Heaven, Hell
and How to Get There
So there I
am lying on my back on the operating table waiting for them to put in a new
pacemaker, when I hear one attendant say to the other…… “do you have the turkey
baster”?.............and although my tongue doesn’t work, I’m thinking, “O my God, they’ve got the wrong patient!”
Then I hear
one guy say “OK, turn off the old pacemaker”…….I really don’t feel anything
until I realize this old damaged heart of mine has gotten a little slower. 60
beats a minute…..then 50….then 40….30……and I begin to wonder if that is how it
will end? Not so much with a bang or a whimper, but rather winding down like an
old clock whose mainspring is gone.
Then I wake
up with a new pacemaker beating 60 times a minute and my smiling wife saying
“See that wasn’t so bad. Think of all
those folks going through heart transplants “. I have too many tubes and cords wrapped
around me to be able reach her throat and strangle her so I say, “aren’t we
blessed.”
But I start
to think a little more about life……...and death. Not ever a question of If…..
but when.
I remember
as a young boy being told St. Peter would meet me at the gate to heaven. There I would be at the end of that long line
and Pete would come up and say “What’s your name BOY!!” I always thought of Peter as some big bellied
Arkansas sheriff carrying that big Ticket Book of Life around with him.
Pete says : I asked what is your name boy”
I answer: John P. Middleton
Pete looks
down at the book searching and then says,
“ HO, HO, Ho, Ho, you’re one of
them BARGAIN people aren’t you.
I say, Bargain people?
Pete
says: Yeah you made a bargain with God……..you
said “I can’t keep ALL your commandments so I’ll just keep SOME of
them….
I say, uh Peter I’ve lived a good life…..
Pete says,
The book records that you said I’m not gonna murder anyone ……………and after age
13 or so I’ll keep the thievery down to a minimum………. And the coveting and lust……………well son, this
coveting and lust business……..
I say, “Now
wait a minute Pete”
Pete says:
Oh son I’m only on page two………your livin’ in that house and we got people
living under a bridge…..we got people starvin’ and look at you boy….you ever
hear of gluttony?.......Are you sure you are in the right line??
Are you sure
you are in the right line? …………………. The right line.
As if, as
the church taught me, my personal behavior resulted in a ticket to heaven…… or
hell. As if my motivation for being good and loving was some sort of unknown
prize in the afterlife…………. Even if I make it to heaven, It is gonna take me
about twenty years to learn to play that damned harp……..then what will I do?
Is that harp
the belief Christians held in the First Century before Christianity, the
religion, …….. almost exclusively developed by men…..decided we needed a Canon,
a Bible, a hierarchy, an earthly boss,
like a Pope………a church building and some land……. some words like….. heretic…or
non-believer…….maybe a silver chalice or two and gold trimming….….lots of gold
trimming……and great… big… buildings.
In the first
century, heaven and hell were not the object or the “deal” in the way we think about them today. The Romans said
about first century Christians. “what is the matter with these people, they
really Love each other”. The Romans
could never understand the first century Christians. They were A THREAT…… due to their
non-violence and their demonstrative love for one another.
That is what First Century Christianity was all about. Loving one another regardless of our beliefs
or faiths or nationalities, or color, or religions…….. recognizing that we all
had the same goals and needs regardless of who we were or where we came from or
what we believed. The first 100 years or so of Christianity had no New
Testament, no specific hierarchy, no canon except the Old Testament, and no
heaven or hell as we understand it. Because heaven or hell wasn’t IN the Old
Testament………..Belief-----Faith----Truth----- was all about loving one another.
Of course, what that first century did have were all sorts of letters and gospels floating
around, all sorts of people telling you how to be spiritual, all sorts of
rumors of what God wants of us, no consensus, except the remembered message of
Jesus to “love one another”. And that “upon this commandment hangs all the
Law and the prophets.”………….. The church was confused………………. And so it did exactly
as men do when confused, they created a structure. They created a structure
that told you not what to do, as Jesus had, but what to BELIEVE. How to toe the
line, join the crowd, embrace the creed, and call yourself a this or a that.
Fellows like Tertulian and Origen, names you probably have
never heard of, said there is too much suspected misinformation floating
around out there. We need to decide what
it is that Christians BELIEVE. What
belief is acceptable and what is not. We don’t care if you act in Love, we only
care what it is that you……. Believe!!!!!
