Hotel Hell's Wallpaper

The rooms at Hotel Hell are nice enough, but that wallpaper... Either it goes, or I do.

What Is Out There?

So what is out there? Most of space is empty. Most of space is void. But there is something out there. There must be, or we wouldn’t be so compelled to go there again and again.  What is out there in the dark?

* A few half broken robot puttering around in circles on the surface of Mars, unable to complete their missions because of faulty hardware, unable to stop their peregrinations because of their programming.

* Asteroid mining roughnecks living between Mars and Jupiter – giving up ten years of their lives to drill and plunder space rocks for ice and nickel and iron in return for a substantial payout at the end of their contracted time. The risk is great, however: 37% of those space-miners die before the end of their contract. Their families or designated recipients receive a small, prorated portion of their payment.

* The gateway to hell. Several religious sects believe that the entrance to the infernal realm is found in the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. That anticyclonic storm has been raging continuously since it was first observed in 1830. The noise and roar of the turbulent storm, twice as wide as earth, actually raises the temperature of Jupiter’s atmosphere by 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Hell is hot and loud, drowning out the screams of the damned.

* Dark Matter and White Light, but not in equal proportions.

* Spinning saucer-craft piloted by either little green men bent on medical experiments of the perverse variety – namely the impregnation of God fearing American women, or buxom Venusian women intent on the seduction of virile, red-blooded, American men.

* Surfaces to exploit. There are always surfaces to exploit. There is always profit to be made.

* Ghosts and demons – malicious entities spreading their hatred through signals from television satellites. That’s how they get to us; television is the vector. They deceive our minds, put us into a subconscious hypnosis. These space demons use what is called the “flicker rate” (the flicker fusion threshold), the frequency of intermittent light stimulus to modulate our perception by superimposing subliminal messages on television programs. This is how they destroy our freewill, how they corrupt our minds – like an intergalactic virus, poisonous creatures infecting our spirits from a distance.

* The former President of the United States of America. Having been impeached and discredited, the previous POTUS fled the surface of the Earth and went into hiding in a bunker on the moon. He is plotting there, with a coven of his satanic high priests, to raise an army of demonized Bolsheviks. His plan is to storm the White House and to retake control of the nation.

What’s out there? Weird and dangerous stuff. Stars and wonder, passion and despair. Out there are all the things we fear and all the stories that we deny. Out there are the monsters that hid beneath our beds when we were children. Out there are shadows and dreams. Out there is wealth, or at least the potential for great wealth. Out there, in the depths of space is danger, fire, heaven, hell. Out there is blood and mystery. Space is filled with mystery.

You Fool – You Rebel! (A Sermon)

Matthew 5: 21 – 37
Psalm 119: 1 – 8

“I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets,” Jesus told his disciples. “I have come not to abolish, but to complete them.” (Matthew 5: 17) If Jesus was a radical, revolutionary prophet, he was not so in this regard; he followed the tenets of the Jewish faith and accepted the authority of the torah. (Evans 223)

How blessed are those
whose way is blameless,
who walk in the Law of Yahweh!
Blessed are those who observe his instructions,
who seek him with all their hearts,
and, doing no evil,
who walk in his ways.
You lay down your precepts
to be carefully kept.
May my ways be steady
in doing your will.
Then I shall not be shamed,
if my gaze is fixed on your commandments.
I thank you with a sincere heart
for teaching me your upright judgments.
I shall do your will;
do not ever abandon me wholly.
(Psalm 119: 1 – 8 New Jerusalem Bible)

But Jesus, in his “Sermon on the Mount” gives a series of antitheses, not this-but that statements. In this he does not contradict the law or abrogate it; he goes beyond and further than the law. The law spoke to a man’s outward actions, to a woman’s behavior. Jesus’ words speak to his inward thoughts, to the attitude of her heart.

The physical act of murder in the old law is punishable by death, but Jesus extends this judgment to inward anger – the murderous, malicious anger burning inside a person.  Jesus told his disciples that calling someone a “fool” or “raca” = liable to judgment

But Jesus himself called people fools. Later, in this same gospel – the gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees fools. “You blind fools!” (Matthew 23: 17) So either Jesus was inconsistent, didn’t heed his own instruction, or Matthew wasn’t accurate in recording either one or the other of these passages. Or it could be that we need to seek a different explanation for this text.

There are two terms to understand in this verse. The first is the word “raca” and is not easily explained. It seems to be an Aramaic word – a contemptuous form of address, “good for nothing” or “wretch” (Exegesis 295). This is more than a “fool;” this is the description of a heretic. (Schaff 61) The second is usually understood as the Greek word Morē meaning “fool.” But some scholars have suggested that it may be the homophonic Hebrew word Môrê which means “rebel” – that is, a rebel against God or Apostate. (Albright 61, Stott 84)

We can read these two phrases as roughly parallel – the first contempt for his mind – his “empty head”, the second contempt for his scoundrel’s black heart. (Stott 84) Jesus’ instruction is then: Whoever despises a brother or sister in the faith as a heretic, or as a rebel against God will be liable to the Gehenna of Fire.

