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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Tuesday, September 24, 2019

love wins


“I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.”
                                                              Rob Bell
______________________________

“I hope they burn in hell”

I’ve hear it said
So, I suspect have you

We have this thing
Those of us raised in place nominally Christian
About heaven and hell

Hell is a big deal in many churches
It is huge part of the message

Turn or burn
Behave or burn

Be the way we tell you to be, or burn

Not for a moment
Not for a day
Or a year
But for all eternity

Hell is thus very useful
It is something that can be used to control
To manipulate
To Coerce

It is also very problematic
How do we hold fast to a concept of hell where most of the people who have every lived will be placed in eternal conscious torment by a God who, we say, is Love?

How do we have a faith is that about us finding our best self
Our most loving self
If a primary motivation for faith is not the desire to transform and reconcile the world,
but the desire to avoid punishment?

And what do we do about the fact that “hell” reveals such horrible things about us?

I hope he burns in hell!
I hope she gets what she deserves?

I wonder if Jesus ever said that?
I wonder if Jesus ever thought that?

I, sadly, have
Even though I am not sure what I believe happens to us after we die
(I tend to believe we came from the Sacred, and when we die we go back to the Sacred)

Even though I tend to believe that even after a person dies, whatever happens is about restoration and reconciliation

There is a part of me that doesn’t want those I feel are evil to “get off”
I suspect they don’t

But I suspect that whatever challenge and discomfort they face comes more from a new awareness of what they have done, and who they have been,
As they see themselves in the light of God’s perfect love
Than it does from God actively punishing them, terribly, for all eternity

But there is a side of me that wishes that those people I see killing our planet
Harming the vulnerable
Neglecting the poor
Oppressing others

Would “get it”
That the Sacred would treat them the way I think they deserve
Perhaps that God would treat them with the same disdain they treated others

But God is love
And God cannot be other than love
And to that end I think whatever God does
Is aimed at change, and recreation
At restoration and reconciliation

I think God never gives us
Even though, as Bell notes
The Sacred “gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.”

Perhaps it is true
That some will find themselves in the presence of the Sacred
And will be
And will stay
The same greed, angry, hateful people they have been on earth

Perhaps
And how that plays out I do not know
But I suspect being a person of hate in a world of love would be hell

Perhaps it is true that some will find themselves in the presence and go
“O my God!”
And see themselves for the first time
And in remove throw themselves into Love

I don’t know

But I do know this
There will be something next
And the Sacred will be there
And Love will be there
And Love wins

And I should be hoping for that
For every single person on this planet
Every
Single
One


2 comments:

  1. Indeed, it good to have faith that love wins and to hope this for all people. I like to consider what this means if I think of hell not so much as a punishment given to people when they die, but as something that could happen, or maybe does happen, on earth (I am thinking of some biblical descriptions of “salvation” that seem to say more about life on earth than about afterlife). In this case, part of having faith that love wins for all people is hoping that we can be agents of change making this happen on earth.

    If I may share a related song I recently recorded, I have a song titled Hope and Tears that is about faith, the Cherokee people and the Trail of Tears, racism, and hope that we can be the people of restoration and reconciliation – in other words, it is about the hope that love wins. The song is posted at https://www.forwardfaith.org/hope-and-tears/

    Thanks for the great blog. I am enjoying your poetic posts.

    Keith Sanford, Ph.D.

    (P.S., I found your blog because we both share blogs posted at the Progressive Christianity website.)

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