Heaven And Hell Live And Let Die Crack
Vida Hubbert
Oh eternity! If all the body of earth and sea were turned to sand, and all the air up to the starry heaven were nothing but sand, and a little bird should come every thousand years, and fetch away in her bill but the tenth part of a grain of all that heap of sand, what numberless years would be spent before that vast heap of sand would be fetched away!
After coming and going every thousand years, carrying away one of the smallest grains of the innumerable amount of sand, this hour glass would finally drain and the banished would be no closer to the end than when they first began. That word which should make the most apathetic among the unforgiven weep, the strongest sweat blood, the youngest curl into the fetal position, the oldest break into madness to hear its footsteps so near, shook me. Who can rightly fathom it? Forever.
Conditionalists (those who believe the wicked will eventually cease to be, based on the fact that the soul is not inherently immortal but becomes so as they meet certain conditions, and in particular through union with Christ) and annihilationists (those who believe the wicked will cease to be because, although the soul would have otherwise prolonged, God finally annihilates them in judgement) both believe that hell is not endless punishment for the wicked.
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As I navigate this very human experience, I am very grateful for understanding the nature of thought. It is clear to me that the more I think about these bumps the more I suffer. The bumps are neutral. It is my thinking in the form of judgment and resistance to them that makes having them painful for me. And probably the most troubling part is not feeling in control of them.
It is humbling to see how easily I can drop into the misunderstanding that real beauty is only skin deep and that what I look like means something. I know I am getting just a small taste of this, but I feel tremendous compassion for the pain and suffering this misunderstanding causes people and especially women. Finding the truth inside of me is what sets me free. Yes, I can probably get rid of or ameliorate the bumps on the outside, but the freedom is in knowing that my looks have no relationship to who I am on the inside.
The true identity we each have is far more magnificent and beautiful than anything our looks can convey. I am grateful for the bumps on my face helping me to remember this and to see it in a deeper way. I know I am not defined by my looks, my bank account, my relationships, or my achievements. My true nature cannot be boxed in by labels, not even the good ones.
My reminder to you is to remember the value of who you are is beyond measure. The feeling of your true nature will remind you of this. It is the feeling you experience when you drop out of your thoughts and into the present moment. It is the experience of peace that overtakes you for no good reason. It is beyond labels of all kinds. And in that state of mind, you know you are enough. The superficial you drops away, and you feel the peace of who you are.
I am reminded of the allegory of the long spoons. It is a parable that illustrates the difference between heaven and hell. In both places, people are forced to eat with long spoons. In hell, the people are unable to lift food to their mouths because the spoons are too long and are starving. In heaven, the people feed one another across the table and are happy and full.
It is easy to nurture each other when we see we are all one. It is natural to be kind when we are not caught up in our individualistic worries. Just like the mushrooms in a field. On the surface, they look separate, but underneath the ground, they are all connected. What is it like for you to look in the direction of your connectedness? What drops out of your mind and becomes unimportant?
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We are endowed by the Creator with power to live our lives for the well-being of all. Heaven and hell are about living (or not) in right relationship with all of creation, of honoring or dishonoring all, and knowing the love of God by sharing it with all of our relatives: human, plants, trees, four-legged, winged, water, and earth all woven together.
We live in a world on fire. This year the Daily Meditations will explore contemplation as a way to build Radical Resilience so we can stand in solidarity with the world without burning up or burning out. The path ahead may be challenging, but we can walk it together.
It is hardly surprising, then, that a belief in an afterlife should bean important part of the Christian tradition. Even if our lives doextend beyond the grave, however, the question remains concerning thenature of the future in store for us on the other side, and thevarious Christian views about heaven and hell are proposed answers tothis question. According to a relatively common view in the widerChristian culture, heaven and hell are essentially deservedcompensations for the kind of earthly lives we live. Good people go toheaven as a deserved reward for a virtuous life, and bad people go tohell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scalesof justice are sometimes thought to balance. But virtually allChristian theologians regard such a view, however common it may be inthe popular culture, as overly simplistic and unsophisticated; thebiblical perspective, as they see it, is far more subtly nuanced thanthat.
is fairly unspecific concerning the fate of the wicked and the importof separation from God. For if we think of such separation as a stateof being estranged or alienated from God, or if we think of it assimply the absence of a loving union with God, then (3) is equallyconsistent with many different conceptions of hell, some arguablymilder than others. It is equally consistent, for example, with theidea that hell is a realm where the wicked receive retribution in theform of everlasting torment, with the idea that they will simply beannihilated in the end, with the idea that they create their own hellby rejecting God, and with the idea that God will simply make them ascomfortable as possible in hell even as God graciously limits the harmthey can do to each other (see Stump 1986). This lack of specificityis by design. For however one understands the fate of those whosupposedly remain separated from God forever, such a fatewill entail something like (3). Alternatively, anyone who rejects (3)will likewise reject the idea of everlasting torment as well as any ofthe supposedly milder conceptions of an everlasting separation fromGod.
Although this Augustinian rationale for the justice of hell has had aprofound influence on the Western theological tradition, particularlyin the past, critics of Augustinian theology, both ancient andcontemporary, have raised a number of powerful objections to it.
All of which brings one to what Marilyn McCord Adams and many otherssee as the most crucial question of all. How could any sinthat a finite being commits in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, andillusion deserve an infinite penalty as a just recompense? (See Adams1993, 313).
But why suppose it even possible that a free creature should freelyreject forever the redemptive will of a perfectly loving andinfinitely resourceful God? In the relevant literature over the pastseveral decades, advocates of a free-will theodicy of hell haveoffered at least three quite different answers to this question:
In any case, how one assesses each of the three answers above willdepend upon how one understands the idea of moral freedom and the roleit plays, if any, in someone landing in either heaven or hell. Thefirst two answers also represent a fundamental disagreement concerningthe existence of free will in hell and perhaps even the nature of freewill itself. According to the first answer, the inhabitants of hellare those who have freely acquired a consistently evil will and anirreversibly bad moral character. So for the rest of eternity, theseinhabitants of hell do not even continue rejecting God freelyin any sense that requires the psychological possibility of choosingotherwise. But is such an irreversibly bad moral character evencoherent or metaphysically possible? Not according to the secondanswer, which implies that a morally perfect God would never ceaseproviding those in hell with opportunities for repentance andproviding these opportunities in contexts where such repentanceremains a genuine psychological possibility. All of which points onceagain to the need for a clearer understanding of the nature andpurpose of moral freedom. (See section 5.1 below for some additionalissues that arise in connection with freedom in heaven and hell.)
If that is true, then not just any causally undetermined choice, orjust any agent caused choice, or just any randomly generated selectionbetween alternatives will qualify as a free choice for which thechoosing agent is morally responsible. Moral freedom also requires aminimal degree of rationality on the part of the choosing agent,including an ability to learn from experience, an ability to discernnormal reasons for acting, and a capacity for moral improvement. Withgood reason, therefore, do we exclude lower animals, small children,the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid schizophrenicsfrom the class of free moral agents. For, however causallyundetermined some of their behaviors might be, they all lack some partof the rationality required to qualify as free moral agents.[9]
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