Religious debate is often divisive; along with politics it is a topic to be avoid in polite company. It tends to leave people polarized, raging in a state of fury. Sectarian violence is plague on the faith – on all faiths: Catholic Christians murdered Orthodox Christians during the Crusades, Protestants and Catholics killed each other during the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants killed each other in Ireland from the 16^th century up through 20^th century.

Early in the history of Christianity, when Christians were still by and large Jewish and members of the Jewish communities, there was division between the traditional Jews and the Christian “followers of the way.” This internecine conflict led to a split in the two groups; the Christians were expelled from their synagogues and cut off from their community.

The rabbis eventually developed 18 Benedictions to be read as part of the liturgy. The twelfth of these blessings was the “blessing” on the heretics:

“For the apostates let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom be uprooted speedily in our days and may the Nazarenes (notzrim) and the heretics (mînîm) perish as in a moment and be blotted out of the Book of Life, and not be inscribed with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.” (Encyclopedia Judaica)

But this cursing wasn’t one sided; there is a virulent strain of anti-Semitism that has run through the Christian church since the beginning.

It’s hard to come back from that. It’s hard to come back from that anger, from that hatred. It becomes an impenetrable wall between us.

I have been called a fool. I have been called an idiot. A blasphemer, a false prophet, a son of the whore heretic. And this by my fellow Christians, my fellow Salvationists. I have been, I am hated by some. Recently a friend of mine told me of a Salvation Army officer that she knows who has expressed a hatred of me, despite the fact that I don’t think we’ve ever actually met. This officer ‘hates’ me because I support LGBTQI people, and believe they should be welcomed and included into our churches. Hate is the word the officer used. And it’s sometimes difficult to believe that I am a part of this community – because of the animosity that is expressed.

This kind of hate is murderous. It kills. It destroys the bonds of fellowship, destroys the bands of brotherhood /sisterhood.

The one who keeps and follows the law of God, the torah, the divine rule of faith and practice was considered to be blessed. And to this we say amen, so say we all. We might all agree that we worship only one God, and that Jesus has saved us from our sins and that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are to be the foundations of our faith and practice, but problems and conflicts arise when we get right down to how that scripture should be interpreted and put into practice in our ordinary, everyday life. We cannot allow those differences in interpretation cause us to break the Christian fellowship of faith.

All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.  (1 John 3:15)

This is not to say that doctrine is unimportant, or of no concern. This is not to say that we should have a freewheeling, anything-goes approach to doctrine. We are called to study and to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). But we cannot let our disagreements – even in the matters of religious doctrine – become so inflammatory that we begin to hate and to despise our brothers and sisters.

If we call them “Racca,” empty headed, good for nothing worthless, reprobates, if we call them “fools,” black-hearted rebels and wretched apostates, then we have put ourselves in the place of God and judged them – and in doing so we make ourselves liable to the judgment of Gehenna Fire.

Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann, Matthew: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1979. Print.

Buttrick, George A. “Matthew: Exposition.” The Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 1951. Print.

Encyclopedia Judaica. 2008 The Gale Group.

Evans, Graig A. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 2006. Print.

Schaff, Phillip. Ed.  A Popular Commentary on the New Testament by English and American Scholars. Edinburgh, Scotland. T & T Clark. 1879. Print.

Stott, John. Christian Counter Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 1978. Print.

Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive - Rosamond E. Herklots, 1905-87,

"Forgive our sins as we forgive,"
You taught us, Lord, to pray,
But you alone can grant us grace
To live the words we say.

How can your pardon reach and bless
The unforgiving heart
That broods on wrongs and will not let
Old bitterness depart?

In blazing light your cross reveals
The truth we dimly knew:
What trivial debts are owed to us;
How great our debt to you!

Lord, cleanse the depths within our souls
And bid resentment cease;
Then, bound to all in bonds of love
Our lives will spread your peace.

(Not So) Biblical Limericks: Straight to Hell

The bible is as clear as a bell,
but to you a warning let me tell:
if your reading of it
differs from mine a bit
that means you are going straight to hell.

Hell is the Paradise Motel

A knock on the door awakened me and, cursing, I tossed back the threadbare and scratchy sheets. “A moment,” I hollered when the knocking came again. I looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. 9:06 it read, then its illumination flickered and the time read 7:29. I tapped it with the edge of my hand and it flickered again and the numbers 11:79 appeared. I cursed again.

At the door, I peered out the fisheye peephole. In the hallway stood a man, a stranger, dressed in jeans, a button-up shirt, and a cheap sport jacket, no tie. He knocked again and whistled patiently. I rubbed my face and opened the door.

“Good morning,” said the stranger thrusting his hand toward me.

“What time is it?” I asked him. 

“Time?” he repeated back to me.

“Yeah. What time is it? You woke me up and the clock in this room isn’t working. What time is it?”

“Morning,” he said to me, as if this should have been obvious. I rubbed my face again.

“What do you want?” I asked. “I’m tired.”

“Want? Why nothing, except to see if I can bring you any breakfast?” He smiled and I hated him.

