Down by the Sally Gardens

Blind Mary

If ultimate bliss is profound, permanent communion then hell is permanent exclusion.  Again in “The Lonely American,” the authors explore the childhood terror that every human person has experienced at some level: being left out by the group. But what we’re finding is that the fear of exclusion never really goes away, in fact it is behind and informs much of the extraordinary complexity of social interactions, especially in small groups.  A great deal of our brain’s neocortex is dedicated to the exceptionally complicated task of deciphering the myriad ways in which another person’s face is reacting to ours as we speak. (This critical function, incidentally, is thwarted when face to face interactions are supplanted by other means of communication) “Do you get me? Am I accepted by you? Are we understanding each other?”  Humans made it off the African plains because of our ability to unite together in small, tightly knit bands, so the reward for growing in social intelligence is survival and acceptance by the group while the cost of refusing to do so is, ultimately, death alone. The mere thought is deeply troubling.

There is a Gospel passage which talks about heaven as permanent communion and hell as permanent exclusion. It is Luke 13.22-35. “The door will be shut.”  The finality of those words bring either comfort, uncertainty or disbelief, depending on the person.  It is passages like this which seal the deal for many.  “I don’t believe in a God that would do that to others,” as though it is God’s choice instead of theirs. God’s choice is to let us know ahead of time.  Our choice is to accept, ignore, or construct a kinder, gentler version of God in our minds – one who will let us pursue whatever life we want on earth and then reward us for it at the end.  That would be quite a sweet deal if it weren’t pure fantasy.  I’m sure children would like that kind of deal from their parents.  (Isn’t it interesting that the deal we’d like from God is not one we view as healthy for our children?)  Or perhaps the over-used image of souls baking in the flames while being stuck with forks has become so comical as to suggest there isn’t even the possibility of something other than heaven. But if the promise of bliss through union is so sweetly compelling there has to exist an alternative, in fact our free will demands it.  Permanent communion or eternal dissolution.

Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near;

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel justice layette on, and mercy blows the coals;

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls;

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

-Robert Southwell (1561-1595)

]]> http://marklerch.com/blog/archives/398/feed 0 http://marklerch.com/blog/archives/394 http://marklerch.com/blog/archives/394#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:44:59 +0000 admin http://marklerch.com/blog/?p=394 Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,

And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;

Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might

To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be,

Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,

That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide

In this small course which birth draws out to death;

And think how evil becometh him to slide

Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see;

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

The most poignant passage in the book was a quote from the playwright Richard Foreman. “I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality – a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. But now I see within us all the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’ As we are drained of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance we risk turning into pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”

Any time one considers the present in the light of the past one risks the shouts of nostalgia! as though the mere mention of how things once were is akin to a hypocritical jaunt down a younger years lane. But consider your own situation. Are your relationships becoming deeper and more meaningful as the years go by (as is natural), or are they becoming ever more superficial, and your interactions with others more disconnected? Do you power down your cell phone for a movie but leave it on during dinner with real people? Are you ever more easily distracted? Can you sit still in a room by yourself with no external distractions for more than a few minutes or do you start feeling anxious? As you mature, are you building an ever deeper inner life or do you feel alienated from yourself? In short, are you becoming a cathedral or a pancake?

This idea of the dilution of inequality has parallels in contemporary Christian thought as well. After all, everyone knows that “God’s sun shines on the just and the unjust.” What is the point, then, of diligence? The problem lies in the confusion of reception and responsibility. The parable of the talents clears it up: all receive in differing amounts and all are responsible according to what was received (and, it should be noted for those who have an inclination to anxiety stemming from performance expectation, what is given is strictly according to the abilities of the receiver – we are not responsible for what we have not received. Remembering this, the mandate to not judge another becomes easier).

When Jesus invited the Samaritan woman to seek his “life giving water,” she responded enthusiastically – “Please give it!” He then invited her to return to the well with her husband, knowing that she had none currently and the man she was living with was not her husband. One of many messages here is this: deeper union with the divine, and ultimately eternal salvation, implies responsibility and repentance on our part. When the ten lepers who asked for healing in Luke 17 received it, they went off rejoicing. Only one returned to give praise to God – a foreigner. Jesus rewards the man with a spiritual healing of faith exceeding the physical miracle. There are temporal graces and eternal graces, and some of them presuppose action on our part.

We could stop here if we believed divine munificence lasted straight through death and into eternity. And stop we will if we have constructed an idea of god in our mind, contrasted with that given in revelation history (thus relieving mankind of the burden of the subjective ideas of billions of well meaning souls) . But for those who are interested in the external reality of what will face them after this prologue of life on earth, a continued reading is in order. The giver of the talents seeks a reckoning. Why do we Christians tend to skip over these less savory parts of revelation? Perhaps it is just too hard to reconcile our inner idea of an infinitely loving God with the God who said he would kick out of his banquet those who did not come prepared, that is, all those who came because they assumed the King rewarded all, regardless of personal behavior. On this point, if God is to be believed, some will be terribly, dreadfully, wrong.

We can look to revelation itself for an explanation of this mystery of why we expect all good to come to us now and after death, regardless of personal comportment. For one thing, we are commanded to take an entire day each week for the express purpose of remembering who we are, where we came from, and our ultimate destiny. (Deuteronomy 5.15) This precept to rest and recollect is essential to the Christian, who, like the Israelites being settled in the promised land, are continually warned by God that the customs and ideas of the indigenous people will rub off on them. Without frequent recollection we won’t have a chance to hear in our hearts God’s constant warning: “The pleasures, riches and worries of life drown out my word” (Luke 8.14) and “What I say to you I say to all – Stay awake!” (Mark 13)  In large part we have not stayed alert and we have let pleasures and temporal distractions displace our faith. We have transformed the fourth commandment into a mandate to seek amusements, pleasures and entertainment before returning once again to our workaday world. To be frank, we simply don’t like being told what to do. This hardness of heart extends back to our earliest ancestors in the faith.

Once we hear this word of warning, however, we are responsible for it. On the last day, it will be this word which rises up to condemn the one who heard but refused to act. (John 12.48) Some will get to stay at the banquet, others will be kicked out. Who those will be depends entirely upon our faith and obedience. (John 3.36)