Short Thought on Hell

From what I can gather, a fair amount of those who know me believe that, unless I rejoin their club, I am destined for a literal eternity of torture, brought about by my rebellion and refusal to accept the free gift of salvation. (Whether or not someone can accept salvation a second time after having "given it up" once is up for debate, I imagine.)

Here is one of my problems with this idea.

Reference to God as Father is a common metaphor in Scripture, as is the idea that God is Love. Evangelical Christians want me to accept the idea that God is a loving father, who has the best interests of his creations at heart.

The sentence of eternal torture goes against this metaphor, and only some insane theological twists can make one think the problem is resolved.

If God loves me, why would he torture me? Is it because he is perfect, and therefore cannot abide my sins? If he cannot abide my sins, why not put me in Hell now? Is it because he is patient? Okay - so he's patient now, up until the moment of my death and we go from patiently waiting for 30-100 years to an ETERNITY OF TORTURE. Well that escalated quickly! It's like he's bipolar or something - excessively patient or the other extreme.

Calling this kind of god good goes against the definition of the word good. Are you trying to tell me that the better a person I am, the more I will feel the desire to eternally torture people who aren't? How the hell is this a good plan?

Short Thought on Christmas

It was a good Christmas.

I feel like my personal "War Against Christmas" has evaporated since losing belief in the "Reason for the Season." Before, my strong desire to follow Christ and to be more like him prevented me from feeling complete joy in the gifts I would give and receive while celebrating his birthday. It felt like going to someone's party and ignoring him, giving gifts to the other guests, eating cake, but not doing much for the birthday-boy.

Now I don't worry about what Jesus wants - I don't think he's alive to care about it. I've come to appreciate Christmas as a warm and familiar holiday in the middle of the bitter cold that draws on traditions from many faiths. Now my joy is complete in the giving and receiving of gifts, in the egg-nog with a wee bit of rum, in the singing of carols - both beautiful and silly, in the happiness of family and friends.

If there is any sadness in my heart this Christmas, it is in the memory of years lost in service to a myth and in the knowledge that most of the people I know still labor under the same heavy yoke of the Christian faith.

Mr. Rogers and Tragedy

I don't know if this would comfort me, were I in the position of the loved ones of 27 people in Connecticut tonight. But for what it's worth:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
- Mr. Rogers

Is Mystery Overrated?

This is taken from Steve Shives, without his permission; hopefully he won't mind.

A little over a week ago, as my wife and I were on our way home from Hagerstown, I looked up and saw a group of strange lights in the night sky. There was a period of maybe thirty seconds where I had no idea what they were. They weren't stars, or aircraft, or anything immediately familiar. They just burned bright and hung there in mid-air, as if by magic, or perhaps some technology far advanced of humanity.
As we began to drive past them, I realized what they were: sky lanterns — candles inside inflated paper bags. The heat from the candle's flame heats the air inside the lantern, causing it to rise like a hot air balloon. The lantern flies as long as the candle burns, then falls back to the ground once the flame goes out. No magic, no alien technology. Something humans in China knew how to make hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, a simple combination of science and craftsmanship.
My purpose in sharing this with you is to demonstrate (hopefully) the beauty of a true explanation for something, even when that explanation might appear mundane to some when compared to more fantastic theories. Mysteries should intrigue us because we want to know things, not because we cherish our own ignorance. To cling to a supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation of something without evidence undermines the very thing that got us interested in that something to start with: we wanted to know. And wanting to know is pointless unless we're willing to accept the answer we find, whatever it might be.
I find nothing beautiful about reports of UFO sightings or alien abductions or magical and supernatural happenings. There's no reason to believe that any of these things is real. They stand between us and the truth. They're the clouds obscuring the stars. (Metaphorically speaking, you know — clouds are actually very interesting.)
Those sky lanterns, though . . . they were beautiful, especially once I knew what I was looking at.

My favorite parts of this:‎
"...wanting to know is pointless unless we're willing to accept the answer we find, whatever it might be."
and
"...they were beautiful, especially once I knew what I was looking at."

There's something about "mystery" that is beautiful. Do you think there is something about the reveal that lessens the beauty?

Blind & Deaf

Yup. Good reminder.

Self-fulfilled Prophecy

As a non-topic preface: My sister recently pointed out how scary it can be to publicly share your ideas - whether writing a blog post, commenting on a blog post, or arguing on Facebook. She was referencing a post I had shared on Facebook by a fellow at Patheos named Bob whose recent post on Christianity as an Adult Activity got severely criticized in the comments section. Bob has a lot of readers. I do not. And sometimes I'm happy about that...

Okay. Here I go, sharing my ideas with the three or four of you. (grits teeth) I welcome your criticism...

I've been enjoying Anna Mardoll's re-read and criticisms of the Chronicles of Narnia so far. Admittedly, they've left a bit of my nostalgia in tatters, but that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes it's good to wake up and smell the coffee. At the end of each book, she watches the movies (BBC version and Walden/Disney/20th-Century-Fox version) and comments on those as well. Her most recent post was about Walden/Disney's adaption of Prince Caspian. You should read it! And especially the little links she has here and there to some pretty hilarious critiques of the movie.

There was one quote from the movie that she mentioned that stuck out to me, and it is a line spoken by Trumpkin after Peter expresses amazement that what looked to be a talking Bear simply wasn't:

"Get treated like a dumb animal long enough, that's what you become."

I'm pretty sure this line was not in the book, although there is a similar idea in The Last Battle. There, Ginger the Cat, having entered the stable and encountered the evil god Tash, and, running for his life, ceases to become a Talking Cat. And this is exactly what Aslan says might happen to the Talking Beasts way back at the Creation of Narnia, back in The Magician's Nephew, if they stop acting like Talking Beasts:

"Treat [the Dumb Beasts] gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so."

There's a pretty big difference between Lewis' concept of reversion to Dumb Beast's and Disney-Trumpkin's. Lewis stipulates that the onus is on the Talking Beasts to remain Talking Beasts, whereas Trumpkin puts the blame for the sad state of affairs squarely on the oppressors of the Talking Beasts - the ones who continue to treat them as Dumb so that they eventually act that way.

What's my point?

I think kids (and people in general, I guess, but especially kids) tend to become what they're told they are, even if they weren't that way in the beginning. It seems common knowledge that if you call your kids stupid, they just might behave that way. Tell them they're unworthy sinners long enough, that's what they become?

Is a person who has done stupid things Stupid?
Is a person who has stolen a Thief?
Is a person who has sinned a Sinner?

Be careful of applying labels to people because of single snapshots of their lives. They may just become the label.

Daniel Refuses to let Christians Judge Him

Daniel Fincke at Camels with Hammers recently posted what some of you might see as a fairly angry diatribe against Christian judgments regarding his deconversion. Hopefully, though, you can see why he would be angry at the constant and erroneous attempts to tell him what his motivations were for leaving the faith. I can identify with this anger, although I must clarify that I have only felt angry in this way with a small number of my Christian friends, family, and acquaintances. If you can't remember a discussion about this with me, you're probably in the clear... :)