Tag: hell

DEATH AND REBIRTH OF RELIGION

The emphasis on love as due to genes or neurochemical reactions

detracts from love as Omega – the final purpose and meaning

of life and the universe

 

Judy Cannato, author of Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons

from Black Holes/Supernovas/and Other Wonders of the Universe

found as she got to know the new sciences

of quantum mechanics and cosmology

they resonated more and more with her experience

of the Holy One –

she believes God’s vision/desire is unity

and this is what the new sciences tell us –

all things are already united –

and this needs to be the root of our own spirituality

 

in Fall/Redemption theology suffering and death

are the wages of sin

but in Creation Spirituality suffering

is due to the birth pangs of a constantly evolving universe

and death is a natural event –

a prelude to recycling and rebirth

 

traditionally, the Institutional Church made heaven and hell

into geographic locations – places in the universe

instead of what is within us and around us

but even someone as conservative as Pope John Paul II

believed heaven and hell

are primordially “states of consciousness” –

similarly, according to Simone Weil:

“God graciously invites all the damned into paradise

but for them paradise is hell”

 

since true religion is about consciousness

and the source of ultimate inner freedom

totalitarian systems feel obligated to attack it

but ironically they attack it with the same values

that religion holds such as communal/brotherly/sisterly love

which religion professed but failed at

 

but religion fails and is born again everywhere

– numerous Japanese Zen teachers criticize corrupt Buddhists

and thus invite non-Buddhists, Catholics in particular

(thanks to Thomas Merton, author of Zen and the Birds of Appetite)

to practice Zen – they felt Zen had a greater future in Catholicism

since it was dying in Japan.

THE EVOLUTION OF BELIEF

In 139 C.E. (Common Era), Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer,

developed a system of circles within circles

which became the primary astronomical model

for 1500 years!

 

for 15 centuries everyone believed

this was how the universe operated

but the accretion of more and more untested beliefs

along with increasingly sophisticated science/history/psychology

caused some Christians, desperately trying to keep up

to assert increasingly unbelievable things

like the existence of hell – a place of eternal torture –

what could anyone do in their brief lifespan to warrant that? –

this belief was the projection of our worst fear onto God

made God into an Absolute Demon/Monster

and created scepticism/atheism

 hell exists, but it is a God-forsaking mental state not a place

7 centuries before Teilhard de Chardin

St. Angela of Foligno saw the whole evolving creation as

a divine milieu – a universe pregnant with God – a heaven

 

in Fall/Redemption traditional spirituality

the quest is for perfection

and the goal is to keep the soul clean

but in Quantum Theology/Spirituality no perfection exists –

imperfection is integral to all nature –

and holiness is cosmic hospitality – welcoming all things –

and the goal is to keep the soul green/

evergreen/ever-growing

 

7 centuries before, and surprisingly like, Quantum Theology

Meister Eckhart’s writings on the soul

answered the fundamental philosophical/theological questions:

“who are we?/why do we exist?”

which supply the basic purpose/direction of our lives

 

no one but Meister Eckhart

according to Matthew Fox

so thoroughly integrated

biblical theology/spirituality/

prophecy/mysticism/

faith/reason/

art/life.

 

NOBLE HEART AND SOUL

Religious questions used to be “What do you believe?”

“What happens in the afterlife?”

Now they are “How is belief possible in our secular age?”

“Who do you believe?” that is “Who is your authority

on questions of religion?” – less and less it is

popes/priests/catechisms

and more and more it is

Google/friends/social media

 

but in medieval times, Bonaventure’s theological method

was based on spiritual searching – a quest for truth –

not ideological confirmation of my biases

but something far greater – something

that binds us together despite our differences

 

if Bonaventure were alive today

he would include eastern religions

in his quest for truth because

contrary to most peoples’ presuppositions/biases

the First Buddhist Precept is a celebration of life

a reverence for living life to the full

cultivating compassion and vowing

to never kill anything

 

whereas some secular people kill their own soul

although they have not died physically

they have died the “second death” mentioned in Revelation –

their soul has been lost and destroyed –

they have cast themselves into hell –

a hell of their own making

 

but in Buddhism the “noble heart,” the “bodhichitta”

is always present in us no matter how

selfish/depressed/fearful we are –

like an unblemished jewel the bodhichitta

can always be rediscovered

and heal us

 

similarly, according to Henri Nouwen

the soul can always be refound

in solitude –

the great furnace of transformation –

where constantly happens

a great struggle with the devil

and a great encounter with God.

