Here is a superb parable, written by my dear friend Mo Thomas:
CNN News Report: Chicago, June 7, 1997
A bomb threat was called in anonymously at 11:01am to a local high-rise office building in the heart of downtown Chicago near the Magnificent Mile. The owner of the building, Dr. Milton Hanner, a sincerely kind and generous middle-aged man who had lived in Chicago for most of his life, had become familiar with and well-loved by thousands of people over the years as he spent many hours each day walking around the building rubbing elbows with folks and getting to know them.
Upon hearing the news of this threat, he rushed over to the lobby immediately, filled with genuine concern over those inside . . . and formed an emergency plan to make sure every person had a chance to escape. A volunteer army formed quickly at hearing the news of impending disaster, and the owner personally led the charge to quickly and efficiently work the entire 65-floor building, executing the plan in an attempt to make sure that each and every person heard the warning, so they could escape.
Over the course of the next several hours, interviews were conducted with dozens of frantic employees who had fled the building, and CNN learned of the following responses:
— Many people believed that it was a hoax, and completely ignored the urgent warnings. They scoffed at the thought of wasted time leaving a perfectly safe building; some of them recalled the random “fire drills” over the past few years – apparently, two of them just last month, in fact.
— Some people considered the warning, and figured that they’d leave as soon as they got some work done. So, they turned around and went back to their phones and computers, soon forgetting about the warning.
— Others used the news as an opportunity to create panic in their areas. They started screaming, shouting, yelling at people to get out before it was too late. Unfortunately, a few folks jumped out of windows to their doom.
— Lastly, a few folks actually took the warnings seriously and followed the owner’s instructions, getting out of the building in the most efficient way possible and finding cover away from the area.
At 3:03 pm that same day, 65 separate bombs exploded in the span of 10 minutes, destroying the building and apparently leaving no survivors whatsoever.
Additional details:
Strange reports started trickling in that the owner was the one who had called in the bomb threat, and had himself been the one to plant timed explosives on every floor. This set off a firestorm of controversy across all media outlets.
Mr. Hanner, all of a sudden, was no longer the sincerely kind man who genuinely cared for the occupants of that building, no matter how many hours he’d spent with those people, no matter the emergency plan he’d formed and helped execute, no matter if he risked his own life to save them. For the compassionate man who went in to save the people from destruction was the same monster who had already made plans to destroy them if they didn’t heed his warning and escape.
The media now portrayed him based on this new information as
a #manipulator,
a #terrorist . . .
a #madman.
Wild reports continued to stream in: apparently, the building was destroyed, but there was evidence that the owner had hired security personnel to round up the remaining inhabitants of the building, taking them to a holding cell in the basement, until they could be turned over to a group of torture experts in a remote underground facility . . . with specific instructions from Mr. Hanner to keep them alive, alert and in excruciating pain for an undetermined amount of time, with no hope whatsoever of release or relief.
The entire city went into a mourning period that lasted for months, while hundreds of surviving employees and family members who had lost loved ones suffered from intense psychological trauma upon hearing these gruesome reports.
It wasn’t until much, much later that the final stack of evidence came forward, clearing Mr. Hanner from any malicious activity… it was truly heartbreaking for family members closest to the owner who knew and loved him, to hear dozens and dozens of reports of these horrific false accusations that so many people, including many of his supposed friends, were making against him. They knew how much he loved all the people who occupied his space. To accuse him of terrorism and torture was a terrible character assassination, pure and simple.
Sadly, years after the final evidence came forward, and he was cleared completely of any crime, most people who were interviewed still believed that he was keeping people alive for the sole purpose of having them tortured.
I have just finished watching the series ‘Messiah‘ on Netflix.
Personally, I both loved it and devoured it. Within three days, I’d watched all ten episodes, lol 😀
Through a winning combination of the story, the scenery, the plausibiity, the superb acting, and the actions and attitudes of the main character ‘al-Masih‘ (Arabic for ‘Messiah’) and those of the people who were influenced by him (in many different ways!), I learned an awful lot of stuff about Jesus, about people, about the Grace of God, about politics and exigency, and much more.
