Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

NOVEMBER 22 2015

PRAY FOR PARIS? PRIEZ POUR PARIS?

There is a certain saying in Latin which today could refer to prayer: Deus ex Machina. It literally means “God out of the machine”. It comes from ancient drama where sometimes a god was needed, so the actors had a god figure suspended above their heads and some stage hand would lower it whenever a god was called for. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, put to death by Hitler weeks before World War II ended, used Deus ex Machina as an example of the sort of god that is needed only when special circumstances require his presence, which actually is the way Christians in general uses God as well. When all goes perfectly, we can do without God but when sickness strikes or death or unemployment or the Paris attacks, we want God there to heal our cancers or avoid death or get us a job or wage war on ISIS. For the rest, we don’t need him.
And then there is the Paris Climate Change Conference starting next week, on November 30, when 50,000 people from all over the globe will converge on Paris to decide on the fate of the planet. All churches in Canada –urged on by CPJ, an organization I have supported since it was founded in 1960 and on whose board I served for a while -are supposed to pray that the world will still has a lease on life. Has it? Should it?
In America people, by and large, couldn’t care less about Climate Change, so in that huge country no or infrequent prayers are offered to prevent us from killing off the planet. Too bad: the USA is supposed to be the most Christian country in the world, with the highest percentage of prayers, supposedly, and also the highest per capita polluters. So….
So are you going to pray for Paris? Of course we should pray for it, pray especially for these Muslim attackers, because in Matthew 5: 44 Jesus urges us to, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Last week my brother Drewes, living in The Hague, sent me an article he found in the Dutch daily TROUW. I translated it because it gives insights into ISIS that are deeply disturbing. It was written by a Robin de Wever.
Here’s what he wrote:

ISIS desires the end of the age, but its own demise may be the result.

It’s only a matter of time, according to the theologians of ISIS, before the true believers in Allah and the infidels from the West will face each other on the battlefield. That conflict will be the final battle, spelling the end of history. If we want to understand the Paris attack on Friday November 13 2015 we cannot discard the apocalyptic rhetoric of ISIS.
It’s on the fields around Dabiq where the last battle will take place according to a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed. ‘After a rather long interval,’ according to the Great Prophet, ‘the armies of Medina and the forces of Rome will meet there.’
Once the fighting starts a third of the Muslims will flee and a third will be killed. The remaining third ‘will be the conquerors of Constantinople.’

The ISIS theologians are fascinated by this prophecy. The Muslim faithful are ‘the armies of Medina,’ while the forces of Rome (read, The West) are the enemies of Islam. This prophecy has convinced them that the ISIS fighters are the bloodthirsty and self-appointed ‘army of Medina’ which in the end will be emerge as the triumphant warriors.

The quotation is found in a ‘hadith’, one of the many saying attributed to the prophet Mohammed. Most Muslims know and acknowledge the hadith of Dabiq, but the majority fails to implement it. That is not unusual because there are so many of these hadiths. ISIS, on the other hand, has made the prophecy of the battle on Dabiq the cornerstone of its theology. This simply means that ISIS wants to bring on the End Time.

This really implies that the Paris attacks on November 13 are connected to this apocalyptic belief. Yes, just as some Christian movements believe that the End Times, as proclaimed by John in Revelation, are near so the ISIS also is convinced that the Dabiq prophecy is about to happen, and, in contrast what the Christians believe, the ISIS militants are sure that they must cause the Apocalypse to come.

They have made a beginning with this in Iraq and Syria by creating what they think is a perfect rule where slavery is part of the package. All this indicates, according to the ISIS’ hadith interpretation, that the End of history is approaching.

‘The more the West reacts, the more people perish, the more convincing is the tale that the end is near,’ according to the terror expert Matthew Henman of the London-based HIS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center.
But creating the ‘Caliphate’ – the perfect religious state- is not enough and that too is clearly indicated by the Dabiq’ prophecy, according to these ISIS theologians. The End Time will come only when the Muslims (read ISIS fighters, as the others are not really true Muslims), engage the armies of Rome, that is to say, the West.

ISIS constantly speaks of this ultimate encounter. In the last few months there was a lull in the fight against ISIS because the West did not want to get mixed up too much into this conflict in Iraq and Syria, but the Paris event has changed all that. These attacks have resulted in the US and Russia and France uniting to engage these elements. (“We are at war” said President Hollande).

An apocalyptic struggle.

‘We must not underestimate the apocalyptic element in ISIS’, according to Matthew Henman of the London-based HIS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center. In an article in the Washington Post he points out that those who sympathize with ISIS interpret the bombing (by Russia, France, the USA and others) as indications of an apocalyptic struggle.

The spiritual leaders of ISIS are no doubt anxiously looking forward to this confrontation as the start of the great struggle between ISIS and the Satanic super powers. Even though the Western powers see this as a war against terror and a threat to national security, ISIS sees it is a holy war, a struggle with a possible apocalyptic outcome.

“The more the West bombs,” says Henman, “the more people perish, the more credible is the prophecy that the end is near.”
ISIS itself contains a queer mixture of different goals. Whether the average ISIS fighter is motivated by the end-struggle is very much in question. ISIS is a complex mixture of apocalyptic expectations, both trying to attain a pure Islam doctrine, but also one political opportunism, as well as simply blind hate toward neighbor enemies such as the Shiites and Yezidis and the far-away Western enemies. Last year it became plain from leaked ISIS documents that a segment of the ISIS founders had very religious motives, but that another section was composed of warlords whose aim was simply to overthrow the established power centers. Already for years they are assisted by fighters from elsewhere who have their own motivations. “The more enemies they create the more enemies are fighting them”, says terror expert Daniel Byman.

And yet, the Apocalypse, the aim of striving for the End of Time, is a recurring theme in ISIS propaganda. The glossy ISIS periodical called DABIQ is full with this stuff.

Escalation, yes or no.

It is quite possible that ISIS is going international to take revenge for all these bombing attacks by Western nations, so say people in the know: thus a simple message of retribution. That’s why they engaged the French on their own backyard, simply to scare the wits out of them, in the hope that this will teach them a lesson not to intervene. But it is far more likely that all this actually will make matters worse, will accelerate the conflict. The ISIS actually envisions both scenarios.

“ISIS has pictured the attacks in Paris as an attempt to discourage the West”, commented ISIS expert William McCants last weekend, “in order to stop further escalation in Syria and Iraq, but this does not make sense if its real aim is a cease-fire agreement. After all, they constantly have made statements such as: let them come on because we are at war with the entire world.”

Can ISIS really wage war with the entire world?
Well, they are doing it now, whether this is the proper thing to do for them or not. They are fighting in Syria and Iraq; they downed a Russian plane in Egypt; their attacks in the French capital are further proof. If ISIS is directly or indirectly responsible for all this, then it is, indeed, busy on multiple fronts.

