All posts by Richard

Hell

Annihilation (Part 3)

4 Comments


This is the eighth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

The image of God as a destroyer is hardly a popular one today. Personally, I think it is a much more Biblical idea than the image of God as one who tortures His enemies in hell for ever and ever. This makes God into an evil tyrant. Amnesty International does a tremendous job in opposing the use of torture in the world today. (They deserve our support for doing so.) But the torture of some African dictator or Middle East extremists would be nothing compared to the horror of a mass torture of billions of souls in hell, which lasts not for days or weeks, but for trillions of years and on into eternity. This view of God is, I believe, completely unbiblical. There is not a single instance where God commanded torture. Such forms of punishment are always evil and satanic. Crucifixion—one of the most ingenious torture devices—was the invention of the Romans, not a punishment devised by God. Christ endured the cross, but his suffering lasts for a few hours. The fires of hell would be greater torture still, and would last forever! God would not permit or tolerate the existence of such a place, since God always came to the rescue of the oppressed and the suffering.

We must be clear that we are not saying that God would never send anyone to hell because He is a God of love and will forgive everyone. This is simply not true, for God will judge those guilty of injustice or evil by destroying them. But, given that God’s judgement comes upon such nations for the suffering they inflicted on others, God is hardly likely to inflict such suffering Himself.

The doctrine of hell is often based on the idea of God’s justice. This is understood to mean that because God is just He must punish sin. However, “justice” really means to act with righteousness. When we talk about social justice we think of concern for the poor, the widows and orphans. Specifically to do justice is to side with the oppressed and the victims and to alleviate suffering and remove oppression.

This, indeed, is central to the Biblical doctrine of the justice of God. While God does indeed punish sin, God’s justice does not cause him to inflict suffering but to alleviate it. God is concerned with justice—that those who cause suffering and affliction are opposed and overthrown.

It would therefore be contrary to God’s character to become One who causes affliction and suffering. Yet the usual view of hell is a place of eternal torment. However, just as God sided with the Hebrews who were suffering in Egypt, and as He sided with the outcasts in first century Jewish society, so too the character of God would demand that He side with those who suffered in hell, if indeed it was a place of endless torment and suffering.

One evangelical writer says:

Everlasting torment is intolerable from a moral point of view because it makes God into a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for victims whom he does not even allow to die. (Pinnock [1990] 253) How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards, and by the gospel itself. (Pinnock [1990] 246-47)

Proverbs

Proverbs 9:7-12

1 Comment

Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults;
  whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse.
Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you;
  rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still;
  teach the righteous and they will add to their learning.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
  and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For through wisdom your days will be many,
  and years will be added to your life.
If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you;
  if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. (NIV)

John

Greater love hath no man than this

11 Comments

This post pays tribute to Lawrence Oates (17 March 1880 – 16 March 1912), “a brave man and an English gentleman.” Oates was a war veteran and Antarctic explorer, and a member of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole.

100 years ago today, he walked from a tent into a blizzard, with the immortal words, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Aware that his ill health was compromising his three companions’ chances of survival, he chose certain death.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (KJV)

Censorship

40 years of bullshit

3 Comments

I heard that feminist Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, is in town, where she’s a guest at Readers and Writers Week.

Germaine Greer glitter-bombed by Queer Avengers

Members of Wellington protest group the Queer Avengers have rained glitter down on visiting feminist writer Germaine Greer, who has a history of outing and denouncing transwomen, even describing them as “ghastly parodies” of womanhood.

Glitter-bombing has gained prominence internationally as a way to highlight transphobia and queerphobia, particulalry in the US where a number of politicians have been targeted.

“Transphobic feminism is so 20th Century,” says Stacey of the Queer Avengers. “It wasn’t okay then and it’s not okay now. Women’s liberation must mean the right to refuse imposed gender roles, to fight for diverse gender expression.”

The Queer Avengers also handed out leaflets stating “transphobia is bullshit,” pointing to the fact Greer was arrested in 1972 while touring New Zealand, for saying the word “bullshit.”

Bullshit and glitter-bombs! Greer was not the first to be arrested in New Zealand for using the word ‘bullshit’. In 1971, Tim Shadbolt published his autobiography Bullshit and Jellybeans, supposedly written while incarcerated in prison cells in Mt Eden and Mt Crawford. The title alludes to the charge which led to his arrest.

Looking back, it all seems quaintly absurd. Today I can say, with impunity, “Censorship is BULLSHIT!” I can, but I won’t. Because the adjective ‘bullshit’ is too good for censorship. I’ll cut to the chase. Censorship is EVIL. And, from my point of view as a free thinker, it is one of the worst of evils.

Yes, Christians have been major culprits in the long history of censorship. Yes, that’s embarrassing. Index Librorum Prohibitorum? I deplore the very idea. Nihil obstat! Imprimi potest! Imprimatur! We live in an age of bullshit and when we encounter it we should call it what it is.

Consider the Ninth Commandment.

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Consider censorship.

Thou shalt not bear true witness.

Now combine the two.

LOL. I just Googled “thou shalt drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up” and top in the list of search results was Uncyclopedia’s entry on Feminism. Uncyclopedia says

Most men hate feministic bull shit and wish Germaine Greer would drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up.

I wish that Germaine Greer would say whatever she wants to say. I don’t have to listen to her transphobic feministic bullshit.

Apartheid, Easy Listening, Freedom, Slavery

Niggaz With Attitude

Leave a comment

Further excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

Apartheid, Freedom, Paul, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson

The Negro Is Your Brother

3 Comments

Letter from Birmingham Jail was penned by Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1963. It was a response to an open letter by fellow clergymen critical of King’s participation in civil rights demonstrations.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

The letter is long, but here are some excerpts. Click here to read the letter in its entirety.