As any writer worth his salt would do while watching an epic show like this, I had begun to jot a few notes down about what I thought of it and what I had learned. And, just as it has happened so many times in the past, before I can get my thoughts out there, someone else comes along and says what I wanted to say. But I don’t mind; some people are better at articulating certain things than I am 😀
And so, here’s the brilliant Brad Jersak, with his impressions of this masterful series. There are a few very mild spoilers, but nothing that would impair your enjoyment of this series should you choose to watch it yourself – which I highly recommend you do if you can (as in, if you’ve ‘got Netflix’). I’ll add some minor comments of my own at the end.
I loved Netflix Messiah. You might not if …
By Brad Jersak
I have just finished binge-watching season 1 of the 10-episode Netflix series MESSIAH.
I loved it. You might not. [No big spoilers].
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need the show to be about Jesus of Nazareth. Al-Masih (Arabic for Messiah), the main character, may or may not represent Jesus. He may be the Christ visiting our era … or he may be a false Messiah seeking to deceive. I liked how the show threw both the characters and the audience into the very question that eye-witnesses of Jesus were fighting over in the first century. The show doesn’t commit to solving the question. It’s about asking it. And so, we now have some Christians and Muslims who are deeply offended by the show. Why, exactly? Because it’s portraying the true Christ poorly? Or painting a false Christ as if true? These critics suffer the classic fundamentalist failure of imagination and misunderstand the place of good fiction as a delivery vehicle for truth.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to reflect fourth-century creedal Christology. Does the show depict a self-revelation of the second person of the Trinity, at once both fully God and fully man? Had the first Christians come to those conclusions as Jesus of Nazareth walked about Galilee, Samaria and Judea? No, it took over 300 years of speculation, debate and councils to arrive at definitions that not all believers agreed on.
I liked how the show depicts those who encounter Al-Masih coming to a great breadth of conclusions, struggling to understand the meaning and identity of this man, just as we see during Jesus’ earthly sojourn.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to be exclusively Christian. Ask yourself, is Jesus Christ exclusively Christian? And do all who claim to be Christian truly follow Jesus, if imitation has anything to do with it? How about Jewish? Jesus was a practicing Jew and nearly all his first-generation followers were Jews who saw him as the promise given to Abraham. Would you be offended if Muslims, too, recognized Jesus as Messiah (as so many have)? Would Jesus be more concerned about hardening the walls between Christians, Jews and Muslims … would he tear down those religiously enforced walls with other-centered love and radical peacemaking?
I like how Al-Masih confronts and transcends religious/sectarian divides and calls everyone to orient themselves to faith in God and love of neighbor.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to adopt your religious forms. Whoever discovers Al-Masih, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim, attempts to co-opt him for their agendas and squeeze him into their religious forms. Their zealous efforts to fashion a form around him become fanatical, ludicrous and even violent. By transcending these forms, he offends some of his most enthusiastic disciples and they abandon him.
I like how the show mirrors Jesus’ resistance to being pressed into a specific brand of Judaism and it reminds me of how Jesus told the woman at the well (John 4) that we’re beyond that—beyond exclusive specific mountains and temples. His Father wants worshipers who come in spirit and in truth.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to be on your side politically. Al-Masih may offend American sentiments when he preaches in Washington D.C., challenging the liberty-crushing injustices that are the fruit of us-them nationalism and globalized militarism. As my friend Matt Atkins said to me, “Al Masih’s call for peace was heard as an act of war against those who couldn’t hear it. ‘The time for war is over!’ Yet those who are war-mongers will seek to kill those who call for peace.”
It reminds me of Joshua 5 where Joshua meets the Captain of the Lord of Hosts (i.e. a Christophany = appearance of Christ) and demands to know, “Are you on our side or theirs?” The Lord replies, “Neither,” and Joshua does an immediate face-plant. The lesson of Joshua is this: “Yes, I am with you. No, I am not on your side.” Or as Al-Masih says when confronted with the same question, “I walk with all men.”
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to justify vengeance and violence. Al-Masih only touches a firearm once in the series (not going spoil it). Eventually, he will challenge a national leader to forego all military might and withdraw his armies from a certain conflict (and in fact, globally).