“The more enemies you tackle, the more enemies will fight against you”, is the obvious conclusion of terror-expert and former advisor of the US government, Daniel Byman, writing in Foreign Policy. If the USA and France are really serious in tackling ISIS then ISIS better watch out. It may not end up as an Apocalyptic Ending for them and an eternal victory for the true Muslims, but simply a military defeat, not the End of Times, but a humbling military debacle. So far the TROUW article.

So what is my reaction?
If recent history is any indication then the US powerful military machine will crush the enemy and – see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan- will bungle the peace. On the other hand, if the ISIS movement is really set to unleash the End of Times, then the Middle East is the right place for it.
There some 1.5 billion people make their home. There also Climate Change will have its most calamitous impact, as millions of small-time farmers, perhaps the bulk of the population, have been forced off the land due to desertification, soil erosion and persistent drought. Desperate people do desperate things. They already experience End-Times. How would you feel if the land which has given a living to an untold number of generations, no longer is fertile and the buildings which were inherited from your ancestors all are destroyed? Multiply that by a few millions and the collective consciousness turns toward apocalyptic thinking.
I see as the prime danger there the presence of nuclear bombs: Pakistan is the real wild card. Its population is largely Islam and its rulers are principally the military, and we all know that the military mind is one-dimensional: for them the only solution lies in the use of weapons, and when the situation seems beyond remedy – and in religious conflicts there really is no solution – then the ultimate weapon may be called for, even when it means collective suicide.
How about the West?
Things at home are not too rosy either. As a matter of fact the West too is in the clutches of a suicide mania. Thus not all that different from the Middle East, which, a hundred years ago, was one of the world’s most peaceful regions; today it is the most violent, witness the millions of refugees, now striking at the heart of Europe.
The current disorder started in 1918 when the World War II winning parties, France and Great Britain, divided the region into several incoherent blocks, by creating artificial states screaming for dissolution. Ever since 1918 there never have been stable successors to the defunct Ottoman Empire, which, through its benevolent rule, used to keep the peace in the Islamic world.
Priez Pour Paris? Pray for Paris?
The Middle East mess has been typical of what politicians do. They look for short-term solutions and never extend their vision to the ultimate consequences. The same is true with the Climate Challenge. Do we really grasp what we have to pray for?
When we pray for a solution to Climate Change, then the Lord right away bounces it back to us: “what are YOU going to do about it? Are you going to throw your car keys away? Are you becoming a vegetarian, as beef cattle are the second highest emitters of methane? Are you willing to share your 2500 square feet house with 2 other families? If not: The West is as much on a suicide trip as is the dreaded ISIS.
Pray? Yes. Pray for forgiveness.

NOVEMBER 15 2015

THE FUTURE OF WORK

The late Sheikh Rashid Bin Saed Al Maktoum, longtime Emir of Dubai and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, once said:
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel.”

When I apply that to my own situation, then I can truthfully say that both my grandfathers rode bikes, my father drove a Ford, I drive a Jetta, my sons (and daughters) all have fancy cars, so do their children, but in the end they all will go back to a bike.
When I look at the farming situation, I see a similarity there as well: my grandfathers worked with horses, my father moved to the city and, while living there still kept a country connection. His children, my generation, all acquired a city-bred mentality, but some of my grandchildren will (be forced to?) move back to the country where they will adopt the life similar to my grandparents, in some ways the same, but also totally different. Yes, much the same but also totally different, because Climate Change will change everything, including the future and nature of work, and especially it will change us.
Famous psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung – 1875 to 1961 – said somewhere that there is a basic difference between a city person and a country personality. That was true in his lifetime, but is no longer the case now: we all are urbanized, all have become technophiles, all depend on nuclear and lots of carbon energy to exist. Sad to say, everything and everybody will have to change.

The coming conference in Paris, starting November 30, will bring a new message to the world: the age of carbon fuels is coming to an end. The immense trouble is that our energy slaves have made it possible – for a few decades – to live far beyond our natural means, far beyond what is possible on a sustainable basis. That has to change. Is that still possible?

Last week I read a quote by famous French novelist Anatole France, so famous that when I studied French he was required reading. He wrote, “All changes, even the most longed for, are melancholy. For what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another.” We must die to our ‘un-creating’ life before we can enter into the ‘creation-friendly’ life. Actually that is a complete religious statement.

When I was born in 1928, I lived in two worlds: part urban, part rural. My grandparents were truly rural: no or little electricity, horse and buggy for commerce, bikes and walking for mobility. As a privileged kid we always had an automobile, but we were the exception. Our children and grandchildren have never experienced anything else: we all must die to one life before we can enter another. That will prove the greatest challenge ever faced humanity, much greater than fighting terrorism. And creation-loving Christians have to be the example!!

This year officially, the world temperature will have increased by 1 (one) degree Celsius. Not a big deal, some will say, and that is true if that would be the last of it, but that is only the beginning. Today we are guaranteed to experience at least 2 degrees and most likely more. And that spells disaster on a grand scale.
One obvious fact is that the world-wide use of carbon products in the form of natural gas, which made fertilizer and plastic possible, and liquid fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, has changed the face of farming and has, in my life time more than a tripled the world population. In the year 1900, when there were 1.5 billion people to feed in the world, close to 40 percent of the working population were engaged in agriculture. Thanks to huge machines, lots of carbon expenditure, and megatons of fertilizer, today less than 1 percent of the working population is engaged in farming and successfully feeding 7.3 billion people.

I have a book by Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College. She is known worldwide for her research on the interrelated issues of work, leisure, and consumption. Her books on these themes include The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, and Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (retitled True Wealth for its paperback edition).
She writes that, “during the last year or two I’ve noticed that conversations about the future of work are now mostly about machines—how smart ones will do fantastic things to make our lives better, or how they’ll make human labor redundant and create a jobless dystopia.”

True, ever since the Industrial Revolution extraordinary labor-saving technological change had both good (cheaper products) and bad (pollution) effects. We no longer work to eat, we now work to consume. That will change: all our work habits will change in the future!

She continues, “Today, that context must include consideration of climate change, which has been almost totally missing from discussions about the future of work. The most obvious reason Climate Change matters is that it promises to be extremely disruptive. Even if the global community can pull off the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass and limit warming to two degrees Celsius, plenty of climate chaos is still in store. At this point, a future of four degrees of warming is more likely, given current national pledges for emissions reductions and considerable uncertainty about them.”
How true. Today all signs point to catastrophic sea level rise, drought, plummeting agricultural yields, frequent extreme weather, and human migrations on a large scale. The current march of the millions to Western Europe and Canada is only a small beginning. It has an immediate effect on the employment picture. Already a totally new kind of work is popping up: helping refugees, re-educating them, requiring greater need for first responders, health professionals, and aid workers, among other occupations. Climate chaos will also have large macroeconomic effects, reducing investment, consumption, and, yes, employment. It might well cost you your job.