“Breakfast?” I sighed. I had hoped to be on my way already. The waiting was interminable. The airline had arranged for this room when my flight was delayed and said that they’d call as soon as alternate arrangements had been made. How long had I been waiting? Hours? Days? I couldn’t tell. And this grinning idiot had woke me up for “breakfast?”

“Yeah. They serve a pretty swell breakfast here at the Paradise Motel. Can I bring you anything?” 

“No. No.  I don’t want anything,” I said and started to slam the door on him, but stopped.  “No,” I said again.  “I take that back.  I need a phone.  My cell phone is dead.  The charger is in my bags, which are God knows where, and the phone in here doesn’t work. Is there a phone in your room?”

“Phone?” repeated the grinning idiot. “Who would you wish to call?”

“The airline, dammit! Not that it should matter to you.” I sighed and rubbed my face again. God, I was tired. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” I said to him. “Can I use the phone in your room?”

God help me, but his smile stretched even wider.  He nodded and said, “Sure.” I excused myself from the door, pulled on my trousers, wrinkled as they were and opened the door again. The man led me down the hallway to his room. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered and hummed. And there was a smell in the hallway, like socks and burnt hair.

“What’s that smell?” I gasped.

“It’s the Mandadapus,” he said as if that should have meant something to me.

“What’s a Mandadapus?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mandapus. Their son, Sacchidananda, finally arrived and they are preparing a celebratory meal. Mrs. Mandapus has been up for hours cooking. They’ve invited everyone to join them this afternoon. You should come.” He said this as he stopped in front of his room and opened the door without using a key.

“You don’t lock your door?” I asked.

“What would anyone steal from me?” he asked and motioned me to enter. I stepped through the door.  “The phone is there,” he said pointing. “I’ll leave you to make your call. Are you sure I can’t bring you anything from the breakfast spread?” he asked. I shook my head and he and closed the door behind him as he left.

I sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the handset of the phone. I fished out the crumpled computer printout with the airline contact numbers from my pocket and began punching the numbers into the dial pad. A high pitched tone played and then a recorded message: “We’re sorry,” a bland voice said, “that number is not operative at this time.” I slammed the handset back down into its cradle. The handset cracked under the force of the impact and I could hear the recorded response through the tinny speaker, “We’re sorry; that number is not operative…” I slammed the handset down again and again until it stopped.

I sprawled out across the stranger’s bed and pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes until I saw a blur of swirling light. From somewhere nearby I could hear the noisy rattle of the ice machine and the sound of hotel elevator traveling up and down between the floors. Upstairs, I could hear children running back and forth in the hallways. Screaming and laughing. I muttered every curse and blasphemy I knew.

Just then the door opened and the man who’d awakened me entered the room. “I broke your phone,” I said and sat up. I pulled out my wallet.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“No,” I said, “Let me give you something. The hotel will make you pay for damages or something.” I looked for the cash I knew I had, but it was gone. All of it. I had at least four hundred dollars in cash, but it was all missing. I screamed and hurled my wallet to the floor.

“Don’t worry about the phone,” said the grinning man in his ugly sport coat. “And try to relax.  Come join me. We can sit by the pool until the Mandadapus are ready. The Paradise Motel has a very fine pool.” 

He stood in the doorway waving me to join him, but I pushed past him into the hallway. “Leave me alone,” I shouted. “Just leave me alone!” I stormed back down the hall to my room, but realized that I could not remember which one was mine. The doors all look the same in hotel hallways. I removed the keycard from my pocket, but it there was no room number printed on it, just “Paradise Motel” printed in a faded pink. 

I shoved the key card into the nearest door, and the door flung open with my weight. It wasn’t my room. Inside was a group of women, sharing a bottle of wine and laughing.   “Where the hell am I?” I shouted at them. The grinning man put his hand on my shoulder and drew me back into the hall. He apologized to the women. I heard them offer us a glass of their wine. He thanked them, and politely refused before closing the door. “Where the hell am I?” I asked him. “Where’s my room?”

He motioned for me to follow a little further and opened a door. My door. I stormed in and kicked at the wall until I’d broken a hole in it. “Why don’t you join us?” the man said to me when I finally stopped kicking. “There will be food and music and …”

I interrupted him. “I don’t want anything from these people, I don’t even know you. I don’t want food.  I don’t want wine. I don’t want to sit by the pool while other people’s children splash me with over-chlorinated water. I don’t want anything except for you to leave me alone until I can get out of this place!”

The man’s infuriating grin finally faltered. “But, friend, you are …”

“We’re not friends!” I shouted and pushed him out the door. “Leave me alone!” I slammed the door shut and fastened the security chain and turned the thumb bolt. From the hallway he knocked again. “Leave me alone” I raged. “Leave me alone!” I grunted and pushed the dresser against the door. “Leave me alone!”

Biblical Limericks: Hold the Salt, Please…

Some verses cause me to perspire,
for they sound so awfully dire;
sometimes Jesus is dark-
take this statement in Mark,
“Everyone will be salted with fire!”

Mark 9:49

Does it relate to Leviticus 2: 13 perhaps?

