Category Archives: Theodicy

All Tears Wiped Away

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in eschatology, Promises of God, prophecy, Theodicy

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1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

As with many of the visions of the Bible, this one from near the end of the book of Revelation (Chapter 21) appears too good to be true — or at least too big and broad to be believed.

To make sense of it, we’ve got to find a way to limit it. First, it can’t be referring to the planet, and the known universe, because the literal statement here is that heaven and earth… that is, everything in the Universe, will cease to exist. And then, just like that, a new heaven and earth is created… except the new one doesn’t have any oceans. (Which with what we know of life on earth as we know it, simply couldn’t happen. The ocean is the key to biological life.)

And to complicate the picture, we have a description of a city arriving on planet earth from some distant place in the cosmos. But how could this be, because the cosmos just ceased to exist. Also, verse 3 says that God is now going to live with mankind…. but how could this be? Didn’t we just lose the earth? Where are the people now?  Is this why they’re crying… because the earth ended?

So let’s try viewing this as metaphorical. Let’s think of heaven as the spiritual or religious realm of human society. Turns out if we do this it can help dozens of places in Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible seem more reasonable.

A new heaven would then mean a new way of thinking about religious things, and therefore new people in charge, new rules, new values, new perspectives. The old religious scene is simply gone. “Imagine there’s no heaven.” John Lennon could picture this, and I can too.

And a different earth … the physical part of human society. That’s gone, too. No republicans and democrats arguing about who is right. No supreme court justices needed to interpret laws, because … well Jeremiah and Isaiah saw the picture with all the laws written in people’s hearts. No courts are needed to explain or enforce obedience among reluctant citizens. And thus no angry youth afraid of police, and no police harassing them.

Now, a major change in this new imaginary scene is where God is. In the old picture, the one we’ve grown up with, God is basically nowhere to be found. He “hides himself”, as Isaiah puts it. And those who claim to have found him have trouble convincing others that they really have. Is it because the ones who seem to know about God aren’t very good examples of what we would logically expect a spokesman for God to be — or is it because the people who they are preaching to are just plain bad … and don’t want to know about God, no matter how nice the preachers are? Or maybe could it be a mixture of both?

So now we have this new picture, and in it God isn’t hiding somewhere or speaking through ancient Jews or weird people who show up on TV or surrounded by stained glass, dress funny, ask for donations, smile too much, and generally just irritate us. All those folks are gone, but God is living with us. Right next door. Maybe even in our spare bedroom.

Now who are the people of God? Is it still the church folks… a small percentage of the population? No, the way John seems to see this picture, all the people are now God’s people.

We know this because they’ve been crying, they’ve been dying, they’ve been in pain… but God is suddenly standing there next to them, wiping their tears. He’s removing their pain. He’s ending death.

How many of the tears are being dealt with in this way? All of them.

How much of the pain is being eradicated? All of it.

How much death is being thwarted? All of it.

Now, here’s where the picture makes us furrow our brows and clench our fists.

Wait a minute! I understand the picture that is being painted. But why is this artwork being created? What does it mean to me? Is this really a true picture of the way things are going to be, or is this some kind of cruel joke? Is this really just saying that the ones who are already setting them up to be the God-people are going to have THEIR pain and tears wiped away, but the rest of us are just going to see them off in the distance, wishing we could be there … and suffering on forever and ever while the lucky few get to live in their own paradise?

The Hope Diamond.

Boston+WashDC_trip_2592_w1920

Well, the guy who painted this picture thought of this… so he put the Jesus followers into the picture too. He put them in there as the “holy city”, which comes out of heaven — the religious world … and comes down to earth. It’s a city with some features like Jerusalem, with its protective walls and its government buildings and its houses and its festivals where lambs die to restore people to God — and its temple where priests mediate between God and man … restoring everyday people to full fellowship and access to God, by making payment for their sins.

And this picture doesn’t only refer to the truly good guys as Jerusalem… he also compares them to a bride who is married to the Lamb… Jesus. How is this bride pictured? Well, she is dressed in white, and she’s beautiful, and the Lamb really, really loves her. What does this bride do? She is attractive to her husband … and that leads her to become like a mother to the rest of the human race. It might even be thought of as the new mother of humanity, in the same way that the Lamb is the new father.

The human race in this picture was orphaned when their first father messed up, and left them outside of paradise, living under curses that mom and dad are to blame for. Now there’s a new father and mother … Jesus and his bride. And all the people who were related to the original father … every human who has ever lived … are released from their curses and welcomed back into this expanded, updated Garden. A garden with no Serpent. A garden with no weeds. And with no Angel of Death to keep people from living there forever.

Too good to be true? No, redemption is the plan. A redeemed and restored earth is precisely what we must learn to expect, to hope for, and to pray for. And whether we pray or not, believe or not, even whether we survive until it arrives or not … it’s a gonna happen.

The Agony of Climate Scientists

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in eschatology, Rob Bell, Theodicy

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One of the blogs I follow is “Climate Denial Crock of the Week”.

This weekend’s post talks about the fear and frustration of climate scientists. It discusses articles which have recently appeared in Esquire and Slate, documenting the angst and even despair of scientists who every day are looking at evidence that, to them, points toward environmental apocalypse. The article says,

“Ultimately, what scientists are after is truth, even if that truth is personally devastating. For that reason, being a climate scientist is probably one of the most psychologically challenging jobs of the 21st century. As the Esquire article asks: How do you keep going when the end of human civilization is your day job?”

“The end of human civilization.” Have you noticed this specter lurking lately, in places other than science fiction? According to Wikipedia preppers seem to be multiplying, and global warming has added a whole new level of fear — with its mechanism of disruption that appears both adequately powerful and apparently unavoidable.