The show presents us with a powerful thought experiment. If you were, for example, the President of the United States or the Russian Federation, what if Jesus himself came to your office on an official visit … and what if you not only believed it was truly Jesus AND you were a sincere and devout believer in Jesus (as both Presidents claim to be) … and what if Jesus told you that God wants you to stand down? What would you do?
I love how the show painted that possibility as a real dilemma for us to ponder … as did the prophet Isaiah, Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul. “King of kings” and “Prince of Peace” must eventually mean something in any nation that calls itself “Christian.”
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to be white. The first full-length movie featuring an actual Jewish actor was The Shack (by Wm. Paul Young). Unbelievably, the producer received multiple complaints by Christians that the man playing Jesus was also a Jew (from Tel Aviv) … and worse, I suspect, they even pointed out that he wasn’t white!
In Messiah, the character is said to be born in Iran … but is equally adept in Arabic, Hebrew and English (or at least Texan). He is certainly a person of color. Moreover, the actor who plays him, Mehdi Debhi, is Belgian-born and ethnically rooted in Tunisia. He is identified on IMDb.com as Muslim.
Some may find this offensive, but bear in mind that the original Jesus-followers were all unequivocally people of color. So, I liked the casting choice very much. On a side note, dare I mention that in terms of age, he’s also a Millennial?
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to hate the people you hate. While he backs down from no one, it may annoy those activists on the left or right that our protagonist is not engaged in the culture wars of spectrum idolatry. He intends to burn them down—and not through coercion or tolerance, but through the most offensive demand possible. “Follow me.”
In that role, we find he loves all our favorite people to hate, whether that’s CIA agents, Israeli interrogators, Islamic Imams, New Age hippies or even Southern Baptists. He reaches out to a suicidal teen, a child with cancer, even a conspiratorial prostitute. Very Jesus-like in some ways. I like that the show challenged my prejudices in ways that Jesus has too.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
… you need Al-Masih to fix everything and heal everyone. The series portrays those who become disillusioned when their supposed Messiah lets them down. When he saves some but not others. When he fails to set things right or make people well. Why doesn’t he just touch that person? Why does he act like a savior and then leave the job half-done? Why doesn’t he use all those God-given powers instead of sitting aloof while people struggle and suffer?
I personally found Al-Masih’s aloofness disappointing and unChristlike at times, if the Christ of the Gospels is our real plumbline of authentic Messiahship. But remember, it’s Netflix and we’re still wondering if this is a false Christ after all.
What’s so brilliant about this depiction is that it raises a real question we all ask (at least privately) about God’s apparent aloofness in a world permeated by suffering, disease and downright evil. Why doesn’t God just fix it? That’s an important meditation, not solved by the platitudes of apologists. At least Netflix knew this.
You might not love MESSIAH if …
That’s a lot of reasons why you might not like the movie. I’ve just listed nine of them. What’s most challenging about the above critiques of the series is that these may be the very same reasons that religious and political ideologues, especially Christians, would reject Jesus and expel him from their systems. We now live in an era where a great swath of those who call themselves “Christian” deliberately reject the Jesus Way and his cruciform call to love, peace and forgiveness. With a thin veneer of Jesus-talk, Christendom at large has found Christ’s message (“I AM the message” says Al-Masih) either too much or too little, too naïve or too dangerous, too lenient or too tolerant, or just too “Jesusy.”
The New Testament calls this apostasy. Heresy is when you make a theological mistake about the nature of Christ. Maybe Netflix Messiah makes such mistakes. Forgivable, especially because it’s not an attempt at a fifth gospel or new creed about our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a story.
Apostasy is another matter. It is a willful rejection of Jesus by those who once knew him. It can happen corporately or personally. The genius of Messiah is that it identifies both types. When an individual who has met Christ is so offended by him that they turn away, that’s apostasy. But on a larger scale, an entire movement may become apostate by expelling Jesus when they exchange his Way (prescribed in the red letters) for a new set of talking points. And there are so many competing gospels these days.
The series nailed this point exactly just as the major world religions are again complicit in driving international saber-rattling and frantically accelerating the doomsday clock. Through the show, I can hear the actual Christ clearly asking us, “Will you faithfully follow my Way or will you denounce me to join those many characters in the Gospels, the Netflix series and today’s world who conspire to rid themselves and their religions of the Cross-shaped yoke I call you to bear”?
