaires ruling the world.

Even the church embodies this evil. The church – or what little is left of it – is no stranger to this evil, calling ‘the God’s world’ evil, promising heaven as reward for soul piety.

I believe that human nature is unfolding in a direction that spells trouble for our future as the human race, reminding me of the pre-Noah times, when God thought it wise to make a new beginning.

We live in a new world where all connections to God and his ordinances are severed. There no longer is a God- Consciousness. In Noah’s time. God directly intervened. Now we are in full control of our destiny in multiple ways. This, more integral dimension, reflects the state of spiritual life, so alien to the era in which, as a child, in pre-WWII, I grew up: the church itself has become a godless entity, in spite of pious words, no longer understood.

These drastic developments are suddenly visible in historic changes everywhere, in the climate, in political preferences, in unprecedented monetary policies, in warfare, in the entertainment world. All previous constrains have disappeared: in everybody, everything, everywhere we see the signs of death and pollution, of the prominence of poverty and the expanding power of plutocrats. Suddenly, overnight, as it were, these hitherto invisible forces leap to the fore, a truly historic transformation, whose outcome places the future of the West and the entire humanity in jeopardy. 

In the current, June 10, issue of the New Yorker, there is a long article asking, ARE WE DOOMED? Its subscript reads, A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through. Here’s a quote: “Hinton, a computer scientist …spoke about whether artificial intelligence poses on existential threat”. 

In short – at 76 – he believes that THE END will come coinciding with his life expectancy – say 10-15 years, that only the old and very old, will escape DOOM.

What is important, is, that an awareness is growing that we are approaching the END, and that:

A new world is coming.

A new world is in the making, as the existing order teeters and its faith in its continuation diminishes. It is time to dream the depiction of the Bible’s last chapter: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations,” and expect what Malachi, the last Old Testament prophet, writes: 

“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them”.

THE TWO WITNESSES.

Two books.

A few days ago, I received a book, sent by my oldest son, an important book, a possible ‘breakthrough’ book.

So, what book was this?

It was: LIFE AFTER DOOM, written by a prominent Christian writer, Brian D. McLaren, who finally, FINALLY, admits that the earth where we live, is doomed. DOOMED. We, WE, have made it inhabitable. Every day we read of another unnatural’ disaster, taking the lives of thousands. Any day now, living somewhere in North America, you may get a registered letter, cancelling your home insurance, because your environmental risks are too great. No fire insurance means no mortgage, so down goes its value. 

When I survey the world, with wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with crucial elections everywhere, with right-wing thinking – against environment – gaining, then this book makes imminent sense.

LIFE AFTER DOOM, has as subtitle, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. Brian McLaren argues that we must read the Bible differently, a book, not about us and our souls, but about Creation, for whose restoration Jesus died to bring it back to its former glory, while we must be God’s co-workers in this process. 

Stefan Paas, another prominent thinker, professor of Mission, has come to the same conclusion. In his 400 pages Dutch book, VREDE OP AARDE (Shalom on Earth), he and McLaren are in full agreement: two prominent witnesses!

Both books point to Revelation 11.

Both books remind me of Revelation 11, where, suddenly, two mysterious witnesses appear, both initially received by the church with open arms. Then illusion sets in, and, just as sudden, the church turns against them.

I can now see how these two modern witnesses will meet the same fate. 

Why?

Because almost from its very beginning – see the apostle John’s letters – the church succumbed to Greek Gnosticism, separating body from soul, and promoting heaven at the expense of the earth, essentially causing our Climate Crisis.  My (Presbyterian) Hymnbook still exalts the merits of heaven, a notion so ingrained in most churches, that most people, dying with that notion, will be faced with the naked truth that not heaven, but the earth is where we end up.

Back to earth: the final Truth

From the first chapter of Genesis to its very last chapter in Revelation 21, Creation occupies the Biblical center. This is plain from the categorial statement that in the new creation: “There is no TEMPLE there.” No temple means no religion. No religion means no bible. 

Jesus did not favor religion: religion killed him. Jesus brought us LIFE, and LIFE means body, soul, spirit: total human involvement here, on the earth, God loves so much.

No temple also indicates that Organized Christianity has had its day. “There is no temple there’, suggests that we have to start moving that way now, and give our utmost effort and energy to the ‘cosmos’, to everything and anything God created in his wisdom, a world that we are uncreating.

Highly controversial.

Last Sunday our preacher was a Salvation Army Major. He preached on Romans 8. After the service, at the coffee hour, I expressed my full agreement with his presentation, centering on the birth of a new creation. 

Since nobody joined in my conversation, it dawned on me that, basically, for the biblically illiterate, church and sermons are often a waste of time, because people lack the Christ-centered framework and the biblical infrastructure.

