AUGUST 3 2019
WE WORSHIP THE WRONG GOD
“We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable and we are witnessing major earthquakes and enormous volcanic eruptions all over the globe on a daily basis now.
For a long time the United States had been spared, but on July 4th and 5th that suddenly changed.
Since that time, there have been more than 80,000 earthquakes in the state of California, and this is just the beginning of the shaking that is coming.”
L.A. Times, July 29 2019
The report continues to speculate that if California’s two major faults are affected the death toll would run into the thousands and damage into the trillions of dollars.
I should add that Revelation, that last Bible book, warns of an enormous quake heralding the End of Time.
We, as the human race are playing with more than fire: the delicate balance of planet earth is at stake. In the space of a few years, a bagatelle in earth-time, a few split seconds, we have caused trillions of tons of ice on both poles to disappear. This means that the carefully calibrated balance of the earth is wrenched out of kilter.
It reminds me of my back which occasionally gets screwed up. Fortunately we have an excellent chiropractor in the village whose services I can count on every other year or so. The Great Chiropractor in the sky – sorry about the somewhat uncouth comparison – will no longer intervene in the affairs of us, underlings because He “Is seeing what our end will be.” (Deuteronomy 31: 17).
This brings me to the recent Gwynne Dyer column in our humble Belleville Intelligencer Daily (in which I wrote a weekly column for 10 years). Its headline was “James Lovelock’s latest book foresees an approaching takeover by robots.”
Dr. Lovelock also predicts the demise of 80% of humanity, reducing the world population to perhaps 1.5 billion ‘humans’, all, by then, also robotic in appearance I suppose.
I agree with this learned man that we are at a cross roads. It’s “do or die” for the human race. No use any longer pretending. Lovelock is right. Humans are grandiosely failing to furnish a cure for the ills of the world. According to this well-known scientist, of GAIA fame, only benevolent, perfectly programmed machines, perfectly equipped with perfect artificial intelligence (A.I), will faultlessly function to make it possible for the best of the human race, carefully selected, of course, based on psychological and other tests, to be able to live (LIVE?) on a mechanical earth.
A tune plays through my head and words, so totally out of wack with Lovelock’s thesis that it almost sounds ludicrous:
Those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
(Isaiah 51: 11)
We have entered a new phase in the earth, the very last phase, where aware humanity is grappling with the demise of everything that exists, including our very lives. This notion has not yet fully penetrated into humanity and, I presume, never will. What is certain is that nothing, nothing, nothing will be done – or can’t be done – to stop global demise: we have locked ourselves into a mode of life from where there is only one outcome: annihilation.
What has happened is that we have bet on the wrong god.
Years ago a certain economist, by the name of E. F. Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful.
In it he said that corporations have become so huge that they overpower democracies by creating a world-wide plutocracy solely geared to serve their own interests. Instead of growth that promotes LIFE, humanity must be subservient to economic GROWTH. And that’s what happened.
This anomaly has come about because we no longer regard ourselves as part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer creation: thinking we are gods, superior to nature.
It is this mentality that has brought us where we are today: rather than live on the interest – the income we can derive from creation – we have squandered the capital, and now our irresponsible greed for ever greater economic speed has surpassed the possible limits and collapse is the next phase. That collapse will not only be material: it will involve everything: mental health, physical health, spiritual health, environmental health, economic health, ecological health, geographic health: not one facet of totality will be exempted.
We simply “believed” that progress would continue forever. We simply “believed” that everything would keep getting better. We simply “believed” that tomorrow, next year, would see more prosperity, more income, more advances. We simply “believed” that the world will be great again.
Now that “faith” has been found wanting; the foundation on which we have built our life is crumbling, and we really don’t know how to handle this situation, this entirely new stage.
By our greedy grossness we have unleashed a monster, a beast so big, a danger so dire that it now dominates us and, instead of the masters we thought to be, we now are the slaves of the forces of nature, totally subject to the wiles of the weather.
Our political systems are not designed or capable to curtail our technological and economic ambitions, hamstrung as they are by our infinite inclination for more.
James Lovelock is a good example of the perfect technocrat: his solution lies in Artificial Intelligence. We – so he reasons- have intellectually and religiously not kept pace. We have become dumber while only the brains of this world have the capability to find the solution: more technology.
A CRISIS SITUATION.
Where did we go wrong?
Well, it goes back a long time. It all started with the TREE. We took creation for granted. We forgot that the purpose of life is not domination, but service.
