Optimism and positivity are important qualities. But are these concepts fully synonymous? And do they, in fact, mean the same as hope? In publications of the Dutch Adventist Church one finds, in the last decade or so, many articles on optimism and positivity. This was also the case in the most recent issue of ADVENT, which had positivity as its over-all theme. Browsing through recent issues of ADVENT I noticed that optimism and positivity were repeatedly emphasized.

I guess I can place myself in the category of optimists. Whether that optimism is always justified is another matter. A pessimistic attitude toward life does us no good, nor is it pleasant for others around us. Optimism reflects a tendency to see things in a positive light, expecting most things to turn out well. Optimism helps us to be, and remain, motivated.

Positivity may go a step further than optimism. Not everything that defines our lives is positive, but fortunately a lot is not negative either. A predominantly positive outlook undoubtedly promotes happiness in life. However, many people, unfortunately, see everything in a negative light and this feeds dissatisfaction and unhappiness. On the other hand, there are many who often close their eyes to reality. They tend to be “cherry-picking”-i.e., taking into account only the things that fit their positive pictures. (Oddly enough, in the Corona era the term “positive” took on a different connotation: a positive test is, in fact, negative news and indicates that the virus has struck!)

Christians certainly have reason to be optimistic and positive, but optimism and positivity are not uniquely Christian virtues. They have more to do with character than with faith. That is why I rather dislike the heavy emphasis on optimism and positivity in our denominational publications. For Christians, these are rather superficial concepts, and hope is much more meaningful. Optimism and positivity have their roots in ourselves. Christian hope, on the other hand, has Jesus Christ, and what He does for us, as its reference point.

Even when there is no reason for optimism, and we are surrounded by negative circumstances, there is hope. This is the Christian assurance of the gospel that must not be diluted into optimism and positivity–however praiseworthy and pleasant these qualities may be. The hope God gives us goes far beyond this. It is not anchored in our own character traits, in who and what we are ourselves, or in people around us, but in the Person of Christ (Heb. 6:19). Biblical hope is not synonymous with the optimistic notion that everything will eventually work out, but is based on the belief that God will fulfill his promises to us–now and beyond this life. Let us never forget, in our emphasis on optimism and positivity, that Christian hope must prevail.

Christ’s resurrection is a fact of irrefutable historicity: a group of people, who were totally exasperated after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, became convinced that Jesus had risen and that they should no longer seek the Living One among the dead (Luke 24:5). Some might say, as we mentioned earlier, that this conviction was based on a cleverly concocted conspiracy or a collective hallucination. But another explanation, namely that the resurrection actually happened, sounds far more reasonable and credible. Let me quote a few lines from a book about Jesus by the evangelical author Philip Yancey, who catches the amazing development in a few powerful sentences: “That Jesus succeeded in changing a snuffling band of unreliable followers into fearless evangelists, that eleven men who had deserted him at death now went into martyrs’ graves avowing their faith in a resurrected Christ, that these few witnesses managed to set loose a force that would overcome fierce opposition, first in Jerusalem and then in Rome—this remarkable sequence of transformation offers the most convincing evidence for the Resurrection.”

N.T. (Tom) Wright put it succinctly in these words: “The disciples were hardly likely to go out and suffer and die for a belief that was not firmly anchored in fact.” Many other authors have stressed the same point. What made a man like Peter who, in Jesus’ darkest hour had avowed that he did not even know the man who was arrested and tried by the Jewish elite, change into the apostle who, only a few weeks later, told a large multinational, multicultural crowd in Jerusalem that Christ was alive? What convinced the doubting Thomas that the Lord was truly risen and gave him the courage to become a missionary to India, where even today some four million “Thomas Christians” are a testimony to his radical conversion? Not all ancient traditions are reliable, but there is good reason to think that most, if not all, of the original apostles, except John (who for a number of years was banished to the Greek isle of Patmos, which in Roman days certainly was not a holiday resort), met a martyr’s death. What propelled them to pursue a career that would end in opposition, torture and ignominious death? How do we explain that James, one of the half-brothers of Jesus, became a prominent leader in the early church, while a little earlier he had flatly rejected Jesus’ ministry? (John 7: 5; Acts 15:14-21). The explanation lies in the extraordinary, undeniable Easter event.

