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Uneasy with the Gods we Invent

The Rev. Mr. Rob Bell says that it would be cruel if God sent us to hell, even though we deserve it.   Mr. Bell does not think God is cruel, so he says that even after we die, we will get chances to repent, and sing in the choir.  


The belief that eternal damnation is a damnable idea is not much of a surprise. But if the choice is ours, and if God is righteous and powerful, things do not look good, unless perhaps God did not really mean what he is reported to have said, and then God is . . . well, not much of a god.  


Many years ago, one of my colleagues said that he was not sure about eternal damnation, either.  (It is offensive!)  I asked him if he believed in heaven.  He believed in heaven.  


It was not fair, but I asked him about several other things generally associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition:  angels, demons, Satan, heaven, miracles, healing prayers, eternal life, and so on.  (I have forgotten precisely the items or the order.)  He admitted that there were some items other than eternal damnation that he was not certain of.  But he firmly insisted on a number of others.  


During World War II (of all times!) a German theologian named Rudolf Bultmann worte a small book titled, "New Testament and Mythology".  He pointed out that the New Testament was permeated by a mythology of a three-storied universe, populated with angels and demons, healing and miracles, and all of that.  (The Rev. Mr. Bell is about seventy years behind the times.  You can get it on your Kindle.)  One of Professor Bultmann's friendly critics said that Bultmann was like a driver, charging down a road, bumping ideas aside until, at the last moment, he swerved aside in order not to hit God.  Bultmann hung on to the idea of God.  


I recall using a similar analogy with my colleague.  I suggested he was willing to lop off branches from his religious tree--hell here, angels there, and so on--and perhaps even cut the trunk down to the ground, but he insisted that the stump remain:  God.  


The problem is that the gods we invent are never better than the inventor.  We can say God is absolutely just, and absolutely wise, and absolutely powerful, and that we have free-will,  but when the logic of things work out, someone is going to hell.  


Mr. Bell is uneasy with the gods we invent.  He has good reason.  


Mythologies--three storied universes, Thor and Freia and Vidar, King Arthur and Camelot, Hobbits and Orcs and Elves--are ways of understanding the world; earlier ways.  


We have to deal with nuclear energy.  A Big Bang.  Almost unimaginable space and time.  Bacteria.  Paranoia.  War.  Our own cruelty.  Our own goodness.  Genes.   Impartial tectonic plate shifts and tsunamis.




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