If you bother to read this blog, one of the basic concepts you have to tolerate is the biblical doctrine of the Fall. Not so much the traditional Western Christian view of it, but you have to understand that our current reality is permanently broken. This world cannot be fixed. The whole point of Christ on the Cross starts with the idea that you intend to end up somewhere else. We are leaving this world for a better existence and we are working on the issue of preparation for that journey. This whole business of holiness in the here-and-now is to work on modifications of your self, not your world.
I’ll do all I can to help you understand this, but it is not a matter for debate.
That doesn’t mean we don’t care about things in this life. Christian Mysticism as we teach it here is by far more pragmatic than anything else I’ve seen so far, and I’ve gone out of my way to examine all sorts of wide and varying viewpoints on reality. Learning how to live in eternity means learning how to handle things here according to God’s revelation. You get better acquainted with God by seeking His character in His Laws. It’s all about the Person of God. We live as best we can in a manifestation of that character. We take seriously the implications of His Laws regarding how we interact with Creation.
You can find a really nice review of the Fukushima situation here. There are other summaries, but I like this one for balancing between we-got-issues and scared-shitless. This thing is uncharted territory in the broad human experience. Nobody knows exactly what’s coming next, but we do have some projections that take into account what little we do know.
Whatever is going on in those three little stinking craters on the coast of Japan is self-sustaining for a long time to come. It’s the concept of Critical Mass. Basic nuclear physics says that as long as a certain critical minimum mass of stable isotope molecules remain in close proximity, this mass of stuff will remain incredibly hot in temperature and highly radioactive. It’s a question of the type of material and how much is one place. Break it down into smaller pieces that are not so close together and it cools off and the radiation will reduce to some lower level inherent in the material itself. Eventually this stuff will burn itself out, but not during any human lifetime. As noted in the article, our best estimate of burn-out time puts it centuries in the future.
Unless you live in or near Japan, the biggest issue is the radioactive pollution of the Pacific Ocean, and the secondary pollution of the air and soil that comes into contact with this nasty water. Alaska is already affected, as is some portion of the North American West Coast. The rest of the Pacific area will get it soon enough. What they get, we hardly know at this point. Given the nature of the oceanic water exchange on this planet, as well as atmospheric mixing, this thing will spread globally and be diluted at the same time. God alone knows how that will affect you and me, but it will affect us.
My point here is, even if it turns out there is no practical measure for avoiding the effects, awareness of it means you can make an informed response to the call of God to act according to His Word. We still teach here that you need to live in your heart, not in your head. You still need that sweet provision God granted the human race to commune with His Creation directly through the higher awareness of your heart. You need to commune with your whole body, with attention to the “brain” near the bottom of your spine. That’s not some weird Asian thing, but is discussed openly in Scripture. We miss it because of our Western intellectual biases; it’s in the Bible. You have to let your heart read the communion of your spirit with the Holy Spirit, because your intellect is incapable of it. All of that still applies here, but we do want the brain properly informed so it knows what to make of things the heart has to tell it.
Only then can we understand God’s priorities in the midst of all this nasty stuff we see.
