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Tim

Personal

It is with tremendous sadness that I acknowledge the passing of my friend, brother and fellow blogger Tim Chastain, owner/writer of the blog ‘Jesus Without Baggage‘. Tim was called home on 9th June and he now stands in that place where all suffering, pain and tears are but dim memories.

It was about four years ago that I discovered Tim’s blog, at about the time that I started writing mine. So much of what I found on Tim’s blog I found to be so refreshing, and so similar to aspects of my own faith walk, and yet so different as all our walks are different. I immediately ‘followed’ the blog and have been blessed by it ever since.

I contacted Tim via his website, and we began our friendship by email, reinforced by mutual blog comments and reblogs. This was at around the time when myself and my family were in the process of fighting my wife Fiona’s terminal cancer, and Tim was very gentle, understanding and supporting towards me, having himself faced into a similar situation.

Tim’s gentle wisdom and scholarship always shone through in his thoughtful and yet easy-to-read blog articles, and he gathered a devoted following of commenters who always brought different facets of insight into the discussions, which Tim moderated with openness and fairness. Tim’s writing brought immeasurable freedom, healing and Grace to countless lives, many of which of course we will never know about until we stand before the King.

I always received a warm glow in my heart whenever Tim commented on one of my blog posts; he was always encouraging, always positive (even if he didn’t agree!), and we learned so much from each other. Examples of Tim’s comments can be found scattered througout my blog posts, and I would encourage you to read some for yourself.

This tribute to Tim would not be complete without acknowledging his tremendous, uplifting support after I lost Fiona. Tim’s words were always gentle, edifying and encouraging, and played a great part in my working through of my grief.

Tim, although we never met face to face, I will miss you terribly. I will miss your gentle humour, your kindness and your unpretentious wisdom. Thank you for being you, and thank you for all you have done – most of it without even realising you were doing anything.

Heaven is a better place now because you are there.

I wonder if there’s a blog post in that idea, somewhere? 😉

Rest well, my friend 🙂

Here is the link to Tim’s obituary

…and to the farewell post on JWOB

But is it Biblical?

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 21 of 33 in the series About the Bible - Inerrancy, Infallibility, Inspiration and Revelation

Once again, I am privileged to share the work of the brilliant Phil Drysdale on my blog, writing on a subject that is close to my heart:

As Christians we’ve all thought “is this biblical?”

It’s a great benchmark to see if something we are believing or doing is in line with scripture.

But there is a concern in this framework.

The Bible can lie to us.

Or more specifically – we can lie to ourselves when reading the Bible.

There are technically two ways to read the Bible – exegesis and eisegesis.

Exegesis literally means “to lead out of.” It’s when we read something in the Bible and it informs our opinions and changes the way we live life.

Eisegesis literally means “to lead into.” It’s when we read our own opinion into the Bible and it confirms our opinion and stops us from changing.

The truth is we all think we are doing exegesis when we are reading the Bible. But studies have shown, again and again, that most of the time the most well meaning of people perform eisegesis when reading their Bible.

It’s no surprise if you are a democrat there are passages to support you – and they do!

But it’s also no surprise if you are a republican there are passages to support you as well – and they do!

(sometimes they are even the same passages!!)

Same with how to raise your kid. Firm hand – its biblical. Soft and meek – it’s biblical.

How about that decision at work? There are dozens of “biblical” solutions in that Bible of yours. But you’ll most likely pick the one you want to or the one that makes the most sense to you.

Now hear me right, we frequently break out of exegesis by the grace of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit. So don’t hear me say reading the Bible can’t guide you or help you change, or that there is no point in reading the Bible.

I’m simply saying we need to be aware that we can be biased in finding what we want when reading the Bible.

In fact, it’s perhaps the only thing we can do. Be aware of this bias and pray God helps us navigate our subjectivity.

But I have another strategy I’d like to propose to you.

It’s more solid than asking, “is it biblical?”

It’s to ask, “is it Christ-like?”

You see when Jesus came He told us we had read the scriptures wrong!

Not just the common folk like you or I. No, the guys who had dedicated their entire lives to studying the scriptures. He told them that they had studied the scriptures to find out a “biblical” view of God and they couldn’t recognize God standing in front of them in the flesh.

Jesus redefined their reading of the scriptures.

He must also be our benchmark for reading the scriptures.

In fact, I would go as far as to propose if your “biblical” view does not work out to look “Christ-like” then it is not in fact truly biblical as Jesus would see it.

And Jesus did some drastic stuff to do this. He edited the scriptures. Selectively quoting them. Cutting out some bits. Inserting His own thoughts into others. Discrediting some while validating others many had ignored.

Jesus messed with the Jewish concept of scripture… and I think He needs to mess with our “Christian” one at times too!!

So that’s my challenge to you today. Will you allow Jesus to inform your concept of biblical?

After all, the Word of God should be the one who tells us what the words of God mean.