While it’s still possible to ignore these storms and even joke about them, I’d like to go on record with some pretty outlandish claims:

  1. The nature of the catastrophes has been unambiguously predicted.
  2. The extent of the catastrophes, and their impact on the various sectors of society have been predicted.
  3. The time of these catastrophes has been predicted, and while our collective ability to interpret the message of timing has been spotty, remarkable logic, evidence and insights have been emerging and gaining clarity for the last three centuries. I find the total evidence which anchors recent past and near-future data points of Bible prophecy now to be quite compelling.
  4. Most importantly, the ultimate goals and outcomes of the troubles that are daily more difficult to ignore have been predicted in surprising detail. Though the fairy-tale ending that is actually outlined in the Bible is veiled by some of its own symbolic language — and disregarded by most authentic Christians (not without good reasons) — I feel compelled to try and spread a little hope. If you care what the Bible says — and my main intended audience is those who do — try to let “all” mean “all” as you review the promises that the Bible contains. I find it really delightful to be able to take comfort in Biblical promises like “all in the graves shall come forth” … “God shall wipe all tears from their eyes.” … “God is the savior of all men” … or that there will be “a feast of fat things for all people.”

“Love Wins” is how Rob Bell put it in the title of his widely-ridiculed but worth-reading book. “The Times of Restitution of All Things” was Peter’s phrase as recorded by Luke. Personally, I am convinced that “they all lived happily ever after” is the best phrase the languages of the world give us to describe what is coming.

Hopefully I’ll be able to expand and defend the above list of claims in coming posts.

The rank falsehood of Pat Robertson’s “history”

17 Sunday Jan 2010

Posted by in christian colonialism, judgments of God, poverty and its causes, religion, religion and politics, revolution, Theodicy

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On Wednesday morning, Dr. Robertson stated that the nation of Haiti made a pact with the devil. “True story”, he said, and claimed that this explains why Haiti  suffered so much in the years since. Au contraire: everything about his statement is false.

Robertson’s claims:

  1. “Haiti was under the heel of the French, Napoleon III or whatever.”
  2. “They got together and made a pact with the devil: ‘We will serve you if you get us free from the French.’
  3. “The Haitians revolted and got themselves free, but ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another, desperately poor.”
  4. “The island of Hispaniola is cut  down through the middle — Haiti on one side, Dominican Republic on the other. Dominican republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.”
  5. “They need to have (and we need to pray for them) a great turning to God, and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic that something good may come.”

1. Wrong century, Pat. Napoleon III came to power as President of France in 1848, then took over as Napoleon III in 1852. The Haitian revolution lasted from 1791 to 1803, inspired by the French Revolution 2 years before, and the American Revolution 14 years before that.

2. In my post yesterday I cited a Salon.com article, which points out that the “pact with the devil” myth is a major distortion of what occurred in a secret meeting on August 14, 1791. At this meeting in a place called Bois Caiman, slaves confided in one another how much they resented their treatment by white settlers. In harmony with their African tribal past, one of the women in the group slit the throat of a pig and “distributed the blood to all the participants of the meeting, who swore to kill all the whites on the island.” It’s quite possible that the woman who led the meeting was indeed possessed by a spirit, as Christians would say it. This was a common part of the voodoo ritual religion that these people had grown up with. But she was acting alone, as one enslaved person in a meeting on the topic of oppression by a wealthy white minority. It is utterly false that this can be called a national “pact with the devil”. Moved more by the spirit of freedom that actuated the American and French revolutions than by demon possession, these poor oppressed blacks righteously decided in the face of abuse and outrage, to throw off the shackles that had been enslaving them. About a week later, the insurrection began in the northern mountains of Haiti … the first paroxysm of justifiable rage in a long-awaited revolution. But the early first successes were quickly suppressed with overwhelming power and violence by the French settlers.

There is actually some recent disagreement among historians as to whether the Bois Caiman meeting even took place. You can read an exchange among academics on the subject here.

The Bois Caiman story is so deeply intertwined in the history of a free Haiti (much like our Boston Tea Party or the Ride of Paul Revere) that to question it in Haiti is unthinkable. Whether precisely true or not, it’s been handed down from countless sources as an oral history about the quest for freedom from tyranny by this oppressed people. One thing seems clear, though — there is very little of a religious nature in the original story. The blood-covenant was more of a cultural expression, having roots in the indigenous people’s practices, mixed with traditions that came from  the Senegambian coast where many Black Haitians had been captured by the French and Spanish. The blood ritual described in the oral traditions of Bois Caiman was not unusual. It was a cultural custom, transported by the slaves who had been uprooted from Africa, along with the tribal and Islamic influences that had shaped them for centuries before. Indeed, this story is not unlike the Biblical account of a blood-sealed pact of revenge by the people of Israel against the perpetrators of an atrocity — as recorded in Judges 20. Here, the people are galvanized into action in revenge, not by a testimony meeting and a symbolic use of pigs blood — but by messengers carrying the dismembered body of the single victim. The point is, it would be pointless to argue that the people of Haiti were any more primitive than the people of the Bible.

3. “The Haitians revolted and got themselves free.” Not really. This was a very unsatisfactory revolution. It lasted from 1791 to 1803, and was beset by both internal strife and outside invasion first by the French, then the English, then the French again. Yes, in the end it did result in Haiti becoming “only the 2nd republic in the Americas.” But the country was exhausted and in ruins, and no nation on earth at the time, including the United States, was willing to do business with a black republic… for fear it would enflame their own slaves’ desire for freedom. Remember, this is 50 years before the slaves began to be released in England, Russia, and finally the United States.