This is echoed by a rather unexpected voice, namely that of the Jewish theologian and Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide (1922-1997). He did not become a Christian, but he did firmly believe that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened. It is, he said, the only explanation for the origin and further rise of Christianity. He confronts his readers with these pressing questions: “How can it be explained that, against all plausibility, his adherents did not finally scatter, were not forgotten, and that the cause of Jesus did not reach its infamous end at the cross?” In other words: “How did it nevertheless come about that the adherents of Jesus were able to conquer the most horrible of disappointments, that Jesus, despite everything, became the Savior of the Church, although the predictions were not fulfilled and the longed-for Parousia did not take place?”

Lapide concluded that the explanations of many resurrection-denying theologians fail miserably to explain “the fact that the solid hillbillies from Galilee . . . were changed within a short period of time into a jubilant community of believers.” He continued: “When this scared, frightened band of the apostles, which was just about to throw everything away in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when the shepherds, peasants, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their Master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.”

Philip Yancey totally agrees: “Surely the disciples would not lay down their lives for the sake of a cobble-together conspiracy theory.”

The above paragraphs are talken from my book about the resurrection: I Have a Future: Christo’s resurrection and mine (Grantham, UK: Stanborough Press,2019, pp. 79-81.

The inhabitants of Zeewolde (the place in the Netherlands where I have now lived for about 13 years) realize more than ever that they are part of a digital world. The recent municipal elections have everything to do with that. Meta–the parent company of Facebook–made a deal with the Zeewolde administration to build in our town the largest data center in Europe. Part of the more than 160 hectares of land needed for this purpose is already in Meta’s possession. In the recent municipal elections the construction of this gigantic data center was the main issue. The two parties which were strongly opposed to it emerged as the glorious winners of the elections, and they are now doing all they can to reverse the deal with Meta. It remains to be seen how this will develop. Meta has called for a pause in the process.

Data centers have a lot in common with airports, wind turbines and large fields of solar panels. Most of us realize that they are part of our current world. These things have to be somewhere, but we don’t want them in our back yard. However, data centers are here to stay and most of us, whether we realize it or not, use them on a daily basis.

I got my first computer in 1987. It was a desktop IBM clone from the Far East. The church office in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, where I was working at the time, had bought a load of these devices. To say that they were high-maintenance would be a formidable understatement. At first, they did not yet have a hard disk and all data had to be stored on separate 5 ¼ inch floppy disks. The next version, that soon came along, had a storage capacity of (if I remember correctly) 2 megabytes (2 million bytes). I am writing this blog on a MacBook Air that is over three years old. This already somewhat outdated device has a storage capacity of 250 GB (equal to 250,000 megabytes). That may seem like a lot, but I recently had to deal with a serious lack of space and decided to reduce the number of emails that is stored on my hard disk from about 35,000 to “only” 8,000.

We have become accustomed to producing a lot of data. Our i-phones hold hundreds or even thousands of photos. We constantly watch YouTube videos, which of course have to be stored “somewhere”. Often without knowing exactly what they mean, people talk about the “cloud,” where they keep most of their data. Many people (probably also in Zeewolde) do not realize that this “cloud” is not above us in the atmosphere, but has the form of big warehouses full of computers: the so-called data centers.

Perhaps the politicians in my hometown can postpone the arrival of the data center for a while, but we are dealing with a global development that is no longer under our control. In total there are now about eight thousand data centers worldwide, which together consume a gigantic amount of electricity and produce huge amounts of heat. The latter is, in particular, a problem that my hometown has not yet thought through properly. The administration of our town does not yet know what they are going to do with all that heat.

The amount of digital info that needs to be stored somewhere is rapidly increasing every year. In 2010 it amounted to 2 zetabytes. Now–just a dozen years later–the amount of data to be stored has grown to about 100 zetabytes. I was shocked when I tried to get an idea via Google of how much that is. A zetabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. One zetabyte is equal to 1,000 exabytes, one billion terabytes, or one trillion gigabytes.