One for ‘Father’s Day’

Insights, Others' stuff

I don’t usually stand on any kind of ceremony for ‘special’ days, especially Father’s Day, which is simply a commercial copy of Mother’s Day. I won’t go into any further details on that.

But today – which, I am told is ‘Father’s Day’ – I saw a superb piece by Lee O’Hare, whose work I have shared before but which I have not posted a lot of recently. And it’s relevant to ‘Father’s Day’. Over to Lee:

“But his father said . . .” (Luke 15:22)

There is probably no passage in scripture that reveals the true heart of God as powerfully as the story told by Jesus of the incredible father who came running to his repentant wayward son after having wasted his father’s inheritance and brought incredible shame to the name of his father. The story known as “The Prodigal Son” really is not about the son at all; it is about the amazing love of a Father who refuses to treat us as anything other than deeply loved, cherished and totally forgiven children.

I realize that everybody reading this is all too familiar with this parable, but I would ask you, do not let that familiarity keep you from receiving the glorious truth which this reveals about the love of Abba God. In seems every time I read this story something new and fresh is revealed to me about the heart of my Heavenly Father. I would like to simply share a few thoughts that have recently come from my meditations on this wonderful story.

The most obvious thing that I see is how completely wrong both sons were in their perception of who their father really is. This makes me remember Jesus’ words in the “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17:25, “O righteous Father the world DOES NOT KNOW YOU.” That is the problem. Without the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit we really have no idea who God is or what He is really like. We carry around in our hearts distorted images of Him which have been forged on the anvils of our personal past experiences of rejection, shame and disappointment. This is only exacerbated by the wrong images we receive from well meaning parents, teachers, preachers as well as our own innate sense of guilt and unworthiness. We then try to relate to God out of those distorted perceptions and find ourselves feeling hopeless, confused, weary and often times utterly burned out and even resentful towards God. I don’t know how many times I have heard frustrated Christians say in one way or another, “It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to be a good enough Christian.” We can know all about grace in our heads, but what we need is a true Holy Spirit revelation of who our Abba really is in the deepest recesses of our hearts.

So what strikes me above all else in this story is how utterly and completely different the father really was. The “prodigal” son had to go to incredible extremes in order to be brought to a place where he was able to finally experience the truth of who His father really was and had always been – including the time that he had been living in the father’s house, as well as all that time he was living far away from home in rebellion and ultimately in complete and utter shame and filthy disgrace. I could easily inject some personal testimony right here, but suffice it to say, I can very much identify with this story today. I know what it is crawl around in the filth of a “pig pen” with distorted and perverted images of who I thought God was filling my heart and mind. I know what it is to finally “come to my senses” and say, “I don’t have to live like this any longer” and to begin the journey of returning to the father’s house. I also know what it is to feel I have to negotiate with God in order to be allowed back on the father’s property.

Pay close attention to the repentance speech the son had prepared and memorized as he was heading back to the father’s house:

“I have sinned against heaven and against you and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Just treat me as one of your hired servants.” (Luke 15:18, 19)

I have actually read in some commentaries that this was a correct and proper understanding and attitude of repentance for this good for nothing, rebellious sinner to have in approaching his father. But, let’s look at how the father, representing Abba God, actually responded when his wayward son returns with repentance speech in hand to plead for acceptance back home “as one of your hired servants.”

Of course, everybody is familiar with this part of the story: “And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20). It is at this point that the story gets really interesting. It is while the father is “falling upon his neck” (KJV) with love and compassion and smothering his swine infested flesh with kisses of fatherly affection, that the son begins to recite his prepared speech of repentance. But he only gets so far. What so many miss here is the fact that THE FATHER DOES NOT ALLOW HIM TO FINISH HIS SPEECH. He has just confessed that he is no longer worthy to be called a son and is about to say, “Just treat me as one of your hired servants” that Jesus interjects, “BUT HIS FATHER SAID . . .” Feel the power of that. I call this the “Divine Interruption” Just as he is about to place himself in servitude as a slave in the father’s household he is interrupted by the father who then turns to the servants and says, “Quick bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet . . .” It is as if the father is saying, “I refuse to hear this nonsense about you being my servant. I will have nothing of it. I am not interested in servants. I do not want a servant. I only want a son whom I can shower with my love and affection.”

Can you feel the power in this? While we are trying to negotiate with God out of our feelings of shame and guilt, which inevitably drag us into legalism and promises to do better and try harder, He is wanting to embrace us with love and kisses of fatherly affection and to lavish upon us His own gifts of grace and mercy.

Through this story Jesus profoundly reveals the heart of His Father and shows us so clearly what it really is that Abba wants most from us, who are His beloved children. It obviously is not simply obedient and responsible behavior. He already had that from the elder son who, the story reveals, also had no idea who his father really was, nor what he was like. The returning son was prepared to sell himself into lifelong servitude to pay his father back for years of shameful rebellion and waste, but as we have seen, the father would absolutely have none of that. What the father wanted, and what Abba wants from us, more than anything else, is a loving relationship. That is what he did not have from either of his sons and he wanted it so desperately that he would spare nothing to have it.