In 312 AD Constantine, the so-called Divine Emperor of Rome,
made Christianity the official state religion…..largely for political
purposes…….He said, under his breath, “let’s gerrymander the voting areas to
include that bloc of Christian voters who can help me control the empire.”
By 325 AD, at the Council of Nicea, the die was cast…..only
unmarried men in the pulpit….an initial list
of the official books of the bible….deacons, bishops, elders, all the
structure of beliefs and hierarchies of what was to become Christianity for the
next 1,700 years.
The religion of Christianity changed Christ’s message of love
to a human message about what we need to BELIEVE ……in order to be saved.
And so, our
contemporary Christian gospel is primarily INFORMATION ON HOW TO GO TO HEAVEN
AFTER YOU DIE through belief structures.
with a very
large footnote about increasing your personal happiness and success through
God.
with a
smaller footnote about character development
with an even
smaller footnote about spiritual experience
and a miniscule
footnote about social/global transformation through love.
How did the
Christian church get it so wrong?........so…….. backwards?
C. S. Lewis
said “The doctrine of Hell is the worst thing that ever happened to
Christianity”.
There is a
long list of people, happenings and events, that contributed to the confusion.
Augustine, who formulated the doctrines of the fall from grace, hell’s
structure, in the fourth century. Dante
and Milton in the 13th and 17th centuries, who created a
view of punishment and hell that was structured and terrifying. The third, Abrahamic religion, Islam, boasts
a view of Hell that is beyond frightening and ghoulishly terrifying. Chiefly for non-believers. It is all about belief, the acceptance of
Allah and the presence of an active SATAN omnipresent in our lives actively
tempting us toward the dark side with an ultimate cost of either heaven or
hell.
Heaven and
Hell simply wasn’t Christ’s message. His
message was about what we do NOW!
His message
was about living, not dying. We were told to pick up the man lying bleeding by
the side of the road as The Good Samaritan did, not because of any reward, but
because it was the right thing to do. The priest passed him by. The good
citizen passed him by. All of humanity might pass him by unless you stop to help him. And what reward do you get? It’s going to
cost you a couple night’s lodging for him and the doctor’s bill’s, and the
time…….let’s not forget the time you have to invest. And you may never see him again. He might not even say thanks……………..and he’s
smelly and dirty and no value to you……..You may even be a little afraid of
him………better walk on by…………you have better things to do.
At its root
core Christ’s message was about The Kingdom of God, the thing he most talked
about. The thing he most emphasized. He even talked about it resulting in a
“new” earth.
But
humankind heard two different Gospels.
The Gospel
the churches heard …….The Gospel of saving individual souls from hell, and
abandoning earth to Satan and destruction.
Or the
Gospel of Jesus ……about saving earth Including individuals and creatures from
the results of human sin and greed through the action of Love.
The
church…………….. and some of our current politicians. I might add……God save us
all….……….. bought the former Gospel……………. The one where in the end Christ
returns……………….. with a flaming Chariot preceeded by a host of divine warriors,
and he brandishes the flaming sword
of justice on all of us and exacts his full ……and final….. divine
…..retribution!!!
Not my
God. Not my Jesus.
My God is a
God of mercy ……not justice. Because, If
we all get what we deserve we
are in serious trouble.
Mercy, not
Law……Mercy, not wealth……Mercy, not anger…..Mercy, not position or power or fame
or influence or riches……Mercy………Love.
I don’t even
have to be a Christian to understand what Jesus was teaching…..what do the
Humanists think about a real world where no one goes hungry…..no one is in
despair because there is always new hope.…..a world where children are
protected, not abandoned. Where there is no murder, no war, no suffering, no
division, no hatred……..no need…….just love.
Pie in the
sky….Pollyanna alive and well…….pipe dreams……Some churches would have us
believe that.
Just leave
the bleeding man there. Don’t get
involved. I got mine now you can go get
yours……get a job…………….don’t dwell in the kingdom of God, choose an abundant
life for yourself instead.
The
Humanists heard Jesus message. The dignity and worth of each individual…and, of
course, each and every humanist practices love all the time, on a daily
basis……..in spades………………....….don’t they?
