A Thought Experiment: Confession, Part Two

Hello! I hope the weeks have been treating you well. For me, they’ve been lots and lots and lots of work as my wife and I prepare for our trip to Europe (actually, she does most of the preparing while I do most of the working, as it’s apparently still the busy season). Before I continue last week’s thought experiment on confession, I want to say that this is the last time you’ll hear from me for a month or more. I won’t be able to blog while abroad, and when I get back, I’ll be putting a lot of thought into why it is I write this blog, and considering whether or not it’s worth continuing. I know it’s a small thing to consider, but please pray for me on this decision.

Anyway, last week I explored the concept of deathbed confessions, and whether or not they constitute real, true atonement. Once a person is beyond all earthly consequence for their past sins, are they confessing because they’re wracked with guilt, or because they’re ashamed of what they’ve done and truly seeking God’s forgiveness? Or are they simply trying to avoid the eternal consequences of their sin the way they successfully avoided the earthly ones? I don’t know the answer, and it may very well be sometimes the former and sometimes the latter. But where that leads into salvation or damnation, I won’t dare to venture.

What I arrived at last week was, I believe, a very critical juncture: fear. Too often, it is out of fear of eternal consequence that we repent of our sins, rather than out of a sense of legitimate guilt. So we repent, or we confess Christ because of our overwhelming fear of Hell. But if fear is the overriding factor – if that is, in fact, the driving force behind repentance – then it leaves me with certain doubts as to whether or not that is true repentance. Should repentance not be borne instead of a desire to grow closer to God, to be made right with him? By that paradigm, the active agent behind repentance is not fear, but love. We confess our sins to God because of our love of him. In a similar manner, I confess my sins to my wife out of love, out of a desire to not let those sins become a barrier between us.

Oddly enough, the idea of confessing one’s sins is strongly debated in the Church today. Despite the command in James 5 to “confess [our] sins to one another so that [we] may be healed,” many Christians reject the idea of confession. And why is this? Because it’s a powerful symbol in the Catholic faith, and those objecting Protestants don’t want any of those Catholic traditions. But one thing is certain: whether you agree with Catholicism or not, the passage in James 5 is there, and there’s not much nuance to it. If we are practicing followers of Christ, we are to confess our sins to each other.

When I was living in Texas, I got into a disagreement with a fellow Christian (an awesome guy with a powerfully deep faith, mind you, so don’t think I’m just putting him down here) over this very idea. His objection to the confession of sins revolved around the idea of laying shame upon the confessing person. “If you confess your sins to a brother in Christ,” he argued. “Then it becomes all about shaming you, and that’s not what the Christian walk is supposed to be like.” I fully agree with him in this perspective. When we confess, we are not to be shamed, nor are we to shame those brothers or sisters who confess to us. That should never be the purpose behind the practice.

But to lay out my view effectively, let me compare it to my opinion on the purpose behind the prison system. Today, there is the overwhelming idea that if you commit crimes, you are to be quarantined, punished and then released when you’ve been punished enough. I have a problem with that. You see, this view of the prison system is just like the shaming that my Texan friend rejected. We imprison the criminal, shame him, then let him go his merry way and dumbly hope that he’s learned his lesson. Contrary to this, I believe the prison system should be a reformative process. We lock up prisoners to keep the regular population safe from them, sure, but the purpose behind it all shouldn’t be to bring the hammer of justice down on them. Instead, the purpose should be to guide them through the process of decriminalization, to radically transform them into non-criminals. A prison shouldn’t be a place of shame and derision; it should be a rehabilitation center.

That’s how I view confession. It’s not to bring us shame, or to provide eternal insurance. Rather, it should be a way of helping each other become better than we are. I used to be in an Accountability Group (which I often sorely miss), and the purpose of confessing our sins to one another was to help each other through our struggles, to offer forgiveness when we failed and provide the helping hand to pull each other up out of the mud of our temptations.

Confession is not a heaping of shame, or a method of punishment. It’s a process of improvement, and if you really want to take it seriously, you need a brother or sister in Christ to help you through it. That’s why God gave us each other.

Until next time, friends…

A Thought Experiment: Confession

Hello and salutations. Not long ago, I stumbled across a radio station wherein a Christian pastor (I think) was talking about living life in such a way that you’ll not carry deep regrets when you have kids, or grandkids, or when you’re on your deathbed. In response, I began to think about the idea of deathbed confessions.

As a listener to a True Crime podcast (Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories), I occasionally hear instances of people who, on their deathbeds, reveal key details about crimes from decades past (usually after calling for a priest). This is usually done because the dying individual, wracked with guilt, wants their sins absolved before passing on. On the surface, this seems to me like a very good thing. The person finally has their “come to Jesus moment” and confesses guilt, then receives forgiveness from a priest or pastor on God’s behalf. I know a lot of Protestants might immediately take umbridge with that concept, but let’s press on and not get bogged down on the doctrinal implications. What I’m considering is whether or not the person making the confession is truly and wholeheartedly repentant.

Well, of course they are! you may be thinking to yourself. After all, they’re doing the confessing, rather than carrying those sins with them into the grave!

But if they were truly repentant, why wait until they’re safe from earthly ramifications to repent? Here’s a completely hypothetical example. Suppose one night I lost my mind and killed someone who was walking along the street. Oh, no! I think. I can’t go to jail for this! So I find an effective means of disposing of the body and then tell no one of the crime. Fifty years pass and I’m lying in bed, dying of old age. I’ve lived a long and happy life, but I’ve carried the guilt of my crime all that time and now, staring at the grim specter of death, I fear for the well-being of my soul, so I call for a pastor and confess to him the murder I committed half a century prior. In peace, I pass on … but to what?

