Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

DECEMBER 14 2014

THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

Senator Inhofe out of touch

Negotiators from around the globe were haggling this past Saturday in Lima, Peru, over the final elements of a draft Climate Change deal. This COP 20 (Conference of People) would, for the first time in history, commit every nation to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions — yet would still fall far short of what is needed to stave off the dangerous and costly early impacts of global warming.

Years ago, in the year 2,000, I attended such a gathering in The Hague, the Netherlands. That was COP 10, thus in the next 14 years there have been 10 more of these international meetings, each time in a different corner of the world, and each time attended by some 2000 delegates, each producing nothing but more GHG, the gases they are supposed to reduce.

For some poor representatives going to such an international meet is a real treat. I remember at the closing the less well-off delegates grabbed the leftover fancy conference cases for use at home or perhaps to sell them. For most of these people such outings are a once in a life-time experience, where the discussions are really of no importance. The final communique is usually written well in advance. The results speak for themselves: only a total collapse of the economic system will assure that the targets for CO2 reduction will be met, and we are well on the way to see this happen.
Nevertheless all this travelling and these meetings add to the GDP of the world. The overarching aim of each country is to increase economic growth by whatever means. That’s why some countries now include prostitution and illegal gambling into the figure that is posted by the government as an affirmative indication of economic well-being. And why not? We count car accidents also as a positive economic sign, and cancer operations, so, yes, the more economic bads, the higher the Gross Domestic Product, GDP.

Last year I was at an international church meet, discussing Climate Change. There a delegate quoted Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Inhofe, as a good example how a Christian should look at Global Warming.

That same senator wrote a book. Its title says it all: “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.” It reveals everything you need to know about the Republican Party’s position on Climate Change. That is the Bad news portion of this week. Sen. Inhofe will chair the Environment committee in the US Senate starting in January, another frightening prospect. His view is by and large how Christians view creation. The book says that climate science is hogwash. Inhofe trusts divine guidance. He writes: “God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

With Inhofe in the saddle America will burn in climate hell. He’s vowed to block all regulations aimed at cutting carbon emissions. When Ban Ki-Moon visited Ottawa harping Harper on that subject, his next stop was not Washington, where Inhofe would have refused to see him anyway: nobody is more unable to change his/her mind than those people who know exactly what God wants. Unfortunately they comprise the majority of the earth’s creatures, including all Muslims.

I read another headline: The Madness Gene.

The headline read: “Do humans have a ‘Madness Gene’ that will ensure the end of the planet as we know it?” The original was a rhetorical question pointing to the obvious capitalistic message: All humans are at their core egocentric, myopic capitalists … all are programmed with this built-in “Madness Gene”… all unwittingly driven to self-destruct our own capitalist economy … our civilization … our planet … and even sabotage ourselves. In short, the “Madness Gene” in all humans exposes the planet’s ending.

The history and evolution of this “Madness Gene” is detailed by Elizabeth Kolbert in her new classic, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.”

The negative consequences of our “Madness Gene” mean worldwide mass species extinction. This is already in progress as a result of the unsustainable irrational behavior of us, humans, in our quest for perpetual economic growth in world of limited nonrenewable global resources.

Yes, our “Madness Gene” is having disastrous implications for all seven billion humans on the planet. Look at the way we move around. We all want transportation. Our car is a status symbol. There are a billion autos and trucks in the world. America has 240 million cars; Europe has 200 million; China and India each 80 million. That’s why Big Oil gets over a trillion in annual revenues. You’re going to cut back on driving? No. That’s your madness gene at work!

Christmas coming up. Rich, middle class, poor millions are driven by consumerism. We demand food, electronics, drive the economy, make sure our kids get an education. Consumers want more, goods, money, progress, a better future. The American Dream was built on a capitalist demand that has a built-in self-destruct “Madness Gene.” Yes, we want it all, even if it kills us.

It’s going to happen. Older folks are the fastest growing segment of global population, in Canada, Europe, Japan, America, China, throughout the world. They all want security, protection, entitlements, retirement nest eggs and good medical care. Also all want to cut taxes. And workers want a bigger cut of the capitalist pie.

So the list of people, good people like you and me, all have the “Madness Gene”, where more is never enough, greater wealth, for a better life, now and more tomorrow.

But capitalism is blind, a game of musical chairs, we’re all playing, screaming “me-first! Climate later!” Unfortunately, later is too late. Because after all 50 percent of Americans think that “global warming is a hoax”. Warnings from Inhofe, from GOP presidential candidates, from Big Oil, we will not be enough time to plan ahead … not enough money to reverse the damage of global warming as the planet passes the point of no return … where the impact is irreversible and there’s no more political will to take action.

I was born in a deep Calvinistic family, adhering to “We are born and conceived in sin, and therefore children of Wrath.” Ouch. That hurts. But that really is our “Madness Gene!”

It reminds me of a very peculiar bible story, involving King David, when he was waging war against Israel’s arch enemy, the Philistines. Here’s what the Bible tells us, perhaps relating one of the earlier version of the Madness Gene. I found it in 2 Samuel 23: 15-17, when David was in a fortress, facing the enemy, occupying Bethlehem, his home town. There David was looking down and some memories stirred in him. What sort of memories? Perhaps David’s mind went back some 60 years, when, as a young boy he was waiting his turn at that well. Ahead of him was a young woman. While she was scooping the water her shoulder scarf fell off, revealing a young, full figure, exposing something David – who only had brothers – had never seen before. Did that incident make David call out, as recorded in the Bible?

David said longingly, “O that someone would give me water to drink from the well there by the gate. Then three of his heroes broke through the camp of the Philistines, drew water from the well, and brought it to David. But he would not drink of it; he poured it out to the Lord, for he said, “The Lord forbid that I should do this. Can I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives?” Therefore he would not drink it.”

DECEMBER 7 2014

THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS- DECEMBER 7 2014

OIL IS NOT WELL

A lot happened this past week. There is a glimmering of good news: Oil is not well. Its price has dropped close to 40 percent. That means that ‘fracking’ may suffer. Fracking is the forceful ‘fractioning’ of rock to release the oil there. It is an expensive process that takes a lot of water, a lot of sand and chemicals, and causes a lot of dangerous pollution. Recent reports state that fracking is as poisonous as tobacco and excess alcohol use for people who work in it and the people who live around these wells, and by the latest count that is some 12 million breathing human beings, not counting at least an equal number of animals, also God’s creatures.