In Canada we just elected a new government, its platform based on continued economic growth. It is true that the faces of a new generation of politicians are refreshing, and there is again hope in the air. But the raw reality is that in Canada the carbon bubble has popped. The Oil Sand oil extraction enterprise – Tar Sand in the USA – cannot be continued: it simply is too polluting. That means an entire arm of the economy is dying. And that is only the beginning. The terrible truth is that our entire existence built on fossil fuels – as today all of our enterprises are – belongs to a former age, the 20th Century, because Climate mayhem leads to economic mayhem which will force a new mindset whether we like it or not. We have to start thinking differently, and must die to carbon rich life before we can enter another based on renewables. The stark choice is: change or die.

Will that happen?

The USA is the world’s largest economy. There the mindset is closed to change if the Republican Presidential debates are any indication. With such an anti-intellectual attitude no turnaround is possible, assuring that catastrophe is guaranteed.
The needed turnaround is immense. Look at transportation. The faster one wants to travel, the more energy one must use. The further we live from where we work, the more energy we use. No longer are suburbs the only problem: it’s the exurbs that necessitate the longest commutes. True, telecommuting is an option for some, but, judging by the crowded highways, that does not seem to make any difference. Granted, cities in Canada, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa, all have elaborate plans for mass transit, but, as the economy declines, the billions needed to build these systems, will not be available. What if all these rapid rail systems are ready and the jobs have gone? That is a terrible possibility.

Today there are two opposing trends at work: a slowing economy means less tax revenue. To combat Climate Change, more tax dollars are needed. To look after the old-age segment for pensions and medical care, more tax dollars are needed, while disappearing jobs also cry for more unemployment assistance.
There also is another adjustment needed, perhaps the major one. In the last century machines have replaced muscle power but they are severely polluting, which means that a totally new approach to life must be learned or re-learned, replacing mechanical power with muscle power. My grandparents had multiple skills. We only know how to push buttons: we lack real life-skills. Climate Change will force us, by the grace of God, to re-learn creation-loving abilities, such as growing food, living more simply, do more walking and biking, greater appreciation for real leisure, not just TV watching or computer games, but reading, conversation, and communal games.

Be assured that Climate Change will play havoc with employment: oil extraction will diminish or disappear; trucking will suffer; flying will be curtailed with ‘going south’ becoming a thing of the past. With jobs disappearing, the government will probably establish a minimum income for all people, and with tax receipts decreasing, this will lead to governments creating money out of nothing, the way they did to rescue the banks by giving them trillions of dollars.
That is a recipe for hyperinflation, driving up the cost of living, and, while making cash savings disappear, will make it easier to pay off debts on all levels. I remember from the war years 1940-45 how our church quickly paid off its huge mortgage when money lost much of its value.

All this indicates that we are speeding towards the end of human life as we know it, because the end of oil will mean the end of billions of carbon-dependent lives. The bad thing is that many will not be able to adapt. The good thing is that it will prepare people for the Kingdom to come.

Today very few people have a clear understanding what “The Kingdom of Heaven” really entails. By and large the churches have not been a leader here, even though Jesus often told us to “First seek the Kingdom”. It bears repeating that the Kingdom of Heaven – as described by J. H. Bavinck in his Between the Beginning and the End: A radical Kingdom Vision – page 32- is: made up of all plants, all animals, all people, all angels —-all things. The kingdom includes the sea and the land, the mountains and the valleys, all that was and is and is to come— all of it incorporated into a grand and mighty whole. The kingdom is the place where all things are in the right place and where everything can fulfill its function and work toward its potential in complete harmony with all that surrounds it. The kingdom is synonymous with light, peace, joy, service to God – all in harmonious veneration.

I need not emphasize that we have done the opposite. A bit earlier on that same page Bavinck describes our situation: “It is impossible to visualize the immense difference between the majestic, harmonious unity of creation as it emerged from God’s hand and the frantic, demon-dominated planet in which we, cursed humanity dwell after the fall into sin…..God has surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers, whose only purpose is to abuse and destroy it.”
Oil, all carbon-based fuels, has speeded up this process, and it is our, almost impossible task, to go back to a life that is dominated by the Divine Kingdom concept.
The future of work lies in that direction.

Anatole France – 1844 to 1924- may not have had a clear idea what it really meant when he wrote, “All changes, even the most longed for, are melancholy. For what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another,” but then poets and writers often are prophetic. For us to gain entry to the Kingdom to come we must die to our present life before we can enter the Life to come, “while forgiving those who trespass against us.” There’s only room for humility here.

There’s where the Future of work is headed: we must live the Kingdom life.

November 8 2015

FIRES, FIRES, EVERYWHERE.

2 Peter 3: 10 comes to mind. It says that: “…the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”

Just this past week I read a warning by Greenpeace that “fires raging across the forests and peatlands of Indonesia are on track to pump out more carbon emissions than the UK’s entire annual output.” The thick smoke choking cities in the region is likely to cause the premature deaths of more than 100,000 people in the region and is also destroying vital habitats for endangered orangutans and clouded leopards.
In Indonesia alone there were 10,000 fires on two of its largest islands alone: Sumatra and Borneo, now known as Kalimantan. Actually it is raging across the entire 5000-kilometre length of Indonesia. One of the burning islands is West Papua. It’s not just the trees that are burning. It is the land itself. Much of the forest sits on great domes of peat. When the fires penetrate the earth, they smolder for weeks, sometimes months, releasing clouds of methane, carbon monoxide, ozone and exotic gases like

Why is this happening? Indonesia’s forests have been fragmented for decades by timber and farming companies. Canals have been cut through the peat to drain and dry it. Plantation companies move in to destroy what remains of the forest to plant monocultures of pulpwood, timber and palm oil. The easiest way to clear the land is to torch it. Every year, this causes disasters. But in an extreme El Niño year like this one, we have a perfect formula for environmental catastrophe.
It is hard to convey the scale of this inferno, but here’s a comparison that might help: the fires in Indonesia alone are producing more carbon dioxide than the entire US economy. In three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany. And Indonesia is just one area: South America is just as bad and so is Siberia.

What we are now doing to the planet and to human society is exactly that – burning down the house while we are still living in it. Everyone needs fuel, especially during a bitter winter, but only a mad man starts deconstructing the house in order to burn bits of it in the stove or fireplace.
Almost as mad as that is stealing bits of other people’s houses to burn, but that at least is not soiling your own doorstep – well not at first. In a world of limited resources and limited space we’ve now reached the point where raiding our neighbours’ houses is the same thing as raiding our own house, because the net effect is the same – disaster on an unprecedented level.