Henry M Morris on the Sensual Nature of Disembodied Spirits

I have in my library the book The Revelation Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Prophetic Book of the End of Times[i] by Henry M. Morris – a commentary on the final book of the bible and a sort of bookend companion piece to his similarly named commentary on Genesis.  And it is a howler, ridiculousness on nearly every page, far too many to share them all...

                                                                                                                                                                   

It’s billed as a “scientific” commentary, but, to be honest, there’s very little actual science.  There is, however, a good deal of science fiction and much fantasy.  Take this example of his science-fiction/fantasy (or speculative fiction, if you prefer) commentary on Revelation 20: 14 “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.  This is the second death,” offered without comment:

“Even disembodied souls seem to be recognizable in terms of their earthly identities.  Note the remarkable descriptions of the dead in Sheol in Ezekiel 31 and 32, as well as Isaiah 14.  That being so, such spirit bodies also may possess spirit senses and are [sic] capable of experiencing feelings analogous to those they possessed in the flesh.  We obviously have little understanding of such things, having no instrumentation with which to measure degrees of pain or pleasure experienced by persons who are without their physical bodies…”[ii]

---

[i] Morris, Henry M. The Revelation Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Prophetic Book of the End of Times Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, Wheaton IL, 1983

[ii] Page 432

Going to Heaven Shouldn’t Feel Like Going Through Hell

I remember being a young teenage boy and being terrified – terrified because I was afraid of going to hell, but at the same time recognizing that I didn't really love God.  (This was about the same time that I told God to “stay the hell out of my life…”  I really didn't want to end up roasting in the fires of hell for eternity, but I felt like I couldn't get to heaven because I knew that I didn't really love God or Jesus the way that the others at church seemed to do.  I didn't want to lie – and realized that it would only make things worse…

I wanted to explain this my parents, but when your parents are the pastors of the congregation, they're not especially keen to hear from their firstborn son that he doesn't know how to love God, so I didn't say anything about it to them.  I tried to explain my fears to a college student in our congregation who had befriended me, but he didn't seem to understand what I was attempting to say.  He gave me the old stand-by advice, “pray about it.”

That didn't help much.

Years later I discovered the song “Slatherage” by the band Dig Hay Zoose which included the lyric: “Motivation of fear, motivation of love, one of these is hell but it gets the job done,” and I knew exactly what that meant.    I didn't understand love for God, but was driven by that fear toward and away from God at the same time.  For me, in those early teenage years, going to heaven felt a bit like going through hell.

I had to realize that a relationship with God was something more than just going to heaven or hell after death.  I knew even then that loving God had to be about something more than afterlife fire insurance, but it wasn't until later that I realized that loving God wasn't even about going to heaven when I die. 

What I came to see is that it’s not about going to heaven at all – it’s about heaven coming down to me.  God loved me even with my doubt, and fear, and anger…  When I could finally get beyond that fear of hell, I found the love of God – which is heaven in itself.

Stupid Things I've Heard - It Went Too Far / It Didn't Go Far Enough

I hear a lot of stupid things.  I mean, people are always talking, right?  And usually they're saying something dumb.  (Perhaps I'm just being cynical and bitter today.  Sorry)

Today I had a conversation with a gentleman who didn't like Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ  because it was "too gorey."  He said, "I think they went too far."

And I began to agree with him, but he kept talking ...

"But..." and here he chuckled, "I also watched Escape from Hell and I didn't like it because they didn't go far enough with the torments."

Radio Telescope Records Cries of the Damned

Recently, astronomers at the Mt. Rumi Science Learn-a-torium released recordings made by deep space radio telescopes that pin point the location of hell.  The recordings were made during a series of observations of a black hole in the Virgo galaxy.  Black holes are incredibly massive objects in space that create gravitational fields so powerful that space itself is curved around them.  Stars, planets, even light itself is ‘sucked’ into these black holes.  And, as recently revealed, so are the souls of the damned.

In these recordings on can clear hear the sound of shrieking and crying souls.  “Their cries are pitiful,” said Dr. Drusba, chief of stuff at the Learn-a-torium.  “If you listen carefully you can even hear what sounds like teeth grinding,” he added.

Prominent theologian Dr. Jack Van Impe believes this is vindication of the Biblical doctrine of Hell.  “Now, this black hole, it sucks in all light and all energy so that it is totally black.  This one has sucked up two billion, three hundred million suns plus millions of dwarf stars – and dwarf stars never loose their heat; it goes on forever and ever.  And these dwarf stars make the heat inside these black holes twenty-five million to thirty million degrees Fahrenheit.

“Consider this and then quit saying there couldn’t be a hell.  Twenty-five to thirty million degrees Fahrenheit!  Now this is interesting because Jesus mentioned a place of ‘outer darkness in Matthew 8:12, and Matthew 25:30 and Jude verse 13 also calls it the ‘blackness of darkness forever.’  Think about it.”[i]

Steven Hawking was unavailable for comment.