I’ll also put in the thoughts that I got from the series, too. Some of these comments echo Brad’s insights too, but since I had written them down anyway, I though I’d just share what I had. Remember I wrote these point down before I’d read Brad’s article, so some of my points might seem a bit dated:
– The series helped me to understand people of different faiths and how they respond to different ‘religious/spiritual’ stimuli
– You should not expect to see yourversion of Jesus in al-Masih. You need to just let him be who he is in the series. I’m not saying whether he’s Jesus or not, because that would be a spoiler. But certainly, very much like the Jesus of the Bible, we can see that al-Masih does make people think about the way they view God and the world, and the way they make important decisions. Very much like how the scrpitwriters ‘changed’ the plot in the movie versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, in that I found it quite disturbing that they’d messed with the plot and I had to just accept it as it was, so too you will need to just let al-Masih be who he is. In fact, this is interesting in itself, in that we hope so much that al-Masih will not only be the returned Jesus, but that that returned Jesus will be exactly as we expect Him to be. And, of course, He won’t be.
– Religious people, just as they did with Jesus in the first century, either love him or hate him. His presence has a very polarising influence, partly because of others’ expectations of him. If al-Masih is the Messiah (whatever that means in your context or someone else’s), he certainly divides opinion.
– Related to the above point, al-Masih gives out the definite vibe that he is the one who is in control in every situation, whether that’s speaking to a crowd or being interrogated in a locked cell. Or, more accurately, we easily discern his faith in God; that God will fulfil His purposes for al-Masih in every circumstance. I think that this is what Jesus would have been like. If nothing else, this series depicts a man who is fully present in the moment and has complete faith in God to carry through what God wants. He won’t be pushed into any hasty choice or response.
– It is interesting to see the responses, of the various people in the series who have been ‘broken’ in different ways, to the idea that here is a person who may be able to help them. These responses vary from utter trust, through frantic seeking, to a cynical disbelief despite demonstrations of what appear to be supernatural abilities.
– The series does have the effect of making you think about the effect that Jesus should have on society, both locally and worldwide.
– It also makes you wonder that if Jesus did come back today, what would happen? Importantly, how would He get past the Press? 😉
– Al-Masih says some difficult things, and sometimes answers his questioners with other questions, or at least with a response that makes the questioner think. To me, this approach certainly brings alive the way that Jesus used to answer both His critics and His sincere questioners.
– It was interesting to see the plight of a Religious man who, despite his desperation and his belief in al-Masih, still thinks that the approval of God is works-based, even thinking that al-Masih will judge him for his actions, despite al-Masih showing no inclination to judge anyone at all.
– For a series not purporting to be a ‘Christian’ series (I mean, there’s even a sex scene in it!), ‘Messiah’ does do a remarkable job of making us think about Jesus and, in fact, also helps us to learn more about the kind of Person Jesus was and is, and about the skills and wisdom He would have to have had in order to navigate the sociopolitical minefields of His day.
– I can also imagine that there will be (in fact I think there already are!) many Christians who will decry the entire series as being ‘blasphemous’ or some other such nonsense. This does not surprise me, but it does show that even a fictitious series like this, when depicting a person who is at least something like Jesus, even that fiction polarises people’s opinions, which to me is a good indicator of a) just how relevant Jesus is seen to be even today; and b) just how brilliant a series it is, if it engenders this response despite being only fiction. [Edit: According to Brad’s piece above, yes, the complaining has already started! 😉 ]
For those who have ears to hear, then, I would definitely recommend this series. It’s believable, intelligent and thought-provoking, and may even increase your understanding of God and of your faith, if you have one. It certainly did this for me 🙂
Let me leave you with an excellent quote from al-Masih himself:
“God knows your secrets. And Loves you anyway. And sin: Sin is just the failure to choose goodness, that is all”.
Header picture shows actor Mehdi Dehbi as al-Masih
Here is one my my favourite worship songs, and it’s from my favourite Christian artist, Don Francisco. This track is from the 1988 album ‘High Praise‘, in which Don departs from his usual ‘story songs’ and instead presents a series of lovely praise and worship songs.