Of course it’s easier to live in denial and keep on cannibalising the world’s vital resources at an ever-increasing rate and pretend that it’s business as usual, but in reality it is anything but that. The alarm bells from commentators from all sectors: science, economics, religion etc. are getting louder and more frequent, better argued and with the raw data to back it up, but we are still not listening.
So this month the Paris deliberations start, lasting until December 11. Whatever will be decided there will have little impact on the ultimate outcome of Climate Change because curtailing GHG – Green House Gases- will cost money and jobs.
More than fifty years ago I, as a member of a book club, received Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring. I never read it and gave it away. Then nobody really listened that well back then, although governments paid lip-service to these troublesome do-gooders. Now we know that what they said was entirely true, that we are headed for disaster.

Just a simple statistic.

According to scenarios used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global annual per capita emissions would need to fall from today’s average five metric tons per person to less than one ton by 2075, a level well below what any major country emits today and comparable to the emissions from such countries as Haiti, Yemen and Malawi. Just imagine: current annual per capita emissions from the United States is 17 tons, while Europe and China are 7 and 6 tons. Get used to it: we will never reach that goal. I have never been in Haiti or Yemen, but spent some time in Malawi, where the average fuel use is what we all should aim for and will never reach: 1 ton per person. I fell in love with Malawi, where the people always were cheerful, the kids sang and danced, everybody walked and lived simply, and everybody wanted to be like the white people.

Yes, we, North Americans, Canucks and Yankees alike, use 17 tons of carbon emission per person. We have to bring this down to 1 (one) ton. Last week in the New York Times a lead article talked common sense: no matter what happens in Paris, even the most drastic reduction will not be enough, so the only thing we can do is adapt. Move to the Arctic as James Lovelock recommends in his book The Revenge of Gaia because the rest of the world will become inhabitable.

Fires will aggravate the water problem and soil erosion. Couple this with increased damming of rivers, pollutant run-off into rivers, fracking and mining and you’ve a recipe for a water crisis, which will, in turn, lead to a food crisis.
Without fresh water we cannot participate in agriculture – this is the basic fundamental industry that keeps most people on this planet alive. Of course, a few people subsistence farm or hunt and gather still, but this is a tiny, tiny fraction of the human population. The rest of the world relies on increasingly intensive agriculture to provide vegetables, grains, fruit and also meat for the several billion people that are busy doing something else with their time.
Take China. It now has come to light – yes, everything will come out as the Bible tells us – that coal use in China has been much higher than previously reported. Coal is the greatest climate enemy. What will bring China to its knees will be the collapse of the environment. Bad air, bad water, bad land and total reliance on imported food will inevitably take its toll.

Of course these problems are not restricted to China, a country simply the canary in the coalmine. Across the Middle-East, Asia, Africa, southern Europe, USA and central and southern America there are increasing difficulties relating to the basics of food, water and the condition of the land.
One of the facts I learned from translating the Bavinck book on Revelation is that the world will soon start to suffer from Hyper Inflation. Bill Bonner and Associates predict that as a result of government flooding the market with phantom money, the current deflation will suddenly jumped over into hyperinflation. Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan says the same. No wonder. With everything under threat, air, water, soil, food will become hard to come by: back to the very basics of life, just as in Malawi.

But back to the fires that are everywhere.

The global fires do more damage than burning trees: they are destroying treasures as precious and irreplaceable as the archaeological remains being levelled by Isis. Orangutans, clouded leopards, sun bears, gibbons, the Sumatran rhinoceros and Sumatran tiger, these are among the threatened species being driven from much of their range by the flames.
South America is also severely affected. According to Greenpeace, a fire in the indigenous Territory of Arariboia has already consumed 45% of the 413,000-hectare. Worst affected are the 12,000 people from the Guajajara ethnic group, whose communities have been surrounded by flames. There are also fears for the approximately 80 members of the Awá-Guajá, an uncontacted tribe. “This is certainly the biggest fire we have seen in recent years,” said Gabriel Zacharias, the fire combat coordinator of Ibama (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources). Almost all of Maranhão’s forests have been cleared. Those that remain are on indigenous lands or in nature reserves. Loggers enter these areas illegally, cut down trees and then launder the timber for sale to the UK and other foreign markets.

Such degradation of the forest increases the vulnerability to fire. Efforts to prevent illegal logging have also raised tensions. Last week an Ibama ranger was shot in a confrontation with loggers during a fire combat operation. Indigenous forest guardians have also been involved in several confrontations.

Fires, fires, everywhere.

“The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”

What is also being revealed- laid bare – is human stupidity. Trees are a significant source of our oxygen supply. When we burn them we not only create more greenhouse gases, we also deprive future generations of absorbing the CO2 we generate, and cut back the supply of the very air our lives depend on. The seas supply the most oxygen, but there too, due to warming of the waters and its acidification the plankton- which generate the oxygen – is also under threat.

In the meantime the world population is increasing and human wants and needs are also growing while the supply of air, the supply of water and the quality of the soil is rapidly deteriorating. It seems to me that our sense of values, our capacity of understanding the basic facts of life, is rapidly diminishing. These basics are that we need three things in life: food, shelter, clothing. Make it four: an understanding of the human mystery, the sense of the supernatural. To me Romans 1: 20 tells volumes. It says that “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

We simply cannot plead ignorance. Creation all around us testifies to God’s greatness. The now global fires reveal our basic unbelief. The fear of the Lord is missing, which means that we no longer possess wisdom. Also, by deliberately destroying God’s creation for the sake of very short term gain, we are openly aligning ourselves with the Evil One whose sole aim is to destroy God’s most precious creation he so much loved (John 3: 16).

There is no greater sin than purposely destroying God’s work of art.

The basic question facing us all on this earth – especially us North Americans who create 17 tons of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) per person each year – is “how then shall we live?”
That is a question no individual alone can solve. J. H. Bavinck in his book Between the beginning and the end: a radical Kingdom vision writes (pages 34-35) “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal………The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules forever.” That really means that personal salvation and the efforts to restore creation go hand in hand,

This is radical language, so totally different from that useless and meaningless “Brother, are you born again”, that a completely revamped church is needed to even start this process. It means becoming fully aware of the destructive lifestyle that we Westerners, especially we North Americans are engaged in.
Job, the man who was fabulously wealthy, can teach us something. He lost everything thanks to the Satan. Now this same Satan has done the opposite to us: thanks to Satan-inspired polluting oil we too have everything, large houses, luxurious mobility, heat and cool at our fingertips, food from everywhere, all obtained at the expense of creation. The catch is that, just like Job, we too have to lose all that and have to get rid of our ill-gotten gains, because they clash with the values of God’s kingdom to come. “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal………The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules forever.”

Preparing for the Kingdom to come implies to “reduce, reuse, refuse, repair, recycle”, and constantly pray: “Maranatha, Lord come quickly.”

November 1 2015

That dreaded number: 666.