This is just another example of the lethal damage we do to our precious planet. It also is an expensive process, just as the Canadian Tar Sand Enterprise where also billions have been invested. All these operations are based on $100 + per barrel oil in perpetuity. Banks have given loans to these operators based on that projection: nobody counted on a 40 percent drop. This means that suddenly the collateral for these loans have also decreased by that same amount.

Oil companies are committing $1.1 trillion over the next decade to projects that require prices above $95 to break even. The Canadian tar sands mostly need $80-$100 to pay for themselves. Arctic and deep water projects require $120, some even $150 oil. The biggest European oil groups (BP, Shell, Total, Statoil and Eni) spent $161 billion on operations and dividends last year, but generated only $121 billion in cash flow, which means that they faced a $40 billion deficit when oil sold for $100 per barrel. Now it trades just over $60. Go figure.

Why is gasoline so cheap now?

There is all sorts of speculation why ‘gas’ is suddenly so much cheaper. Politics? Trying to get at Putin whose country needs expensive oil to continue? Or is it aimed at Iran, which needs $140 oil to keep its population happy?

Actually the reason is quite simple: China is experiencing an industrial malaise. Over the last decade or so China’s economy has been firing on all cylinders to go —- nowhere. Yes, you read it correctly. It built bridges to nowhere, highways to nowhere, entire cities where nobody lives, office towers completely empty. By its own estimate China has built improvements to the tune of close to $7 Trillion that is more than the GDP – the Gross Domestic Product – of France and Great Britain combined. All these empty structures and useless infrastructure boosted the Chinese economy and, in turn, the entire world’s economy. Now the chickens come home to roost: everybody is gearing down, because the second largest economy in the world, after the USA, is in deep trouble.

And the rest of the world?

Not much better. Europe is in deflation. The USA has increased its National debt by some $8 Trillion on the Obama watch, now totally $17 Trillion, or close to $60,000 for every American from 0-100 years. That in addition to other debt, such as mortgages, car loans, credit card balances, which easily adds another $40,000.

Another somber note came from different field altogether. Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC: ”The development of full AI- artificial intelligence – could spell the end of the human race.” His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of Artificial Intelligence, which is, of course, programmed in English. It reminds me of the Tower of Babel. There God expressed his misgivings: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do this is impossible for them.” (Genesis 11: 7). AI already is able to do many of the tasks we human do routinely, and more labor saving possibilities are invented every day. We are in this world to serve each other, not to destroy our own employment and that of our neighbors. Once we are useless, then our reason for existence is gone as well. Already in Southern Europe youth unemployed has reached 50 percent. Idleness is the source of all evil. No wonder suicide rates are growing rapidly.

Ban Ki-Moon came calling

On the eve of another UN sponsored Environmental Conference, this time in South America, another warning, which, given past history, will also go unheeded. In spite of many of such world gatherings, the last 20 years GHG- Green House Gases, carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) – is up 60 percent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree Celsius. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches or 7.5 cm; U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice. Just like the G20 meeting, these global conferences do perhaps more harm than good.

But we have to try. That’s why Ban Ki-Moon came calling on the Western world’s greatest polluter: Canada. The highest diplomatic official, the head of the United Nations, visited Ottawa ahead of the Lima, Peru conference on Climate Change. I am sure that Stephen Harper did not like Ban Ki- Moon’s harping on Canada’s P.M.’s pet project: The Tar Sand Oil, which makes Canada the world’s villain as the country doing the least to combat Green House Gases. To Harper’s great chagrin, the current low prices of international oil will make much of the Alberta’s oil uneconomical, and will make his balanced budget plans for 2015 impossible.

We all know by now that oil and its products is the main source of Climate Change. All nations are busy reducing their carbon foot prints. Better insulation, solar power, more small cars with much higher mileage all have accomplished that, and also has reduced the need for oil. With China no longer able to afford to build the immense ghost towns, cutting down on oil consumption is a world-wide endeavor.  So, yes, what is at work is the simple law of supply and demand: the world has produced too much of that lethal liquid and now there is a surplus. In order to avoid the worst of Climate Change, the world simply has to leave much of what is called oil reserves in the ground. It is now estimated that under a global climate deal consistent with a two degrees centigrade world, the fossil fuel industry would stand to lose $28 trillion of gross revenues over the next two decades, compared with business as usual. The oil industry alone would face stranded assets of $19 trillion, concentrated in deep water fields, tar sands and shale. Many Canadians have objected to Alberta’s tar sand operations. Well, it could quite well be that in the next few years we will see a drastic reduction here. Watch for dominoes to fall everywhere in banking, in the stock market – your future pension is in danger – in the oil fields and in government revenue, which for a good portion depends on oil royalties. No royalties means either higher taxes for all or cutbacks in social services. Either way it will hurt you and me in our pocket books.

Cheap oil is actually a curse. It promotes increased use of carbon fuels at a time when we should be investing massively in substitutes, but now the apparent plenty of oil and gas takes the spine out of most politicians.

We have entered a new phase in Human History.

There have been several periods in human history, all periods of millions of years where life was determined by natural events:  the ice age comes to mind, one of the shortest of environmental periods. We now have entered the final stage which people have been calling The Anthropocene Age. You may recognize the ‘anthropo’ part, referring to us humans.

Today we humans dominate the earth, hence that label. Here are some basic facts:

1. Somewhere between 40-50 percent of every living or dead organism is dominated by us humans. Scientists call that Primary Productivity, which was nil when the humans roamed the earth as hunter-gatherers, eating renewable fruits and animals on a sustaining basis.
2. Today our domination is evident in the rivers, most of which we have either been diverted or dammed.
3. We use so much fertilizer that we exceed the nitrogen naturally occurring in nature.
4. The fish we catch far exceeds its natural growth, with total depletion slated in a few decades. We use more than 50 percent of the water run-off and are rapidly depleting the world’s aquifers.
5. CO2 has risen by 40 percent – the Green House Gases – while the even more lethal methane has doubled.

Why is this happening? The fact is that markets price all matters wrong. They price oil and gas, for instance, based on current demand and supply, while not calculating the costs to the planet in pollution, global climate change, sea level rise, and more. This is, as Lord Nicholas Stern famously put it, history’s greatest case of market failure. What the world needs is a radical new approach to pricing the products, but, unfortunately business as usual is just too convenient, too easy, and incremental change will not save the planet. The only conclusion is that what cannot last, will not last.