---

[i] These are Van Impe’s actual words – April 9, 2005 – 

What I’m Reading: Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian

It’s a short book with a long title and an even longer subtitle – Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian: A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, especially its Elites, in North America – by Robert H. Gundry[i] I don’t remember where I picked up this book.  It’s been on my shelves for a couple of years, but I’ve only just now gotten around to reading it.

It’s not a long book at all (the title is almost longer than the book itself)  but it’s written in dull academic prose that is, at times, more complicated than necessary and makes the book feel longer than it really is. The book is less than 200 pages long – and has only three chapters[ii]  I’ll share my thoughts on those three chapters.

1 – Jesus the Word according to John

It has sometimes been argued by those who have studied the gospel of John that the prologue (1:1 – 1:18) was a separate writing that was tacked on to the rest of the gospel sometime later by an unknown editor. Those who subscribe to this idea point out the fact that the emphasis on the logos of God in the prologue disappears completely from the rest of the gospel.  Gundry demonstrates at some length that while the prologue may have indeed been added to the gospel later, it would be untrue to say that the themes of the prologue disappear from the gospel proper. 

In this first chapter Gundry walks the reader through the 4^th gospel showing how at every turn the (few) stories and the (many) words of Jesus return again and again to the themes established in the prologue – and how the emphasis on the gospel as a whole is on the Word – that is Jesus – who speaks the words of life, the words of God to the world.

I am looking forward to returning to some of this material again in the near future as I hope to develop a preaching calendar for next year focusing on John’s gospel[iii]

2 – The Sectarian

This is where things get a little tricky.  Gundry interprets John’s Jesus (and thus John – the author- by extension) to be “sectarian.”  To be “sectarian,” for Gundry, is to be a member of a “religious group that rejects the social environment in which it exists.”[iv]  

He points out the sharp division in John’s gospel between believers and unbelievers, those who are children of God and those who are children of Satan, between light and dark, He interprets Jesus’ command to “love one another[v]” as a command that the disciples should love those in the Christian community.

In John’s gospel we never see Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors and Pharisees – like we do in the synoptic gospels.  In John, Jesus only eats with his friends – those he loves. [vi]

He acknowledges that Jesus’ followers are not instructed to hate outsiders – as the members of the Essene community at Qumran were[vii]  but shows how Jesus wouldn’t even pray for “the world,” only for those that he loved! [viii] In John’s gospel “the world” is dark, and unenlightened; it refused to recognize Jesus and was full of sin.

Whether we like it or not, an honest reading of John’s gospel will reveal some rather sectarian themes. But this would make sense if it is true (as many scholars of John believe) that John’s gospel was written as a defense of Christian beliefs by Jewish Christians who had been expelled from their synagogues and banished from Jewish communities by those who refused to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.  It’s easy to understand the “us –versus - them” attitude that can be found in John’s gospel.

3 - A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, Especially Its Elites, in North America

And this is where it gets a little repugnant (at least to me.) 

Gundry laments what he believes to be a decline in evangelical fervor and missionary zeal.  He decries an evangelical church that seems to be becoming too much like the rest of the world in its pursuit of pleasure and comfort.  And he longs for a return to fire and brimstone styled preaching with emphasis on strong doctrinal preaching and an emphasis on the afterlife- heaven and hell, eternal life and everlasting damnation[ix]

He would be quite pleased for evangelicals to return to their roots in Fundamentalism – defending the inerrancy of the Bible and a literal interpretation of the scriptures. 

I am not opposed to strong doctrinal preaching.  I’m not opposed to calling the Church away from a pursuit of power and luxury and comfort.  But I’m not at all comfortable with Gundry’s desire for a return to the Fundamentalism of the 1920’s or with his adoption of John’s sectarian mindset.

To have been a sectarian in John’s community was to have been in a position of powerlessness and persecution.  The Christian community that received John’s gospel had been cut off from the larger community and had been excommunicated from their place of worship.  They were in the minority and they were harassed.  In that situation it was natural for the Christian community to circle inward for protection.  They loved one another, but didn’t pray for the outsiders.

But to call for John’s type of sectarianism in our contemporary pluralist culture is wrong.  Evangelical Christians in America today are not (no matter how much they might whine that they are) under attack.  They are not persecuted.  They are not being expelled from their places of worship. They are not being cut off from their communities.

It struck me as interesting that Gundy quotes from the sociological research of Christian Smith on this point:

American evangelicalism… is strong not because it is shielded against, but because it is –or at least perceives itself to be – embattled with forces that seem to oppose or threaten it.  Indeed, evangelicalism…thrives on distinction, engagement, tension, conflict and threat.  Without these, evangelicalism would loose its identity and purpose and grow languid and aimless.[x]

It’s as if Evangelical Christians have to manufacture enemies in order to feel like they’re accomplishing something.  Perhaps this is why so many of them continue to believe that President Barak Obama is a Muslim who’s intent on turning America into an Islamo-Fascist state.

We can (and should) read John’s gospel for what it reveals to us – but it would be completely inappropriate for us to read it in the same way that the embattled Christian community who first received it. We do not face the same threats that they did.  We are not persecuted as they were.

 

---

[i] William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, U.K. 2002.