This song, No Better Place, reflects my heart of worship. There is indeed no better place than to be before His Throne, basking in His Presence and knowing His love. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
There is no better place
Than to be here and to look upon Your Face
In Your church or all alone
No better place than to be before Your Throne
God of comfort, Lord of mercy Love that knows no bound I adore you, worship and bow down Worship and bow down
(Song shared here with Don’s kind permission)
Don’s music can be purchased for download or bought as audio CDs on his website, www.donfrancisco.com. There’s also a lot of his music available on YouTube.
Here is a great post by Paul Ellis, on the meaning of the word ‘holiness’, a term so abused in its misunderstood state that it can be said to be responsible for untold damage inflicted on believers by those who simply don’t know what it means – but think they do! Veteran believers will know exactly what I’m talking about 🙂
One of the reasons why we don’t walk in the freedom that the gospel brings, is that we have changed the meaning of words. We have made beautiful words ugly and turned truth into lies. We tell ourselves that we are doing what the Bible says, but since we have redefined words in the Bible, we are fooling ourselves.
For instance, we’ll tell ourselves that repentance means turning from sin. (It doesn’t.) Or that confession means reviewing my mistakes. (Wrong again.) So we review our mistakes and turn from sin until we’re blue in the face and then wonder why nothing’s changed.
Holiness is another word that comes to us mangled by the machinery of religion. We’ve heard that holiness means avoiding sin or being set apart, but that’s not what holiness is. It’s not that those definitions are entirely wrong; they are just not quite right. Like defining light as the absence of darkness or wealth as the absence of poverty, we have missed the essence of the thing.
God lacks nothing. He is unbroken, undamaged, unfallen, completely complete and entire within himself. He is the indivisible One, wholly self-sufficient, and the picture of perfection. When the angels sing “Holy is the Lord,” they are not admiring him for his rule-keeping or sin avoidance. They are marveling at the transcendent totality of his perfection.
To worship God in the beauty of his holiness is to be awestruck by the infinite sweep and scale of his sublimity. It is to become lost in the limitless landscape of his loveliness.
Holiness is not one aspect of God’s character; it is the whole package in glorious unity. It is the adjective that precedes all other attributes. Hence, the love of God is a holy love; it is the whole and unrestrained love of the Trinity spilling over into the hearts of humanity.
Similarly, his righteousness is a holy righteousness; it is the habit of right action that flows from One who is in such harmony with himself that he is incapable of acting any other way.
And his joy is a holy joy; it is the pure and unshadowed delight that accompanies every expression of his love and goodness.
Holiness is hard for us to comprehend because we have never seen its like. We are more familiar with our needs than his fullness, our brokenness than his wholeness. When the writer of Hebrews said, “Without holiness no one will see the Lord,” he was not making a threat but describing a fact (Heb. 12:14). And when the New Testament writers exhort us to “be holy,” they are calling us to live out our true Christ-borne identity.
This does not come naturally. Our experience in a sick and broken world has not equipped us to relate to One who is healthy and whole. We don’t even speak the same language. Our native tongue is the language of lack and longing, but Jesus speaks the language of abundant life.
“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” said the Holy One (Matt. 5:48). The word for perfect means complete or full grown. It means whole. Jesus was saying, “Be whole as your Father in heaven is whole.”
Here is the fourth and final part of the mini-series of video talks by Lee O’Hare, where he addresses the foundational issues underpinning the standard Evangelical doctrine of Hell.
In this talk, Lee addresses the other main pillar/weapon in the arsenal of the Fundagelical proof-texter: the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
With this Scripture, unsurprisingly, the Fundies have no problem accepting that this is a parable (unlike in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus) because it suits their purposes and they can instead twist the parable. No-one really believes that sheep will go to Heaven whereas goats will go to Hell 😉 . But because parables are stories with an indirect meaning that must be inferred by the reader, naturally this provides Fundagelicals with the opportunity to twist it how they want, which they do freely and shamelessly. In mitigation, many of them are just parroting what they have been taught…I know this because I used to do it too, just like that. But I never used the phrase ‘Pieces of Eight!’.
But in this talk, Lee explains the background to this parable and explores several avenues as to its interpretation.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts giving you videos to watch, these talks do represent a fair amount of investment in terms of time; each talk is about an hour long. But if you can at all make the time to listen to these excellent videos, it will be time well spent, I assure you.