That to me is again a sign of the very last days, as the emphases now focus away from the Bible and away from the soul-destined heaven. This again became plain to me when the father of two murdered missionaries in Haiti, as reported in the New York Times, expressed his confidence that his children now were in heaven, in spite of Jesus’ repeated statements (John3: 13) that ‘nobody can go to heaven except Jesus who came from there’. Till the very last, just before his Ascension, Jesus told his followers again that, where he is going, nobody can follow.

On the contrary.

The entire human and biblical histories have only one aim: THE NEW CREATION. Jesus’ death on the cross was not primarily for our sins: its immediate aim was to wrest creation from the clutches of Satan: see John 3: 16. When Adam and Eve sinned, they transferred ownership of creation, God’s Holy Work of Art, to God’s great enemy. Jesus’ death and resurrection restored that ownership. 

Still in doubt? Read John 3: 17:

 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

For these two witnesses the battle has just begun. The Church with Popes and Cardinals, Basilicas and Cathedrals, confessions and superstitions, will not lightly surrender its pomp and circumstance. 

THE ARK AND THE ARCTIC.

There’s nothing new under the sun: there are always people, their skin color may vary, perhaps today they are a tad taller, not necessarily better dressed, lately more women among them, with the newcomers having a lot of toys: iron horses; loud banging sticks, but, basically, no difference between ancient and recent, except, these later creatures are fatter! 

Where does this lead? 

I am trying to compare people thousands of years ago, in Noah’s time, a mere 400 generations away, to you and me. Are we smarter? Are we cleverer? I doubt it. Could we have pulled off building an ARK without chainsaws, without logging trucks, skidders and other power tools? In many ways, we are completely identical: then as now, evil rules us both.

ARK: the guesswork.

Picture yourself alive in Noah’s time. Imagine, all the talk and rumors! Some doomster is constructing a huge boat! Says that the world will end! That torrential rains will drown as all. Why? Because we are evil. Evil? Come off it. We have some really smart people among us. They even came out of heaven, and, believe me, they are clever. They call themselves the Nephilim, (see Genesis 6) the ‘fallen’ ones, tall and talented: real leaders. Just the right guys to have around. As our new leaders they brought a lot of new ideas to us, became family, married our women, and introduced us to many innovative tactics. Progress, that’s what we wanted. None of this ‘listening to nature’ stuff. 

That mysterious visit.

It all started when a man I forgot his name, something like Jason, came calling one day, wanting to buy our cedar bush. We haggled a bit and settled for a steep price: No bargain, and he paid in gold. They wanted these specific trees: lightweight, and watertight. 

 The father, Noah, and his three sons, had a proper plan, had all the dimensions set-out, and once the basic structure was in place, with scaffolding all around, they used the bitumen, of which there was plenty around, to make the structure watertight. Watertight? The nearest river, the Tigris, was a three-day trip away! 

You know the rest of the story. The animals came in two by two. Then…

Today?

Ecclesiastes 1: 9 says it all:
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” 

The Nephilim, the ‘fallen’ ones, are still with us. And they are? The big Oil Companies, just a few scores of multinationals cause the bulk of Green House Gases. Of course, we let them. We are their eager helpers, just as in Noah’s days.

The Ark, and the Arc-tic

I believe there is an intimate connection between Noah’s Ark and our very own Arctic. In Noah’s days people were just as mentally stagnant as we are today. Our constant news stream leaves us immune to the most shocking events. In Noah’s days, this was also the case. 

Enter Arctic News.

This time not God, but we will cause the entire earth to be cleansed of evil. Arctic News leads the way. I am inclined to write: leads THE WAY. 

Here is a direct quote from its May 13 bulletin.

Self-amplifying feedbacks and developments as discussed above, as well as crossing of these two tipping points, could all contribute to cause a temperature rise of over 10°C, in the process causing the clouds tipping point to get crossed that can push up the temperature rise by a further 8°C. 

Altogether, the temperature rise may exceed 18°C from pre-industrial by as early as 2026, as illustrated by the image on the right, from the extinction page.

Ample warning.

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius proposed a model predicting that increased concentration of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere would result in a warming of the planet. In his model, the warming effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapour in preventing heat flow from the Earth’ s surface (now known as the “Greenhouse  Effect”) are counteracted by a cooling effect where the same gasses are responsible for the radiation of heat to space from the atmosphere. 

We are great at ignoring warnings. The reports from UN annual conferences on Climate Change are becoming increasingly alarmist, but sport scores and Trump’s performances are seen as more important. 

In Noah’s time, God directly intervened. Since then, God has drawn back. Deuteronomy 32: 20 reveals his wisdom:

I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.

The similarities are there: the Ark and the Arctic. God caused the flood. We will cause the final fire. Soon. Pray for grace.