[ii] Three chapters plus a few “extended footnotes” and “some theological desiderata.”

[iii] I will also be returning to some of the things I learned from James McGrath’s books - The Only True God and John’s Apologetic Christology: Legitmation and Development in Johannine Christology.

[iv]  Page 64 – quoting Benton Johnson, “On Church and Sect”  American Sociological Review 28 (1963)

[v] John 13: 34 - 35

[vi] The wedding at Canaan might have been exception to this – except we don’t read of Jesus eating or drinking.  He’s just there.

[vii] 1QS 1: 9 -10 "...he is to teach them both to love all the Children of Light...and to hate all the Children of Darkness..."

[viii] John 17:9.  You might also compare that with 1 John 5:16 – 17.

[ix] Especially an emphasis on hell and eternal damnation.

[x] Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 89.Universtity of Chicago Press, 1998.

What I'm Reading: Valley of the Dead

"Through me the way into the suffering city,

   Through me the way to the eternal pain,

   Through me the way that runs among the lost.

Justice urged on my high artificer;

   My maker was divine authority,

   The highest wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me nothing but eternal things were made,

   And I endure eternally.

   Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."[i]

The poet, Dante read these words above the gate to hell - wherein he would observe the most ghastly scenes of sin and vice and human depravity.   But how did he come to such a place? What did he see in his life to inspire such horrific descriptions? 

Kim Paffenroth, a professor of Religious Studies and author of several horror novels, has in his novel –Valley of the Dead: The Truth behind Dante’s Inferno - supposed it to be “a massive, horrifying outbreak of cannibalism… Dante had witnessed what I previously thought was a deadly plague only in our modern world – zombies, ghouls, the undead, the living dead.” (pg.10 -11) [ii]

This outbreak of flesh eating monsters flung the traveling poet headlong into a valley filled with the most sordid and vile examples of human depravity imaginable.  But as in the best zombie stories, the evil isn’t so much in the reanimated corpses but in the living.  The dead are, of course, dangerous.  They are the threat that sends Dante and his companions fleeing, but it is the sin and wickedness of those still alive that raise Dante’s revulsion. 

The monsters, the shuffling and moaning corpses are, for all the danger they pose, to be pitied.  They have become creatures without will, without choice, driven by base and uncontrollable desire. 

At one point in the novel Dante and his three companions are asked by a lecherous man why they think the creatures have come.  “Tell me, in your tidy universe of a just, loving God, who made these abominations, these creatures of evil, malice, and destruction?”

One answers, “God made them so that we may overcome them and grow stronger.”  Another says, “They make no difference to us, since this life is unimportant… We care only for the soul and eternal life.”  Dante answers the man’s question saying, “They are just people left to their own sinful ways…They are what we have made of ourselves.”  And the other in his group, the only woman among them, answers, “They are here for us to pity.” (pg. 122 – 123)

Pity.  And Mercy.  Even in this hell on earth there is mercy for these creatures.  It is the living who seem to be beyond pity (though hopefully not beyond mercy.)  The dead may be forgiven their destructiveness for they do not choose it, can not resist it, and do not enjoy it.  The living encountered in this valley of the dead, are truly wicked.  They are greedy and gluttonous.  They are lustful. They are full of malice and anger and blasphemy. They are the truly monstrous.

And like C.S. Lewis’s gates of hell –locked from the inside- the people of this valley refuse to leave. They are so consumed by their selfishness that they will not leave their sin to flee neither the plague of walking dead nor the invading army that is destroying and slaughtering everything and everyone in its path. 

It’s been several years since I struggled through Dante’s Inferno. And, truth be told, I didn’t actually finish it.  I’ve wanted to read it through, but haven’t yet.  But this lack of familiarity with the Inferno wasn’t a handicap to reading Valley of the Dead.   There were several references that I recognized (the wolf upon the road, the river crossing, the fortune teller with an undead creature whose head had been turned backwards on its body, the frozen lake at the center…) and I can only assume that there were just as many that went over my head. But the novel is written clearly enough that even those without any knowledge of Dante’s writing could understand and appreciate the story.

The Zombie genre has a bad reputation (even worse that that of science-fiction or fantasy), some of which may be deserved. Many zombie movies seem to be merely an excuse to fling copious amounts of blood and gore upon the screen. Zombie novels seem to be the new fad in horror writing – a quick way for publishers to make a buck (in the same way that pulp crime novels, science-fiction novels, and romance novels have been for years). But good writing transcends the stereotypes and clichés of the genre to honestly describe the human condition.  Though there is plenty of gore and violence in Valley of the Dead (what would a zombie novel be without them?), the thoughtful reader will recognize that there is something more within these pages.

So bitter is it, death is little more;

   But of the good to treat, which there I found,

   Speak will I of the other things I saw there.[iii]

***

And writing about the living dead gives me opportunity to link back to my zombie film : This Accursed Melody.