I’ve been sharing a lot of teaching debunking the doctrines of ‘Hell-fire’ recently, so I thought I’d intersperse all that dark stuff with something of a more tangible beauty. I mean, working against bad and harmful theology is a good thing, but sometimes it gets a bit too much; unfortunately, it’s unavoidable that sometimes we need to focus on the bad stuff in order to trash it.
So I thought we’d come up for some air for a little while. It won’t hurt if the last instalment in Lee’s series of talks waits until next time 🙂
I am extremely fortunate to live in what is probably the most beautiful part of England. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Yorkshire Dales, of course, having been raised within just a few miles of the edge of the National Park. I love the Lake District; Wasdale Head being one of my favourite places on Earth.
But South Devon, where I live, is an amazing place of breathtaking beauty; a place which does bear some similarities to other, more remote, parts of the country. It’s a place where rural and urban are mixed in a delightful manner, but to cap it all we have the sea close by too. Devon is not as remote as, say, Pembrokeshire or Cornwall, but it does have the advantages of any peninsular environment in that the roads are not as busy as they are in other parts of the country (because they don’t really lead anywhere else apart from further into the peninsula!), and it’s generally not industrialised. Out on a peninsula, we tend to find that we get forgotten by central Government, which is not always a bad thing.
One area near where I live is called the ‘South Hams‘, and it is classified as an AONB or Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. And nowhere is this more the case than in the area around Dartmouth and Kingswear, a kind of ‘peninsula within a peninsula’. Flying over this beautiful landscape is always a delight, of course, but I do like to get out into the area on foot too as often as possible.
Being very much an early morning person, last week I went out before dawn to an area near Dartmouth called Froward Point, where also is found the Brownstone battery, a wartime coastal defence site. This is a remote National Trust property very close to Coleton Fishacre, where I used to volunteer for the Trust, playing their beautiful Bluthner Grand piano for a couple of hours every other Saturday. The music filled the place with the Presence of God – I used to play a lot of worship music – although no doubt many of the visitors would not have realised what that sparkle in the air actually was! 🙂
Near Froward Point is a structure known as the Daymark, or Day Marker. It’s a tall stone tower which was built in 1864 as a prominent and easily-recognisable landmark to help sailors find the mouth of the River Dart estuary from seaward.
The Daymark walk is one of my favourite early morning walks because when you stop the car engine and get out, it is completely silent out there. If it’s before dawn, even the birds are reasonably quiet, but it is of course easier to filter out their sound even if they are going at it.
I got there not long before sunrise on a crisp, frosty winter morning, with very few clouds in the sky, and those that there were were over the sea to the east/southeast where the dawn light was growing.
As I continued along the track towards the Daymark, I realised that because I could see the actual horizon – there is a panoramic sea view from here from Start Point all the way round to the tops of the hills of East Devon just poking out of the sea across Lyme Bay on a clear day (excellent evidence for the Globe Earth as decried by the Flattards*) – then I would actually be able to see the Sun come up out of the sea. Having reached the Daymark footpath, then – the Daymark is off to one side of the main track – I watched and waited.
The field that the Daymark was built in was today full of sheep. All standing around minding their own business but still keeping a wary eye on me, the interloper in their silent world.
And suddenly, there it was: the first sliver of the Sun was visible. Just like that. One second it was just horizon; the next there was this impossibly bright fragment of gold sitting there on the sea, and getting larger by the second. And I was looking straight at it as it magicked into view. It felt like there should have been a fanfare of trumpets or something to acknowledge the miracle, but, no, the silence was just as profound as ever.
Trillions of tons of superheated hydrogen and helium climb suddenly and miraculously above the horizon, just like it’s done on every day before, and so of course the sheep aren’t bothered. Well, I was lost in the sheer wonder of it all. I think it’s simply fantastic.