The heart of this story, and what personally speaks powerfully to me at this time, is the fact that the father, out of his love and desire for true relationship, was willing to let his son completely go so he could come to the absolute end of his own self-sufficiency in order to find out who his father really was. Only by coming to the end of himself was the son able to finally recognize what had been important to the father all along.

– Lee O’Hare, shared with his kind permission.

There Is A River…

Insights, Others' stuff

Another piece from Jamie Englehart:

Maturity celebrates diversity, and those who think, lead, believe and function differently than each other. When we try and put everyone into our paradigm and way of doing things and our way of thinking and believing it will only lead to breaches in our relationships. No one likes to be put into a box they do not belong in, and everyone wants to be celebrated for who they are and what God has graced them to do and become in His Kingdom.

David tells us in Psalm 46 that there is A river whose streams make glad the city of God. There is only ONE River, but there are many streams and if we would just flow in our lane and bring to the city the life that it needs thru the streams that we release then the river will continue to make the city glad.

However, when the streams think that they are THE River and there is no need for the other streams is when the life flow is dammed up and the city becomes sad. So flow my friends in the streams of life that God has you in and celebrate the other streams that are bringing joy to many. If another stream is not your taste or flavor, remember it is ministering gladness to those you are not.

– Jamie Englehart, used with his kind permission

The Wonder of it all…

Aviation, Personal

I’m a member of a Pilots’ group on Facebook, and recently one of the other group members wrote this:

“I’m on my way to my PPL with around 18 hours and just a few more lessons before the solo…
Have you ever during your training became unmotivated or suddenly having doubts of your goal of being a pilot?

I always dreamed to fly (hundreds of hours on flight sims, hanging on airport fences, etc) and I enjoyed every single minute of the training. Just suddenly it hit me “what is after the PPL”.
Is it normal or is it just me?”

In addition to others’ very wise and encouraging responses, I of course had to add my two penn’orth. Here’s what I put:

” Well, as a Pilot you will find that you never stop learning. There’s always a new adventure, a new trick, a new lesson. Awe, wonder, freedom, solitude, seeing the reaction of others when they see the world from ‘up there’ for the first time, the technical stuff, the practice, the skills, a good precision navex, landing away at an impossibly short grass farm strip, low-level cross-country and attacking a dam at the other end of it (imagining the gust response is flak!), night flying in the pitch darkness pretending you’re looking for Lancasters, fighting down through a pernickety wind gradient and an unpredictable crosswind, seeing the ocean with the glitter of the sunset at 10,000 ft (picture)…. so many great memories and so many adventures yet to look forward to. Keep it up, bro, you have all this to look forward to as well as still enjoying your training, which is in itself a series of adventures and milestones…”

I also shared with the group the picture from the top of this post. This was the view over the Atlantic Ocean from 10,000ft up, above the north coast of Cornwall, on December 8th, 2012, at about 1600 GMT. The picture was taken not long before sunset, with the external air temperature a very friendly eight degrees below freezing, and the clouds below carrying amazing little rainbow colours of ice crystals which are not easily visible in the photo – that sort of thing is not easily captured on camera. But the sheer magnificence of it is breathtaking. It’s an entirely different world up here; the light is harsh, white and blinding in the crystal-clear, freezing air, and you can see for at least a hundred miles in all directions. It’s simply indescribable.

It’s true that my friend on the Pilots’ group has all this to look forward to…every flight is different, and you learn something new each and every time you go up. This is why we fly!

Wow! This is why I love flying so much….

The Great Heresy

Insights, Others' stuff

I get accused of heresy a lot, simply because I don’t believe in a lot of what ‘mainline’ Evangelical Christianity believes in. This of course depends entirely upon my accusers’ presupposition that they are in fact right, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. But when you’re talking about an infinite, intrinsically unknowable Being, it stands to reason that anyone who claims to have all their ducks neatly in a row is by definition wrong.

But the biggest heresy of all is the huge slur on the character of God that is perpetrated by that same group. Here’s a far better take on it, from Kevin Carter:

I truly think the great heresy of the church is the attack on the character of God that began with Augustine, continued with Anselm, and was finalized with Calvin.

God became a tyrant, who saw humanity only as worthless rags, worthy of destruction… God’s holiness wasn’t something to love, but something to fear because we could never live up to it, and it’s not our fault, because God created us with that flaw, but we’re the ones to be accountable.

God, in a moment of regret, recognizes the flaw and decides to give us an escape route, but He does so by requiring the greatest, most painful and bloody death possible, then fragments the story in numerous ways, fills it with some myth, and requires you to believe a great number of ridiculous claims that work against the fabric of what we’ve come to understand to know about the Universe. And if we simply aren’t convinced by one particular sect of people who call themselves His followers, then He torments us gleefully in Hell for infinity?

I’m sorry, but that God is not Holy, Righteous, or Pure. That God is more evil than Thanos.