---

[i]    Dante – Inferno - Canto III. 1 - 9

[ii]   Paffenroth, Kim, Valley of the Dead: The Truth Behind Dante’s Inferno, Permutated Press, 2010

[iii]  Dante – Inferno  - Canto I. 7 - 9

Different Versions of the Same Story - A Review of Chapter Seven of Love Wins

French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his play No Exit that “hell is other people.”  (l'enfer, c'est les autres)  And sometimes I think he was right.  Other people limit my freedoms, and my choices. Other people force themselves upon me with their demands for my attention and my concern.  Other people demand my time and my energy.  They take and take and take.  They drain me. They devour.  They consume me.

But I’m also convinced that heaven is other people.  They share with me.  They give gifts. They tell jokes and make me laugh.  They comfort and console. They help. 

I don’t remember where I read it first (and a brief search of the internets hasn’t helped me to discover the original source…) but there is a story of a man (or a woman) who was given a glimpse of hell.  She (or he) saw people seated at a long table for a feast.  Foods of every variety were laid out for them, roasted meats, hot warm breads with melting butter, succulent fruits, and deserts to die for.  “How is this hell?” he (or she) wondered.  Then she (or he) realized that the people gathered for this feast had no elbows.  They could not, no matter how they bent themselves or twisted or stretched, put that sumptuous food into their mouths.  They were tortured by the unattainable feast in front of them.

This person then saw a corresponding vision of heaven – again there was the gorgeous feast and again, the people had no elbows.  “How is this heaven?” the observer wondered. “This looks a lot like hell.”  But then he (or she) watched as the people gathered for that feast used their elbow-less arms to feed each other.

Heaven is other people.

In chapter seven, the penultimate chapter, of his newest book, Love Wins, Rob Bell reminds us of the story of the prodigal son – or, rather, he reminds us of the stories (plural) within that parable.  There is the story that the younger son believes of himself and his father, and there is the story that the father tells his returning son.  There is the story that the older brother believes and the story that father tries to tell him.   They are different versions of the same story.

Hell is other people.  Heaven is other people.
Hell is a feast without elbows. Heaven is a feast without elbows.
Hell is older brother who won’t join the party.  Heaven is the younger brother who can’t believe he receives a party.

Different versions of the same story and, according to Bell, “Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story. (Love Wins, pg. 170)”

Passing through Nature into Eternity - A Review of Chapter Five of Love Wins

All that lives must die
passing through nature into eternity.
Hamlet Act I Scene ii

A few days ago my children and I had a discussion about the differences between the “Disneyfied”  version and the original versions of various fairy tales.  “The original stories,” I told them “are all about death.  All of them.  Cinderella.  Goldilocks. Sleeping  Beauty.  Beauty and the Beast.  They’re all death.”

I may have been exaggerating slightly for comedic effect, but there is a smidge of truth there.  It’s all about death.  And it’s all about life. It’s all about resurrection. These themes are Universal.  They are everywhere.  .  The universe, it seems, is designed to show us this progression from life through death to life. Rob Bell notes this in his newest book, Love Wins

This death-and-life mystery, this mechanism, this process is built into the very fabric of creation.  The cells in our bodies are dying at a rate of millions a second, only to be replaced at a similar rate of millions a second.  Our skin is constantly flaking off and our body is continually replacing the skin cells with new ones; we have entirely new skin every week or so. (Love Wins pg. 131).

The atoms and molecules that form our body were once part of stars.  We live because a star burned out. We live because something has died. 

Hamlet – A man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king,
            and a cat of the fish that hat fed of that worm.

Claudius – What doest you mean by this?

Hamlet – Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
            progress through the guts of a beggar.

Hamlet Act IV Scene iii

We live because something has died.  The fruits and vegetables we eat to keep us alive and healthy once lived themselves.  The meat we eat once lived.  But now we live because of it.

It’s all about death.  It’s all about life.  It’s all about resurrection.

Nothing that has not died will be resurrected.
C.S. Lewis – The Weight of Glory

A seed has to be buried in the ground – it has to die – before it can grow.

And when it comes to Christianity it’s about Dying to Live.  Bell writes about some of the ways that this is understood in the bible – and there are several different and overlapping ways of understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

“Motivation of fear, motivation of love
one of these is hell, but it gets the job done”

Dighayzoos

Some are better than others, but no one metaphor can fully encapsulate the cosmic scope of that resurrection life.  And those descriptions that make Christianity merely an eternal fire-insurance policy are especially inadequate.  There is much, much, so much more to it than the avoidance of hell.

How Mighty is the All-Mighty? - A Review of Chapter Four of Love Wins

I am at camp again.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place and I enjoy being here with the kids.  We are sleeping in tents, sitting around the campfire, hiking in the woods, shooting arrows at the archery range, climbing on the high ropes, and later in the week going on a white-water rafting trip.  It's pretty exciting.

Well most of it.

I spent the morning at the emergency room with a young man who broke his arm.  I told him that he needs to tell the story that he broke it while wrestling with dinosaurs atop a 100 foot cliff because the fact that he fell off the swings is really rather embarassing.  The four hours we spent waiting (and waiting and waiting) at the ER was not the most exciting part of the week.  But it did allow me some time to read.

And now that I have - at least for the moment - some connection to the internets, I want to continue my reviews of Rob Bell's newest book - Love Wins.