And so Haiti was free in name only. While it remained the richest colony in the history of colonial exploitation, as a free nation it was forced to endure an economic embargo not unlike the one we have enforced against Cuba for the last 50 years. The southern states, who of course had enormous clout in every American administration, viewed black Haiti very much the way cold war-era Americans viewed Communist Cuba. Haiti was the worst of all possible worlds: Black, and intertwined with the French, who were now led by an ambitious non-democratic emperor, Napoleon I.

The Haitian victory over the last of several French attempts to re-impose slavery in 1803 presented an alert Thomas Jefferson with a golden opportunity. Jefferson saw that France wanted Haiti back even more than they wanted to risk war with the United States over the ownership of the Louisiana territory. He also was not as afraid of a black nation as President Adams and all the southern statesmen had been. He is reported to have said, “”Provided that the Negroes are not permitted to possess a navy, we can allow them without danger to exist and we can moreover continue with them very lucrative commercial relations.” So Jefferson reinforced the slave leaders in Haiti prior to the French invasion, and when, as he hoped, the French suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Haitian rebels, Jefferson was able to swoop down and buy the Louisiana territory for a pittance. As the Haitian ambassador stated in response to Pat Robertson’s foolish prattle, Haitian victory was the direct cause of the United States gaining the land of 13 of our western states:

Yet racism and religion-based prejudice continued to create outside pressures which continued to afflict Haiti. Beginning in 1825, the victors became the vanquished when France with the help of the other great powers forced the Haitians to pay reparations to France for their victory.   “They were forced to pay again with their sweat for the freedom they had already purchased with their blood.” The details of this outrageous penalty, and its impact on Haitian society ever since, are described  here. (Thanks to Paul Tullis) This immoral demand, which impoverished Haiti while it enriched France, was not paid off by Haiti until 1947! And the results are still felt to this day. Their curse was not from God, but from the White race, the “Christian” “civilized” world, who drained Haitian money away 10 different ways.

4. The Dominican Republic is not prosperous, either. It suffers from a very similar fate — poverty in the midst of plenty, government corruption, a tiny privileged class and masses who live at the edge of poverty. While it is true that the Dominican Republic has about 6 times the per-capita income of Haiti, and much better life expectancy, many of the same problems afflict this half of the island as well. I’ve been there, and once you leave the wealthy resorts for the native towns, you see grinding poverty and desperation. Pat’s characterization of the country as “healthy and prosperous” may be true of the American real estate moguls who have built golf courses and resorts, but it is certainly not true of the local people. Santo Domingans can hardly be said to own the land they inhabit.

5. Centuries of failure in Haiti have combined with an indigenous belief in supernatural causes for natural events to create a dominant attitude of fatalism. Any truly moral framework, whether Christian, Jewish, or Moslem, could make a positive impact, working one person at a time. For example Nazarene missionaries since 1950 have made a positive impact, not by producing a “great turning to God”, but by teaching people how to improve their soil, build wells, terrace hillsides, and eat the tropical fruits which easily grow in Haiti (which tribal culture teaches are harmful to pregnant women). These are not religious changes but practical agricultural and lifestyle transitions. I applaud the earnest efforts of people like Howard Culbertson to invest in Haitian improvement, one person and family at a time. But the cause of their troubles was grossly misstated by Robertson — they were not cursed by God, but by godless people masquerading as followers of Jesus. Just as fake Christians slaughtered millions and sowed weeds of poverty in the Congo, so western “Christian” “civilization” has destroyed and denuded Haiti.

When a spiritual descendant of these kinds of religious mobsters blames the victims for their troubles, I just see red. Shut up, Pat, cash in your fortune and give the money to someone who is soberly working to undo the multiple curses of exploitative “Christianity”.  I don’t know for sure who might be effective, but I am certain the test we should go by is not related to the Christian doctrines or the church affiliation of the workers. “Christians” have been the curse of Haiti since Columbus first opened Pandora’s box there. Tomorrow I’ll begin to tell the story of how the arrogant jerk that my home town was named for launched Haiti’s woes, plundering the land for the queen of Spain.

After I finish telling the story of the exploitation of Haiti by one “Christian” nation after another, I’m going to examine what the Bible says about all of this, and see if we if there is any evidence that there is a God who sees, cares, and plans to do anything about exploitation by people who think they’ve got the “true religion”.

Pat Robertson and Haiti – where angels fear to tread

15 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by in christianity, Hell, media, orthodoxy, religion and politics, Theodicy

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I had a great birthday. January 12 was a happy day for me, all day long. But a couple of days later I discovered what a big tragedy it was… an earthquake hit Haiti, killing maybe 100,000 people.

Aside from the small donation I sent to World Vision, there isn’t much I can do. I can urge you to support Haitian rescue efforts. I can express my thanks to Doctors Without Borders and others who were already there, hard at work. My impact is ridiculously puny.

But perhaps to salve my conscience I’m going to use this as the occasion for my re-entry into the blogosphere, a year and a day after my last post here on HappyGod.

Since my topics are God and what’s wrong with the world, let’s talk about Pat Robertson. Not the man, but his ideas. OK, alright, let’s talk about the guy too, and his habit of rushing in where angels fear to tread. (Thanks, Alexander Pope, for helping me break the spirit of Matthew 5:22 without disobeying the letter!)

Sometimes we’re confronted with foolishness that is so laughably evil, so hatefully dumb, that all we can do is gape in amazement. Where do I begin?