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.
I [am] compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.
We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

[T]ime itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.

I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?

I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Hell, Keep it Metal!, Nile

Annihilation of the Wicked

Leave a comment

This is the title track from Nile’s fourth album, Annihilation of the Wicked. The lyrics are based on the Amduat, an Ancient Egyptian funerary text which dates to around the middle of the second millennium BC. The English translation by Yakov Rabinovich is titled The Book of What’s in Hell.

What’s in hell, according to the Ancient Egyptians?

Seker
Ancient and Dead
Primeval Master of the World Below

In Thick Darkness
Amid Violent Tempests of Unendurable Cacophony
His Serpents Make Offerings unto His Image and Live upon Their Own Fire
His Servants
Hideous Reptiles of Terrifying Aspect
Whose Work is Nothing Less than the Annihilation of the Wicked
Consume the Bodies of the Damned by Flames of Liquid Fire They Emit from Their Mouths

On Their Blocks
They Cut into Pieces the Flesh of the Dead
Singing Hymns of Torture and Mutilation to Their Master
Accompanied by the Wailings and Anguish of the Damned
They Wreak Destruction upon the Wicked

Hell

Annihilation (Part 2)

7 Comments


This is the seventh in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

Also speaking of a consuming fire on Edom, Isaiah says:

The streams of Edom will come filled with burning pitch, and the ground will be covered with fire. This judgement on Edom will never end; the smoke of its burning will rise forever. The land will lie deserted from generation to generation. No one will live there any more. (Is 34.9-10)

These verses use language similar to what we are used to thinking about hell and present the image of eternal fire. Yet the Edomites will not burn forever and forever. The Edomites will not live in eternal torment—they have all been destroyed (no one lives there any more). God says:

My sword… will fall on Edom, the nation I have completely destroyed… He will make a mighty slaughter in Edom. The strongest will die—veterans and young men, too. (Isaiah 34.4, 6-7)

Malachi 4.1 also uses the image of the fire of God’s judgement:

“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evil-doer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left.”

Once again, the point is not that the evil-doers are tortured or afflicted by fire, but that they are consumed by fire. That which is thrown into this fire is burned up so that “not a root or a branch” is left. Similarly, hell may be an eternal fire, but it is a consuming fire. Those thrown into it will be “completely destroyed,” they will all “perish,” “not a root or a branch will be left,” they will “disappear from history as though they had never existed,” “there will be no survivors” and “no one will live there any more.”

Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities annihilated by God with “fire and brimstone” (Gen 19.24). According to Jude those who were destroyed “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). Yet the inhabitants of the cities were not eternally tormented, and the fire is not still burning. Rather they were overthrown in a moment (Lam 4.6) and turned to ashes (2 Pet 2.6). The picture of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of lifeless waste: “nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing in it” (Dt 29.23). Again, the point is that God annihilates the wicked.

Revelation uses similar imagery to describe the destruction of “Babylon”:

“The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.” (Rev 19.3)

However we understand this “Babylon,” as a literal city (Rome) or a symbolic image of false religion, the image of this eternal fire is one of complete destruction.

This tells us how God deals with evil and injustice: it is to completely destroy it. God destroyed the Edomites because they were guilty of social injustice, and wiped them out as a nation, until not a single person survived. As a way of describing that judgement, God speaks of “burning pitch” and “ground covered with fire” and says that His judgement “will never end” and that “the smoke of its burning will rise forever.” This means that the judgement is final and that the extinction of the Edomites is eternal.

If we compare this to descriptions of hell, we may suggest not that souls will live in eternal torment, but that the wicked will be extinguished, and that this punishment—the punishment of extinction—will be eternal.

The Psalmist says that the wicked will be destroyed:

The wicked will perish…
they will vanish—vanish like smoke! (Ps 37.20)

God “destroys the wicked” (Ps 9.5), “all evildoers… will be forever destroyed” (Ps 92.7). However “forever destroyed” is something different from “forever punished.” The Bible declares that the wicked will be destroyed and that this will be an enduring and eternal fate. Paul says that the wicked “will be punished with everlasting destruction (2 Thess 1.9). This does not mean that they will endure everlasting torment—but rather that they will be destroyed and that they will be eternally non-existent. To return to the prophecy against Edom, this “judgement on Edom will never end; the smoke of its burning will rise forever,” yet the point is that the Edomites will be eternally non-existent: “No one will live there any more.”

I find it difficult to believe that the Edomites destroyed over two thousand years ago are still being punished in hell. They received their punishment—they were destroyed—and, having been destroyed, no longer exist.

 

Censorship, James, Keep it Metal!, Metallica, New Testament

James 3:1-10

Leave a comment

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. (NIV)

Despised Icon, Freedom, Keep it Metal!

Furtive Friday

Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Since 17 November 2010, to be exact. (You think I have a memory like an elephant? You should see my database.)

I dedicate this to a frequently furtive fellow freedom-fighter and friend. Why frequently furtive? Because, when you’re taking on the faceless forces of the grey ones, shining a light, Christ-like, in dark places where scuttling Statists sleeplessly scheme to grind our God-given rights into the barren dirt of despotism, anonymity is never a bad idea. (My friend is also no stranger to alliteration.)

This is one of my favourite tracks by legendary Canadian deathcore band Despised Icon. Did I already mention that Despised Icon is the best thing since Slayer? I did.

I expect my friend won’t appreciate the music much, although the anguish in the vocals matches the often anguished tone of his blog posts. But it is the accompanying video which reminds me of him. The man in the video is being pursued. Pursued by whom or by what? By person or persons, entity or entities, unknown. But the IRD is a pretty good guess. Although I suppose it could be his own personal demons. Maybe even the Big G? Well, how does it all end? In victory or submission? Or both? With an enigmatic smile.