Luckily, that’s not who God is, nor is that what the church believed for the first 400 years or so… There is a more ancient truth of God’s love for all humanity, Gods suffering because of the sin condition, God’s desire to conquer the sin condition and offer us a way out of that system while we live, but with complete plans to fully reconcile ALL of it eventually.

That’s a God worth loving… The first is something to be feared and reviled.

– Kevin Carter, shared with his kind permission.

Header image shows three of the Monty Python team (left to right: Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam) in their well-known and oft-quoted sketch ‘The Spanish Inquisition’. No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition, of course 😉 But unfortunately the reality was nowhere near as funny: The real Spanish inquisition were a bunch of church-approved heresy hunters who began their work in the late fifteenth century and continuing for some 300 years. Nasty people they were, and of course their heirs are still in existence today. Seriously, they were horrible. Here’s a link to the the Wikipedia article on them.

Do Not Be Afraid

Insights, Others' stuff

I don’t know if you know this, but the most commonly-used phrase in the entire Bible is this: “Do not be afraid”. Usually (although not always) it is used in the context of humans being scared of God or His angels.

Funny, then, isn’t it, how so much of today’s church activity focuses on fear. The doctrines, the practices, the terminology, the liturgy  – most of it is fear-based. And most of that fear is of course channeled into the idea of being afraid of God, despite the most common context of the phrase ‘Do not be afraid’.

The phrase could even be seen as the most-often-repeated commandment of God, although you won’t hear all that many church leaders preaching on that idea, because of the loss of fear-based power that would follow. So, when people trot out the inerrantists’ phrase, ‘God says it, I believe it, and that settles it’, why do they not apply it to the phrase ‘Do not be afraid’?

And given the phrase that is repeated so many times – Do not be afraid! – there really is no excuse, when you think about it, for any believer to be afraid. Afraid of God and/or what He’s going to do; of death, because it’s been defeated; of Hell, because it’s just a scaremongering idea invented by the mediaeval Church to keep people in line. No, there is no need at all to be afraid, and I would like to emphasise this by sharing below a great piece from my friend Mo Thomas on this very subject. Here we go:

Fear of Divine Punishment

Based on what I know of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, I have NO FEAR OF HELL whatsoever, for me or anyone else, EVEN IF it exists as western theology frames it. (Note: I don’t believe that it exists as a nightmarish place of eternal horror, and neither did 5 of the first 6 schools of theology in the first 5 centuries after Christ. We might be missing something?!?)

Why would I ever have any fear or worry? This is the Abba of our Lord Jesus that we’re talking about!! His Love never fails, it keeps no record of wrongs, and His mercy endures forever. I trust Him completely that it would be for our refining, that all which is not of Christ would be burned away in His holy fire.

“We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love he has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them. By living in God, love has been brought to its full expression in us so that we may fearlessly face the day of judgment, because all that Jesus now is, so are we in this world. Love never brings fear, for fear is always related to punishment. But love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts. **Whoever walks constantly afraid of punishment has not reached love’s perfection.”** (1Jn 4:16-18 (Passion Translation))

Hear God speak into your soul, gently but firmly, with unshakable confidence in His voice…

“It is I, the One who loves you.
Trust in Me, and #DoNotBeAfraid.
Come to Me, and rest in My Embrace.”

Selah.

There is No Balance in God

Insights

So many people these days, ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ alike, believe either consciously or subconsciously that God is somehow a mixture, a balance if you will, of light and dark,  good and evil, yin and yang.

He’s not. In God, there is no ‘balance’ as we understand the term.

His mercy is not balanced by His judgement; instead, His mercy triumphs over judgement.

His love is not balanced or somehow cancelled out by His ‘holiness’ (as some Christians understand it, as essentially meaning stand-offishness) or His justice (usually meaning humanity’s brand of vengeful justice); instead, His Love in fact never fails.

Instead of hanging on to these cautious beliefs that always hold something in reserve, something that is fearful about trusting that God is good all the time, it’s time we realised that in fact that which we thought was too good to be true actually is true: Yes, God is good!

In fact, He’s all good, He’s completely good, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Not one bit. God is in fact just like Jesus. Was there anything dark about Jesus? Of course not, and neither is there anything dark about God either. And He loves you with a love that will not only never end, but which will never, ever let anything separate you from that love.

And this is the completely one-sided, unfair, unearned, shockingly life-changingly wonderful and brilliant truth of the Gospel – which really is Good News. All of it.

Here’s the truth: if the god that people have told you about does not look just like Jesus, then that’s not the real God they have told you about. Period.

Regarding Christians Who Gloat About People Burning in Hell

Insights, Others' stuff

Before we even start, yes, I’m sorry but there are indeed such people as I mention in my title.

I once wrote that, “[Hell means that God allows the] torment of literally billions of precious people for all eternity, all at the same time as the ‘elect’, those who are ‘saved’, are ‘living it up’ in Heaven and knowing full well that all that suffering is going on ‘somewhere else’.