After standing there watching until the Sun was showing its complete disc, I set off back to the car park with bright spots before my eyes 🙂 But there was one more wonder. Like I said, the Froward Point area has panoramic sea views, but there is equally a wonderful view inland over the beautiful South Hams. In this instance, the sunlight angle was of course so low that shadows were cast in the valleys from my angle with the Sun behind me…
…and yet lighting the tops of the hills of Dartmoor with that unique golden dawn light (it’s a different colour entirely from that seen at sunset). Only the evening before, I had seen the Dartmoor hills from 7,000ft up, in my aeroplane, but this time lit by the westering, setting Sun and throwing the moors into sharp relief. The contrasts of colour, location and view were sharp and unique.
So, there we are. A stunning set of pictures taken in a beautiful area, in which I am so privileged to live. Despite being Yorkshire born and bred, and I love Yorkshire dearly, I am sorry to say that I would not move back. Not when I live in a place like this!
Hope the photos blessed you 🙂
*A ‘Flattard’ is a definitely derogatory term for someone who believes in a Flat Earth, and who tells everyone about it whether they want to hear or not. The term was of course pirated by these people, who are incapable of any original thought beyond making up new excuses for their pet beliefs, and used as the basis of their attempt at the derogatory term of ‘Globetards’, used by them to describe the vast majority of civilization who believe in a globe Earth.
This is the third part of the mini-series of video talks by Lee O’Hare, where he addresses the foundational issues underpinning the standard Evangelical doctrine of Hell.
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is one of the main two pillars holding up the structure of the Hell doctrine. Although it’s a parable, and as such should not of course be taken literally, so keen are the Fundagelical apologists to keep this story in their arsenal of proof-texts about Hell that they even deny that it is a parable. And this despite it beginning with Jesus’s standard parable introduction; kind of like His ‘Once upon a time’, and despite it being a story told to the Pharisees; ‘The Bible clearly says…’ (lol) that Jesus only spoke clearly to His Disciples (Matt 13:10ff); to everyone else He spoke only in parables (Matt 13:34-35). In other words, so strongly do they want to believe in the Hell doctrine that they will even go to these, almost dishonest, lengths to protect what they choose to want to believe. It’s sad and it’s desperate.
But this talk is a real eye-opener, and Lee finishes his tale with a flourish that will gladden any heart with the ears to hear. But probably not those who have hardened their hearts in wanting to believe this nasty doctrine come-what-may.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts giving you videos to watch, these talks do represent a fair amount of investment in terms of time; each talk is about an hour long. But if you can at all make the time to listen to these excellent videos, it will be time well spent, I assure you.
This is the second part of the mini-series of video talks by Lee O’Hare, where he addresses the foundational issues underpinning the standard Evangelical doctrine of Hell.
In this instalment, Lee looks at the use of the word ‘Gehenna’ in Bible translations (especially the King James Bible; you know, the one that Jesus used 😉 ) where the word Gehenna has been incorrectly translated as ‘Hell’. This is a fascinating talk which will bring much clarity on this subject:
On the subject of Gehenna, as Lee says, it’s a real place that you can go and visit today if you’d like to. Here’s a picture of it. I don’t know about you but I think it looks pretty hellish. Not.
Recently, I published a series of talks by Dr. Don Keathley on the doctrine of Hell and why it is such a faulty concept. As my readers will know, I do not believe in the concept of a postmortem Hell of fiery everlasting punishment (known as ‘eternal conscious torment’ or ECT) for those who fail to meet the requirements of whatever religious group is touting the Hell idea. And there are many such groups, each with a different set of requirements for what they believe will ‘save’ a person from this unimaginably nightmarish fate – which, to me, just speaks volumes about the fallacy of the whole thing.
And then there’s the whole fallacy preached by various people who say that Jesus spoke more about Hell than He did about Heaven. There is a word for this kind of lying tripe, but this is a polite blog so I won’t share it 🙂 I’ve written on this subject twice before, here and here.
I have been listening to another, shorter, series of teachings by the brilliant Lee O’Hare, where he too debunks the entire ECT doctrine, piece by piece, and concept by concept. In particular, he tackles in a thorough and scholarly manner the two main parables taught by Jesus which those who believe in ECT (also known as ‘Infernalists’) use as the main supporting pillars of their doctrine.