The 40% drop in the price of oil looks like the first domino. All the supposedly safe, low-risk loans and bets placed on oil, made with the supreme confidence that oil would continue to trade in a band around $100/barrel, are now revealed as high-risk.
In the heyday of home mortgage financing – a mere 7 years ago – exotic mortgages were bundled into securities, and sold with the implicit understanding that they were low-risk because the housing market would continue to expand. However, once home prices fell and the collateral collapsed and borrowers started to default, the result was that banks were on the hook for trillions of dollars, and the US government bailed them out, by borrowing trillions.

Now the same is true of oil, except that all borrowing power has disappeared. Just as the belief was that house prices would only go up, so banks today have assumed the oil would never go down, and used that assumption as collateral. Now they have to bite the bullet or go under.

Now that the first domino in the oil sector has fallen a long line of financial dominoes is next in line. Everyone who bought a supposedly low-risk bond, loan or derivative based on oil in the ground is about to discover the low risk was illusory. All those who hedged the risk with a counterparty bet are about to discover that a counterparty failure ten dominoes down the line has destroyed their hedge, and the loss is theirs to absorb.
The next link is jobs. Of all new American jobs since the recession, 93 percent were in the fracking field, all related to the oil and gas industry, which if oil prices stay where they are or fall more, will all vanish just as flared gas disappears into nowhere. However the fall-out in welfare and unemployment payments, reducing deficits even more, will be felt by all. Add to this the losses to investors, the restructurings and bankruptcies more bailouts, and more dominoes are destined to topple.

Don’t for a minute think that these bankers, who take home millions of dollars in bonuses, have a clue what’s going on. They all live by the herd instinct. Every one of them knows the risks, but they all are afraid to be the first to bail out, to be the first one to call the entire financial system a hoax.

When, in Lima, the world’s climate experts will gather, the only result will be more words, words, words. Nothing will change because as long as there still is a dollar to be made from exploiting the earth, this will continue, even though the odds are getting longer and longer.

THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS:  November 30 2014

Away to the USA.

It’s been more than a week away from home. Spent 10 days, including travel, in the U.S. of A., the week of Thanksgiving and the (in)famous Black Friday. I had come with specific instructions to buy dressy black shoes and a new white shirt, both formal because a granddaughter is getting married.

I am one of those who grew up in wartime Holland from 1940-45, which was preceded by 10 years of depression, all of which I lived through and which shaped my outlook on economics. Economics, in my book, has as root the word ‘economy’ which to me conveys being frugal and by that I mean hanging on to my money. Of course I have black shoes already, but, really, no, they could not pass for formal. You see, I resoled them myself, using my staple gun and a bit of shoe goo to fasten new soles and little nails to give them new heels – with a bit of glue as well. The upper heels on both shoes were frayed, so I patched them up with black gorilla tape, as shiny as the shoes themselves with the result that when viewed from eye level they still looked quite respectable. But rather than risk the ire of the mother of the bride, I became a shopper, guided by our youngest daughter who knows her way around Minneapolis-St Paul. So I now have another white shirt, which I will wear perhaps twice, and new shoes which will see a bit more use. I can assure you that I am not like the former first lady of the Philippines who had 1200 pair of shoes. I am amply supplied in running ones: three pairs but can only boast of two pair of normal shoes, a decent pair of brown and these abused black shoes. So, yes, buying another pair was really no luxury.

I love meeting interesting people. In the Toronto airport I walked around and talked for a while with 6 young women from Somalia and Ethiopia. They had been on a trip back home and were on the way back to Minneapolis where some 30,000 of their kin live. All wore pure black, including hijabs. I can recognize people from Somalia, so I picked out those who had come from there and had a delightful time with them, laughing and joking and guessing the age of their small children, fast asleep after travelling from Addis Ababa and Mogadishu. I love African people. Of course they are Muslim. So what. Is Christianity so exclusive that it is the only religion that offers salvation? Is Hinduism also all wrong, and Buddhism? On Sunday morning we attended our daughter’s church, Episcopalian. The rector there was as glaring in white- as were the deacon and two others – as those Muslim women had been in black. I had an uncle in Holland who always wore black: because of his sins, he said. I never asked him what they were.

There’s something about a big city that simply cannot be duplicated in Tweed where the entire municipality has less than 4,000 people. Big cities can offer much. Sunday afternoon we went to a concert in a large new Lutheran church, a beautiful building, with a million dollar pipe organ. A performance by a full symphony orchestra, all volunteers, all professionals, who even pay to be part of this huge musical endeavor. Even though some 500,000 thousand – 15% of its 3 million population – are colored in the Greater Twin City area, the audience was all white, white beards, white hair, perfect middle class ASP, Anglo-Saxon-Protestant. I did not see one different face, either in the 70 performers or in the 700 person men and women there.

I was wondering what is going to happen in the future of music making now that the middle class is under immense pressure. The average wage in the USA is under $20.00 per hour: that is not enough money for the kids to go to music lessons and for their parents to pay for concerts.

Minneapolis St Paul is an immense city bisected by the Mississippi River. I am always amazed at the extent of its urban area. To go to that concert we had to travel 35 km one way, and to buy the shirt and shoes we had to drive 35 km the other way.  The Twin City area is 16,000 square kilometers compared to Toronto of some 7,000 sq. km, with identical populations.

The price of fuel there is now $2.66 for a US gallon, or about 70 cents per liter, adding 12% exchange rate makes it about $0.78 Can. Compare this to the Ontario price of $1.10, which brings me to the topic I really want to write about: money.

Is money the meaning of life?

We live in a society obsessed with money. By and large people are not measured by what they do or say, but by the size of their net worth. Money is the most important rule in today’s society and the acquisition of it is seen as its highest goal. Curiously people often spend it before they have it, and mortgage their future at a rate never experienced before in modern history.

There’s a war going on, a money war. Japan is all out to weaken its currency to make it more competitive. The Canadian dollar too is dropping and so is the Euro, while the US dollar has become much more valuable.

In spite of all its drawbacks, money, as a tool to facilitate the commerce between human beings, was and is, nevertheless, an inspired invention, with tremendous potential for both good and evil. That is why, when first invented, it was administered by the priestly class. Today, more than ever, Money makes the world go round and goes around the world with a velocity equal to the speed of light and in torrents unequaled in history: the daily flood amounts to more than One Trillion Dollars. Because of Money the global economy is like a jet plane, fast, comfortable and when it crashes, its fall is also spectacular.

WWJD? What Would Jesus Do?

When Jesus came to earth, forever to retain the status of both God and Human, he could have been a human being of any description, stature, degree and condition; and yet he chose to be poor. The English poet Christopher Harvey said of him in the seventeenth century:

It was Thy Choice, whilst Thou on Earth didst stay, And hadst not whereupon Thy Head to lay.

