Mulled Vine

I imagine meeting God at the end of time and asking him if it is OK for me to ask some questions that have been on my mind lately. I imagine Him nodding lovingly and patiently, seeing my confusion and my anger, and beginning:

“Go ahead.”

“So, it’s up or down from here on?”
“Yes, figuratively speaking.”
“And I’m going…?”
“Down.”
“Down?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“You didn’t wholly believe the Truth about me, about my Son, who is the only Way to me.”
“But I did believe!”
“Not enough.”
“How do you mean?”
“You were filled with doubt.”
“But that’s my nature!”
“That’s your sin nature.”
“But Thomas doubted, and he got a sign!”
“That was then. His sign should be your sign.”
“It’s not enough. There is too much uncertainty about your Truth.”
“I thought it was pretty clear.”
“You would say that. At the end of the day its only clear if people can find you.”
“People do.”
“Yes, but they also find lots of other Gods. What about them?”
“They are mistaken.”
“But sincere?”
“Sincerity is not enough.”
“Clearly not.”
“You deserve your punishment.”
“Yes, but so does everybody, including those who believe.”
“True.”
“So they are in because they interpreted the data differently?”
“Yes”
“Lucky them.”

So we decided to see how many people we could fit into a telephone booth – it was Jay’s idea, no surprises there; bloody lunatic is going to kill himself one day trying to see if death is bad as they say. It wasn’t so much that we wanted to break any records, more an excuse to get drunk afterwards and get up close to the girls without being slapped.

We decided that the largest people should go in first, something Anna was not too pleased about – she describes herself as buxom, which while true, is only part of a much bigger truth. Getting the first ten in was amusing enough, and apart from a few protests from the girls at being groped, it all went pretty well; the rest however were more trouble and by the time I clambered to the top and squeezed into the last available space, tempers were pretty high.
“Where’s the feckin’ photographer?” swore Jim, “I’m dying here.”
“I’ll call and see where he is,” said Juliette, “Anyone got 20p?”

So we decided to see how many people we could fit into a telephone booth – it was Jay’s idea, no surprises there; bloody lunatic is going to kill himself one day trying to see if death is bad as they say. It wasn’t so much that we wanted to break any records, more an excuse to get drunk afterwards and get up close to the girls without being slapped.

We decided that the largest people should go in first, something Anna was not too pleased about – she describes herself as buxom, which while true, is only part of a much bigger truth. Getting the first ten in was amusing enough, and apart from a few protests from the girls at being groped, it all went pretty well; the rest however were more trouble and by the time I clambered to the top and squeezed into the last available space, tempers were pretty high.
“Where’s the feckin’ photographer?” swore Jim, “I’m dying here.”
“I’ll call and see where he is,” said Juliette, “Anyone got 20p?”

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me for the path is narrow. In fact, just piss off and leave me alone.

2. Sex is like air. It’s not important unless you aren’t getting any.

3. No one is listening until you fart.

4. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.

5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

6. If you think nobody cares whether you’re alive or dead, try missing a couple of mortgage payments.

7. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

8. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

9. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

10. If you lend someone £20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it.

11. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

12. Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windscreen.

13. Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.

14. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and most of that comes from bad judgment.

15. A closed mouth gathers no foot..

16. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

17. Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.

18. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

19. We are born naked, wet and hungry, and get slapped on our bum … then things just get worse.

20. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

I have of late met a number of new bloggers through my Diary of an Old Fart blog, some really whacky, apparently non-Christian folk. And you know what? Its been like a breath of fresh air. We Believers get so entrenched in our pious, but oh so very encouraging talk of God and life and suffering and why it all totally makes sense, that we forget to lighten up and live a little.

Jesus was someone that people liked to be with, not some stuffy, self-righteous, truth wielding fake. Jesus was/is fully human, through and through.

I saw a list for wives here so thought I’d stand up for the men!

1. When you ask your man whether your bum looks big in your new dress, expect fear. He doesn’t know what to do. Lie and he is in trouble. Tell the truth and he is also in trouble. Its a lose-lose situation.

2. Husbands are not complicated. All they need are admiration, good food, and the occasional romp.

3. Husbands hate buying gifts. Give him a detailed, unambiguous list with fallback options. Whatever you do, don’t say “surprise me”. That’s just cruel.

4. Husbands love their families immensely and will die to protect them. Dishes on the other hand…

5. When a husband says his day was fine, then then its not because he doesn’t want to talk to you – its probably all he can remember.

6. Husbands are basically emotionally stupid and will miss everything but the most obvious sulks. Best to just come out and say what’s on your mind – he won’t get the hint.