Chapter Four - Does God Get What God Wants ? continues some of the thoughts he began in chapter three.  (You can read some of my thoughts about his thoughts here...)  In chapter three Bell described some of this thoughts on Hell -  which, contrary to some of the hullabaloo I heard about the book before I read the book, Bell does not deny. 

Can God make a rock so big that even he can't pick it up? 

It's a frivolous kind of question, I know.  But it's a question about the limits of Gods' power.  How powerful is God?  How mighty is the "all-mighty"?  How great is God?  How good is God?

If we believe that God is all-mighty
and
if we believe that "God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2)
is God able to get what he wants?

How great is God?
Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do,
or kind of great,
medium great,
great most of the time,
but in this,
the fate of billions of people,
not totally great.
Sort of great.
A little great. (Love Wins, pg. 97-98)

Hell is there for those who would refuse and reject the love of God, but is that the end?
Is that all? Or does God’s great (all-mighty) love pursue us even there?

Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love? (pg. 109)

Bell observes that Christian history is full of believers who have affirmed that even death cannot contain God’s boundless love, and that the eternity of the hell of separation from God isn’t necessarily forever. 

Bell doesn’t use the story of Jonah, but in my own thinking and my preaching I’ve found the same thought expressed in that ‘fish-story’.   Think of Jonah, that obstinate anti-prophet , who tried to escape the presence of God – even to the point of being thrown into the bottomless abyss of the raging sea.  Jonah even tried to flee from God by sinking down into the depths of death.  But even there he was pursued by the unrelenting hound of heaven.

There is a hell for those who would reject the love and grace of God.  And If Bell and C.S. Lewis and many, many others are correct, the doors of hell are locked from the inside – and those who suffer in hell suffer because they refuse to submit to God.

But is that the last word. Sorry you’re too late.

If we want isolation, despair and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength  to make the world  in our own image, God allows us that freedom. … If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.

If, however, we crave light
we’re drawn to truth,
we’re desperate for grace,
we’ve come to the end of our plots and schemes
and we want someone else’s path
God gives us what we want.

…

That’s how love works.  It  can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,

we can have what we want,
because love wins. (pg. 117, 119)

If the hound of heaven can follow Jonah into that bottomless pit of death, can’t he do the same for all who would attempt to flee from his presence? 

I think he can.

What the Hell? - A review of chapter three of Love Wins

Okay, really?  This is the chapter that got people so fired up?  What the hell, people? 

First off – if anyone is still claiming that Bell has denied the existence of hell, he hasn’t.  So stop saying it. When you repeat it you’re only repeating a baseless slander.

There are individual hells,
and communal, society-wide hells,
and Jesus teach us to take both seriously.

There is hell now,
and there is hell later,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. (Love Wins pg. 79)

There is heaven in the here and now (or there can be if we will see it and make it) and there is hell here on earth, and humans are very good at making that.  But beyond the hell we create for ourselves in the here and now with our selfishness and depravity, there is the hell of separation from God in what comes after this life.  And Bell doesn’t deny that either. 

What he does say is that forever may not be forever.

Bell argues (and argues from scripture) that Hell may not be the eternal conscious torment that so many have taught.  Bell argues that the awful fury of God’s righteous wrath isn’t poured out just so that the wicked will spend billions and billions and then billions more years more in sulfurous torment, but is instead meted out for the purpose of reconciliation.

Gasp!

The dominant theme in scripture is restoration to God.  That’s what the book (the collection of books) is about – the way that the ever loving God has set out to restore his lost and broken family. 

It comes up again and again and again.  Sins trodden underfoot, iniquities hurled into the depth of the sea.  God always has an intention.

Healing.

Redemption.

Love.

Bringing people home and rejoicing over them with singing. (Love Wins pg. 87-8)

But before you start shouting UNIVERSALIST and throwing stones at the supposed heretic, you should recognize two things.

ONE - Bell never says (at least not in this chapter, I haven’t read the entire book yet…) that everyone will be saved.  In fact he pointedly acknowledges that that redemption and love that God is so keen to offer to everyone can be refused.

I tell these stories because it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace, and humanity can be rejected.  From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human, we are terrifyingly free to do as we please.

God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. (Love Wins pg. 72)

And TWO – If you reject Bell as a vile heretic based on this, you’re also going to have to pin that label on and throw stones at the venerable C.S. Lewis who held a very similar view of hell.  Lewis believed that “humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle (Mere Christianity, pg. 156)” and that it is up to each one to accept or reject that salvation, even from within the torments of hell.   The difference between Lewis and Bell is that Lewis is more pessimistic about the eventual repentance of those in the torments of their own hell.  Bell, “ has more faith in the ability of some to eventually repent, that is the only real difference between them—and it is a belief about people not about God and God’s desires.”

Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does.  In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat.  What you call defeat, I call miracle:  for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity.  I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.  I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man “wishes” to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.  They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved just as the blessed, forever submitted to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free. (The Problem of Pain, pg. 127-8)

This is the “jacked up theology” people have been screaming about?  What the hell?