Surely, you can’t say I was courageous in repenting, for the police aren’t going to arrest me for a 50-year-old cold case, and especially not since I’m old and a precious few hours from death. The earthly consequences of my actions cannot affect me. There’s never been a safer time to confess. I’ve held this crime until I was safe from consequence, then confessed it in order to protect my soul from consequences in the afterlife.

Honestly, this sounds cowardly to me. There’s nothing noble about this that I can see.

This brings me to the deeper issue: fear. When we confess our sins, are we doing so out of fear? Do we proclaim Christ in order to have “fire insurance” and go to Heaven, or due to our love of Christ? Do we confess out of fear of eternal consequence, or because you feel truly guilty for your crime and know that confession is the right thing to do? If your answer is the latter, then a deathbed confession would, I argue, reveal cowardice, not faith and loyalty.

So what am I saying, then? Are we not to confess our sins on our deathbeds? Prior to that, I’d say. When I struggle with lust, I confess that to my wife and beg for her forgiveness. When I’m at a customer’s house (remember, I’m a carpet cleaner) and I accidentally scratch a door or a cabinet or the wall, I apologize to the customer and hope that they can forgive me. I don’t say these things in order to pridefully toot my own horn; I hope you’re not getting that impression. I just want you to know that I’m taking my own thoughts seriously. I’ll continue to think on this and get back to you later, when I’ve thought more on the concept. Until that time, please share your thoughts on the topic.

Until next time, friends…

Christian Humanism

Hello, dear readers! To those of you familiar with different schools of philosophy, you might be looking at the title of this post and thinking, huh? That’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one! But it’s an idea that’s been rumbling in and out of my head for about half a decade now, so hear me out. First, though, let’s dive into the individual concepts.

HUMANISM

Humanism is a branch of philosophy that was officially set off near the end of the 19th Century, though there are some who claim its roots go back to the Middle Ages. At the core, it emphasizes the value of humanity and praises human achievements. For example, when discussing a particularly cruel act, one might describe it as “inhumane.” An act of kindness, on the other hand, can be described as “humane.” This is because the root suggests something inherently good, or noble, in humanity. Humans are not monsters at the core, but something special, even praiseworthy. It is human compassion, ingenuity and a host of other unique characteristics that make humans good.

However, from the start, this philosophy has had problems, and it’s understandable why. Any philosophy which holds at its base a praise of the human person will, if left unchecked, inevitably lead toward arrogance, vanity and pride. And so it was with humanism. At a meeting held in the 1930s, a group of largely Unitarian preachers and scholars drafted the first “Humanist Manifesto,” setting the philosophy on the road toward intellectual arrogance. They envisioned empiricism replacing traditional belief, with human intellectual prowess being the defining characteristic of humanity. As a result, this view is known today as “Secular Humanism,” and it is almost completely atheistic. As a matter of fact, many atheists today – notably those arrogant militants who argue against religious belief, rather than the respectful ones who engage in open discourse – identify themselves as “secular humanists.”

THE SINNER’S DEPRAVITY

It’s not as bad as it sounds. Okay, it actually is as bad as it sounds, but let me explain. As atheists have become polarized as secular humanists, many Christians have run in the opposite direction and begun to adopt the exact opposite view. They’ve taken one of the chief bullet points of Calvinistic predestination and applied it more openly: Total Depravity. Total Depravity is the idea that all humans, upon having their nature marred by the Original Sin, have become turned wholly toward evil and are incapable of doing good. However, due to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, good can now be done. It must be noted, though, that it is not the human person who does the good, but only the Holy Spirit within them. Humans are completely incapable of doing good; only God can do that.

Total Depravity not a widespread belief across all of Christianity, mind you, just as Secular Humanism is not a widespread belief across all of atheism, but it’s gaining some serious traction. Primarily, Total Depravity is popular among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, who also just happen to be the loudest factions of the Christian Church. These Christians look at the human person and see only a broken, evil, corrupt sinner who can do no good on his own and needs God to rescue him.

CHRISTIAN HUMANISM: A BLENDING OF THE TWO

If I’m being honest, these both sound horrible. One leads to an unbridled arrogance and self-idolatry, while the other leads to misery and a self-loathing sense of helplessness. That doesn’t sound like a very happy world, if you ask me. But what if there’s a middle ground? What if there’s a more reasonable median between the two, somewhere where the sinner meets humanity?

On the one hand, I don’t think that intellectual prowess should be the defining characteristic of the human person. I used to be intellectually arrogant, and it was, quite frankly, miserable. So while I still strongly encourage intellectual development, I don’t believe it’s all there is to humanity. I believe we have compassion. I believe we have fraternity, and depth of emotion, and a sense of awe that brings joy to God. But we are not the crowning jewel of the universe. Too often, we fall into our selfish, self-oriented trap, and we act against those humane callings. We are imperfect and flawed, like diamonds with a big chip in the side or an impurity in the middle. And that’s why we need God. It’s only in the sacrifice of Christ that we can, by the guidance of God, become those perfect diamonds that he intended us to become.

But we are already shining reflections of our maker. We’re not mud-covered cockroaches incapable of any true achievement or good and noble action. If we were sinners and nothing else, then why would God continue to love us, to love us so much that he suffered a shameful death in an effort to save us? Why would God bother coming to us in the form of a savior if there was nothing redemptive in us worth saving? The answer must be that there is something within us, something humane, that indefinable characteristic that the humanists got lost in their attempts to find. And it’s only by the power of God that it can be uncovered.

This is what I mean by Christian Humanism: we are broken, amazing beings, capable of wondrous acts, but only when we let God put us back together.