My NIV study Bible tells me that the most acceptable explanation for this number is that, as the number 7 signifies perfection the triple 6 indicates a valiant attempt to reach that perfect stage but in the end, fails.
I mostly agree with that rationale, but I think there’s also more to this.
In the past 3 months I have translated a Dutch book dealing with Revelation and the author, the late Johan Herman Bavinck, a theologian and professor of Mission at the Free University in Amsterdam, refrains from giving any explanation to the many numbers bantered about there. This caused Walter Brueggemann, offering a short review on the book, to write:
“J. H. Bavinck has written a commentary on the Book of Revelation. It would, however, be wrong to call this a commentary, because he honors none of the turgid protocols of commentary. He sweeps away the calendar-counting of hysterical fundamentalism; he has no patience with the book-keeping mentality of historical criticism. Rather he plunges us into the great cosmic drama of conflict that defines the earth as it yearns for the perfections of heaven. The writer of Revelation knows that “everything on earth is tiring” as the church lives in conformity and contamination. But the lamb/lion is relentless even while remaining hidden and delayed. Bavinck says of the book of Revelation that it swells “to a mighty choral, the jubilation song of the victory.” And he offers us, on that great choral, a vast fugue that calls us to great imagination through which we as church will be drawn and empowered to live differently in the world. We have no commentary like this that is itself emancipatory and of transformative, well beyond our usual arithmetic of piety and morality.”
Brueggemann lauds the absence of the guessing game that has made Revelation the source of the most outlandish speculation about the end of the world and what is in store for us in the final days. Perhaps foolishly, I will venture into a field where these two learned men, Bavinck and Brueggemann, don’t want to go.
Why do I do that?

I am not a theologian, just an informed layman whose opinion really does not matter. Bavinck is quite cautious in the Revelation’s number game. The number 666 he does not mention at all and he only devotes a few words to the Thousand Years of binding Satan (Revelation 20), saying only that it probably occurred in the past.
When I look back many centuries it dawned on me that the period from about 600 A.D. to 1600 A.D. could be seen as the most fitting time frame. St. Boniface, a Celtic missionary, born in England in 672, ventured into the Netherlands to preach the gospel there which cost him his life: he was murdered in Dokkum, the top of Friesland, in Netherlands in 754. The blood of martyrs always has been the seed of the church. No exception there. 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. (He was excommunicated). Throughout the Middle Ages Christianity flourished as never before. All the great cathedrals were built during that period. Also the St. James Bible, the Westminster and the Belgic Confessions and the Heidelberg Catechism date from that time. All these documents are still in use. So that period could well have been the era Revelation pointed to. That period ended with the 30 year religious war (1618-48) which was the most devastating conflict Europe ever experienced. Since then wars have dominated the world scene, culminating in the war on Creation, now raging in full force.

Back to 666.

Bavinck wrote En Voortwentelen de Eeuwen in the mid 1950’s thus more than 60 years ago. I translated the title as And On and On the Ages Roll. When Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, Michigan, publishes it next year it may emerge as At the Threshold of Eternity, a commentary on Revelation. In that sixty years interval we have experienced the advance of technology with the Internet, instant photography, but also the onset of all the catastrophic symptoms so well outlined in the book of Revelation.
Bavinck sees the main aspect of the last bible book in Revelation 22: 11. There it says: “Let those who do wrong, continue to do wrong….Let those who do right continue to do right“. He writes: “Now we can approach what can be seen as the heart of this book, its dominating theme. This can be captured in one phrase: everything becomes what it is. That’s what the book is all about, that is the meaning of all happenings and in particular of this final phase.”
He continues: “That simply means that we now live in a masked world, a world in disguise. Matters are not what they are, are different from what they are in fact. That is the secret that this world so carefully wants to conceal. The Satan, that immense moving power behind the world’s happenings holds humanity in the clutches of the fateful illusion that God is dead matter, something stale situated in the past, a self-satisfied sugar uncle, far beyond from being relevant. He has sold humanity on the notion that men and women everywhere are now fully in charge.”

About the final phase we now live in, Bavinck writes: “Nature will fall upon the human race as a provoked lion: nature will breach all the constrains humanity has laid upon it, and will explode into extraordinary catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, failed harvests, pandemics. All these will be more severe than ever. And as part of all this comes the dissolution of human society. Wars will come of an intensity and severity never before experienced, causing incalculable confusion. And all this will result in the coming of the kingdom of the one world-tyrant, the beast with his abhorrent body, arising out of the ocean of the community of nations. Again for a short spell the human throne will be established. Humanity has not turned to God, has only become more outspoken in his resistance, more spiteful in its hatred, more determined in its powerless hate, more relentless in its rage against God’s children. Indeed, who is unjust, more injustice will ensue, who is vile, more vileness will follow. The mask falls off.”

The stage is set for that final phase. Each week now we experience another 1000 year event: floods, droughts, storms, you name it. That the masks are falling off we see in the Volkswagen cover up of the true emissions. We also see this in the Roman Catholic Church where its sexual abuse scandals are coming out in the open. We see this in Capitalism, causing the destruction of the entire world for the sake of money. We see this in the Snowden revelation, outlining the extent of government penetration into the internet and other digital data. We see this in the millions of refugees now escaping the wars everywhere. We see this in the impossibility to cut down on energy use.

This month the world meets in Paris and people there will call for a ban on all carbon products, which is easier said than done. All plastic is derived from oil sources, all vehicles move on gasoline. There are today more than 6000 items that depend on carbon-based material to exist: car bumpers, airplanes: there is no end to its uses. There simply is no substitute. Or take air conditioning: The USA, a nation with 318 million people accounting for just 4.5% of world population consumes more energy for air conditioning than the rest of the world combined. It uses more electricity for cooling than Africa, population 1.1 billion, uses for everything. Or take its NSA the USA National Security Agency, once so secret that NSA was said to mean No Such Agency. It warns that no internet address is completely safe. The only way to stay undetected in this world is to join an as yet unknown tribe in Brazil or somewhere in Papua New Guinea. As soon as a person is connected, is wired, has an e-mail address, the cover is blown.

And here is where the number 666 makes its debut.

Governments now argue that to guarantee our security we have to sacrifice some rights. This is an invalid argument. By shifting from targeted to mass surveillance, governments risk undermining democracy while pretending to protect it.
Already we live in an age when your supermarket’s software knows who you are from your buying choices; where your email provider can send you advertisements matched to key words in your supposedly private messages. Fact is that we slowly lose our rights to privacy and our commitment to democracy. Canada’s former Prime Minister was well on the way to become a dictator. Will Justin Trudeau be different? Economic necessities and environmental constraints will be stronger than any good intention.
Already individual supervision is in place. More than 2.5 billion people, mostly urban dwellers, voluntarily wear a tracking device – their smartphone. It can tell you the nearest coffee shop, order you a taxi and even find you a nearby potential sex partner because it knows where you are. Hire a bike and the city transport system knows where you start and finish. The privacy issues here are dealt with by limiting the flow of data between public and private sectors, and by making the individual the centre of the information flow.
But in a smart city, you need data to flow freely across sectors that, in the commercial world, would normally be separate. The energy system needs to know what the transport system is doing. And the whole thing needs to be run like a “God game”: the government, not the individual, must exercise control.
For this reason, early on, the technology companies realized smart could only be built with a new kind of government. You would have to run the entire state as an integrated system, where every recorded change reconfigures activity elsewhere – so, a traffic incident at point A can temporarily reroute buses, redraw cycle lanes and send additional public transport to affected suburbs. Right now, at every conference and jamboree, mayors and council leaders are being bombarded with marketing pitches for smart-city technologies.