Keith Olberman was articulate and strummed some chords I wanted to hear:

Whoopi Goldberg and friends were similarly indignant and equally articulate about Dr. Robertson…

Other worthy comments are all over the web:

Atheists weigh in (and the Atheists.org site links to an excellent Salon.com article)

Ambassador from Haiti weighs in

Even God weighs in (humorous press release, via Andy Borowitz, in which God distances himself from the Christian right)

I’m going to leave Pat Robertson squirming in the discomfort of his own religious hotsauce, and come back tomorrow with some historic perspective on the real cause of Haiti’s disproportionate suffering.

Benjamin Button – more about death than life

27 Saturday Dec 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, Hell, love of God, movies, prophecy, religion, Theodicy, universalism

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I took my wife to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas day. We both enjoyed it a great deal.

It’s a love story, and an adventure story. Someone compared it to Forest Gump, but it’s never as emotional as that masterpiece, nor as funny. But it’s got some humor, I’d give it it a thumbs up for the quality of the writing, acting, cinematography, and directorial artistry. And I love the way sunrises over the water are like a character in the film … somehow Benjamin is attracted to them, and watches them regularly by himself, with family members, etc.

As I stated yesterday, what makes me resonate with the movie the most is the way it presents human growth backwards from the norms we see every day…. aging, failing, dying. Here, a person emerges from the womb as from the grave, in decrepitude, and then grows toward youthful vigor. The “youthful” Benjamin writes in his diary at one point (perhaps at 15 biological years, now with the body of perhaps a 60 year old) “Some days I feel different than the day before…” His wrinkles are disappearing, his hair is sprouting “like weeds”, his hormones are catching fire.

Does the Bible really support the idea that such a miracle is possible? That it will happen to the masses of humanity? Yes and Yes!

Jesus himself states the case as emphatically as words can say: “Don’t be amazed…. All in the graves will come forth.” Unfortunately the fog of neo-Platonic concepts like immortal soul and hellfire make it difficult for most Christians to really see what Jesus is saying here. It’s quite simple, though. The ones who enter into a relationship with God during this age, and continue walking in grace and faith, emerge in the resurrection of Life, what Jesus calls the First Resurrection in the book of Revelation. For such, their resurrection is instantaneous, glorious, and in heaven. The entire rest of mankind, who remain in their sins, emerge from the grave still in their sins, but experience a gradual resurrection, through a process of judgment or trial and testing. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul states that God gives each a body as it pleases him. This is tremendously reasuring, because it means that disfigured, disabled, distorted folks in this life can look forward to being whole upon emerging from the grave. Then, their education will begin and it will take most of the Millennium for each person to build the finegrained righteous character that is going to be their birthright and their ticket into everlasting life as a member of the human community.

Isaiah describes the scene in several places, including chapter 35. He defines its scope as “the ransomed of the Lord” (which by the authority of 1 Tim 2:4-6 I claim means “all the human race”). He states that they return (come back). That is, they don’t go to a place they never were before, they come back to where they were before.. planet Earth. They come back joyfully, and yet they have some travelling still to do. Isaiah calls it a highway of holiness. He describes it as a place that you can’t travel if you’re unclean (dirty or sinful) … and yet he says that it exists FOR the unclean. He says that the wayfaring man (Joe Sixpack), though they be but fools, won’t err therein. They will figure out how to navigate that highway to holiness, and with the help God has provided with his powerful Son and his patient Bride they will get to that place of moral excellence, of wisdom, of forgiveness, of victory over doubt and selfishness and fear. I envision the Bride or spiritual government of that age as all the great and saintly Christians of ages past; myriads of powerful spiritual mediators working overtime to help everyone with a cloud of supernatural help and faithbuilding efforts. The result of all this effort is the process of age-reversal that Job described in the verse I quoted yesterday… returning to the days of youth.

Isaiah hints at the remarkable reversal of all that we think about in this new living (un-dying) process. He says in 65:20, “”No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed.”

What an odd verse! I think the normative experience during the Millennium will be to awaken from the grave near the beginning of the Millennium and live under the authority of Christ and his “Bride”. Joe Sixpack will be living, learning, getting the occasional rebuke but mostly lots of great instruction and encouragement, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Then comes the end, when Christ turns over the Kingdom to the Father, and there is one last final test, known in the book of Revelation as the “little season” when one more time an evil deceptive intelligence (Satan) is allowed to try and organize opposition to God. This will finally settle who really has love in their heart and really wants to live eternally on the earth…(see Matthew 25:31 to 46)

So I think the Isaiah 65:20 text is saying that since every person can expect the better part of a Millennium to be their minimum opportunity,  anyone who dies at, say, 100 years old in that Messianic Age will be like a child in comparison to the 700, 800, 900-year lifespans that the vast majority will experience. And all those who die before the end of the Millennium would do so only as a final judgment… so after a 100 or so years of the most patient and thorough tough love imaginable, those who are executed will be truly sinners, truly deserving of the curse of death. They’ll be the few, the occasional incorrigible folks who simply refuse to buckle down to the righteous authority of the Lamb and his Bride. They will be recognized as accursed sinners by their fellow men.

The Button story isn’t remotely about any of these things. It explores the challenges and unique tragedies that would face a man whose 70 years of experiencing the hereditary fall of man if his growth pattern were reversed. So in the end his life is still a process of dying, not a real life as the Bible envisions it for all people in the future.

It’s tough for us to shake the perception that this life is LIFE. It ain’t folks. It’s death. Cradle to grave, dying we die. That’s why Jesus said weird things like “let the dead bury the dead.” Even the people he resurrected remained firmly dead … that is, dead in trespasses and sins, not released from the condemnation upon all who get their life from Adam.