Until next time, friends…

From the Archive: The Enemy of God

Good day! Last time, we revisited an old article in which I explored how the ancient Israelites confronted the age-old concept of evil. Today, I’d like to take that a few steps further with the follow-up that I originally wrote just over a year ago. So step up and brace yourselves, because here comes the devil.

“Last week, I went into detail on how the concept of evil had been personified throughout history. In harsh cultures, evil was seen as a great beast which crushed all who stood in its way. In cultures where different ideas on worship and morality clash, evil was seen as an invasive, polluting force. In our over-commercialized culture, evil is seen as a sneaky salesman trying to lure us in with all manner of seemingly-succulent temptations.

But what of the devil himself? What about that being mentioned in the Gospels and, especially, in Revelation? What about that guy who supposedly creates covens of witches and breeds heretics, and who’s believed to have once been the greatest of angels before his fall from grace? The standard story we’re all taught comes more out of tradition than scripture, and it claims that the devil (also called Lucifer or Satan) was once an angel, and one of God’s closest of confidantes. But then, due to his own pride, he refused to bow to Christ and then instigated a war to claim the throne of Heaven for himself. He lost, of course, and so he and his followers were cast from Heaven where they established dominion over the Earth as the devil and his demons. It’s a fascinating story and the source text is a beautiful read. But unfortunately, that source text is a 17th Century work of religiously-inspired fiction called Paradise Lost.

So what’s the real story, then? First, let me establish that in most of the Old Testament, there is simply no concept of a being we think of today as the Devil, or Satan. The serpent which tempts Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is only ever referred to as a serpent, and his connection to the devil wasn’t drawn until decades after the death and resurrection of Christ. But there are a few strange areas of Biblical mystery, like the enigmatic Lucifer Passage of Isaiah or the appearance of Satan in the book of Job, and we’ll explore these in a bit more detail.

Lucifer of Isaiah

This passage was one of the primary inspirations for John Milton, the writer of Paradise Lost, and it is one of the most-quoted passages among those who look for Old Testament evidence for the devil’s existence. The issue at heart with this passage, however, is that Isaiah gives no context for it. The words seemingly pop out of nowhere, and the only hint of context is that, in the greater passage, Isaiah is taunting Babylon. This suggests that this “Day Star, Son of Morning” character may have been a particularly harsh Babylonian king, perhaps one who fell from power, as the passage would suggest. Those who take a more astronomical approach have suggested that the “Day Star” is really the planet Venus, which rises for only a few minutes before dawn, seemingly bringing the dawn with it. Lucifer, after all, comes from the Latin Lux-Ferre meaning “light-bringer.” In any case, we have no idea who this enigmatic character was. Was he a fallen angel? Possibly, though the text makes no suggestion to that effect, so the mystery remains.

Satan of Job

Aside from God and Job, who is the most remembered character in the book of Job? That’s right: Satan. But there’s a historical twist to this character. You see, this Satan was not the Satan we think of today. Instead, he was a being known in the times of ancient Israel as The Satan (pronounced Suh-Tahn, as opposed to Say-tin). When Job was written, The Satan was not considered to be an evil figure. On the contrary, he was regarded as an angel whose job it was to test people in order to determine if their faith was truly genuine. He was to put people to the test. So when God points out Job as the most righteous man on Earth, The Satan doesn’t see this as a way of attacking God via his faithful worshiper; rather, The Satan sees someone worthy of being put to the test. So The Satan is tormenting Job not for malicious reasons, but in order to discern whether Job loves God out of true faith or simply out of gratitude for God’s great blessings. When Job ultimately passes the test, The Satan would have been just as satisfied as God, and then he’d move onto the next person. This explains why The Satan is never punished in the book: he didn’t do anything wrong. He simply did the job God appointed him to do.

The Devil

While there was no concept of an ultimate enemy of God in Old Testament times, there was definitely belief in demons and evil spirits. However, there wasn’t any idea of a demonic hierarchy. To the ancient Israelites and, later, Jews, there were simply bad spirits out there who wished to harm humans, similar to how there were lions and bears that wanted to harm humans. But a term that showed up from times unknown (to me) is the term “Devil.” This comes from the Greek Dia-Ballo, meaning “to cast between.” Theologically, this refers to a person, being or entity which tries to cast itself (or some malady) between a person and God. Demons and evil spirits could be considered devils in this regard, as could hatred, strife, envy and the breaking of any of the Ten Commandments.

Now let’s build this into a coherent story. There was not originally any concept of a demonic hierarchy, no arch-demon or devil or Satan at the top. This was the norm for Jewish mythology all the way through the end of the Old Testament. But then, in the late 300s to early 200s BC, there arose a community called Qumran. Qumran was populated by a Jewish apocalyptic sect called the Essenes, and they were adamantly awaiting the end of the world. If you want a historical context, then I’ll say that all or most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were likely written and compiled by Essenes. Anyway, the writings of the Qumran Essenes have been found and they suggest something quite strange: the people of this community seemed to believe that they were living in the presence of angels. But it gets stranger, because in one of their texts, we see the earliest description in all recorded history of an evil angel. This angel was given no name, but was simply referred to as the “Angel of Darkness,” and he was greatly feared by the Essenes. After less than a century, more texts began showing up, describing all manner of fallen angels. One text, called the Book of Enoch, even describes two separate rebellions in Heaven, one led by the fallen angel Shemyaza (an event which is connected with the enigmatic Nephilim of Genesis 6) and another led by the angel Azazel (the name of a likely-demonic character cited in Leviticus 16). Historically, it seems, the Angel of Darkness arises and then all manner of angels begin to fall, at least where apocryphal literature is concerned.

