My friend, Deb Sampson, has been collecting a set of responses from all over the Diocese of Colorado to an adaptation of 50 questions from Christian Piatt's book, Banned Questions About the Bible, to be used for a class at her church, Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. I was honored to be asked to participate, and here are the questions that I chose to answer:
#6 -- If people have to be
Christians to go to heaven, what happens to all of the people born before Jesus
or who never hear about his ministry?
I think of heaven as being united with God, and I think of
God’s time as being without beginning or end (God, the alpha and the omega).
Jesus IS God. God is Love. Knowing Jesus-God is knowing Love. Knowing the
stories of Jesus-God’s ministry is just details. So, in God’s time, in
eternity, people in their soul form have an endless opportunity to choose to be
united with God. God never gives up on his beloved Creation, which includes all
people.
#15 -- How can God be
all-loving yet allow people to be thrown into hell?
I think of hell as being separated from God, from Love. God
created people in God’s image, with free will. Love is an act of will. People
choose to love or choose not to love. God is Love, and God-Love allows people
to exercise their free will.
#19 -- Where are all the
miracles today? If they were so prevalent in biblical times, why don't any
happen today? Or do they and we just don't notice?
Miracles are all around us, everyday, everywhere, but we
have succumbed to the distractions of our egos and our lives. Humankind is
narcissistic. We tend to see the world only through the lens of our own selves.
That narcissistic lens is like a permanent cataract that distorts our vision.
As with cataracts, our vision isn’t good enough to see all the small daily
miracles all around us. We only notice miracles if they’re huge enough to drop
on our houses and heads and shake our world.
Think about the joy that a child, a young innocent, takes in
simple things like blowing bubbles or mushing up a sweet, ripe fruit. Think
about the occasions when you’ve stopped suddenly and noticed the fragrance of
blossoming honeysuckle or the smell of wet grass after a rainfall. When we can
step outside of ourselves into a stiller, simpler moment, we then have the eyes
to encompass the miracles, because we see with an inner vision as well as
through our physical eyes, and that inner vision is connected to God, the
source of all miracles. Miracles are messages from God, invitations to come and
see “my Creation and that it is very good.”
#23 -- Hell, Sheol, Hades,
Gehenna, and Tartarus are all labeled as “hell” by one or more Christian
groups. Are they really the same? Are they all places of fiery torment? Are
such things to be taken literally, metaphorically, or both?
All of those names for hell refer to the same thing, which
is separation from God who is Love, separation from Love. Separation from Love
is experienced and embodied by each person differently, in different
intensities at different times, triggered by different external life events of
all sorts – from loss of a parent to loss of a partner to loss of a job or loss
of an ideal, etc.
Because love is an act of will, separation from Love carries
with it the added pain of self-hurt, of self-inflicted injury that our soul
recognizes as such even when our conscious mind believes that the hurt is
other-imposed. It is that self-denial of our willful withdrawal from Love that
is sinfulness manifest. And that sinfulness and self-denial imprison us in our
own individual hells.
Certainly there are instances of separation from Love that a
person can experience as torment so strong that it feels like one is being
consumed by an unquenchable fire, but there are also instances of separation
from Love that feel like a complete absence of feeling, a disembodiment of
self, a numbness that feels more like being frozen solid than like burning up.
You can call it a metaphorical feeling, that burning up or being frozen solid,
but the person experiencing it knows it as real and palpable and present, now.
In one of the reviews that I read about Piatt's book, the writer made the point that it's not necessarily the answers that matter, but that the conversation continues about these important, and perhaps occasionally, impertinent questions. I agree.
5 comments:
Love your responses to these questions. Equating the concept (or reality) of he'll to the absence of God or love makes so much sense. What could be worse?
I'm helping make grape pies this week with a parish that experiences miracles regularly. Nobody knows how they do what they do or where the money comes from but they undertake all sorts of impossible projects and usually accomplish more than they set out to do with an ASA of 25 or so. Their vicar believes and lives assuming that everything will work and it usually does. Of course it takes a lot of hard labor. The disciples had to work to take the food to those thousands and to collect the remains. As you said, miracles are all around us. We just don't recognize them if we see them at all.
Thanks, Mindie and Shel, for your comments.
I can't think of anything worse than being separated from Love.
Shel, your parish sounds delightful, and it also sounds like it's a community. When parishes grow larger, it becomes much more difficult to retain a sense of community. There is much more segmentation. I really miss that sense of community being in a larger church with Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) of around 165.
Can I get a signed copy? :-)
Christian Piatt
I wish it were "my" parish but it 70 miles away in the snow belt. I'm trying to replicate it in our parish but I don't have their vicar. She is my inspiration and guide however. Fortunately our priest likes her too.
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