I recommend you read Chapter 13 of Revelation the last few verses. There it says that the mark of the beast- the Anti-Christ – is either on the forehead or on the hand. Only when this is visible can people buy or sell.

Today there are two technological ways to identify people: fingerprints and an eye scan, now widely used in airports before you board. With the power of computers doubling every year, the entire world population can be registered at a central point. Only the poorest of the poor in Africa and Asia escape detection: commercially they don’t count anyway.

Revelation, chapter 13, ends with a call for wisdom. That means that this passage can only be understood when it actually takes place, when reading the signs of the times. When Bavinck wrote his commentary some 60 years ago, computer power was negligible. The most powerful machines, made by IBM, occupied an entire room. Today a laptop has more capacity. “If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” So ends this chapter.

We are approaching the end of this world. Already everything is under threat: all of nature, the food supplies, whatever moves and lives and has a being. Still humanity will not turn to God, with churches closing everywhere and people abandoning ‘religion’ in droves. Has the church become a failure?
The Evil One, having the world solidly in its power, will persist till the bitter end and use all tricks of the trade to subject humanity to his evil intentions. The Evil One will use the powers of technology to make sure that everybody will comply with his wishes. For that end our SIN- Social Insurance Number – or our Social Security Number will be used, a number symbolized by 666.

Yes, that number 666 means more than a valiant attempt to reach that perfect stage.

P.S. “Hiel” is a Hebrew word meaning: god lives. The ending –ema, indicates ‘son of’. The name “Hielema” could mean: “son of the living God”( See Psalm 82: 6).

Next week: Fires, fires everywhere.

OCTOBER 25 2015

HE’S COMING AND WE MADE HIM.

Have you cut down on your driving, lowered the heat in your house, downsized to 1950 housing standards, walked or biked where it was possible, gone vegetarian, ripped out that lawn and started to grow your own produce? Of course not. Nobody else you know has done that, so why should you.
Let me go back a few years. When I started selling real estate in 1963 the first house I sold was a new 3 bedroom brick bungalow, full basement, measuring 40 feet by 25 feet or 1,000 square feet for $12,000. Then the family size was 4.5 persons, giving each person about 220 square feet. Now the average new house is 2400 square feet, occupied by a small family of 2.6 persons, or close to 1,000 sq.ft per person. Cheap and abundant energy made this possible, and, of course, cheap money, thus lots of debt. Downsizing to 1960 standards would mean 600 sq.ft. dwellings and a huge saving in carbon!
Appealing to people to restrain themselves by self-enforced abstinence alone is a waste of time. By and large, we consume as much as our incomes allow: the more we earn, the bigger the car, the larger the living space, the more we fly, the further away the vacations. In other words: we love to tell the world that we are well-off.

My opinion

We will not, we will never, change our living habits voluntarily. That bodes ill for climate change and will cause HIM to come. Nobody in the Western world – of course there are a few exceptions – will go against the grain, will be a climate change leader, yet we will have to if the world will stop the process of Climate Change.
Next month the world will meet in Paris to discuss this matter. With Stephen Harper out of the picture in Canada and the Australian Abbott also booted out, two vocal Climate Change deniers will not be heard. However the USA is still the wild card. Obama is convinced that the world is in danger, but less than 35 percent of its population shares that view.

The only way to stop Global Warming is to enforce it by law. Only when enforceable and enforced constraints are in place for everyone, can manmade global warming be curtailed. That simply means that we need a world-wide body to legally enforce the way we live. Does that point to the HIM, the Anti-Christ?
Justin Trudeau in Canada and whoever will be president in the USA have their work cut out for them. In Europe it is a little easier. They have the Euro area, comprising most of that part of the world. There is a governing body in place to start a process of carbon use curtailment. Also, generally, Europeans are much more climate conscious than we in North America. I can see Canada come around somewhat, but there is no doubt that it is almost impossible to curtail energy use there. We simply cannot abandon the McMansion we have built everywhere. The only way to force people to alter their wasteful living habits is to tax them on the carbon fuels they use. In other words: a carbon tax.

Of course a carbon tax solves nothing. The rich can afford to pay it. And the poor? Well they’ll sell their ration to the rich, so it is a sort of wealth transfer. More about that next week when I take a stab at the number 666.
Let’s face it: we have painted ourselves in a corner. We have built a society based on cheap and abundant and – presumably – friendly fuel. We now know that this was totally wrong, but once on that road it is impossible to turn back: it is a one way street to universal suicide.
When the substance used in refrigeration was seen to cause the Ozone layer to disappear, the so-called Montreal Accord was universally accepted because there was a non-polluting alternative readily available. Now we must replace fossil fuel with solar and wind power, which is possible to some degree as long as energy to make thee panels and towetrs is cheap and widely available because it still takes electricity to fuel hybrid cars; it still takes all sorts of steel and other material to fabricate them, using perhaps as much energy to manufacture and transport them than they save in fossil fuels. And then there is long distance trucking and airplanes.
Elections

I closely followed the Canadian elections and still do so for the USA where politics has become a total farce, which bodes ill for the world. Were the government there to legislate a carbon tax there, the country would see a revolt.
For Canada too it does not look promising. Take Canada`s recent election. The mantra all party leaders forcefully proclaimed was that Economic growth would be their prime goal. The Liberal Trudeau went the furthest by promising deficit financing to build or repair the infra structure so that heavily polluting cars and trucks would have a smoother ride. Expanding the infrastructure means new jobs, more carbon costs and also more taxes: Infinite Economic growth in a Finite World is impossibility. None of the politicians even hinted at this.

We all love our television. We love watching sports. We love the situation comedies, all financed by advertising which have as sole purpose to sell us more things we don`t need with money we don`t have.
I repeat: it just can’t be done, assuring that HE will come.

A steady state economy, which means a no growth society, will only be achieved when a new human consciousness emerges. That means a totally new mindset. This means a complete reversal of the way we now live. Even if this were to happen, even if everybody would suddenly be a convinced environmentalist, nothing would change because of the sort of suburban society we have created, including the massive Wal-Mart stores, the Big Box business model: change has become structurally impossible. We simply cannot go back to small dwellings, small local communities and local enterprise, no matter how willing we are. Only demonic repression, a ruthless dictatorship, a regime with a wide-spread secret police and death penalties for energy abusers is able to only somewhat make this possible. Prepare for HIM to come.