It’s easy to see why this is such an easy concept for certain Christians to grasp, because it’s mirrored in the way that many Christians reject as worthless those that they despise. So ‘those people’ are suffering? Well, it must be something they’ve done/it serves them right/other such highfalutin’ statement. Because the suffering is going on ‘somewhere else’ and therefore it doesn’t matter.

I do wonder how those with such cold hearts can define themselves as ‘Christian’. I mean, each to their own, yeah, but surely Jesus’s whole emphasis was on ‘Love’? Attitudes like that are as far from Love as it gets, when you think about it. Surely their own definition of ‘love’ should be based on St. Paul’s famous description in 1Cor 13? But it’s a long way from that!

And I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who thinks like that. Here’s a superb piece by one ‘Captain Cassidy’, written in the wake of the Paris terrorist shootings in 2015. I must say that I don’t agree with everything in the essay, but I think she has encapsulated nicely many of the objections I have about Christians being so blasĂ© about the idea of people burning forever in Hell.

I want to talk about Hell today.

There is something truly grotesque about the way so many Christians seem to get off on the idea of people burning in Hell. I’m sure you’ve seen what I have: the way their eyes glitter when they talk about it, the eager tone of voice they get when describing in lurid detail the horrors non-believers will experience there. I don’t think they even realize they’re coming off that way, they’re so desensitized to the idea by now. The idea that a huge number of their family members, loved ones, and total strangers alike are one day going to burn forever and ever and ever is so endemic to their worldview that I’m not sure they even realize what it means or what their gloating implies about them as people. Today we’re going to talk about this mindset and what it means–and why good people reject it.

[…]

[Description of interviews of people trying to help burn victims – Ed]

These interviews hit me really hard. […] All of the people I’ve mentioned here have made one fact painfully clear: out of every single way there is to die, burning is about the most horrible and ghastly one there is. If these victims they’d tried to save had survived, it would be amid years of pain; burns take forever to heal and some never really do. Clearly our species simply didn’t survive serious burns often enough to pass on superior burn-healing capabilities to our offspring in the distant past, because we are really shitty at healing that sort of injury. No wonder Christians years ago used death by fire to punish heretics and dissenters; out of all the really imaginative ways we’ve ever found to hurt people, fire’s about as bad as it gets.So gang, that’s what it’s like to watch someone burn to death. It’s not fun or funny. It’s not cute. It’s not something to gloat about or even feel smugly certain about. Someone has to be seriously disturbed to watch someone suffering fire damage and feel anything but a desire to immediately leap in to help in any way possible.

And had I … suggested that there was something these burn victims might have done to deserve that kind of death, I would not have been surprised in the least if such an encounter ended with me nursing a bruised ego–or ass. Neither of these [people] are gods, and even they would have been more merciful than the Christian god apparently is.

When Christians chirp their various singsong threats, that’s what they are saying to us: we are going to suffer and die an unending death by fire, tortured forever by burning, and they actually look forward to seeing us in that kind of agony. It’s no more than we deserve, by their lights, so there’s no point in wasting empathy or sympathy on us. They regard our rejection of their religious claims as a direct attack upon themselves, and our future torment is nothing more than cosmic comeuppance for not obeying them.

We didn’t pick the correct religion out of all the thousands in the world, you see, and from there the correct permutation of Christian doctrines out of the 40,000+ available. We didn’t manage to feign adequate belief in the utter nonsense spewed by Christian apologists and leaders. We found no reason to believe in this god who spent so much time and effort deliberately obfuscating his existence to ensure that there’d be no proof whatsoever of his existence. We figured out that there was no more reason to accept Christianity’s claims than there is to accept those of any other religion. And for our great sin of using our divinely-granted consciousness and discernment, we deserve to burn to death forever. We deserve to be set on fire after we die and tortured without any hope of mercy, redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, parole, or escape.

Most Christians don’t even think about how absolutely appalling this doctrine is–how blatantly manipulative, how openly terrorist in nature, how beyond-blitheringly cruel and evil it would be for any earthly despot to institute a punishment even half as ghastly as Hell. Even worse are the Christians who do think about it, though; they have to find some way to reconcile such a concept with that of a loving god, and the ways they find of doing that are nothing short of obscene.

Why it’s only moving the problem one step over to claim that “people send themselves to Hell.”

The idea of Hell as I’ve outlined it clearly does make some Christians hugely uncomfortable. And it should. It’s an evil, nasty, mean-spirited, fearmongering, openly terrorist and extortionist doctrine that is 100% incompatible with the current reigning Christian view of its god as gentle, loving, and merciful.

That doctrine is fine with a lot of Christians–the sort who openly gloat about dead soldiers and picket children’s funerals, or those Calvinist sorts who seem perfectly at ease with the idea of their god being an asshole–but most Christians are part of our culture whether they like it or not, and our culture is moving away from that kind of cruelty. So they’ve evolved some two-steps meant to distance themselves from the more troubling ramifications of their own ideology.