But these two talks come later in the series. In this first part, ‘What about Hell?’, Lee examines the doctrine itself and describes the history and origins of the concept. Now, that might sound boring but, let me tell you, it’s a real eye-opener and well worth listening to. In this video, Lee also sets the scene for the remaining three talks in the series.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts giving you videos to watch, these talks do represent a fair amount of investment in terms of time; each talk is about an hour long. But if you can at all make the time to listen to these excellent videos, they will transform your life. Maybe listen to them, episode by episode, over a few nights of long soaks in a hot bath. That’s what I do 😀 They have certainly helped me, because they have confirmed once more that I am not the only person in the faith that is thinking along these exact same lines!
Without more ado, over to Lee:
For more links to articles on the debunking of the Hell doctrine, visit my Hell Resource Page.
Young people are leaving the organised Church at an alarming rate. Well, it’s alarming to those who want to keep them ‘in’, anyway.
Here’s what my friend Phil Drysdale has to say on the issue:
The issue isn’t that Christian leaders don’t know why young people are leaving the church. No, young people are telling us very clearly why.
It’s that these types of answers require too much of a change for the average leader to be able to deal with.
My three big takeaways from this are:
1) Many young people today aren’t looking for certainty half as much as they are looking for a place to explore their doubts safely.
2) Many young people don’t see getting people out of the world and into the church as a primary goal. They care about loving the world and want to see Christians go out into it and make it a better place, without an agenda.
3) Many young people aren’t scared of the world or facts, they are happy to reinterpret their faith and its texts in light of newly discovered truth. A church that is unable to do so will lose them quickly.
I fully agree with all this. I have some comments too, as you might imagine.
You see, this sort of thing always attracts the inevitable responses from hardline, rigid and unbending* leaders who hold the ‘word of god’ ** above everything else, insisting that it’s not the ‘word’ that needs to change, but the ‘world’.
‘Oh well, it’s not us that say it, but it’s the Bible’.
‘This is what god says, not us. We can’t change what god says just because we don’t like it’
‘Don’t blame me, it’s the Bible wot sez it. I can’t change what the Bible says. ‘
‘The Bible has a timeless message; it’s not our fault that the times are changing away from its message. It’s the world that is going the wrong way’.
‘I’m not going to sugarcoat what the Bible says just because that would make me/it more popular’
‘It’s not about making the Bible more acceptable; it’s about telling people the hard truth’
And so on ad nauseam.
Maybe they should do a little thinking as to just why people no longer think the Bible is relevant…it’s not the Bible that’s at fault; it’s the attitudes of the people who brandish it. Who wants to be like one of these dull, grey, boring, joyless people?*** Evangelical Christianity is the worst advert for God there is, particularly when combined with the (mainly Old Testament-based) doctrines they espouse. And let’s face it, many of them arenasty about it; they are judgemental and condemning and almost gleeful about the idea of seeing those with whom they don’t agree burning in ‘hell’. And that comes out in their lives and in their interpersonal attitudes. Again, who wants to be like that? Jesus maybe should have said, “They shall know you are My disciples in that you judge one another”. Not.
Of course, I appreciate that not all Christians are like that. But the ones that get the publicity are indeed like that, and they are a terrible advert for Jesus. Again, “You shall be My bad witnesses throughut Judea and Samaria and into the whole world”. Not.
Instead, God continues His work in the hearts and lives of ordinary people all around the world, while Evangelicalism continues to pray for a future ‘great awakening’ which is already happening all around them and they can’t see it. It’s like Moses not being allowed into the Promised Land. Served him right, though, he was a prat.
Sadly, I have no pity for these people. Their own insecurities, and their unbending attitudes in response to those insecurities, render them unable to merge effectively into the very society they are trying to influence. ‘Hard truth’ can never be called ‘Good News’. But I am grateful for what their prayer has brought to birth – the new revival of Grace that is quietly and unobtrusively sweeping the world.
Shame they can’t see it.
*Rigid and unbending; hence, the header picture of a rigid steel joist (RSJ) 😉
**Lower-case use of initial letters intentional.
***Obviously I know that not all Christians are like this. But my rant, as always, is against those who arelike this 😀
CNN News Report: Chicago, June 7, 1997
, piece by piece, and concept by concept. In particular, he tackles in a thorough and scholarly manner the two main parables taught by Jesus which those who believe in ECT (also known as ‘Infernalists’) use as the main supporting pillars of their doctrine.