The Devil of Today

Somewhere between that first Qumran text and the time of Jesus, the Angel of Darkness had gained mythological prominence in Judaism such that he came to be seen as standing at the top of a newly and loosely constructed demonic hierarchy. But such a being would undoubtedly need a name for reference, so the Jews began casting all manner of names at him: Satan, Devil, Moloch and Beelzebul (both of which are the names of Canaanite gods), the Adversary and, as we progress into the Christian era, Lucifer. This being incorporated into himself all of these different entities and identities, absorbing and compiling them into one character which appears in the Gospels and Revelation (where he is referred to as The Dragon).

This does, of course, raise a plethora of theological queries. What became of The Satan? Did he lose his name, or did the Angel of Darkness kill him and take his place? Or did he eventually evolve into the Angel of Darkness? And why did this strange fallen angel make no appearance before the days of Qumran? Was that when he fell? Or was he in hiding until the Qumranites found him out? Or did he arbitrarily choose that time to declare himself to humanity? Certainly, some of these answers would have far-reaching effects on our reading of the Old Testament. After all, scarcely a Christian can read Job without mistakenly thinking that the modern Satan and The Satan are the same character, and the Christian mind immediately sees Isaiah as describing a fallen angel, thus forgetting the possible link to a Babylonian king.

All I can tell you is what I’ve learned in my studies. It’s up to you to trust that God has these answers, and that maybe, just maybe, he’ll choose to someday share them with us.”

Until next time, friends…

From the Archive: The Divine’s Opponent

Hello! Considering the response I got from my last series – about the origin of belief in Hell – I figured I’d dive back a year into my archives and dig out this gem. In it, I explored the changes in how the ancient Israelites confronted the problem of evil, and how it, in turn, led to the development of a much darker concept: the devil. It’s a bit long, but hopefully set to fascinate you, as it did me in my research.

“Hello, and salutations! [Last week], we celebrated Easter, and it was a great time to remember what remarkable event happened just under two millennia ago: the force of death, which has plagued mankind since time immemorial, the force to which even the smartest, greatest and most God-fearing of us succumb, was defeated by a man who was three days dead. On that day, Jesus walked from the tomb and demonstrated that not only could he raise new life, but he could even resurrect himself. What a remarkable thing that would have been to see!

Now getting to the topic of today, I wanted to discuss something on the darker side of things, theologically speaking. I wanted to talk about the enemy of God. I’m not planning on repeating to you the same information so often quoted from Paradise Lost or the lone Lucifer Passage of Isaiah; instead, I’m going to share the personification of evil itself throughout history. This personification is something which has gone through radical transformations, and it was, in fact, a component in my Master’s thesis, so what I’m sharing today is essentially what I unearthed in my graduate school research. Let’s dive in.

I’ll begin during the age when Israel had finally settled the land of Canaan. They’d narrowly escaped from slavery in Egypt, then wandered in the Sinai Desert long enough for a whole generation to pass away and now, finally, God’s chosen people were granted the Promised Land. The great Jerusalem Temple was established and divine worship of God was carried out through the nation. And then, the Israelites found trouble. Trouble during this time (approximately 1000 – 586 BC, a time known as the First Temple Period) came in the form of ritual impurity and lack of devotion to God. Before this time, the concept of “evil” was nebulous and often misunderstood. After all, there are passages in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) which even mention God himself “repenting of the evil he sought to do.” This raises significant theological questions, but that exceeds my area of expertise, so I’ll not explore them. Nevertheless, Israelite mythology during the First Temple Period had no established entity which stood in direct opposition to God. Instead, the opponent of God, that force which ran counter to the divine will, was ritual impurity. Scripture from just before this era records how Moses’ nephews, Nadab and Abihu, were “consumed by fire” for messing up in the ritual worship of God. Idol worship, which God saw as spiritual infidelity, often carried disastrous results, causing God’s temper to flare and Israel to suffer international defeats and internal strife.

Then came the Babylonians. First engaging in skirmishes with the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah in 597 BC, Jerusalem itself fell to the Babylonian Empire in 586, eleven years later. The Babylonian rule was harsh and oppressive, with Jews (the descendants of Judah, almost the only Israelites left) taken in chains to Babylon, their Temple burned and their infants often murdered before them. The Babylonian pantheon was forced upon them, and their children were in many cases to be raised as Babylonians. Now in this time period, known as the Exilic Period, the Jews came to see the Babylonians as God’s enemy, and wherever mythology was concerned, they imagined God being opposed by a great, dragon-like beast. This beast was the symbolic representative of Babylonia, and the reason is that a physical dragon (were it real) would be as oppressive, dangerous, violent and terrifying as the Babylonians themselves were to the Jews.

But time passed, and after approximately forty-seven years, the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persian Empire. These Persians were actually pretty nice to the Jews. As long as the Jews admitted that Persia was in charge, and they paid their taxes, they were mostly allowed to do as they pleased, and Persian mythology was not forced upon them. As a matter of fact, the Persians even allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple, establishing a period of history known alternatively as the Post-Exilic or the Second Temple Period. So with such a lenient and ideal nation ruling over them, naturally this was seen by the Jews as a time of peace (with a few minor hiccups), and any sort of enemy to God was scarcely mentioned. No dragon, no impurity, just peace among God’s people.

The Persians ruled for about two hundred years before a Greek force (actually Macedonian, but they were obsessed with Greek culture) gained control of the Jews. Intending to Hellenize (or Greek-ify) the Jews, they forced Greek culture on them, which caused a great deal of friction as Jewish morality and Greek culture were at odds in a great many places. So there began to be a resurgence in mythology about an enemy of God, and this enemy took not the form of an oppressive dragon, but rather as a sneaky character who would pollute the “pure” worship of God. There was a great deal of civil unrest among the Jews, who did not want their culture and religion polluted by this new enemy.