No wonder that throughout the Middle Ages Jesus is appearing not just as God, but as a pauper. Curiously the fastest growing Protestant movement in Brazil, the so-called Crentes as the believers are known, preaches the theology of prosperity, which promises material success as well as eternal salvation, a puritan ideology imported from the United States. With such a complete reversal of what Jesus portrayed in his life, we do well to investigate the relationship between Jesus and money a bit closer.

I am convinced that Jesus had some basic misgivings about money – just like we do at times- because we all know that wealth and its acquisition makes people do crazy and often dishonest things. “The love of money is the root of all evils,” is Paul’s warning to Timothy and this probably was one reason why Jesus did not like money. If I understand Jesus correctly I think that with Jesus there also was a deeper reason, something very personal. I get the impression that Jesus went out of his way to avoid contact with money and was even loath to touch the stuff. Why do I make that assumption? Well, Jesus has pure recall of everything, past, present and future and so had perfect insight, hindsight and foresight into everything. His betrayal, his suffering and death was directly associated with money. How would we feel if we knew that money would eventually kill us, which may well be the case anyway? I think that this view governed Jesus’ attitude towards money and perhaps even towards economic theory.

Take the feeding of those thousands: Jesus knows that if these people had gone off to buy bread and fish in the neighbouring stores, the merchants, being good businessmen, would have suddenly increased the prices of these basic food items because of greater demand. The law of supply and demand is certainly not a latter-day invention: it has existed as long as people have traded. That’s what economics is all about: charge high when everybody needs it. So what did Jesus do to forestall this price-gouging? He simply by-passed the economic law of supply and demand and created bread and fish ex nihilo- out of nothing- well, almost out of nothing.

Then there is that so uncharacteristic incident where Jesus almost went berserk when he chased the money changers out of the temple, upsetting much more than the tables. After all having these business people do their work in the temple was an age-old tradition and necessary to keep the Jewish house of worship functioning properly because only certain kinds of money were accepted in the temple. And how else to get the proper animals for sacrifice? I think it was money and its abuses that made Jesus so angry. Another, more indirect, indication: I find it curious that Judas, the unredeemed among the saints, carried the purse and handled the finances: Judas, who loved money more than Jesus. In the end he ended up with thirty pieces of silver and then discovered that money as an idol wants our very lives. In that sense we are much closer to Judas than to Jesus. With ‘we’ I include all people in the over rich West.

Also to me a tip-off was Jesus’ great disdain for the nominal value of currency, evident when Mary spent perhaps a year’s income on that precious oil. “So what,” Jesus remarked, “so what if such a large sum was spent. It is only money.” Or consider the occasion when Peter was asked if Jesus would pay the temple tax. “Of course,” is Peter’s immediate reaction, “of course Jesus pays.”

But for Jesus this was not such a straightforward matter. Why this reluctance to pay the temple tax? Well, I have my theory about this. I think Jesus knew that perhaps this very money given to the temple was going to buy his life and ensure his death.

And then, in an ironic twist, with almost a touch of black humor, Jesus shrugs his shoulders and says: “OK, not important. Let me not major in minors. Go to the lake, catch a fish and there you’ll find a silver coin enough for the both of us.” I like that. Jesus is never skimpy. And, of course, with this gesture, he shows that all the fish in the sea and- by implication- the cattle upon a thousand hills, are his. Here we see Jesus’ royalty coming through. Queen Elizabeth never carries a wallet. Wherever she goes on an official visit, she goes free. Jesus is the same and much more so. Here he shows that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, but people do not recognize him that way. He also sees money as what it is: a fiction.

It’s all about money

Jesus once made a radical statement: “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” In our Western world everything is about money: the stock market, the strength of the dollar, the price of gold, three items mentioned in almost every newscast. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: the woods are paved, the mountains mined, the seas eaten, species eliminated: all because of money. Already half of all wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years because of money. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave: we are selling creation to serve us as a slave. We, as 6 percent of the world’s population cause 40 percent of the world’s pollution, in perfect accordance with the aims of Capitalism which defines itself as Creative Destruction. I am more and more inclined to think that Capitalism and its exponent, the global money economy, is the Anti-Christ. I know, that is a strong statement, but I think that’s why Jesus feared money because he foresaw how destructive it would be for him, for his creation and for us. He died so that we too could be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than we can ever live in a money society. If we want to share in that life then we must regain a new sense of value; we must reset our priorities to have our treasures expressed not in money but in love, in genuine compassion for all God’s creatures, humans, animals, trees, flowers, air, water. God so loved the cosmos…. (John 3:16).

THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS: ending Nov. 23 2014

I occasionally watch T.V., mainly the newscasts. The picture that fascinated me last week was taken at the G20 meeting in Brisbane, with Putin sitting at a round table with 10 chairs, and he was there all by himself. Had I been there – God forbid that I would ever dwell in such company – I would have joined him, asking him about his relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church, to which, so the tale goes, he is committed. But then that church is no different from any other, I imagine. Last week I was at our regular Thursday night Bible study, where one of the topic was Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. You may remember that twice he found the disciples – reduced to 11 by now – the then church, fast asleep. Jesus scolded them for this. It struck me that today, with God’s creation also in total agony, the church too is asleep. The excuse: creation is none of its business.

Talking about sleep: is there anything more boring than a G20 meeting? For some reason the heads of states from important countries meet once of year to dine and wine, at great expense to the taxpayer and even greater expense to the environment. They all fly in, of course, adding to our precious air megatons of GHG- by now you may know that this means Green House Gases – mostly CO2 which causes Climate Change.

The Australian chairman of the G20, Tony Abbott, wanted to keep Climate Change off the agenda, enthusiastically supported by Stephen Harper, the Canadian P.M, who has found a soul mate in Tony Abbott, whose name has religious connotations, an abbot being the head of a religious order. How fitting!

Both P.M.s are deeply religious: Infinite Growth being their idol, and in that they were at the right church service: the meeting of the G20. The Christian God is a G3, God in Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Devil favors G666, while the secular church goes by G20, representing multiple gods, with the overarching expression of faith in the sacred duty to deliver exponential economic growth in a finite earth.

At this meeting, as usual, a company of priests prepared the Holy Script which always contains their faith commitment. It never varies: “The G20 is going to boost living standards and create better jobs.” It’s the age-old political clap-trap that is as meaningless as their idols, which are eloquently described in Psalm 115:

Their idols are silver and gold, made by the human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes but they cannot see, ears but they cannot hear….Those who make them will become like them, and so will all who trust in them.