I’ve talked before about these distancing acts. The whole “love the sinner/hate the sin” dance is one of them; it is meant to give Christians an excuse to be nasty and hateful to others. They don’t especially care if their dance fools anybody outside the tribe; it’s done for their benefit, not for ours.

The current two-step around Hell is one of their current favorites, though.

Follow along with the dancing red ball:

Assumption A. Allowing people to be tortured for any length of time is evil and monstrous.

A1. The Christian doctrine of Hell involves people being tortured forever by fire.
A2. That would normally make the author of such threats evil and monstrous.
A3. But the Christian god can’t possibly be evil and monstrous.

Conclusion. Clearly that means that the evil and monstrosity is coming from somewhere else.

Assumption B. Whenever a doctrine seems to contradict Christian ideology, it’s not the doctrine that is in question, ever, nor the ideology that is at fault; there is always a way to reconcile them somehow.

B1. So clearly it’s people’s fault that they are facing eternal torture. It is not this god’s choice that people suffer, nor his desire.
B2. The Christian god must have nothing to do with Hell, so people must be sending themselves to Hell to be tortured eternally by fire.

Conclusion. It’s totally not our god’s fault at all that people end up in Hell getting tortured forever by fire. Overall conclusion: Hooray! He’s (still) a loving and merciful god!

I’ve heard a dizzying number of excuses along these lines offered by Christians to explain why Hell is not a monstrous and evil idea:

* People choose to throw themselves into Hell.

* People don’t want to be with Jesus in the afterlife, so they do this to themselves on purpose.

* Would you want to have a rude guest in your house for a party? (I used this excuse myself.)

* The doors of Hell are locked from the inside, not the outside. People who go there don’t want the Christian god around.

* Hell isn’t a punishment; it’s a consequence for non-compliance, just like death in a car accident is a possible consequence of not following seat-belt laws.

* Hell was designed for demons, not people, so of course it won’t be pleasant for people to be there.

And some heretics even try to make for themselves a Hell that is not fiery, eternal, and physically painful–even though such a Hell looks nothing whatsoever like anything in the Bible.

All of these excuses depend on a few ideas that categorically put the entire Christian faith on its ear. These excuses all require that the Christian god be something besides all-powerful, for him to be an idiot, or for him to be malevolent enough to punish people for his own inability to provide evidence enough to compel belief in him. As Neil Carter’s so ably described, tons of Christians figure this stuff out and end up following the evidence right out of the religion. We deconvert because when we tried our damndest to find a good reason to believe, we found none at all.

Christians might comfortably and complacently believe that one or two of us “chose” to be tortured eternally, but most ex-Christians are thoughtful, caring, intelligent people who want only to do the right thing with our lives. The idea that a god might allow a single one of these precious and beautiful people to be harmed even one second repulses any compassionate mind. How many of those people do Christians need to meet before they start having questions about how loving and merciful their ideas of Hell are?

And, too, this entire “choose to be tortured” idea has the distinct smack of victim-blaming about it. It’s like a murderer telling a judge, “I told her not to scream or I’d shoot her, and she screamed! So really, she chose for me to shoot her to death!” Do you suppose any judge in the land would allow such a murderer to go free after that excuse was given?

If the Christian god designed the ideology and place itself, if he decided upon its entrance requirements and then deliberately refused to provide people solid proof of any of his religion’s claims so that there was no more reason to blindly choose his religion over any other in the world, then he is the same as that murderer who claimed that his victim caused her own death by not complying with his demands. This is not the same situation as someone not listening to seat-belt laws and then getting killed in a car accident; in our scenario, the Christian god actively inflicts this pain on others (or allows it to be inflicted, but again, because he’s omnipotent that doesn’t actually make much of a difference!) because he was dissatisfied with their obedience to his whims, and he created the entire game itself to be exactly as it is now. It was no accident that someone found no evidence to believe, nor that there happened to be a horrific place ready for that person to go to after death to suffer for not having believed.

The Christian god, if one is to take his adherents’ preposterous claims seriously, is an omnipotent being who created this realm and set it up. If he didn’t intend for any people to go there, then he needed to design somewhere else for people to go. If he didn’t want people to go somewhere like Hell, then surely he is powerful and intelligent enough to either create a more reasonable ideology or to give people overwhelming evidence and instructions for avoiding that place.

If he isn’t powerful enough to create a cosmology that allows people to see the truth either before death or posthumously, or to change their minds after death about anything, or to at least allow for rehabilitation and redemption at that point, then maybe Christians need to figure out what cosmic Truth their godling is compelled to obey and go work out what god is embodied therein so they can follow that one instead, because whoever that god is, she or he is the real MVP.

And that is the Problem of Evil in a nutshell.

Either this god is not smart or powerful enough to create a cosmology that avoids eternal torture, or he is cruel and malevolent enough to allow such torment to exist. If he’s capable of stopping fiery torture but chooses not to do so, then he is evil; if he is not capable or doesn’t realize what’s happening at all, then he’s hardly a god in the first place.