Another three hundred years went by and, in 63 BC, a Roman general conquered Israel and brought it into Roman control. The Romans were, like the Babylonians five hundred years earlier, highly oppressive, often carrying out gruesome mass executions against anyone even suspected of rebelling. And in this highly oppressive atmosphere there was a new explosion in mythology about the devil, who was usually seen as a great, dragon-like beast. The book of Revelation even refers to him as “The Dragon.” This symbolism had the same effect in the Roman era as it did back in the Babylonian era: the devil’s characteristics were symbolic of the oppressive characteristics of Rome itself. In an oppressive culture, God’s enemy was imagined as epitomizing that oppression.

But once Rome became Christianized a few centuries later, the beast/dragon imagery lost prominence as the early Church began to focus on rooting out heresies, returning to the symbolism of purity versus pollution. The heretics were viewed as the devil’s agents, polluting the “pure” worship of God. It’s interesting to note that an almost perfect parallel happened in America during the Witch Trials of Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th Century. Those accused of witchcraft were feared as the devil’s agents sent to pollute the religious purity of their Christian community.

So what do we see when we imagine the devil in our culture today? Do we see a great beast, a roaring dragon oppressing all who stand in its way? This is the imagery often clung to in oppressed nations, but it doesn’t really show up here in America. Instead, the Americanized devil is thought of as a clever salesman, trying to trick people into selling their souls and going down dark roads of perdition. We imagine him doing this by the clever mastery of speech, persuasively damning us with psychological wordplay and powerful temptations. Is this because of our heavily-commercialized society? Is this because of America’s charismatic nature, too often compelled to fall into a cult of personality, and thus suffer the resultant paranoia? I’ll leave that up to you to decide, but it certainly seems to be the case. I even did an experiment with my old Sunday school class back in Indiana a few years ago, and this theory held true in that scenario. In any case, I would encourage you to think on these things.

Now before I go, you may have noticed that I never used the term “devil” until the Roman times. If you didn’t notice that, go back and take a look. The reason for that is the mystery which we’ll explore next week.”

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll revisit the evolution of belief about God’s greatest enemy: the devil!

Afterlife 103: My Story

Salutations, and welcome to the third and final installment of my series on the origins of Hell and the afterlife. Today’s post might be a bit shorter than the previous two, as I’ve already shared most of what I know. What follows is my own story, one which I’ve shared only with a few people, but one which, after many years, I think I’m finally ready to tell.

Back in 2012, as I was in my final year of college, I finally agreed to attend a religious retreat my church participated in called “The Walk to Emmaus.” It was a fantastic experience, involving me spending three days separated from time and the world, alone with God and other believers. On the last night there, after a particular ceremony, I underwent a religious revelation, breaking down a number of walls I’d erected in my mind, walls which for years had made me intellectually arrogant and emotionally numb. I suddenly found myself feeling a deeper love from God than I ever had before, a love which flowed through me to other people. Since then, I’ve backslid every now and then, but it was the first step toward a much more balanced faith, and it has meant the world to me and to my wife.

But all was not perfect that night. Still feeling the aftermath of that experience, I went over and sat down next to my sister’s boyfriend (now her husband, my brother-in-law and pastor-to-be), Denny. I closed my eyes and then, suddenly, I felt like something had dug deep claws into my chest and pulled me away from that place. Wherever the new place was, I can only remember two things: a terrible sense of separation from all things (including God), and the color pale green. As if from some distance away, I heard Denny and a pastor praying for me, and then I returned to that place beside them, with their hands on my shoulders. Whatever had gripped me was gone, and I was rescued from that terrible, empty, pale green place.

To date, that ranks among one of the top two most terrifying moments of my life. I was able to recover the religious experience from earlier and put the bad moment behind myself, and I went on my way with a renewed sense of my Christian faith.

The following semester, I began my studies in graduate school, and one of my first classes was focusing on the book of Revelation. I was fascinated by the text, but froze when we reached chapter six. “I saw and beheld a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hell followed close behind.” I froze because we dove into the original Greek, in which the horse was chloros, translated intermittently as pale or green (think of chlorophyll). The horse was pale green in color. Without hesitating, I raised my hand and asked the professor why the horse would have been pale green. He responded by telling me that “in the ancient world, Hell was often depicted as pale green.”

I can’t tell you what Hell is like for everyone, or what it will be like in eternity. But I can tell you what it was like for me: it was a place of complete and utter isolation, where even God is no longer present. For me, then, Hell is any place where God is not. So as Christians, we should not seek after God simply to avoid going to Hell, but because any life spent without him is hellish in itself. He is gracious in giving us whatever sort of life or afterlife we desire, but as for me, the only life and afterlife I want is one that’s present with him, and I pray the same for you.

Until next time, friends…

Afterlife 102: The Development of Hell

Hello, and welcome back! In my previous blog post, I described the growth and change in beliefs about the afterlife in ancient Israel. Originally having little to no actual belief about life after death, they eventually developed the gloomy idea of Sheol, a shadowy realm where ghostly “echoes” of people go upon dying. If you’ve ever sloughed through the terrors of Dante’s Inferno, you’ll find this kind of existence in the outer rings, where Dante placed the “righteous pagans.” But in Dante’s Inferno, things take a definite shift from Sheol into the realms of the truly hellish. So where did these ideas come from? What led the ancients from belief in a gloomy shadow realm to a place of eternal torment?

Well, that change was a long time coming. In the 4^th Century B.C., the Jews (the last remnants of ancient Israel) came into contact with Greek culture and philosophy through Alexander the Great. Here they were met with a coincidental (if you can accept that) Greek counterpart to Sheol: Hades. The two became virtually synonymous. But Greek philosophy had a very deep and profound impact on all aspects of Jewish theology; however, that’d be another rabbit hole that I won’t dive into right now.