Voluntary curtailment just can’t be done.

Like so many others we too have kids spread out over North America which mean airplane trips either for us to see them or for them to visit us. Our grandchildren want jobs, need economic growth to make a career. In short: a no growth society is a pipe dream. We can’t change anymore. Nobody wants a stagnated society, not a soon-to-graduate student looking for the first job; not immigrants who arrive with almost nothing; not newlyweds considering starting a family; not academics building research programs or pursuing tenure; not development officers of green non-profit organizations; not the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada. Perhaps a few old fogeys like me, a somewhat well-off retiree. That’s about it.
Granted, we in North America certainly could do with less. Europe, with an equal if not higher standard of living, manages to do so at half the carbon use. But how about China or India, where a good portion of the population lives on a dollar or two per day. No way will ROW, the Rest of the World condone a no-growth policy.
What will eventually happen?

We eventually will see the implementation of some sort of wartime energy rationing, perhaps by means of electronic coupons that must be surrendered with each fill-up, electricity payment and heating fuel. Each person receiving an equal share. That how it was done during the war in Europe with food and clothing. Extra coupons too be bought from those who use less. It means, of course, a world-wide police state. More about that next week. Failure to implement this mean unrestrained weather catastrophes. We are well on the way for this: every month this year has been the warmest ever, with September exceeding all.
Yes, we live in interesting times.

It is fascinating to follow the USA political scene. What is going on there is a snapshot of what is happening elsewhere. Gone are all illusions. The United States is abandoning its self-imposed overseer of international order. What Paul Kennedy in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers predicted, is happening: money problems and budget constraints will force once Great nations to stop policing the world- as the US has been doing – or face monetary collapse.
The real problem is that we have abandoned God.

Jesus once wondered whether he, upon his return, would still find faith on earth. Indeed our deeper problem is spiritual. Capitalism has brought the world to the edge of environmental collapse. Now all sorts of pseudo religions are appearing, one of them evident in the USA in the Tea Party vision of individual priority where Government action of any kind is seen as evil. And that in an age where only concerted action to combat Climate Change can give us a bit of hope.
Common sense is no longer an option there. In the USA are emerging fanatic movements, devoid of reason. In case after case, “reasonableness” has been trampled by behavior and creed that is stronger, darker and less temperate. As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times: “Fanatics flock to the Middle East to behead strangers and apostates. China’s growing affluence hasn’t led to sweetening, but in many areas to nationalistic belligerence. Iran is still committed to its radical eschatology. Russia is led by a cold-eyed thug with a semi-theological vision of his nation’s destiny. He seeks every chance to undermine the world order.”

All politicians are at a loss how to counter this. Canada may have elected a charming new leader, but smiles and hugs are no remedy for Climate Change, budget deficits, falling oil prices, universal deflation, or a Super El Nino. Persons such as Trump in the USA and Carson, both leading the polls in the Republican contest for the Presidency, are purely false prophets. Can Hillary Clinton rescue us? No person can because the problems are larger than life.
I once wrote long ago that civilization started in the Middle East and it looks like it will end there too as Russia and its arrogant leader has now increased the odds of this happening.

No longer can diplomacy and appeal to common sense be used to rectify the world situation.
Last week NASA, the USA National Aeronautics and Space Administration, predicted that California will experience a major earthquake in the next 30 months. The Revelation of John, the last Bible book, predicts that one of the signs of the last days is a giant earthquake.
A super El Nino is on the way. There was also one in 1918, the year of the Spanish Flu, which killed anywhere from 40-100 million people when the entire world population was less than 2 billion. People now think that the 1918 El Nino contributed to the onset of that pandemic as an El Nino affects weather patterns throughout the entire world, causing extreme droughts in some places and floods in others. A similar pandemic today with 7 billion plus people in the world could well kill hundreds of millions, especially since, according to the influential medical magazine The Lancet, 90 percent of the world population already suffers from some sort of disease.

Where is this all heading?

Writing in The American Interest, Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown argues that we are heading toward an “Age of Exhaustion.” That sounds true to me. Most certainly we are at the end of Capitalism whose mantra is ‘creative destruction’. We have used up 50 percent of all life on earth to satisfy our growing population and its inexhaustible appetite for all things natural. I repeat that Infinite Growth in a Finite World is impossible, yet our politicians utter this phrase all the time and win elections on this platform.

The Bible tells us time and again that “we must love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves”. To love God means to love his creation. That is the core of our failing. The world is full of false prophets: the Donald Trumps in the USA, the Le Pens in France, the ISIS caliph in the Arab world, and Vladimir Putin in Russia. They will make matters worse and speed up the coming of a world ruler, the Anti-Christ, who will try to enslave us all.

Next week: What could the number 666 mean?

OCTOBER 18 2015

IS THE CITY BEYOND REDEMPTION?

Last week I wrote that, when disaster strikes, people in the city will not be able to find refuge. I did not elaborate then, promising to do this now. Here are a few obvious facts. When collapse looms there will be no electricity and thus all transportation will soon cease. Today people in cities such as Toronto and New York increasingly rely on public transportation which is good for mobility inside the city but traveling away from the core requires a car. Both in Toronto, the third largest city in North America, and New York tens of thousands have bought condos in the core, forsaking the use of the automobile, so all these people are stuck when disaster strikes: there simply is no escape. Stores only have a three day supply. After that: famine.
It all started with Cain. Cain? Who is he?
There once were two brothers, Cain and Abel. Their parents were Adam and Eve, which the Bible tells us were the first human pair. These two fellows were born when their parents were banned from the Garden of Eden. They were as different as two siblings could be. Cain was the man of action who worked the land and tamed animals to take the hard work out of farming. Abel was a shepherd. While Cain was impatient, Abel was slow in pace, contemplative, not lazy, but certainly no go-getter. Somehow Abel understood God’s plan for creation, he relied on God’s law, studied the way of nature, and marvelled at God’s goodness.
Cain was different. Because his parents had insisted on his doing so, he went through the routine of worship but really thought offering a lamb or other animal pretty silly stuff. He noticed Abel’s contentment, his happiness, his lack of uptightness and realized his own anxiety and his own restlessness.
All this did not escape God’s attention. He spoke to Cain: “what the matter with you? How come you are so unhappy? Cain replied: “I do all the work around the place. I toil from dawn to dusk and beyond. Abel, the pious fool, what does he do to contribute to the economic well-being of the family enterprise?” So, at one time when Abel had forgotten to close the gate and his sheep accidently strayed into a field ready for harvest, his anger boiled over and he knocked him cold. Abel’s head hit a sharp stone and he bled to death.
Then God got into the act again: “Cain, where is your brother Abel?” But Cain ignored the question and kept on walking. God repeated the question and Cain screamed back: “Leave me alone. Am I my brother’s keeper?” God: “Cain you killed him. His blood cries out to me from the ground. Now the ground is cursed forever and you will be a restless wanderer forever.”
Cain, scared, lamented: “You drive me from the land. Whoever finds me will kill me.”
The start of the city.