Now, obviously there’s no proof for a single bit of Christians’ claims. There’s no evidence that there’s even an afterlife, much less an unpleasant one controlled and administered by demons at the behest of an omnimax god of love and mercy, much less any god, omnimax or not, loving and merciful or not, much less a cosmology that looks remotely like the one Christians believe.

But if one of them tells me with a perfectly straight face that their infinitely loving, powerful, merciful god is not only okay with the idea of anybody burning in this life or the next but designed things to be that way, then I am going to think that either the Christian in question has never really thought this one through (as indeed I hadn’t, back then!), or is an immoral person who is okay with hurting people for non-compliance.

Moving the Problem of Evil to humans’ laps only moves the issue one step over; it does not resolve the actual problem at all because ultimately, their god (according to them) designed all of this nonsense in the first place. All they’ve done is add some victim-blaming to the mix.

And I’m not so sure that it’s that far a jump to think that if it’s okay to hurt someone deliberately and cruelly in the next life, then maybe it’s not so bad to do it in this life if it’s for a good cause. We already know that right-wing Christians regard themselves as mini-Jesuses, fully invested in the right and ability–even the obligation–to dispense divine justice upon other human beings in the name of the greater good. They already think that they should be given the right to control the rest of us because non-Christians are just too damned stupid to run our lives correctly. They already scare the bejesus out of non-believers because of the over-the-top aggression they display when they’re challenged–even to the point of issuing death and rape threats to an underage girl who objected to the way Christians in her school district were muscling into her education.

If Christians can’t have cooperation through happy consent, then they have demonstrated repeatedly that they will take compliance given only out of fear–and will consider either one evidence of divine blessing upon their endeavors. And our culture is starting to reject this mindset–in large part because we’re finally starting to empathize with and understand the people who are getting hurt by these ways of thinking, and we’re starting to understand how interconnected we are to each other.

It’s hard to stomach the idea of hurting someone we know very well and consider part of our group. It’s even harder to be okay with the idea of eternal fiery torture for non-compliance when we start really thinking about how terrible it is to burn.

Any religious system that relies upon force, violence, or threats to gain compliance from anybody is not one worth following.

People are right to reject any religion that tries to gain power and influence through threats, and to reject such such behavior as incompatible with the idea of a loving deity of any kind even on the metaphorical level. People use fear when they don’t have a good case to make otherwise. The bigger the threat, the weaker the case generally is. And Hell–burning to death forever and ever–is about as big a threat as anybody could ever concoct.

But fear requires darkness in which to operate. It can’t stand daylight in the form of questions and open dissent. The more people question the doctrine of Hell, the more Christians will get the permission they need to contemplate the unthinkable questions: What if the two-step they’re doing about Hell doesn’t actually solve any of the problems the doctrine has? What if the violence embodied in Hell taints everything about Christianity?

And even more unthinkable: What would their religion even look like without fear being any part of its doctrines and ideologies, and without threats being considered a perfectly acceptable and viable marketing tactic? If they refused to use fear or threats of any kind to sell their religion, then how would they market it?

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Redefining Language

Insights, Others' stuff

Nowhere does Jesus mention that anyone should try to save others from Hell. You’d have thought if it was that important He’d have told us? You’d also have thought He’d have told us how important it was that we pluck the souls from the brink especially in the context of those parts of His teaching where the meaning is traditionally ascribed to being about Hell.

Furthermore, if the hell-fire doctrine is true, and if Evangelical Christians claim that a loving God still lets people go to Hell ‘because He is so loving that He will not override their free will’, then it follows that they have to change the definition of Love so that it bears no resemblance to that found in 1Cor 13.

In fact, much of the traditional ‘Hell’ doctrine relies on somehow making it look as if god is being ‘loving’ as he sends people to Hell. This simply has to involve the twisting of the meaning of the word ‘love’ out of all recognition from its normal use. In fact I would go so far as to say that only Religious people (and maybe politicians) can twist a word so that it means the exact opposite of its true meaning, and that usually in order to make it fit with their own twisted ideas.

Here’s a great post by my friend Rob Grayson, and shared with his kind permission, where he examines the concept of language, how it gets twisted like that, and what to do about it. Enjoy:

Redefining language

Whatever your views on evolution and the origins of the human species, you’ll probably agree with me that one of the main characteristics that sets humans apart from any other species is our capacity for rational thought. And this capacity is closely linked to our ability to communicate using language. (Indeed, without language we would certainly not be able to express our thoughts; whether we could even think in such a sophisticated way without language is debatable.)

As a member of the human race and a daily user of language, however, you’d probably also agree with me that language, as powerful as it is, is fraught with difficulty. It seems that, no matter how much care we take in communicating what we think, there’s always room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

In a recent blog post, my theologian friend Michael Hardin puts it like this:

What if language is not divine? What if language is a purely human phenomenon? What if language is not neutral, but is a bent, broken and distorted means of communication? Is it not the case that we are constantly being misinterpreted or that we find ourselves explaining ourselves to others in simple conversations? Language is not straightforward is it?

