Skip to main content

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.




.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more