Eventually the Greeks declined in power and were replaced with a new rising force: Rome. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire and, only about 50 or so years before the birth of Christ, it absorbed/conquered the outlying land of Judea. Now faced with oppression the likes of which they hadn’t seen since the days of Babylon nearly five hundred years earlier, the Jews again began revisiting much of their theology, and now, for the first time, we begin to see the concept of Hell, or a place of torment reserved for evil people. Little is said of its details, although the words of Jesus in some places seem to indicate it as a realm of outer darkness, “where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It sounds like a far worse version of Sheol, if you ask me.

But there was another image which fed into the belief in Hell: a trash dump. On the outskirts of Jerusalem, there was a small valley where the Jews would go to dispose of their trash. In that valley, called Gehenna, they would often burn the refuse, and it wasn’t uncommon for the fires to go on burning with an acrid smell for days or even weeks. But to add a darker history to Gehenna, the Old Testament records rare occasions when unfaithful Judean kings would, against the dictates of the Levitical Laws, sacrifice children to pagan gods in the valley. Thus, this place which was always stinking and burning, was considered by many Jews to be cursed. Eventually, this dreadful place fed into the new theology of a much more punishing Sheol, and the belief in Hell was born.

Near the end of Revelation, it is recorded that at the Final Judgment, those “whose names are not found written in the book of life” will be cast into a sea of fire and brimstone for all eternity. This passage undoubtedly fueled the fires of Hell-belief throughout the Christian era, including how the place of punishment is portrayed in art and literature all the way up to today. That still leaves a lot of questions in the air, of course. For instance, is the sea of fire literal or metaphorical? Is it where nonbelievers or simply evil people are sent today immediately after death? Or is Hell merely a “holding tank” for those people until they’re judged at the end of the world? As I’ve said, I can’t tell you the truth, only what people have believed the truth to be.

Until next time, friends…

 

Afterlife 101: The Ancient Israelites

Good day, good readers! I hope these days are treating you well. Recently, the daughter of a member of my Sunday School class began asking some questions about the nature of Hell, and – not knowing what my next few blog posts were going to feature – I thought it would be excellent to trace the history of such a belief. First, I’ll trace it throughout the days of ancient Israel. Next, I’ll explain how the concept of Hell arose and was disseminated in Christian dogma. Lastly, I’ll share my own, personal experience and its aftermath, an experience which I have shared with very few people in my life. But the time has come, I think, to share that story. Before we begin, however, I want to make it clear that I’m making no definitive statements on what the afterlife actually entails; rather, I’m tracing the history of what others have believed about it over the past three millennia.

Basic Background

Before we dive into the afterlife, you must first be aware of two distinct eras which scholars have defined for ancient Israel. The first is called the “Pre-Axial Age.” This is the time from undated prehistory (Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua and the like) all the way until the days of King David. The Pre-Axial Age is defined by a very worldly focus in regard to religious belief. People back then did not necessarily possess what we today call a “personal relationship with God,” though there were some exceptions like Abraham and Moses. Instead, the people saw God the way they saw kings: as distant rulers to whom they owed great honor and loyalty. They believed that if they served God in the appropriate ways, then he would reward them with health, agricultural success, large families and protection from danger. They followed rigid traditions and engaged in cultic practices like sacrifice, and they prayed often, but God was not a best friend to them; he was a king to be appeased, who would reward them for their worship.

Following the days of King David, scholars have defined what has been called the “Axial Age,” in which the people began to view God in a very different context. No longer a distant overlord to be appeased in exchange for blessings in this life, God was now a much closer and more intimate being, one who cared deeply for his people and who would bless them with greater riches like wisdom and an afterlife. While the idea of having a “personal” relationship with God was still a long way off, the Axial Age was a giant step toward that. And King David, for too many reasons to get into right now, seems to have bridged the gap – or initiated the transition – between the two ages.

The Afterlife in the Ancient World

It may be startling to hear, but there’s very little evidence that Israelites or their precursors had beliefs about the afterlife during the Pre-Axial Age. Yes, they did believe in Heaven (a concept going back to the first verse of Genesis), but it was mostly viewed as a dwelling place purely for God and his angels, not for humans. It was, essentially, like his White House. For humans, however, the only mention of an afterlife was the euphemism of “sleeping with one’s fathers” (2nd Samuel 7, 1st Kings 1). And in a Pre-Axial mindset, wherein humans want blessings from God in this life, the idea of living on in another life held little meaning or importance. You lived and you died, and that’s that.

A change came about during the time of Kings Saul and David, however, in a concept called Sheol. This strange word is used only seven times in the Pre-Axial days before King David, but another 58 times in the Axial Age after David. To explain why it’s used in the Pre-Axial days would require a lengthy discussion on how the Bible was written, so I’ll avoid that rabbit hole for now. In any case, the concept of the afterlife came to be defined in the days around Kings David and Saul as Sheol.

Sheol was not exactly what we would picture the afterlife to be like today. A vague, mysterious, shadowy realm, it was seen as the place where everyone went after death, regardless of how good or bad you were. At death, a shadowy echo of you, called a Shade, was said to depart from the body and thereafter roam around in Sheol for eternity. A few notable exceptions are Enoch and Isaiah, both of whom were taken up to Heaven without dying. Sheol is even featured prominently in the last days of King Saul (1^st Samuel 28). Bothered by the death of the prophet, Samuel, and needing to know how his battle would go the following day, King Saul seeks out a woman known as the Witch of Endor (not the Endor with Jedi and ewoks, but an actual place in ancient Israel). Contrary to the Law at the time, Saul has the witch conjure Samuel’s shade up from Sheol to speak with them. After first asking why he has been disturbed, Samuel then prophesies that Saul will join him in Sheol on the following day as a punishment from God. The next day, Saul’s army is defeated by the Philistines and both he and his son, Jonathan, die in battle.