The very least one can say is that language is imperfect. Even with the best of intentions and the greatest of efforts at clarity, misunderstanding is rife. In fact, in line with Michael’s linked article, I think we can go further still.

We humans are prone to think in a way that judges and separates people into in groups and out groups – with ourselves, of course, usually in the in group and our enemies and those we do not care for or value in the out group. We define ourselves over against others. And we tend to excuse behaviours in ourselves and the groups with which we identify that we would condemn out of hand in those we consider other than us. This kind of thinking – most of it non-conscious – seems to have been deeply entrenched in us ever since the Garden.

Given how closely language is associated with thinking, it follows that our language is also subject to the same non-conscious tendencies. We use language to structure the world according to our innermost thoughts and perceptions. As we think, so too do we speak.

This is particularly problematic when it comes to talking about God.

First, we’re faced with the problem of the inadequacy of language. How do black-and-white characters on a page (or sound waves transmitted from our mouth to another’s ears) begin to convey God’s divine majesty, love and power? Even the most imaginative and evocative metaphors fall short of the task. But, the inevitable insufficiency of language aside, a still greater problem awaits us.

As I outlined a few paragraphs ago, the language we use has evolved to express the skewed way in which we think. And so, when we use it to describe even a being as wholly good and perfect as God, our descriptions are tainted in ways of which we are rarely aware.

For example, I spoke of the challenges of using human language to convey God’s love and power. Because of the way we’re programmed to think about such things, we often do violence to the character of God by forcing him to fit the contours of words whose meanings are largely pre-determined, often at subconscious levels.

Take the word love – surely one of the highest, most noble words in the English language. From the Apostle Paul to Shakespeare and beyond, love has been the impetus for endless creative expression. It seems quite right and safe to think of God as a God of love.

But we need to realise that our conception of even something as wonderful and laudable as love is structurally tainted. Most of our experience of love – whether given or received – tends to be limited and conditional in nature, so that even when we think about the perfect love of God, deep in the recesses of our hearts lurks the suspicion that that even this love will run out on us, that what is today a source of comfort and delight will transmute into judgement and condemnation if we fail to live up to its requirements.

So, whether we’re aware of it or not, as soon as we think about the love of God, and as soon as we use the word “love”, we risk colouring God in a way that distorts his essential character.

The same can be said of our notion of power. That God is supremely powerful seems obvious beyond question, so we happily speak of God’s power. But we do so without realising that power has a terrible and special place in the human psyche and experience: it’s often what defines the relationship between the privileged and the downtrodden, between the abuser and the abused. We tend to think power is good when it’s exercised in our interest and not so good when it’s used against us. Above all, power is what shapes and orders the world; and it does so by making people conform to its will.

Describing God as powerful, then, while accurate on one level, is also problematic, for such a description carries deep within it the notions of coercion and force. Indeed, these notions are so ingrained in our worldview that we struggle to see why they’re even a problem.

What the problem boils down to is this: in using our words to describe God, there’s a real and present danger that we subtly distort God to fit him into our mental paradigms, without even realising that we’re doing so. In short, we often unwittingly redefine God according to our language.

What’s the answer to this conundrum? Given the limitations and distortions of language, how are we to faithfully speak about God at all?

I’m not sure there’s any simple answer, but I do have three suggestions:

1. Be aware of the problem. It’s often said that awareness is half the battle. If we practise the art of being conscious of the inadequacies and dangers of human language when talking about God, we’re perhaps less likely to carelessly and thoughtlessly abuse or distort his character.

2. Work hard to communicate well. Rather than simply speaking of God’s love or power and assuming that these are clearly understood attributes, even among longstanding believers, use explanations, comparisons, metaphors and stories to clarify what they mean. (The Apostle Paul, whom I’ve already mentioned, dedicated a whole chapter of his letter to the Roman Christians expanding upon what he meant by the word love.)

3. Allow what we know about God to redefine our language. Thankfully, God didn’t leave our understanding of him to chance or to the vagaries of human language. Instead, he took on flesh and showed us in the person of his son exactly what he’s like. Jesus vividly demonstrated for us that God exercises power from below rather than from above; God’s power is the kind of “weak power” that refuses to coerce or force but chooses instead to invite and to woo. And Jesus showed us that, far from being conditional or limited, God’s love is recklessly self-giving. As an unknown author wrote, “I asked Jesus, ‘How much do you love me?’ And Jesus said, ‘This much’. Then He stretched out His arms and died.”

Rather than forcing God into the pre-cast moulds of our limited and distorted human language, let’s offer our language – and the thinking that underlies it – to God and ask him to reshape it according to his paradigm. Rather than struggling to define God according to our human notions of power and love, let’s ask him to fundamentally change our understanding of power and love.

Perhaps this is something of what Paul meant when he urged the Corinthian church to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.

[ Header Image: John Keogh ]

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