Indeed those who believe in the god of silver and gold and in infinite growth have lost all notion of the essence of creation. To see creation as something that cannot feel or hear, or suffer pain, something dead, implies that God is dead. The Bible sees creation as a living entity, now (Romans 8: 22) groaning as in agony. The Psalms see it as alive: hills dancing with joy, the heavens proclaiming God’s glory. To trust in the Lord means trusting in the goodness of creation, seeing it as the symbol of God’s greatness, and treating it God’s gift to us. That same Psalm, 115, tells us that “the highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to us.” That is a holy trust.

The G20 in Brisbane, Australia, where the outside temperatures had again reached a record, the matter of Climate Change was on the agenda in spite of the protests from Abbott and Harper. The final official communique said that:

“Our 800-point action plan will increase the size of the global economy by more than 2% over the next four years. It is going to step up the fight against climate change, make banks safer, modernize infrastructure, crack down on tax evasion and win the battle against Ebola.”

Stephen Harper certainly did not help to cure Climate Change the week of November 9-16. He must have generated tons of Green House Gases, by first flying to Beijing, for an APEC conference – APEC standing for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation – then back to Ottawa, for the November 11 commemoration, trying to score political points, and then right away hopping in the plane flying 14 hours to Brisbane, Australia. Of course Harper is one of those Christians – the majority actually – who does not believe in Climate Change. He does believe in Infinity that is in Infinite Economic Growth a faith he shares with his soul-buddy Tony Abbott who scrapped the carbon tax when he came to power. Everything is sacrificed on the altar of Economic Growth. I wonder have these fellows ever read Isaiah 24, where the consequences of molesting the earth are outlined:

See the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it;

He will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants –

It will be the same for priest (abbot) as for people…………

The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered.

Last week I read in E. F. Schumacher’s Small is beautiful that Jesus’ admonition to First Seek the Kingdom has not only a promise – all things we need will come to us – but also a threat: unless we first seek the Kingdom, that is the welfare of creation, these other things which we also need, will cease to be available to us. That’s what happens when we pursue Economic Growth and neglect the welfare of creation. The Bible says that the ‘wages of sin –polluting is sin – is death.”

I am quite sure that behind closed doors the leaders of the world weren’t so optimistic. The entire world is in deep human excrement, to use a diplomatic word. Frankly its politicians are in panic. They are running out of options. The Financial Times reports today that China now resembles the US in 2007. Domestic bank loans have risen 40% since 2008, while “the ability to repay that debt has deteriorated dramatically”. Property prices are falling and the companies that run China’s shadow banking system provide “virtually no disclosure” of their liabilities. Last week the G20 leaders announced that growth in China “is robust and is becoming more sustainable”. That is pure hogwash.

Take debt

A long time ago Shakespeare cautioned: Neither a lender nor a borrower be. Well, today there are plenty of both, and the great bard’s warning is not being heeded.

A report in September revealed that total world debt (public and private) has reached 212% of GDP, $100 Trillion +. In 2008, when it helped to cause the last crash, it stood at 174%. The Telegraph noted that this threatens to cause “renewed financial crisis … and eventual mass default.” Shadow banking has gone berserk, stocks appear to be wildly overvalued, the Eurozone is bust again. Which will blow first? The system the world’s governments have sought to stabilize is inherently unstable, built on debt, fuelled by speculation.

David Cameron, Britain’s PM, came back from the G20 meeting with warnings that we are in for hard times, revealing a bit what his political colleagues also fear. The world has run stuck: there is no alternative policy to the so-called Keynesian policies – pump in more money – with the result that they are making the same mistakes while expecting a different outcome. There is talk in Canada that Harper will call an early election. He has to face the voters in October 2015. When we do go earlier to the polls that is a certain sign that he fears collapse will come before next October.

Back to Oil.

By now everybody knows that fuel prices are down. Speculation abounds that this is a political ploy to play hardball with the “fracking” oil in the USA, which needs at least $70/barrel oil, and to humiliate Putin whose Russian economy depends on high fuel prices, well north of $100 per barrel to make ends meet. The Middle East oil sheiks can get by on less than $40 per barrel. Of course we, in North America, are glad because the cheap oil frees money to spend, especially with Christmas a few weeks away.

Actually low oil prices are a symptom of the opposite the G20 need for growth: they signal stagnation everywhere, in China, in Japan, in Europe, and also at home in North America.

The world at large needs high oil prices to pay for the ever-more expensive exploration costs, such as penetrating the almost inaccessible last frontiers. So the low prices are bad news, because they spell deflation, the exact symbol of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Deflation is the Great Economic Plague. In a world oversaturated with debt, deflation is makes debt harder to repay. Lower prices mean that people wait to buy, because tomorrow the prices may have gone down even more. Thus lower prices signal economic stagnation. Fact is that the global economy has caught the equivalent of financial Ebola: deflation, which is the recognition that debts can’t be repaid, obligations can’t be met, and contracts won’t be honored. Credit evaporates and actual business declines steeply as a result of all those things.

I dare say that, for the foreseeable future, we will not see higher growth for the simple reason that growth can never go on forever. The earth is tired. It is literally exhausted. It’s been a fabulous 200 years, and now we see the end of growth. Our natural environment cannot continue to support further exploitation. The evidence clearly shows that atmospheric temperatures are rising, nature is failing to sustain many of the services that are critical to human life, and our global theft of everything natural is sharply reducing the biodiversity that safeguards our existence. There is no longer any doubt that ‘growth’ which really means the massive use of carbon energy, the increase of material output per person, and the rapid growth of the overall human population, is the cause of this environmental degradation. And yet, economists across the political spectrum call for ‘restoring growth’ as quickly as possible: the blind leading the blind.

Politicians are plainly petrified

I repeat: at this point politicians and bankers are simply terrified: the global system is overly indebted and so vulnerable to complete collapse of stock markets that very few of our leaders sleep peacefully. That the entire financial world is desperate can be seen by the violent rise and fall of currency values. The Japanese yen and the euro go down, the dollar goes up. It happens in a few months, which is quickly in the world of money.

Yet the stock markets go up, no longer a portrayal of the real state of affairs. Nobody wants to be the first to pull the plug: perhaps there are yet a few paper dollars to be made. Both Greed and Fear rule the roost.

My advice? No, I won’t hazard a guess. There is no rule that applies to all. Become aware of the utter frailty of the system we have devised. Support and strengthen the community you live in. There is real wisdom in community. Now more than ever we will need friends and family and strong churches, just as the time when all these bodies are often in deep disarray.

Pray without ceasing is perhaps the best and only option.

THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

The hoily mess in the Middle East

November 16 2014

Idleness is the source of all evil.

History started in the Middle East, and it did so with a bang. The bang was the killing blow to Abel’s head. The killer was his older brother, Cain, the first child of Adam and Eve. Ever since that time war and bloodshed has been the maker of history. Lamech, Cain’s offspring, was typical. He boasted: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me; if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times. (Genesis 4: 23-24). Apparently this ratio still applies there today: in the recent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, 30 Israelis were killed and 70 time as many Palestinians. Quite a contrast with Jesus who uses that same number: we have to forgive wrongs not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Thanks to Lamech’s bragging we now face feuds forever and ever with the result that the Middle East has been floating in a flood of blood until this day. In ancient history matters there got so bad that Yahweh drowned its entire population, save for Noah and his family. Can this happen today? Yes. If the Massive Solar Flare of 1859 (the “Carrington Flare”) that melted electrical transformers everywhere, would hit now, it would have the same fatal effect as Noah’s Flood. It would effectively stop all electrical transmission, paralyze daily life and starve the Western World in a few days.

After the Flood came the Tower of Babel drama. There God thwarted human communication to prevent the first – not the last – human overreach. The confusion of tongues then led to widespread emigration, as the world was largely unexplored and uninhabited, and deserts basically non-existent.

Overgrazing and overpopulation were to become the prime cause of desertification, now the norm in the Middle East and rapidly gaining elsewhere. Violence against creation and violence between people go hand in hand. The Middle East was the first densely settled part in the world and also the first area to suffer environmental degradation. It seems to me that, in order to provide ‘lebensraum’ for its people, the spread of Islam – basically a black/white religion (follow the rules and you go to heaven, easily replacing Christianity) – can be traced to escaping its polluted lands for greener pastures, which in the early Middle Ages were found in Eastern and Southern Europe,

The Crusades – 1096 to 1291 – were the first of a series of religious wars.  The Popes then, supposedly possessing the keys to the kingdom of heaven, promised the Crusaders, upon joining up, carte-blanche forgiveness for their past and future sins, resembling the exact Koranic assurance of heaven for any Moslem warrior. The Crusades were followed by the Black Plague which killed some 30 percent of the then European population of an estimated 60 million.

Religious Wars

Where the first religious war was between Islam and Christianity, the second one occurred in Europe between two branches of the Holy Catholic Church, its Roman Catholic wing and the Protestant part. It lasted from 1618-1648, and affected half of Europe’s people. That prospect now looms for the Middle East, adding to the chaos there and preparing the ground for another pandemic.

Wars always lead to abuse, especially of nature. The current conflicts in the Middle East are also a direct result of lack of water, overpopulation and no meaningful employment. There’s a Dutch saying that “ledigheid is de Duivel’s oorkussen”, which resembles our saying “Idleness is the root of all evil”, including the waging of wars. I wonder what will happen in California where there is a looming lack of water, and in Brazil, where in its largest city, San Paolo with 20 million inhabitants the pumps are also running dry. Both California and Brazil are slated to become deserts due to the persistent drought in the Sunshine State, while in Brazil the landscape has been stripped of 80 percent of its natural forests. Natural forests act like giant sponges soaking up rain and gradually releasing it. They also protect watercourses and maintain water quality by reducing sediment and filtering pollutants. Can Phoenix be far behind or Las Vegas? Both desert cities rely on far away, ever scarcer water.

The oily mess in the Middle East.

Two of the Middle East’s three biggest oil?producing countries, Iran and Iraq, have a Shi’a majority, while  Saudi Arabia is overwhelmingly Sunni, with a restless Shi’a minority concentrated in the country’s oil?producing east, a dangerous situation, a deep religious divide.

What separates Sunni from Shi’a is a succession dispute that erupted after the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D. now almost 1400 years ago. Those who accepted Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s father?in?law, as the rightful successor became known as Sunnis. Those who believed that Ali, Mohammed’s son?in-law, was properly the successor became known as Shi’ites. They’ve been fighting ever since, now coming to a head.

The seeds for war were sown in 1911 with Winston Churchill who was First Lord of the Admiralty, responsible for the Royal Navy. He set out to bring the Royal Navy’s aging fleet into the 20th century, switching its engines from coal to oil. Hence his interest in the Middle East, the trustee of the largest pool of oil in the world, with Saudi Arabia leading the count controlling a quarter of the world’s oil reserves.

Now, in 2014, the world is totally addicted to oil. No wonder that the world’s attention is concentrated on the Middle East, and particularly on Saudi Arabia, where young adults, those between 15 and 30 years old, make up half of the grown-up population and, despite the country’s oil wealth, close to 30 percent are unemployed. Corruption there is endemic, 50,000 princes and their relatives are on the state’s payroll, leading wasteful lifestyles, while the bulk of the population live in servitude. While siding with the USA in fighting the notorious IS- Islamic State – its ultra conservative Wahhabi clerics propagate the spread of hatred of the West. Of the nineteen 9/11 attackers, fifteen were Saudis.

The Danger of Religious zeal

Nothing inflames minds more than disputes involving religion. Actually Religious fervor is a world-wide phenomenon. Hardliners, those who know exactly what God or Allah wants, battle the modernizers. Rome, with Pope Francis, is not the only example. Conflicts like these rage between believers in Baghdad, in Tehran, in Riyadh, in Jerusalem and in Washington. Religious passion has been portrayed by W. B. Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming,” where he wrote When “the centre cannot hold, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” We, in the West lack all conviction, largely having abandoned religion in favor of material welfare, now rapidly disappearing. The ‘worst’ is all too evident in the atrocities committed by the ISIS followers.

The present trouble started in 1918, at the conclusion of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, controlling much of the Middle East, fell apart. With England and France being the so-called winners of this war, they demanded compensation for the enormous human and material losses they suffered, so between them they carved up the Middle East without any regard for tribal and other ethnic considerations, including the approval to have the Jews return to the Holy Land, without making provisions for the people already living there.

