Imagine 2050

 Life in 2050

Let’s touch down on our Earth in the year 2050.   It’s clear there are tons of changes.   The most obvious change is the absence of Cars.   What we do see are hundreds of these electric powered 12 passenger driverless taxis like little trolley cars which stop at every intersection.  If we need to change directions we just jump off with our market shopping cart and jump on the next one going the other direction.   We can easily stop them with our cell phones.   Our cost is tabulated just like EZ pass 40 years ago.  

Solar Panels on every roof have dramatically changed the architecture of new construction as every building built today is built with the Sun in mind.  Since oil has become such a scarce commodity it is saved primarily for food production and distribution.  The good news is that with this high reliance on the tide, wind and solar, the ozone hole has closed and our planet has cooled 2 degrees from its high and the rains have begun to fall on the plains with predictable regularity.   Our ocean levels have even dropped 4 inches as the polar ice fields are growing.

The most obvious change we see in this new world is our population diversity.  During the past 40 years the Spanish presence is now seen in every part of our village life.   Like every other immigrant movement they first occupied the cities but now every community is thoroughly integrated, even traffic signals are now bilingual.   While a few English complain about losing the Mexican War, secretly even the most harden right wing conservatives are grateful because the immigrants presence has stabilized our economy, maintaining the value of our home real estate and for providing workers who are dearly needed in all our industries.   Since energy comes at such a premium price many machines have been replaced by human labor.  When we turn on our TV we are surprised to see 30 percent of the programming is in Spanish, 35 percent in English, 15 percent Chinese, 5 percent Portuguese and 15 percent Arabic.  This programming seems to mirror the population makeup of our country.  

Agricultural preservation is guarded intensely as we become more village conscience, consuming locally grown produce.   Urban high risers are common now even in small towns as people cluster more leaving space open farming or gardening. Land and water is an extremely valuable commodity. 

Necessity also has helped us streamline health care into a one payer system for everyone.   I try to tell the story of how it was back at the beginning to this century where I paid the price of a small car every year for a family health plan with a $5,000 deductible.   I paid my premium to one company who then would process my claim through another company.   Our doctor employed staff to make up a bill 3 times higher then they knew they would receive so when the processing company would get the bill they would downsize it to what the doctor was hoping to receive, then the paper work would come back to me and I would need to make the payment as my totals did not yet reach my deductible.   I could tell they could not understand what I was talking about.   Just as well.  Everyone likes their system. 

The Amish now number well over a million in population as they continue to grow colony by colony across the nation providing the country with fresh produce.  They have revitalized the countryside of our nation’s bread basket as large section farms are purchased and divided up into their original 40 or 80 acre subdivisions creating diversified subsistence farms.   Even many English from urban areas are attracted to the sustainable farming practices of these hearty people and come to try their hand living off the land.   The Amish certainly did not expect to be the people everyone looks to for leadership in energy conservation as they have.   

The Catholic Church also has seen a huge increase in numbers especially strengthened by immigrations from South America.   Their message of Peace with God, justice for the oppressed, sitting with neighbor whoever that may be, communion with God, with leadership who emulate Christ with a vow of poverty has created a strong Catholic revival while the evangelical church enterprise movement sputters to its end in just one generation.   

It took 15 years for US to recover from their costly intervention into Middle Eastern Affairs at the beginning of this century, US was forced to make the hard decisions withdrawing support from Israel for their own economic survival.  US simply could not continue to spend so much money in constant military preparedness.     After a bloodbath in 2023 where millions of Arabs were slaughtered, Israel was isolated from all its neighbors. US could not afford to support this apartheid nation any longer. Most evident is Russian and China’s blunt opposition showing the strength they play in our economic stability.  Additional opposition came from our own youth population who flatly refused to participate any further military missions.    The European Jews were forced to scatter once more, the walls came down and the Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, and Indigenous Jews reclaimed their country for themselves, sharing Jerusalem once again. Surprisingly they now live together relatively peaceful as they had back in the days of the Ottoman Empire. All this proved what the Muslim world has been saying for generations; they were not opposed to Jews but the western occupation that Israel was.   As a result the whole of the Muslim world is far more relaxed.   The women are allowed to take off their veils in large areas of the middle east including, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran and live and as they lived prior to Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran.   Afghanistan is still wrestling with Taliban’s concern of Western moral corruption but their opposition is primarily directed toward the western entertainment world and not western governments.  

The largest religious change in the US is the role of the evangelical Churches.   Since one of the strong convictions of evangelical churches was the teaching that it was God’s work to establish the nation of Israel.  These churches had become politically aligned, so much so, Israel could do no wrong.  They became identified with a racist, apartheid, self serving,  power consuming nationalistic movement.   They ignored the criticism of all other historic churches which emphasized that Jesus and his bride the Church is God’s kingdom and not some nation attached to a particular piece of land.   By identifying so closely with political Zionism for almost 100 years which caused so much human bloodshed and suffering, these independent politically aligned evangelical churches now seem pretty foolish and irrelevant.  

Another of the problems which led to the demise of the evangelical churches was the competitive enterprising spirit among ambitious church leaders.   The only thing worse than denominations is when leaders claim their own apostolic authority creating churches unto themselves.  These churches created the illusion of strength as they were well funded by the founding generation.  Large churches like convention centers grew up where people came from miles around to take in a very professional scripted video enhanced performances.  Pastors became more distant from the people, sometimes replaced by live streaming from some other location.  Teaching was primary focused on belief or faith alone or psychological self help images based on stories from the Bible, and mission work became two week vacations doing work projects combined with tourism.   Very few built long term relations with the Global South or East as the denominational mission boards have done for years.  However even the intense dramatic programming has became accepted as routine by the younger generation.  It soon became apparent that these large churches lost their appeal to their children.  Studies showed that 70 percent of children raised in the mega church left the church leaving the churches with an aging peer group who could not sustain the religious empire they sought to build. 

Churches such as the Amish or Catholic which emphasized attending the church closest  to you, sitting with your neighbor whoever that may be in the pew, walking with each other faithfully are flourishing.   Even though most described their services as kind of quiet, predictable, even boring with volunteer leadership;  these churches continue as strong communities of faith.  With long traditions of children seeing their grandparents in church, children feel a strong sense of spiritual accountability to their faith community and become engaged themselves.  The Catholic Church survived moral scandals of the turn of the century becoming a repentant church of past sins.   They became the natural home for such a large influx of immigrant families from South America and the Philippines.  

A significant part of evangelical Church on the other hand did not disappear but was also taken over also by Hispanic, Asian, and especially Chinese immigrants.   These people carried with them none of the political baggage of the historic fundamentalists.  They tended to be economically poor but strong in their passion to support each other in whatever need would arise.  The theological understanding that our love for Jesus is expressed when we sit/eat with the person who most needs us; the one next to us.   Of course this practice of walking in step with the one who needs you is born of necessity for sheer survival and not from instruction.    These new immigrants were embraced by historic peace churches who came to this country as poor refugees themselves, and by mainline Protestant groups who were quick to respond to persons in need.   The immigrants revitalized aging and lonely churches with energy, inspiration, and children.   The older members gained so much joy in relationship with the new arrivals simply by sharing a cup of water in Jesus name.   Their simple presence among these aging congregations vaporized the most destructive long term tradition; the tradition of dividing the church in every generation creating peer group churches with the most recent pop theology.

How good it is to step into the future drinking pure water, fresh air, riding bicycle, experiencing the community of this new diversity of people, a more relaxed political environment, living small, living well, and living in community, Thank you Jesus