Those who receive new life from Christ are indeed alive, however. Christians in this age are truly set free from death, and though their outer man appears to die, inwardly they are being renewed with an inner spiritual life that is the spark of an immortal, spiritual existence beyond the grave.

But those who do not receive Christ in this life remain in their sins, and will have to be dealt with in the next age. And of course, that’s where I differ from the main stream of the Christian community… in seeing a second age of grace for all the rest of mankind.

So enjoy a good love story… but also try to put your mind around the incredible love story of a happy God for ALL the human race. Not one that falls flat because most folks don’t respond… [SPOILER ALERT] not one in which the leading lady gets old and dies, and the leading man gets young and dies … but a love story that is reasonable, fair, and yet results in everyone who wants to living happily ever after!

Benjamin Button Biblical?

25 Thursday Dec 2008

Posted by in eschatology, movies, salvation, Theodicy

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I’m excited to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” I may even go see it tomorrow.

It’s a love story in which Brad Pitt plays a freak of nature who is born as an old man and lives his standard, finite life in reverse… starting out with an aged body but immature mind, and then progressing through a 70+ year lifetime until he has the mind of an old man in the body of a baby. Somewhere in the middle, he crosses paths with Daisy, played by Kate Blanchett as the love of his life, whose progress follows the normal trajectory of mind and body maturing together.

Interesting dramatic twist… and some of my favorite actors apparently do a terrific job of breathing life into the proposition.

What interests me most, however, is the on-screen depiction of a biblical idea. It is actually verbalized in the book of Job. There the character of Elihu, a young messianic prophet, paints a word picture of redemption in which “his flesh shall become fresher than a child’s; he shall return to the days of his youth.” (Job 33, verse 25) Clearly he’s not referring to religious conversion in most cases… becoming a Christian doesn’t normally equate to a “fountain of youth” experience.

Bear in mind that I am convinced all people who miss out on the opportunity for Christian discipleship during the current age will enjoy a universal, practically fail-safe opportunity for full redemption in the next age.  True Christian disciples, in my view, have most often been persecuted or ignored in their churches or other communities…. unpopular with the worldly but also hated by the “religious” who run most sectarian institutions. So while the perhaps 5 or 10 percent of folks who have truly followed Jesus’ footsteps as authentic believers during the last couple of millennia have experienced a redemption, it has been quite inward and almost undetectable to those around them.

Not so the coming redemption for everyone else. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and indeed all the prophets describe exactly the sort of thing that Benjamin Button experiences, physically speaking. Health. Youthfulness. Happiness. Houses. Food. Peter called it “times of restitution” or restoration of all things. (Acts 3:19-21) All things… including health, life, hope, happiness, and a planet that is in tune with its residents.

But unlike Benjamin, life will not be limited to 70 years or fewer, as most people have experienced it. In the Biblical depiction of world salvation, all people will emerge from the graves with the advantage of previous experience. Their decades of living with love  as well as hate will give them a start on the curve of moral development. And they’ll all be walking and working and learning together…. whole genrations at a time. For a thousand years, people will have the experience of being reunited with family, old friends and old enemies, apologizing for past sins, being exonerated for past mistreatments, and coming to grips with what it means to be actualized as a free but obedient, loving, honest, good person in community with the rest of the world. And when the thousand years is past, in the words of Amazing Grace, eternity will have just begun.

Pretty dramatic, don’t you think? GIs coming back to the love of their lives, perhaps to meet the child they never met… And the curses which shorten life, which frustrate all of us, will be gone. The benefits will be especially noticeable to the poor of the world of the present age.

I could give you Bible verses for just about every claim, every phrase …. but it’s too laborious right now… gotta run.

After I see the film I’ll review it and let you know whether it lives up to my expectations.

Merry Christmas!

Not the last lecture

25 Friday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, media, orthodoxy, Theodicy

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The world has lost Randy Pausch. Temporarily. The Carnegie Mellon prof who gained acclaim and then wrote a best-selling book about dying of cancer has passed away in the last few hours. He was 47. His story is particularly touching to me because he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at precisely the time that my wife was initially diagnosed with the same illness. Our initial scans showed a mass on her pancreas and a number of spots that looked liked metastasized tumors on her liver. We spent several weeks contemplating the possibility that Beth would be gone within 3 months to a year, just like Randy’s family. Thankfully for us, when we went to the Mayo clinic a more focused scan revealed that the local doctors had seen false positives. But the confrontation with death left us with a deeper sympathy and deeper sense of purpose for living well and loving much. Randy’s response is bittersweet to say the least. While we admire his refusal to whine or complain, we cannot help but ask why death happens, and what the purpose of human life might be, if there is one at all. For myself, times like this make me embarrassed to have to identify with the Christian community… because the dark side of orthodoxy is that it believes, and sometimes even says out loud, that people like Randy are “lost”… a euphemism for an eternal destiny of hopeless, conscious torment “in the hands of an angry God.” Randy brings a tear to most of our eyes when he chooses to be satisfied with the amount of life he has enjoyed. He is thankful for his parents, thankful for his job, thankful for his family and the many dreams he has been able to achieve. But as a participant in the Christian community I’m embarrassed to say that the ugliness of Calvinist or even Arminian theology casts the darkest of shadows on every life, no matter how well lived, which does not end with the unqualified acceptance of their Molechian concept of deity. I know my Christian brothers who believe in hell would be offended by my comparison of their faith to the “God of drums” — the awful pounding of sacred drums to drown out the screams of children thrown, alive, into the red-hot arms of a flaming deity. And yet that is the unvarnished truth when you really face Christian doctrine head-on without flinching. Am I right? Challenge me if you think not. I am crying right now, in grief for Randy’s wife, his kids, his many friends and colleagues, his students. What a great man he was. But I am also deeply happy, because the Bible is so crystal clear, so brightly unambiguous, that orthodoxy is dead wrong and doomed to full disclosure and embarrassment; and that Randy has not delivered his last lecture. Randy will be back … with songs, with joy, with the same humility and fun-loving spirit that he carried into the grave. If I read Isaiah correctly, the karma of Randy is far closer to the truth than what Isaiah called the “refuge of lies”. I’m well aware of the proof texts that folks use, and I have spent years in sweet fellowship with good Christian brothers and sisters who are persuaded that these lies (which originated in the Garden of Eden) are true. But the hail that is now decimating the Christian church and making this the post-Christian era is forcing Bible-believing Christians to re-examine the Bible and see what it really says. And to admit that if God is indeed love, there is no way he’s got a guy like Randy Pausch on the wrong side of eternity. No way.