THE POWER OF PENANCE

The major challenge to Immanuel Kant’s view of religion

as morality came from Friedrich Schleiermacher

the greatest theologian of the 19th century

who conceived of religion not as morality or belief

but as an immediate awareness of our absolute dependence

on God – religion is thus pre-moral and even pre-cognitive

and expressed everywhere in different ways

 

we are absolutely dependent on God

but in human relationships co-dependency is a betrayal

of wholeness because co-dependent people

have no personal center

 

whereas the enlightenment we seek already dwells within us as our center

like a mustard seed/treasure buried in a field/pearl of great price

 

when Jesus said “if you call another ‘fool’ you are in danger

of hellfire,” he did not mean “if you get angry, God will condemn you

to hell,” he meant that “unjustified and indulged anger

is hell” – you put yourself in hell and hell in your self

 

to break through into nondual consciousness

we need to overcome the domination of ego and reason

and forgive ourselves and reality

for being exactly what they are: a mixed bag

of goodness and darkness –

we are all simultaneously sinners and saints

 

even proto-saints like Thomas Merton

who never wanted to be a plastic saint

on the dashboard of someone’s car

finally realized after nine long years as a monk

that penance is pleasing to God

and “enables God to take undisturbed possession

of the soul” because in penance

your ego is reduced to nothing

 

unlike the Pharisee who thanked God “I am not

a sinner like that tax-collector” who at the back of the synagogue

beat his chest and cried out “Lord have mercy on me

a sinner” – Jesus said it was the latter not the former

who went home justified in God’s eyes – for penance tells you

“the old sinful self is not dead”

but absolution tells you

“God’s love is greater than the old self.”

GOD’S JUSTICE IS ETERNAL LOVE NOT ETERNAL PUNISHMENT

 You may find the idea that God is only pure love, not a mixture of love and wrath, revolutionary if you grew up as I did with an idea of God as an angry old man in the sky constantly watching us so he could punish us for our sins.

    Although I have grown beyond that image intellectually, the vestiges of it are still deeply planted in my brain and make it difficult for me to totally trust God. Even as an adult I used to think that, on the one hand God was purely loving, and yet on the other hand we had to maintain God’s “holiness,” by which we meant “hatred of sin,” and since sin has to be punished, God’s justice was always punitive and wrathful.

    But what if God’s justice is only restorative not punitive, and God is forever only pure love? What if, as the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr always says, “Jesus came not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God.”

    The best human being would do everything they could to fully understand and help others, not punish them. However, we live in a dualistic, tit-for-tat culture that divides people up into good and bad. The bad are your enemies and the culture tells us enemies are to be punished and destroyed.

    This punitive cultural attitude even infects our churches and warps our theology. Jesus taught that we should love our enemies, but many Christians do not believe that God does this, God condemns sinners to be tortured forever in hell.

    Jesus taught that we should forgive seventy times seven, that is, forever. But many Christians do not believe God does this, God sends people to eternal torment in hell.

    Why would someone as great as God, who has infinite power, knowledge, patience, kindness, love, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy choose to eternally destroy infinitely small, vulnerable creatures because of the stupid things they do, usually out of their own ignorance and brokenness? Doesn’t that make God infinitely petty, unloving judgmental and angry – qualities we don’t admire in any human being?

    Even in civil courtrooms, the length of the sentence must fit the crime – we don’t send people to lifelong imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread for their family because they are food insecure. Eternal punishment therefore does not make sense. What could we possibly do that would warrant, not just imprisonment but torture, and not just for a lifetime but forever? Forever is an awfully long time, particularly if you are being tortured! This idea makes God a monster who is eternally vengeful, something we admire in no one. This idea makes atheists not believers. Surely, God is far greater, not far lower, than the best human being?

    Maybe God’s holiness is God’s infinite and eternal love, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy? Maybe God’s holiness is like the story Jesus told about the father of the prodigal son who runs out to meet and embrace his son and celebrates his return, rather than punishing him for squandering his father’s fortune? Maybe God’s holiness is like Jesus who, when a woman is caught in adultery, rather than stoning her for her sin, as the elders wanted him to, says, “I don’t condemn you, go and sin no more.”

     I think the idea of hell as a place of eternal torture is a projection of our worst fears onto God and religious leaders used this to control people. It is easy to control people who are afraid. I also believe though that there is a hell, not as a place but a state of mind. We create our own hell or heaven on Earth by the choices we make. I suppose it would be possible to make eternally bad choices and so condemn yourself to eternal hell, but I don’t think God condemns us. Rather, God would eternally pursue us until we gave in to God’s eternal love.

    Of course, this brings up all the verses in the Bible about the wrath of God. There are good theological responses that give alternative ways of interpreting these verses, but I reserve my answers for another article. Suffice it to say for now, that the Bible is full of examples of God’s restorative not punitive justice. For now, let us merely consider and savor the idea that God’s holiness and justice are found in God’s eternal love not eternal wrath, that God is only loving not both loving and wrathful.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and author of God’s Ecstatic Love (Apocryphile Press, 2021). See www.brucetallman.com/books