The amount of data to be stored continues to grow exponentially. Every day in our world we send over 300 billion emails and 500 million tweets. Within a few years, it will be twice what it is today. The number of data centers will also continue to grow at a steady pace. Human beings have unleashed something that is out of their control. We do know that much of these data has, in fact, no value, and that we–to put it bluntly–are storing an infinite amount of garbage.

Involuntarily, while writing this blog, I was reminded of a text in Psalm 147, where God is described as the Administrator of the perfect data center of the universe. “Great is our Lord and supreme, his understanding is beyond measure.” (vs. 5). “He determines the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names” (vs. 4). An Australian study concluded that the number of stars in the universe is 70,000 million million million (that is: 70 with 22 zeros). God alone knows the exact number, and He knows them all by name. People often think that human technology and knowledge has no limit. But it doesn’t amount to much, compared to the “unmeasurable insight” of the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator.

The Netherlands is preparing for the arrival of at least 50,000 Ukrainians, and possibly even double or multiple that number. Meanwhile, people of other nationalities continue to come to our country, hoping to be recognized as asylum seekers and to get the opportunity to build a new existence here. The movement of large groups of immigrants, and all the challenges associated with this, is a worldwide phenomenon of all ages. In the past the Netherlands had to deal, time and time again, with the arrival of large numbers of foreigners. One of the largest groups that ever had to be accommodated were the Belgians who fled to the Netherlands during the First World War, when their country was at war while The Netherlands had remained neutral. Their number was more than one million, while our country had “only” about five million inhabitants at the time.

Large-scale migration changes the demographics of a region or a country. This has been the case in the Netherlands since the Germanic tribes “invaded” our country via the Rhine two thousand years ago. Over the centuries, all kinds of new groups followed, including significant numbers of Jews and Huguenots. In the last half century, people from the former colonies (Indonesia, Suriname and the Antilles) arrived, along with hundreds of thousands of guest workers from southern Europe. The fact that there are two Polish supermarkets in the place where I presently live indicates that the migration phenomenon has not by-passed my hometown, with a population of about 22,000.

I am currently writing a review of a book in which migration plays a very important role. It emphasizes that, worldwide, migration has been a major factor in shaping the course of history. However, the author (see below) of this fascinating, but rather complicated and detailed, book is mainly concerned with one particular aspect of migration. His thesis is that the spread of Christianity owes more to migration than to the formal mission activities of churches and religious organizations, and to political and military factors. When people–alone or (usually) in groups or as a whole nation–move to another region, they take their religious beliefs with them. In ancient times, it was often Christian slaves or prisoners of war who ensured that the gospel reached places where it had not penetrated before. Constant migration ensured that the Christian faith did not assume the same form everywhere and that theological differences could also spread. Migration, according to this book, therefore had consequences not only for the geographical distribution of the Christian faith, but also for a growing diversity of rites and theological views.

In the Netherlands we have seen how in many places migration has altered the religious landscape of an area. The Bijlmer (South-East Amsterdam) is perhaps the most striking example of this. When Joop den Uyl, as one of the aldermen of Amsterdam, was in charge of planning for this new district, he believed that no land needed to be reserved for church buildings. After all, we were on the eve of a totally secularized world, in which people would no longer go to church. But now, some sixty years later, this part of Amsterdam is the most religious place in the entire country! The immigrants who came mainly from Suriname and the Antilles, but also from Africa and elsewhere, made sure of that.

What religious impact the arrival of large numbers of Ukrainians cannot be predicted. It is possible that this will at least strengthen the Greek Orthodox element in our religiously diverse country. Much will depend on whether many Ukrainians will live among us for the long term or even permanently.