Somewhere between nowhere and goodbye

23 Wednesday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies, Theodicy

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I just finished a couple of major deadlines in my secular work and I celebrated by watching a movie in my hotel room. I’ve seen Million Dollar Baby before, but this movie is told so cinematically, so emotionally, that even when I know the plot ahead of time I find myself going through the same gut-wrenching, agonizing struggles that Frankie (a boxing trainer, Clint Eastwood) and Maggie (his boxer, Hillary Swank) have to face.

The tears and sadness I feel when watching that excruciating story morphs for me into a warm and settled expectation at the end (after my cry). Not because that story ends well. (For those who still haven’t seen this 4-Oscar-winning best picture, I won’t share any details of the plot.) Yes, it’s a work of fiction that feels as sad and overwhelming as any of the myriad tragic stories we hear about every day. Yes, on the face of it I could agree with Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer who wrote that ‘no movie in my memory has depressed me more than Million Dollar Baby.’“[4]

The only real hope that comes from the Hollywood portrayal itself, in my opinion, flows from the crystalline quality of all 3 leading characters of the story. (Eastwood, Swank, and Morgan Freeman) All three face deep disappointments and overwhelming personal challenges. All of them, at some level, fail in achieving their dreams, and the film departs from the normal romanticizing tendencies of pop culture to allow the characters to find a way of coping with their own failure, rather than miraculously finding a way out.

This encourages me because, first of all, I am persuaded that the Bible does not romanticize the experiences of this life for anyone, either. “People die all the time” is not just the realistic pronouncement of the sage observer, Freeman. It’s also the simple story of the Bible.

And I also find encouragement because of the finely-tuned sensibilities of so many people, including the folks in Hollywood who Christians love to bash — people who are pursuing the truth of human life and spirituality with grit, objectivity, and fairness. Increasingly, the reality of the failings of heroes, as well as the mitigating qualities of the “bad guys” are served up in realistic ways. Again, I find this much more like the Bible than the romanticized pulp I here coming from, say, “Focus on the Family” or other well-intentioned but, in my view, simplistic advocates of a brand of Christianity.

For me, then, real hope comes, not from a sweet but ultimately romantic humanistic sentimentality which says that “getting our shot” (as Freeman put it) is all we can hope for. Nor does it come from the faith (?) of a  Churchianity that’s been, amazingly, quite deceived: that everyone already has all the shot God in his “sovereignty” has allowed for them…. forever. If either of those options were true, then all the many people who have died trying, or died without trying, or died meaninglessly because of the stupidity or negligence or evil of another, would have died for nothing. They would be just where Freeman thinks Eastwood might have gone… “somewhere between nowhere and goodbye.” Or, if the Christian mainstream is right, they’d be well beyond good-bye, into horrible, unceasing, conscious “good riddance”.

Hope comes from the promise of a resurrection. Not a tentative, deductive, inferential hope that comes from reading ancient poetry or believing myths. The Bible is quite concrete and direct in its promises of a universal resurrection… and more than that, a thoroughgoing exploration of all the lessons of life for every person. A day of reckoning that is transformational, hopeful, and reconstructive. An Act Two that builds on Act One, and doesn’t kill off any of the characters. And those characters who exit in Act Three (after the Millennium) will do so of their own volition, their own informed and fully conscious choice.

Movies like Million Dollar Baby, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List leave me, after I’ve had my cry (and I really am a soft touch in those kinds of tragedies) with a profound satisfaction that the goals of God that are so clearly stated, and will indeed be achieved … and that the methods of God we see about us will yet prove to be so brilliantly wise and incessantly loving as to take our breath away.

When the world comes to its Act 3, there won’t be a nowhere, and there won’t be any more goodbyes. And I think that’s why God is happy.

Q: What about Violence and Lust in the OT?

09 Wednesday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, Bible Questions, eschatology, love of God, prophecy, salvation, Theodicy, universalism

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Eyoel writes:

But I really need your brotherly help this time…

This week, I’m going to debate a [person who does not accept Jesus as the Son but does believe other sacred texts which I do not believe are true]. I have seen [friends like him] pick the violent verses of the Old Testament (and Moses), and ‘lustful’ parts from it, mainly from the chapter Songs.

I can readily answer any question raised from the NT, even some from the OT. But..I have a huge problem with the things I mentioned above.

How can one understand the ‘violence and lust’ mentioned in the Old testament? I don’t want to look like a fool in front of him, and my desire is to try my best to bring him to Christianity.

Hi, Eyoel,

God did tell the Jews to remove specific groups of people from the Land he gave to them. He made it clear that it was His land, and they were to not have anything to do with the people who were already there — the Amorites, Phillistines, Amalekites, etc. He made it clear that they were judicially executing them for His own reasons, but we can think of a few reasons why God would give these orders:

1. God gave the land to Abraham and his seed of promise, Isaac.

2. These people were “polluting” the land itself with their idolatry, their sexual sins, their diseases and their own vicious ways.