No one can
know about heaven or hell. Is it
there? What does it look like? Tell
me!!….I need to know…………………………….….But I can’t know….can I……..what is the fate of good or wicked
people?
With the
rise of the cult of Osiris during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt followers of the
pharaohs were given the prospect of eternal life, with moral fitness becoming
the dominant factor in determining a person's suitability. At death a person
faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges. If they had led a life
in conformance with the precepts of the Goddess Maat, who represented truth and
right living, the person was welcomed into the Two Fields. If found guilty, the
person was thrown to a "devourer" and was condemned to a lake of
fire.
Zoroastrianism
has historically suggested several possible fates for the wicked, including
annihilation, purgation in molten metal, and eternal punishment, all of which
have standing in third century Christian writings.
In classic
Greek mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, (Greek “deep
place)” . It is a gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and
suffering that resides within Hades (the entire underworld) with Tartarus being
the hellish component.
So
Christianity had a rich pre-tradition of Hell bound bad guys
What did
Christ mean when he said to the good thief, “this day thou shalt be with me in
paradise.” Where and what is this paradise? Did the writers of the gospel
conjure up the idea of Hell from the old Jewish concept of Sheol a holding
place? …….Or the Greeks….or the Zoroastrians?
Perhaps my
favorite definition is from the modern existentialist author Jean Paul Sarte
who postulated "Hell is other people".
Hell is also
spoken of in the Bible, but its nature is even more sketchy. When Jesus described the destiny of sinners
who refused to change their ways, he compared it to Gehenna, which was a
rubbish dump outside Jerusalem. People
in wretched poverty picked their way through it to find scraps, and fires
burned 24 hours a day raising a horrific stench.
Church
leaders of medieval times took Jesus’ picture of wretchedness literally. Dante, then Milton, foresaw a judgment after
death in which the wicked were thrown by devils into flames or some misery,
while obedient churchgoers were lifted by angels into bliss. Pictures of this divide can still be seen on
the walls of ancient churches.
Today, those
who seek to understand what the Bible means when it describes Hell are
–hopefully, more likely to consider the complete misery of being separated from
God…….That would be a spiritual desolation equivalent to the woe that Jesus
could see in Gehenna. What it seems……. to modern progressive theologians…….. is
that Jesus meant being cast into the outer darkness….alone, end of existence,
no future, no hope….that is hell in modern theology. Take a look at the book
“The Fire that Consumes” by Edward Fudge if you really want to understand
biblical Hell.
But
heaven???? THE IDEAS ARE BOUNDLESS. Which
is right….who knows?........ Is it a
place? Who knows. Does it even
exist?.....who knows…….we have no control over it or our fate after death.
Wherever, whatever it is……. the faculty of reason can’t comprehend it. We are then left with Awe….Mystery…..Reverence……Wonder and all those other words that so poorly
describe…….. FAITH.
Is it true
that good little boys and girls go to heaven and bad little boys and girls go
to hell?....... I don’t know, but I choose through faith to believe in Heaven,
in Peace, in Bliss… and in Shantih…the peace which passeth understanding.
“GOD KNOWS
what the public will think,” wrote Charles Darwin to fellow naturalist Alfred
Russel Wallace in November 1859. Darwin’s celebrated work On the Origin of
Species had just been published, and he was resigned to the fact that his case
for biological evolution would be controversial, and his world of only the
strong surviving while the weak are………….. dinner…a bit ……..dismaying.
I can’t tell
you about heaven. I can tell you a
little about My Faith or why I believe what I believe. I’m not sure whether it will be as good as
what you believe or why. But I can tell
you what kind of a world we would have if everyone were to practice compassion
and mercy, ecology and love. OH!...what
a place that would be ……..Like heaven on earth. Like Jesus Kingdom of God on
earth……like “thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
Our earthly
goal ought not be some amorphous reward in heaven…..but what can I do today to
improve the lives of others. To create a heaven on earth.
You have the
right to decide.
You can wish
for a better world….. a heaven on earth….or not.
You can
learn more about compassion…….or not
You can
learn TO HAVE COMPASSION FOR YOURSELF, AND EMPATHY FOR OTHERS AND MINDFULNESS
……….or not.
John P. Middleton
Feb 2013
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