7. Husbands don’t like to ask for directions. No point trying to analyse this or change us. Just go with it.

8. Husbands don’t turn cars around to go back. Forward is the only acceptable direction.

9. Husbands don’t enjoy chick flicks.

10. Husbands don’t do shopping. What is the point of browsing if there is no predetermined purchasing agenda??

At church tonight, an illustration. Three pots of boiling water: in the first a carrot, in the second an egg, in the third ground coffee. After half an hour the carrot is soft and mushy, the egg very hard, the coffee well brewed and fills the room with a glorious aroma.

The illustration is representative of how we react to tough times: we can become soppy and full of self pity, or we can become hard and cynical, or we can make something good of our situation.

Ok, so the analogy is naff, but the point being made good. If life chucks you a lemon, don’t cry, don’t become a sour puss … make lemonade.

I have thought a lot about suffering and God and how to reconcile the two, not always in the abstract. I have unfortunately not made lemonade most of the time, but I have learned a fundamental truth: we cannot be refined without pain.

I have grown.

Granted kicking and screaming the whole way, but here and there some gold glimmers through the clay.

I’m reading Lee Strobel’s Case For Faith at the moment. I picked it up quite by “chance” in my Pastor’s library the other day as he was discussing football with my companion and I lost interest so looked at his library instead. It piqued my interest because I’ve read his other book Case For Christ which is one of the more satisfying books on Christian apologetics I’ve encountered.

I had gone off apologetics for a little while, mostly because I find that very often the discussions with atheists are too emotionally charged and end up being more abusive than truth seeking, and anyway I have enough to do just trying to be like Jesus in a practical sense. However, my recent encounter with Matt, who is now an atheist (of the less vehement sort) but used to be a believer, stirred things up a little.

So I thought I’d take a look at Hell as a gentle warmup.

The objection is simply stated: How can the concept of Hell be reconciled with a supposedly loving God?

In other words, if God is loving, how can he have created a place so awful as Hell and punish for eternity a finite number of sins? There are other related questions but I’ll focus on these for now.

An awful place?

Hell is usually imagined to be a place of fire and brimstone, full of vile, cackling demons with pitch forks torturing screaming victims. Some of this imagery is also in the New Testament, but I think it is fair to say that these are images, figures of speech, not necessarily a reflection of the underlying reality. For example, the term for Hell often used in the New Testament is Gehenna, which was the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, a place of fire, smoke, stench, filth and worms. Can you image the affect of this image on the jews of the day? Hell is also described as a place of darkness, which cannot be if its permanently lit up with flames.

So if it is not like this then what sort of place is it? Is it even a place? I don’t know, but what is clear is that it will be separated from God, both by His choice and by the choices of those who didn’t want Him in the first place – a realm of evil without any of His restraint, any of His love. God has to by nature maintain a separation between pure good and evil. How could an infinitely holy God tolerate the presence of evil? The reason that Hell is so bad is that it is all that God isn’t. But in many senses this is a self-made Hell. If you don’t want God, He grants you your wish. Does He like Hell? No, definitely not. Did He create it? Yes, but probably as a result of the fall, not the original creation which He declared was “good”. Hell is a sad but necessary consequence of Free Will.

As for those who are genuinely misguided in their beliefs I think there is enough circumstancial evidence in the Bible to grant that at worst their suffering will be diminished, but at best that God will grant mercy to the innocent.

Excessive?

Is eternity in Hell for a finite number of sins unjust? The argument usually presented here is as follows:

Punishment for wrong is just, so no problems there. Punishment for wrong against an infinitely good God is infinitely bad, so infinite punishment follows. This combined with the above view that Hell is more a place of our making than a place of active punishment, resolves things enough for me.

I’ll leave it there for now. The book is excellent and to be recommended if you want a more detailed (and vastly improved) treatment of this subject than I can offer here.

Have you ever considered how alien forgiveness is? From birth we are completely self-centred and will retaliate if injured. We train our children to be nice, to forgive, to turn the other cheek, and we don’t quite know what to do when they are bullied because advice like “give him a good kick in the nuts and he won’t bother you again” sometimes seems to make good sense. But we persist with the notion that it is better to forgive than to retaliate because that’s what Christians do, that’s what love is really about.

But it is still very unnatural to us.

Why even this morning I clattered around very loudly on purpose because my wife went to bed very late last night, and not quietly, and knowing full well that I have an early start and need all the beauty sleep I can get. I mean, really!?

Revenge is sweet, they say, and it is. Unfortunately, just like sweets, it has a rotting effect … on our souls.

So as you get ready for your day, and tie the belt of truth around your waist, and put the breastplate of righteousness, don’t forget to brush your revenge instinct with the toothbrush of forgiveness.

Epimenides of Knossos was a Cretan philospher who made the famous statement around 600 BC: “Cretans, always liars.” It is famous because it results in a paradox. Was he speaking the truth or not? If he was telling the truth, then as one of those Cretan liars he must have been lying. If he was lying, then as a liar he was telling the truth.

Ok, so what?

Paul tells Titus that the statement is true.

Even one of their own prophets has said, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. (Titus 1:12-13)