Now, after 100 years the countries created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire cry for tribal, religious, and ethnic recognition. With no democratic legacy, there’s no chance at all that this process will result in peaceful coexistence. Expect explosions. Expect more chaos. Expect a dangerous mix of oil and religion, the most lethal combination possible. The battle lines are set. Already the Shiites, centered in Iran, boast that they control four Arab capitals: Beirut, through the Shiite militia Hezbollah; Damascus, through the Shiite/Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad; Baghdad, through the Shiite-led government there; and Sana, where the pro-Iranian-Yemeni-Shiite offshoot sect, the Houthi, recently swept into the capital of Yemen. In all these places the Shiites dominate the Sunnis.
Over against them is Turkey, with the largest army in the Middle East, a Sunni nation, and Saudi Arabia, also on the Sunni side, with the largest oil deposits, and the richest nation by far. At present the situation is still fluid, with Syria engaged in a civil war with no definite outcome in sight, and the Kurds wanting an independent nation, fighting both Turkey and Iraq for self-control. In the midst of it all is Israel, where the unrest among its Arabian population is growing, completely surrounded by simmering fires. In the meantime the stage is set for a massive Sunni-Shiite all-out war.

So how about us in the Western world?

We still need the oil there, even though today there’s a surplus of the stuff, thanks to ‘fracking’, the new word that is derived from the word fracturing, a process involving in crushing rock to free the tight oil in there. It is a very expensive procedure and highly polluting, because it takes a lot of energy, sand, water and chemicals to free the fuel that delivers our daily bread to the local store. A low oil price kills this bonus which has propelled the USA to become the largest oil producer in the world, for a short time anyway. Once this rapidly depleting source is gone, it is back to the Middle East, still the major source for the lowest cost oil.

The story becomes complicated

Right now the USA and some other countries, including Canada, are bombing supposedly only ISIS targets. ISIS is the fanatical movement that wants to return the Middle East to pre-modern religious conditions, a male-dominated society where no emancipation is tolerated, operating under the banner of the Sunni religion. “No boots on the ground” has been the Western slogan, knowing too well that the wars waged by the USA and others in Iraq and Afghanistan have been total failures. Will a bomb here or there do the trick? The perilous part is that the two most populous nations in that region, Iran and Turkey, are on opposite sides. Turkey is a member of NATO, another complication, but it favors ISIS which both the USA and Iran opposes. But the USA and Israel are against Iran for its effort to become a nuclear power. So the matter involves the choice between two evils: either Iran is punished for developing nuclear capability, or Tehran is asked to side with the USA in its fight to topple the ISIS radicals. Israel is dead-set against Iran proclaiming that its very intention is to wipe Israel from the map. Will that pit Israel against the USA?

Apart from oil, the Western world is not threatened by all this Middle East turmoil. Also we in the West have enough troubles of our own. Basically the West sees ISIS as nothing more than small groups of highly motivated and trained fighters, who, by passionate and brutal means fueled by Islamic radicalism, have managed to do immense damage to advanced societies, thanks also to clever user of technology.

Because ISIS is motivated by ‘religion’ it is impossible to eradicate this danger. Ideology and religion always trump rationality. That was the case in Europe during the Thirty Year War, and that is the case now. The millions of refugees, displaced in Syria, in Iraq and elsewhere, are the victims, and soon the UN will be powerless to feed these people as their numbers multiply and the conflicts in the Middle East accelerates. Don’t for a minute expect for token bombing to have any effect: just as the blood of martyrs has always fueled the advance of Christianity, so Western involvement in this solely Arab civil war, will only aggravate the anger and draw the battle lines even more clearly.

There is the explicit danger that what is taking place in the cradle of civilization will become the start of a War involving the entire world. Once the battle lines are more clearly defined, when Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran openly enter into the fray, the fate of the entire world is in the balance as OIL becomes the ultimate treasure. The world cannot function without the fuel that originates in the Middle East. At the same time the Western world has sucked itself into a spiral of debt that threatens its social cohesion. It is simply impossible to continue the Welfare State in an era of deflation and economic collapse, witness its powerlessness as Russia takes over Eastern Ukraine, as the economies of Spain, Greece and Italy experience downright depression, as the economies of Japan and China succumb to excessive debt, and as Climate Change worsens and threatens our way of life.

History started with a bang to Abel’s head. History will end with a bang to the very source of energy on which the world depends.

NOVEMBER 9 2014

CHURCH—ILL?

I had planned to start a series about the church, but, on second thought, I abandoned this idea, even though I had lots of sources. I even wrote a book on the church, which I never finished. What’s the use, I reasoned: the church is in decline and very few people are really interested in its fate. My writing about it will only add to the confusion. Instead I will devote future weekly columns to THE CREATED WORD, the world we all live in, the world which is our home today and in the future. I believe that future to be The New Creation, the Coming Kingdom, which the Lord Creator upon his return – he is absent now – will establish.

Another reason why I will not write about the church is the Republican victory in the USA. A good percentage of this block of people are church goers, who deny the relevance of Climate Change, see the earth as its enemy, and consider exploiting it as its rightful privilege.

Perhaps some unbiblical thinking

Just a line on where I am coming from. In the Hebrew Bible there is a mysterious passage concerning Cain who flees from his family after having killed his brother Abel. When God talks to him he replied that he was afraid being killed by roaming vagabonds (Genesis 4: 14), implying that other people were already out there. This to me conveys the distinct possibility that Adam and Eve were selected by God out of the existing human race to make a new beginning, this time filled with the Holy Spirit, thus infused with God’s wisdom. To me this could suggest that God has sensed that the humanity then present was on the verge of harming the world he loved so much (John 3: 16), so he chose a certain human pair to make a new beginning to show the rest of humanity how to live within the limits of creation. Such a choice is not unusual. Later Noah, Abraham and David too were chosen to do the same.

Ii seems to me that the two humans whom we know as Adam and Eve took fruit from a tree without asking the tree for permission, thus breaking cosmic harmony and unlocking cascading creational chaos, culminating in the current climate change. Nietzsche has written that ‘the sin against creation is the greatest of sin.’ I believe that to be the case as well, because creation is God’s direct revelation.

The Bible tells us that the entire human history is one of fall and redemption, of briefly doing God’s will and again and again going against God’s commandments. The real miracle is that, straight through all these strivings, these ups and downs, God is establishing his kingdom. Revelation 14: 13 tells us that our good deeds will accompany us in the New Creation. History has meaning, after all.

There is evolution, also in human development. That Adam and Eve were rather naïve is related by Richard Elliot Friedman in his book, The Hidden Face of God. This great Hebrew Scholar concludes that throughout history two crucial developments have taken place: (1) God’s role in the world slowly disappears – see also Deut. 32:20 were God contemplates to let humanity have its way – which resulted in (2) a shift in the balance of control toward more human power, as humans assume an ever greater responsibility for the fate of their world. Adam and Eve could not do anything about the weather. We now have done that, so much so, that the climate has gone wild.