The concept of Sheol existed for a long time in Israel’s – and later Judah’s – history, and it’s interesting to note its similarity to the Greek concept of Hades, where all but the most noble of heroes are to spend eternity, not in punishment or in reward, but in general gloominess. Now with that happy thought, I’ll end our current discussion and return to you again in two weeks for the next step, in which we explore how the afterlife changed from Sheol into the divergence of Heaven and Hell.

Until next time, friends…

Revelation and John’s Gospel

Hello, all! I hope the past weeks have been treating you well. For me, work has been quite busy, with the introduction of two trainees for whom I’m at least partially responsible. At least, this is what my expectation will be, given that I’m writing this before their training officially starts.

In any case, lately I’ve been talking a lot about politics, and so I instead want to shift into discussing the Bible (shocker, I know!). In the past, I’ve touched on the idea of who wrote the book of Revelation. Today I’d like to dive in deeper and see just exactly why it is that scholars believe the writer of John’s Gospel…did not write the book of Revelation.

Introduction

It’s a long-held Christian tradition that the writer of the Gospel of John is the same man who wrote the book of Revelation. That individual, tradition claims, was the apostle John, one of Jesus’ three primary members of the original twelve disciples. Certainly that lends a lot of credence and power to the words of both books! But there are a few issues with this claim. First, while the writer of John’s Gospel (who for further usage I’ll refer to as “Gospel-John”) claims to have been present at the events described, he never actually claims to be John the Apostle. But to keep from going down a tangential rabbit-hole, I’ll end that discussion here. Now interestingly enough, Revelation opens with the writer identifying himself as “God’s…servant John” (beginning of chapter one). He doesn’t claim to be an apostle, only a servant. From here on out, I’ll refer to him by his traditional name of “John the Divine.”

To complicate things, there are some fairly critical differences – stylistic, linguistic, grammatical and structural – between the Gospel and Revelation. The Gospel reflects a mastery of the Greek language (the original language of both works), whereas the clumsy, clunky Greek of Revelation displays an amateur usage of the language. I don’t mean that to sound offensive, only to show that John the Divine did not have the Greek skills and understanding that Gospel-John possessed. But we’re going to look past these differences and explore what, to me, seems like the real, critical issue at hand: the theological differences.

The Eschatology of John’s Gospel

Eschatology refers to the study of belief about the end of the world, coming from the Greek word “eschaton,” meaning “end.” To have an eschatology means to have a particular belief about how the world will meet its demise. Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, the writers of the immensely popular Left Behind series, conform to a very specific kind of eschatology (click here to see my view of it).

Within the Gospel of John, there is a very distinct kind of belief which is called Realized Eschatology. Realized Eschatology views Heaven and Earth as two completely independent worlds coexisting simultaneously. However, during the life of Christ, God (through Jesus) essentially punched a hole, or a passage, between Heaven and Earth, allowing for humans to go to Heaven. See the diagram below.

In Gospel-John’s view, Heaven is accessible now, and through Christ alone, we can access it. As the Earth eventually fades away and dies, the connecting tunnel will essentially act as a sort of life boat, allowing those who trust in Christ to reach the safety of Heaven. Little is known of the sequence of events leading to the Earth’s destruction as, in Gospel-John’s eschatology, those events aren’t really that important. Heaven is accessible now, and when we’re on the other side, Earthly events will be irrelevant.

Much of this derives from Greek philosophy, including Christ’s identification as the “Word of God.” This comes from the Greek word “Logos,” meaning “word,” and it was developed by a Greek school of philosophy called Neoplatonism. This school saw God alone in the beginning before time. God spoke, and the word (or Logos) he spoke took a form of its own and created the universe on his behalf. Essentially, God created the world by proxy through an extension of himself: his Word. The beginning of John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as that Word, and it is by that Word that the portal was opened between Heaven and Earth, and only by and through that Word that humanity can be saved. Greek philosophy feeds into Christian theology and two millennia later, here we stand. Gospel-John really knew his Greek.

The Eschatology of Revelation

The book of Revelation operates under a very different understanding, corresponding with a belief system called Apocalyptic Eschatology. It’s quite a fascinating topic, and it was the focus of my Master’s Thesis. Anyway, apocalyptic eschatology envisions a world in which Heaven is distant and separated from Earth, very much like earlier. However, rather than having a tunnel or portal connecting the two, there is a much more gradual progression of time, during which Heaven is approaching Earth, and Earth is, in turn, being turned into Heaven. Eventually, at some unknown point far, far in the future, Heaven will arrive on the scene and merge with Earth, and that will be the final reality.  See the diagram below.

So what, in this system, was the purpose of Christ’s ministry on Earth? Glad I asked! You see, according to John the Divine, Christ’s appearance on Earth, and especially his crucifixion, was the catalyst which set in motion the chain of events leading to the fulfillment of his eschatological worldview. Jesus began the whole process, and John the Divine’s book describes what will come about as a result of it.

The worldview of apocalyptic eschatology was very thoroughly Jewish, and at the time Revelation was written, it had at least four centuries of literary and theological development under its belt. There were countless works out there among the Jews, and most interestingly, this whole genre of writing and belief (according to some persuasive scholars) actually arose as a reaction against Greek philosophy and culture. That’s why apocalyptic eschatology is so very, very Jewish, and that may be a contributing factor to John the Divine’s lack of knowledge in the fields of Greek language and philosophy.