3. If the Jews left the people there, in the nature of things they would have ended up (and indeed did to a large degree) copying their religion and their sexual sins, and pick up their diseases of body and soul.

4. God wanted to teach lessons that would create a vivid picture of his determination to have purity and His righteous standards in force in human society in the future.

5. God wanted to create a record of battles, conflicts, and both victories and defeats that would serve as spiritual lessons or “types” to the true spiritual people of God who he planned would come along later.

6. God wanted to forge the Jews into a tight nation, very tribal and very genetically separate, who would be able to survive for the 2000 years that God knew they would be scattered among mystic Babylon, before it was time to regather them again onto their own land. The promises of their resurrection as a people are now being fulfilled. Though even many “Christians” hate the Jews and can’t forgive them for their mistakes as a nation, God does not see it that way. He loves them and has already begun to restore them.

7. God also loved even the enemies of the Jews, and knew that since all people are born dying — as good as dead — they really are learning lessons too … and will be resurrected and restored in Christ’s kingdom. There are specific promises of land for the Arabs, the children of Lot (Moabites) … even the Egyptians and Assyrians in the future. All will be restored, including the enemies of Israel and their kindred tribes, Sodom and Gomorrah. (see Ezekiel 16)

By contrast, the other religions you are dealing with do not provide an everlasting hope of peace and brotherhood among those who it considers enemies. Those sacred writings seem suspect to many who have looked for authentication, because the “original” manuscripts are lost, and the “messages” came through one man whose story is questionable when put to a variety of reasonable tests.

The Bible is verifiable in every detail, and has been supported by the fossil record of the order of creation, and thousands of archeological findings.

***

As far as the lust part, the Bible is very clear about the limits and guidelines for human love. To the extent that the Song of Songs is a picture of human marriage, it is a vivid description of the kind of love that rightfully and purely exists between a man and his wife…. and in the song their love is not consummated yet because the marriage has not occurred.

But the Song of Songs is much deeper than that. It is also a spiritual account of the love that exists between the King of Kings and his chosen wife, a “black but comely” woman who he sought and claimed as his bride, in spite of her lack of royal bloodlines. It is a picture of Christ and the Church, and it describes the stages of her transformation by God’s grace.

It also discusses her “little sister who has no breasts” – a picture of what Psalms 45:14 refers to as “the virgins her companions who follow her” — the less developed, less fruitful category of Christians who grow up with those Christians who are most faithful and desirable to the Heavenly bridegroom. (no denominational connections here — it’s an individual character-evaluation only God can make). Compare this to Jesus’ story of two groups of virgins — pure and loyal followers — who are distinguished by fruitage in their lives — some wise, some foolish; some with oil of light in their cups, some caught in the nighttime without it. Matt. 25:1-13 Or compare it to the salvation promised to both those who build their lives with “gold, silver and precious stones” and those whose life is merely “wood, hay and stubble” — 1 Cor. 3. Both groups are saved by God’s grace, but one group gains a reward, and the other experiences trouble which humbles and purifies them in the end.

In the Song a question is raised about the Shunamite’s little sister, and the answer is given: (paraphrasing) “She will be examined to see if she is a door or a wall” — a sexually active (spiritually speaking) person or a virgin (spiritually speaking) — that is, faithful in mind and heart or having sold out to the world system and its various idolatries, as many scriptures in both the old and new testaments describe. If she is a door (no longer a virgin), she is boxed in with cedar planks — a coffin — emblematic of eternal death. If she is a wall, and has not lost her spiritual virginity, she is used to build a palace of silver . Silver is the metal used to describe the class of people mentioned in Revelation 7 and other places as a secondary group of saved Christians. Primary group, in the throne and joint heirs with Christ; secondary group, serving in front of the throne. Gold is used to describe the purest, most faithful group of saved Christians. (see Psalm 45:13ff)
See Song of Solomon 8:9

I might suggest asking the person who gives credit to different “sacred texts” where his God promises life for all men (Isaiah 25:8); or restoration for even the enemies of his people (Isaiah 19:23-25)

God has promised through all his holy prophets to restore everything, including the earth, life, and fellowship with God for all people: Acts 3:19-21

This of course harmonizes with the character of God as taught to us by Jesus: he loves his enemies, and his anger toward them is but for a moment, but his mercy endures forever. Psalm 100:5

The question is, does the anger of other traditions’ God only last for a moment? Does his mercy toward all last forever?

Once again, the way I see it, God is happy because he has a plan in place that will restore everyone, including his enemies, and give them a full opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Grace be to you…

Q: Why was Jesus sent to Earth?

04 Friday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, Bible Questions, Calvinism, eschatology, love of God, Theodicy

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Hi, Brian and Kimberly,
My apologies for taking so long to answer you.

Jesus told us that God’s motivation is love, and that his goal is to bring life to whoever believes in Jesus. John 3:16

Of course, the mainstream traditional teaching is that most people self-select themselves out of that opportunity, by choosing to reject Jesus. My Calvinist brothers acknowledge that humans are not really free and capable of responding, but their perspective isn’t very comforting, either: they teach that God has chosen who will escape the wrath of God. Apparently in this view God has chosen to send the majority of the human race to eternal misery. Some Calvinists will tell you that God knew these folks would not do the right thing anyway … others will say that the sovereign God can’t fail, is always righteous, so of course this idea that millions, billions are fore-ordained to hell cannot be an unloving or bad idea. After all, “who are we to reply against God?”, they will say; “who are we to complain as lumps of clay against the potter’s will?” (language Paul used in Romans 9, but not to justify eternal damnation, it seems to me).