The desecration of creation.
We have abandoned our awe and religious respect for creation. By and large we no longer are religious. By and large we no longer have a sense of anything that’s greater than us that we have to bow our knee to or that we have to humble ourselves before. Religion is something the old people do. Religion is something we do on Sundays for an hour. Perhaps. The number of people who darken the doors of the edifices are rapidly dwindling as they die off and not being replaced: their children and grandchildren don’t understand their rituals.
Part of the myth of progress that we believe in is the notion that we’re evolving beyond religion, but if we don’t have anything that we believe is beyond us then we become destroyers.
Go back we can’t. There’s nothing to go back to. The church preaches a fictional heaven, or Rapture.
So we go our merry way, having exotic vacations, where, thanks to our prosperity we escape to enclaves in a seemingly pristine places, a total illusion of course. We know we can’t go back to the world my grandparents enjoyed: we are trapped. Lovelock’s solution is no solution because he robs us of our humanity.
Here’s a quote from a book I have translated, THE RIDDLE OF LIFE, published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids.
“Once we more closely have examined what goes on around us (in creation), then instead of mere admiration for the amazing newness of it all, we are struck even more by the unity and order that are evident everywhere, because everything on earth is somehow harmoniously connected to everything else. The one species influences the other and the one creature depends on the other. Plants cannot exist without the earth that feeds them. Animals, on the other hand, cannot function without plants, as these are often the sole source for their food.
The phenomena of day and night, of summer and winter, of rain and drought, of heat and cold, all are part of the grand chain of happenings, depending on where the sun happens to be and from where the wind blows. The one event influences another and yet the one cannot exist without the presence of the other.
By further investigation we discover that the order is one full of
purpose. The great connectedness of all these entities is at the same time the reason why the totality is served by it as well. We don’t even need to explore everything too deeply to discover the amazing fact that behind everything there is an invisible set of laws: that the one as it were serves to complete the other. The butterflies serve the flowers just as much as the flowers serve the butterflies. The sun, that big, beneficial celestial body, which from an immeasurable distance bathes the earth in multicolored splendor, is itself not conscious that from a distance of millions of miles it brings light and warmth. It is the sun that maintains life on earth. It is the sun that causes plants to sprout out of the moist earth. It is the sun that removes mourning and remakes it into merriment. If the sun had a mind of its own, then perhaps it would muse: I shine because that’s my nature: I delight in it; it’s the joy of my life. But it knows not that a Hand mightier than the sun has included it in the beautiful law of serving. Because, unknowingly, that so superior sun serves the tiny, tiny plant that full of life expectancy courageously stretches its stem to absorb its rays.
That little plant cannot think beyond its nature. It winks at the
sun and dreams of the joy that awaits it in a life of light and sunshine. But it has no inkling that it serves just as much as it is served by others. It serves the minuscule seeds it now carries and that later will form new plants. It serves the animal, looking for food, or is needed to help another plant using it as a crutch to climb higher. In manifold ways it serves other creatures that need support or shade or nourishment or moisture.
When we look around us with open eyes and minds, then there
is one thing that time and again touches us to the core: it’s all about serving. The law of serving is at the heart of every creature: it is the overarching purpose for every being. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist. Every creature may think that it is there only for itself, but in the final analysis it is nothing else but a servant for others. To be alive, to exist at all, finds it destination simply in serving others. Without that law nothing else can be.”
YES, WE ARE THE SERVANTS IN CHIEF!
We are there, not to dominate but to serve. The great example
always is Jesus Christ: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others.” (Matthew
20:28)
ATONEMENT.
The people of Israel had a yearly day of ATONEMENT, a day especially set aside with prayer and fasting, to plead with Yahweh the creator, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, for forgiveness.
Our own sins now are much greater: we have hurt God where it hurts the most: we have totally ruined his work of art.
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, God ordained this solemn ritual. “This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: Atonement is to be made once a year for all the sins of the Israelites.” (Leviticus 16: 34).
This was the only time the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, an indication how tremendously important this event was.
Take note: ATONEMENT IS A LASTING ORDINANCE!
Literally our sins cry to heaven. If there ever were a time for repentance, it is now. If the churches have any idea or notion why they are in the world, then a Day of Atonement should be held at least once a month.
Will it happen?
People are desperate. Desperate means “deprived of hope!”
Isn’t HOPE the church’s main message?