Conclusion

So are John the Divine and Gospel-John the same person? Personally, I highly doubt it. While the former was fully entrenched in a thoroughly Jewish belief system which excluded Greek philosophy, the latter incorporated a great many Greek themes and ideas into his own work. Gospel-John’s realized eschatology emphasized the concept of space: there are two worlds existing simultaneously, with no regard to time or history, and Christ built the passage between the two. This emphasis is a reflection of both Greek and earlier Mesopotamian religious belief, in which the focus lay in temples and mountains and physical locations. John the Divine’s apocalyptic eschatology, on the other hand, emphasized the concept of time, with one world slowly feeding into the other over the course of history. This is a reflection of early Israelite belief, in which believers are to set aside not a land or space, but a day to worship God. Israelite and later Jewish believers are to honor God on occasions and days first and foremost.

Does this mean the two systems are incompatible? Of course not. After all, time and space both exist in our world. I remember my good childhood at my parents’ house, a place which helps me to remember moments. John’s Gospel is not incompatible with the book of Revelation, and John the Divine and Gospel-John were both followers of Christ who had messages from God meant to be shared with the world. But it casts a great shadow of doubt on the idea that they were the same person. For instance, an architect can design a history museum, but that doesn’t make him the curator. It just means that both men are necessary to get the full picture of what’s meant to take place.

Until next time, friends…

What is a Leader’s Purpose?

Good day, all! I hope that this month has been treating you well. Now today I’d like to take a look at the question of what a leader’s purpose is, but from a Biblical standpoint. My purpose here is not to argue for politics, but to explore the role of leaders in the context of the Bible. Then, maybe, we can take a look at how we can apply that to modern day.

A few years ago, when the Refugee Crisis was in the news, one of the potential U.S. presidential candidates of the time sent out an article describing the Biblical responsibility of the ancient king. His purpose, of course, was to draw a parallel between the ancient Israelite kings and our current president in order to establish the proper and Biblical course of action. Now in this article (which I was unfortunately unable to locate), the writer claimed that the purpose of the Biblical king was to protect his people first and foremost from those who wish to do them harm. Thus, this writer was arguing that it was Biblical to deny asylum to modern refugees on the grounds that such refugees could be potential threats to the American people. This sounds like perfectly reasonable logic, case closed.

That is, if it were true. This article I read was a fantastic example of how this potential presidential candidate – while likely a God-fearing Christian – was about the furthest thing from a Bible scholar. So speaking as someone who’s actually read the Bible, let me explain the Biblical role of the ancient king.

In ancient Israel, as we find in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, there was not initially a plan for a king. The people were to be led by the prophets and the priests, and when the occasion called for it, sporadically anointed political leaders called Judges. However, the ancient Israelites decided that they wanted to be like the other nations who had kings, and so God relented and gave them King Saul. Saul, while initially charismatic and faithful, proved to be both brash and unstable, and so the kingdom was given over to the ever-famous King David, and thereafter to his son, Solomon. But afterward, Solomon’s unfaithfulness to God resulted in Israel being split in half during the reign of his son, Rehoboam. The secessionist half chose their own king, Jeroboam, and the rival kingdoms persisted for centuries before being destroyed, one by the Assyrian Empire and the other two centuries later by the Babylonians.

Within that history, there is a great deal of activity by many dynasties of kings, but if you look closely, you’ll find an interesting strain of truth that persists throughout it all: a kingdom is blessed when its king leads the people in being faithful to God; a kingdom is destroyed or harmed when its king leads the people away from God. Jeroboam refuses to take down the “High Places” (small altars and places of worship to other gods), and his kingdom is badly beaten, his dynasty destroyed after only a few kings. This is a pretty standard story which repeats itself over and over in the Northern Kingdom over which he ruled.

But then take King Josiah. As a very young king, he discovered a lost book of the Bible (suspected to be Deuteronomy) laying in the wastes of the Jerusalem Temple. As a result, he renovates the Temple and tears down the local High Places, and as a result God blesses his reign with peace and prosperity. His son does not follow suit and brings the kingdom to ruin. King Ahab, husband of the notorious Jezebel, acts cruelly and corruptly, and he worships foreign gods with his wife. They – and the kingdom around them – come to tragic fates. And just before the advent of the Babylonian Exile, we find King Zedekiah seeking an alliance with Egypt despite God’s commandment to give in to the Babylonians. The alliance collapses, Zedekiah suffers horribly and his kingdom is left in ruins, its Temple burnt to the ground.

So what pattern do we see here? It’s actually quite simple. When a king leads his people to God, God becomes their protection. When he turns away from God, or tries to protect the people by his own power and ingenuity, destruction surely follows. The role of a king, therefore, was not to protect his people at all, at least not physically. Instead, his purpose was to model to the people how they should live, and to lead them in the right relationship with God. Oftentimes, this seems counter-intuitive, like letting into our country the refugee who may be a terrorist in disguise. But think of the great Judge, Gideon. He had a great army to lead against an enemy, but under God’s orders, he whittled that army down to three hundred men, leaving them far outnumbered. But because of his loyalty to God, he and his three hundred won a decisive victory. Is it too farfetched to think that if he had retained his army against the command of God, they may have suffered a catastrophic defeat?

So the king’s role is to lead his people in faith, modelling the commands of God. Protecting his people, as bizarre as this sounds, is secondary to that, but the reason is natural: because if the people are faithful to God, then God will protect them. If we do as God commands, there will undoubtedly be difficult times (as there always are), but we will be secure in the knowledge that God is protecting us. If our leaders – and yes, even our president – will lead us back to the ways of faith in God, then we won’t need a powerful military to protect us. We’ll have the Creator himself on our side. That is the true purpose of a king: to put us on the side of God, however that may be.

Until next time, friends…