God makes a promise and allows him to develop creation in the way he sees fit. Why does God give Cain such freedom? God wants to speed up the development of creation. Cain, driven from the fields, uprooted from a slow-moving agricultural life, God gave Cain carte-blanche to bend God’s creation to mold it into the image of humanity. Until Abel’s blood flowed, there still was a great deal of stability and affinity between the human race and God’s creation. Cain shattered that closeness. He introduced insecurity, the taste for blood, the desire for revenge.
Cain, the insecure wanderer, who yet craved security, Cain was promised protection by God, a God whose existence he denied. The tragedy of Cain, the tragedy of the human condition, is that the human Cain will always be in search of a home.
So where does Cain search? He turns his eye and his desire to Eden, toward the lost paradise, and this too is the perpetual quest for humanity. The search for a home, the search for “Paradise Lost” is nothing else but the human desire for God’s presence.
Cain, in search for a home, in search for security, builds a fortified city.
It is now almost impossible to imagine life without the city. People even in the smallest communities, isolated on remote islands, depend on the city. The old age pension cheques, the TV programs, our tax notices, they all come from the city. Human progress and the city are most intimately intertwined. Harsh as it may sound, the city, the place of human progress, is the direct consequence, is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and his refusal to accept God’s protection.
So Cain builds his city. For God’s open paradise, Eden, he substitutes his closed fort. He calls the city Enoch, which means “a new Beginning.” Cain is going to make the world over again in his image. God’s creation is seen as nothing. A new start is made, a new beginning. Cain, with everything he does, digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. Each solution to a problem becomes a new disobedience, each invention, each remedy, a new offence to God. With Cain paradise becomes a legend, creation a myth. Cain, in his city called “A new beginning” takes possession of the world, and molds creation according to his plan. It is no longer God’s world: it is Cain’s creation.

The city, what is it?

It is the place of people, rich and poor, old and young. It is the place of cathedrals and concerts, of head offices and sweatshops, of courts and crime. Many people of God live there, yet basically a city is the place where the human desire to exclude God from creation is the prime motive, is the place where people display a remarkable unity in being separated from God, where constant efforts are made to exclude any divine intervention.
Perhaps 60 years ago there still was a country-side separated from the city, but now there is little difference. Food production with monstrous tractors and so much other energy-intensive machinery has become just as heavily dependent on the total energy package as the city. The modern farmer has become little more than an extension of the city system. Now with the opening of India and China many more billions want to adopt the Western City and will become enslaved to the environmental waste cause by human progress.
Yet the city, Cain’s answer to Eden, to paradise, is God’s way of preparing God’s people for the New Jerusalem, the City of God. The city is now the place through which Christians, wherever in the world, must pass. The city is the world today, the world is the city, the global village where, says 1 John 5: 19, Satan rules. The Arabian desert, the valleys of Nepal, the African jungle, the forests in Brazil, the space above the earth where the satellites roam, every square inch of the universe has been annexed by the city. We need to be in the city but not of the city. We must work for the betterment of the city without adopting the mentality of the city.
For Cain, the founder of the city, it was first of all a monument to his own pride, his defiance to the God whose existence he even denied. God now uses Cain’s pride and is using our pride to produce human progress. Cain saw the city as the expression of his power to thwart God’s efforts to bring creation to its fullness. God uses the momentum of progress and the advance of human knowledge not only to bring about the downfall of those who willfully pollute creation, but miraculously God also blesses human progress for the benefit of the building of God’s city. The contemporary designers and builders of the city now have no God-Creator factor in their blueprints, yet they cannot manage to exclude God from the city. When the full truth is revealed it will become plain that God has used the sinful efforts of humanity to bring about God’s plan, the New Jerusalem.
The city has become the place of non-communication. Through all branches of electronic and written media, through advertising and promoting a consumer lifestyle, the economic aims everywhere are clearly identical. With a universal economic language, with ‘market forces’ in control world-wide and instantaneous satellite communication everywhere, never has there been a greater choice in communication networks and simultaneously a greater lack of personal communication. It is the Tower of Babel confusion all over again but now the confusion is not caused by God but is self-generated. Confrontation is now world-wide. As the population pressures multiply, as the conflict zones expand, as the soil becomes more degraded and the air more dangerous, so too wars and rumors of war multiply. The tragedy of human progress, of a life lived without God is becoming more focused, and so are the voices of despair and the acts of desperation evident in the millions of migrants now moving to where food and safe shelter beckons. No longer is heard a message of optimism, of a better tomorrow.

The entire world is now city.

We are now in the midst of the great cosmic drama of conflict that defines the earth as it yearns for the perfection of heaven. As Johan Herman Bavinck in his exposition of John’s book of Revelation indicates: “everything on earth is tiring” while the church lives in conformity and contamination. Therefore the world remains ignorant of what is to come and will be utterly surprised when the mighty choral, the jubilation song of the victory, will resound through the universe.
Last week I wrote that, when disaster strikes, people in the city will not be able to find refuge. I did not elaborate then, promising to do this now. In my previous column “Does violence against creation and the killing by humans have a common root?” I mentioned that the Bible urges us “To come out of it”, meaning the destructive lifestyle we are engaged in, and I pointed to Cain as the ultimate cause of this situation.
It is true that the city, the bastion built by Cain and his offspring, provides no refuge because it has become totally dependent on creation-destroying energy resources, totally depending in its electricity distribution network. It is equally true that moving to the country is basically no solution as it too has become an integral part of the urban scene. That basically means that there is no possibility that we can pull through when global disaster strikes. That is the cruel truth.
So what does it mean when the Bible urges us “To come out of it?”
“God is a Spirit and we must worship him in spirit and in truth”, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob (John 4: 24). The truth of the matter is that we must first understand the real state of affairs in our world, which means the sinfulness of our creation-destroying way of life. This means that there is no real escape from disaster when this present world falls apart which it simply inevitable. Therefore we must rely on prayer and God’s goodness to face the horrors of disintegration as escape to a safe haven is impossible.
The time to mentally and spiritually prepare for that is now. We must detach ourselves from ‘the spirit of this age’, the false god of capitalism, the false notion that compromise is possible, the false optimism that somehow we can muddle through. Don’t expect the church at large to provide the answers, even though some of its members will.

The Bible in its last book, the Revelation of John, tells us that we live “At the threshold of Eternity”. Today we are exactly there. The stage is being set for Jesus to return, but not yet. More about that next week.

Next week: Why a world ruler – The Anti-Christ? – is a logical next step.

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