However Jesus was well aware that God’s sending of a righteous man into the sinful world would not just magically make everyone all sweetness and light… those who benefitted from the status quo would fight him… and so he states in John 3:17 that again, the goal is not to judge the sin-gripped world through Jesus, but to save that very world through Jesus’ efforts on their behalf.

Jesus stated that he came to give his flesh for the life of the world. Again, life for the entire world is what is clearly and unambiguously stated. It doesn’t say, “I came to give my flesh for every individual who receives me before he dies.” There’s a world dying, and Jesus sets his sights pretty darn high — “I’m going to save the world.”

Pause for a moment to consider the ways in which that phrase, “save the world”, is used so often today.

Here’s the first 5 things that come up in a Google search:

  1. The Save the World Project says, “Today we all face a great challenge…” Indeed. This one focuses on fossil fuels, something Jesus never even mentioned.
  2. The How to Save the World blog focuses on unequal distribution of wealth, species extinction trends, and other ominous facts that make thinking people worry.
  3. Justin Timberlake and Madonna apparently have an orgasmic focus in their 4 minutes to save the world.
  4. Foreign Policy magazine presents 21 solutions from various brilliant people on how to save the world. First is from Garry Kasparov the chess master: a Global Magna Carta.
  5. And at the Save Your World store, you can learn about body care, hair care, and other accessory items at the Rainforest-Mall:

    “By purchasing our products, you are contributing to the Save Your World® project, a partnership with Conservation International and the Government of Guyana Forestry Commission. The project secures rainforest habitat that would have been leased by mining or logging companies. Every purchase you make helps protect one whole acre of dwindling habitat…”

That’s just the top 5 ways various well-intentioned folks think we can save our world. Do you suppose that Jesus was equally misguided when he tossed out the notion that somehow if he died on a cross it would do something to save the world?

Or do you think that the historic results of Christianity so far were what he had in mind when he said “my flesh I give for the life of the world”? According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the percentages of the world that are Christian have barely budged in a hundred years — still roughly 33% of the world population. And that’s counting “Christians” in the broadest, most shallow ways possible.

ReligiousTolerance also quotes Samuel Huntington:

The percentage of Christians in the world peaked at about 30 % in the 1980s, leveled off, is now declining, and will probably approximate to about 25% of the world’s population by 2025. As a result of their extremely high rates of population growth, the proportion of Muslims in the world will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s population about the turn of the century, surpassing the number of Christians some years later, and probably accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s population by 2025.

Islam is growing faster (2.9% annually, faster than world population growth), while Christianity is slowly slipping as a percentage of world population.

If we try to evaluate Christianity according to the number of adults who have chosen to claim themselves practicing followers of Jesus, a survey published in Crosswalk.com in 2001 stated that 11% of the world “know Jesus”. Quoting ReligiousTolerance.org:

Missiologist Ralph Winter estimated in early 2001 that there are 680 million “born again” Christians in the world, and that they are growing at about 7% a year. This represents about 11% of the world’s population and 33% of the total number of Christians.

So getting back to my main point: Christianity as we know it should not be viewed as a fulfillment of Jesus’ claims that he came to save the world.

Jesus said, “If I be lifted up [on the cross], I will draw all men unto me.” Here he doesn’t talk in general terms about the world, he makes a pretty bold claim about individuals. That’s especially significant, since elsewhere he said, “no one comes to the Father except through me” and “no man CAN come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him…”

And Jesus not only claims that he is the only way to life, he claims that the opportunity comes from God, and ALL men will indeed be drawn to him.

It should be obvious, it seems to me, that either we should dismiss Jesus entirely as a raging, self-deceived lunatic, or else we should try to find a rational explanation for these amazingly grandiose statements.

Paul, writing about it later, said that Jesus brought life and immortality (two distinct things) to light through the gospel. (That’s from 2 Timothy 1:10)

I would submit that life for the human race (on earth beginning in Messiah’s worldwide reign) was brought to light through the gospel. The whole world will be saved when the redemptive plan of Jesus is fully accomplished. The earth will be restored, the garden paradise will expand to fill the world, the nations will be healed — whoever wants to — and only after they have made their choice will Satan be allowed to attempt to instigate one last rebellion. (see Revelation 20) Though Christians lost sight of this world-wide redemption, orthodox Jews have held fast to it in one form or another and it’s still a prominent part of their hope for the future.

The Gospel also brought to light the promise of immortality or death-proof-ness, the power to live without external sustenance, forever. This distinct quality was not even enjoyed by angels, but only God and the resurrected Jesus. And yet it in the Christian “high calling”, this opportunity is opened up for the victorious followers of Jesus, who will live in heaven as spiritual beings. This is the “special” salvation for the “church of Christ.” In the “first resurrection” they will become part of the “bride, the lamb’s wife”. They will be given the kingdom. They will judge men and angels. They will shepherd the nations with a staff of iron with Jesus in his throne.

In summary, Jesus came to save the world. And he’ll really do it. First he saves a small group who will be so close as to be called his “bride” … but then they together turn their attention to the world and continue the hard work of saving it, through a process of resurrection by judgment, and teaching the world what it means to live in harmony and follow the principles of God’s universe. When they’re done, every man, woman and child who has ever lived will have fully learned what God expects of them, and how wonderful things can be if everyone follows those loving and just principles. Then a final test, and those who choose death will receive it. The vast majority, no doubt, will choose and forever enjoy life and love on a restored earth. “And they all lived happily ever after…”