For the worldwide Adventist community, migration is undoubtedly a determining factor. In many countries, members who have come from outside the country’s borders are in the majority. This is particularly the case in the United States, and this trend is likely to continue. In many European countries, the Adventist Church would have declined in membership had it not been for migration. Tp say yhat this has not created any problems would be a denial of the facts, but the arrival of church members from other areas has allowed the church to still grow a little or at least remain stable in terms of its membership. Moreover, this migration has resulted in greater diversity and in many places also in a new vitality of church life. The thesis of the author of the book I am to review, that the spread and the growth of the church owes more to migration than to institutionally directed missionary actions, has, at least for some decades, also been true for Adventismin the Netherlands.

Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI (USA): Eerdmans, 2021)

For the tenth time, an international group of specialists has analyzed a mass of data and on that basis compiled a “world happiness index”. The recently published report designates the Finns as the happiest people on our globe. In second to fourth place of happiest countries are Denmark, Switzerland and Iceland. The Netherlands comes next in fifth place.

I am writing this blog at my son’s kitchen table in Sweden, which ranks seventh in this happiness index. Canada, to my surprise, comes no higher than the fourteenth spot. The United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, and France are at numbers 17, 19, 20, and 21, respectively. At the very bottom of the list is Afghanistan as the least happy country in the world. Russia does not rise above place No. 74 on the list. (It should be noted that the data were collected before Russia invaded Ukraine.)

The compilers looked, among other things, at average life expectancy, the quality of health care, the average income of citizens, their sense of security, and further at a range of data distilled from the use of the social media. In each country, a representative group of several thousand people was surveyed. Thus, the results largely reflect what the citizens of each country themselves think of their own happiness (or lack thereof).

This project leaves me with a lot of questions. Are the Swedes really a bit less happy than the Dutch? And are our Belgian neighbors really that much worse off than the Dutch? Are people perhaps less optimistic in certain countries than in other, neighboring countries? During the Corona era, I regularly filled out questionnaires from the RIVM–the organization that kept track of all the data on the pandemic. Some of the questions repeatedly addressed how I was feeling. Was I less happy than before the pandemic? Did I often feel lonely, worried, or even anxious? What grade did I give myself when it comes to my over-all happiness? How does one answer questions like that?

The index informs us that there are only relatively few people on earth who, on average, are happier than the Dutch. However, if you follow the talkshows on TV and listen to the comments of people in the street, you don’t get the impression that the Dutch are such an extremely happy and contented people. In the recent municipal elections, almost half of the Dutch population did not bother to come to the polling station. Asked why people did not vote, one mostly heard comments like: It doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t vote, the politicians do what they want to do anyway. They are in it for the money, and only have their own interests at heart. Politics is corrupt through and through.

People accuse the government of not addressing several of the major problems in society. When you hear what people are saying, you would sometimes think that the vast majority of the population lives pretty much near the poverty line. How do you reconcile those sentiments with being at place five on the list of happiest countries?

Of course, there is a big difference between collective happiness and the happiness of individuals. Collective happiness is mostly a matter of statistics. Despite all the complaining and dissatisfaction, most Dutch people realize that society in their homeland is much rosier than in a very large part of the rest of the world. At the same time, we should not forget that a sizeable group of people has every right to complain. Those who have to live on a small allowance, or only on their state pension, have a hard time, especially in these times of sky-high energy bills.

The question remains: How do you define happiness? Health and a reasonable degree of prosperity certainly contribute to our happiness. But there are also a lot of people who describe themselves as happy, even if they are not all that healthy, and even if they have to turn over every euro several times before spending it. Happiness certainly also has to do with good relationships with family, friends and other people who are part of our social network. Yet not all people who have no family or few friends are unhappy. People of faith, as a rule, will say that their faith is important to them and contributes to their happiness. However, there are also masses of unbelieving people who consider themselves quite happy.

So, what is happiness? Whether you are happy or not is a question you can ultimately only answer yourself. For most of us, aspects such as experiencing love and inner peace, having valuable relationships, contentment and gratitude, play an important role. For many, the deeper meaning of life is also of great – perhaps of decisive – importance. With many others I find this meaning in the Christian faith.

Perhaps the creation of a “happiness index” is not entirely meaningless. We certainly don’t live in a country where everything is perfect and the government doesn’t make any mistakes. But if we compare our society with that in most other countries we can consider ourselves “happy” with our fifth place.