Consider the following. Adam and Eve were so helpless that God had to make the clothes for the fallen human pair. With Noah we see a lot of progress. Where God caused the Flood to happen, Noah is the project manager for building the Ark. Abraham is even much more independent, evident in discussing with God the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, where he even argues with God (Gen. 18). In the next chapter, Genesis 19: 22, there is a real curious sentence: “I cannot do a thing until you get there,” referring God not able to act until Lot’s family has escaped from that hellish place. Writes Friedman, “Humans are not independent of God here, to be sure, but let us say, the human voice in the story is certainly growing louder.” The progression continues in Jacob who has a physical fight with God. In other words, human are confronting their creator, and that results in increasing their participation in the arena of divine prerogatives, quite in contrast with the pietistic hymn Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting yielded and still.

And then there is Moses. Friedman here quotes Exodus: “See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh.” He writes: “These words are remarkable by any reckoning, but that are particularly impressive in the context of the shift in the divine- human balance.” Psalm 82: 6 comes to mind where God tells us that “you are gods; you all are sons of the Most High.” All of which makes me wonder whether we underestimate ourselves.

Later when Moses had destroyed the first tablets of the law, furious that the folk of Israel had turned to worshiping the golden calf, the second set of tablets is not inscribed by God but by Moses, who later more than once successfully persuades God to relent and change a divine decree. To top it off: Moses speaks with God “the way a man speaks to another man” (Exodus 33: 11).

In short the entire Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is a repetitious series of falling away from God, briefly returning to his laws, and repeatedly forsaking his commands. Even though God’s prophets were extremely outspoken in their condemnation of the false religious practices of their days, their words did not seem to make much of a difference, which suggested to me also that, if I were to write a series on the church, my musings would have the same result. My change in focus is also inspired by Amos whom I see as a role model, also a lay-prophet, a farmer called by God to speak to the nation.

Years ago I made a six verses song about Amos. Yes, they can be sung on any melody with 10 10 11 11 meters. Here are 3 of them:

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

3.      “The noise of your music and songs God detests.                                                                              He hates and abhors your religious fests.                                                                                        Your pious assemblies they cause only dread:                                                                                let Justice roll on like a river instead.

5.      “Hear this you who cheat the poor of the land                                                                                 false dealings your holdings greatly expand.                                                                                   I’ll send a new famine to all people here:                                                                                        My blessings will cease and my Word disappear.”

I believe that basically today God’s blessings have ceased and God’s word has disappeared. The church, by and large, unless it preaches the Kingdom to Come, and prepares the church for the New Creation, has lost its focus.

Israel’s exile, which lasted 70 years, is another example. It mainly involved the cream of Israel’s intelligentsia, among them many people very knowledgeable of Israel’s past history, harboring historical data preserved through the generations by means of oral transmissions. They also managed to take along all possible written sources. Somehow these people were allowed time and had the opportunity to record much of what we now know as the Hebrew Bible.

There are lessons we can learn from this. During Israel’s 70 year exile, a genuine community had developed in Babylon. I found this also being the case during the German occupation in the Netherlands 1940-45. Oppression is a good thing for the church. The exile period resulted in deep religious questioning. However, immediately upon return to the Promised Land religious strife erupted (something also the case after the war in the Netherlands). Where the prophet Isaiah had pointed out that Yahweh’s aim was to restore the whole creation to a divinely ordered shalom, this vision was ignored by the returning parties who focused primarily on their own partisan interests. The Old Testament tells us that soon disputes arose between its two leaders, both intent on establishing their authority over all opposition, and not hesitating to call the judgment of God on the heads of their rival. Instead of establishing ‘SHALOM” as Isaiah and his followers had advocated, in other words “making Peace with the Planet”, religious strife persisted. This condition has prevailed till the present day.

What really changed my mind.

I was re-reading J. H. Bavinck’s recent book Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision. I was struck by something he wrote, something the church as institute will never buy, bent as it is on individual salvation. He writes: “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.”

That’s revolutionary. We, as Christian Community, must struggle to live in expectation of the Kingdom –that is the New Creation – to come. That is the task the church is supposed to prepare us for. Frankly I can’t see that happening. My thinking not to pursue a series on the church was also influenced by the following observation:

“If the people of Israel, directly in touch with God through priests and the prophets refused to live according to God’s laws, it is extremely unlikely that the 2000 year old institution which is the church today has preserved the Truth with a Capital T.”

My conclusion is that, if the decline of the influence of the Christian Religion in the sophisticated Western World is any indication, a process that is continuing unabated, no human effort to stem that tide will be successful.

What is needed is a totally different approach. Where the Old Testament Church failed to believe what the Hebrew Bible prophesied about the coming Messiah, the New Testament Church failed to believe that “this is our Father’s World, and thus his Word as well.”  The new approach must not focus on the church, because, according to Revelation 21: 22, the church has no place in the New Creation, the Kingdom to Come. This text, one of the last ones in the New Testament says: “I did not see a temple or synagogue or mosque or church building there, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple”.

From this I conclude that our focus, aided by Scripture, should be on Creation, God’s Primary Word, because also God’s Secondary Word, the Bible will no longer be relevant, as God’s law will be written on our hearts.

It is well to recall what happened to the Old Testament religion, where Jerusalem was the seat of the Jewish worship, centering on the temple, which  was destroyed in the year 70 A. D. This officially ended the Old Testament way of worship, which already had ceased to be relevant with the death of Jesus who will make everything new.

There’s a revealing passage in J. H. Bavinck’s book: Between the Beginning and the End: A radical Kingdom Vision. It describes the legal process between Jesus and the High Priest. Here is a citation:

“The Messiah was the ultimate meaning of Israel’s nationhood. ….From generation to generation Israel had longed for and pined after the eventual coming of Him who would, at one time, bring salvation. The prophets had testified that this great Redeemer would be none other than God himself, the son of God who was to come into the world. And now that finally this great son of David, this Messiah, has arrived in the world, now he, by that same Israel, is labeled as a blasphemer, a person who has made himself equal to God. Has there ever been anything as tragic as this denial?”

I believe that we are making the same tragic mistake again by ignoring Scripture passages about the New World to come and effectively denying that Creation is God’s Primary Word.

The main reason I decided not to write a series on the Church, was my re-reading of J. H. Bavinck’s Between the Beginning and the End: a Radical Kingdom Vision. It contains everything and every thought I want to say. Go and buy it today. Search for EERDMANS.COM to order the book. Amazon too carries it, of course.

For 10 years I wrote a weekly column for a regional daily. Starting next week I will again do this on my blog – which had 11,000 visitors in October and 9,000 in September.

In This Was The Week That Was, I will single out events that caught my attention during the past 7 days.