Our Brilliant Eternity
In Defense of Love
The civilized world reacted in horror to the burning of the young Jordanian pilot by the terror cult known as ISIS in the Middle East. Revulsion at the barbarity of seeing a human being burned alive in an iron cage was almost universally condemned ̶ almost, because in that cruelty’s aftermath the flow of conscripts into ISIS’s ranks did not diminish it grew. (Evidence, if any were needed, of evil’s influence on vulnerable minds in our world.)
But this writing is not about that horrific event or tragic region.
Rather it is to hold in parallel the Christian mindset that lives on when it comes to belief in eternal punishment: As there is still a population of Christians, maybe a majority, who believe that erring souls will be punished in the same fiery manner ̶ without the hope of death releasing them, for any who die in sin and are without the salvation offered by our merciful Father through his Son. Let’s reflect on this, imagine and amplify it: pain, not any pain, but burning, blistering pain, forever sanctioned if not applied by a loving parent (even the agony of the Cross had its ending).
Our thoughts about God need revolutionizing, and about hell as much or more.
It is only criminals such as ISIS who can stand by that cage and call such torture just, and even proclaim it holy. No Christian should be able to stand beside them in that posture. And God our Father, His Loving Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, certainly cannot.
How many decent people, atheists and agnostics, of sound judgment and reputation keep the thought of a Deity at bay because of this one punishing doctrine vehemently defended as honorable and balanced by Christianity and other faiths? And how many tens of thousands, perhaps millions of these might be attracted to Him if believers stood and said: “This teaching of eternal torture in hell is not true, was fabricated by men with ill agendas, and no soul will be forever punished or imprisoned without end in this or in any other way by God, our loving Father”?
MARK 7: 7
Isn’t true Christianity, like all true religion, better exemplified in the sharing of bread with the hungry, in caring for the elderly, in lessening a neighbor’s burdens ̶ as a Love inspiring kindly service performed without judgment or condemnation?
In fact, what would we think of the earthly parent who could say to a child of his or hers: “You have offended me once too many times or rejected my needed saving grace; for this I will punish you forever, and without hope of any comforting diminishment you will remain helpless in eternity.”
(To those Christians who could stand by that cage in which a child of theirs was, to their thinking, justly burning, here is a space in which to place their name: _________________; then approve their eternal condemnation with your initials here: _______________ ; and let any who are like minded, citing existing Scriptures (there are ample), add their acquiescent signatures to your child’s suffering on this line: _______________ . Or just, and most poignantly perhaps, ask a minister who has lost a loved but ‘unsaved’ child to early death by accident, illness or suicide, if he or she will sign it.)
Now who can put their names there? Can you see the gentle Jesus entering His? And if He and we cannot, how can our Heavenly Father?
MATTHEW 18: 22
I don’t have the answer as to what hell may or may not be, or to the Bible’s passages, even New Testament ones, suggesting its unending ferocity. I only know that eternal suffering for a single faith omission or the errors of a lifetime is unbalanced and cruel, and few earthly parents could assign that to their child. It makes a mockery of justice, mercy and forgiveness.
Not just seven times, but seventy-times seven, meaning endlessly, was what our Lord affirmed of the repetitive quality and need for forgiveness. Yet for the one omission of rejecting His pardoning Grace, there is no forgiveness by our Father, even for a life spent in selfless service to humanity.
What a sweep of fear this punishment of eternal fire casts over our faith. The spirit of its hurting should inform us of its source because the revulsion it creates makes non-believers of so many.
As a young boy who served my church at altar I asked my earthly father if he could place me in hell for anything, even something grave, I did to him. A decent and honest man, he replied that he could not. When I ask my heavenly Father today under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the answer is the same, He will not.
LUKE 15: 18-24
In addition to our spirit/soul, our Father God gave us a mind to reason, and a heart to feel.
Maybe hell, as a condition, is that state of mind so far removed from what is kind and civil that Love’s presence seems all but lost. The leaders of ISIS and other terror groups abide in this state today.
Or as a possible place in spirit it might be where, with deepening rejection, souls gravitate who remain in this condition not forever, nor through confinement by a vengeful God, but until they tire of Love’s refusal, repent (change, as did the Prodigal Son), and leave Satan’s grasp for what is shining in the distance.
As even the smallest ember’s glow wants for oxygen that it may live, so the darkened soul must ultimately seek its source of life, the Eternal Light that is without and within.
There are reformed ̶ what a beautiful, telling word, re-formed ̶ criminals and even ex-jihadists who have made this transformation. Their testimonies are out there. Why does the hope of such rebirth end at physical death? Since most of us agree we are more spirit beings than beings made of dust, why is eternal life not considered as being largely life lived in the Spirit, with periodic descents into flesh? One life, but more than one embodiment, where mental and spiritual growth in each are ascendant (or stay static or regress) and the sowing in one era and the reaping in another are demonstrably realized.
GALATIANS 6: 7-8
Why is this possibility so readily disdained and dismissed when it more exemplifies the unbounded gift of free will, and the soul’s perfection through eternity. The prodigy, astounding displays of athleticism, applied brilliance in any field are all answered by this architecture. Many questions are satisfied by it. “What is sown in the flesh will be reaped in the flesh.” How many dark lives have defied, to history’s eyes, the implications of this scripture? (The tyrants who end their lives in relative good health come to mind here.) The excruciating imbalance of things dissolves in this argument.
Avariciously wealthy in one descent, impoverished in the following; the lesson learned. A crippling ailment courageously borne in the eighteenth century, yielding an Olympian in the twentieth; faith and patience imparted. A fear of heights in one crushed by an ancient fall, her phobia explained, and maybe healed in the explaining.
MATTHEW 11 & 17
Mathew 11: 14 &15 ̶ “And if ye will receive it (speaking of John the Baptist) this is Elias, which was to come. He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” And again in Mathew 17: 10-13 is this design intimated.
If we will receive it, ears to hear. Life lived in the Spirit, with interludes in the flesh. (Almost universally when Savants are asked where their unique talent comes from, they say: “I remember.” A gift practiced to sacrifice and exhaustion in a previous embodiment, yielding immense talent in a later one. Yet in the case of Savants, with an impediment accompanying for whatever learning that soul requires.)
But judging an affliction and imagining its linkage to a previous expression in the flesh is not the province of any soul ̶ because it may not have bearing, and only the Maker of hearts knows what is in one’s past, and what the future holds. And He has made provision for it all.
“I CAME THAT YE MAY HAVE LIFE
AND HAVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY.”
Then what is the advantage or need of Salvation? It is this: the sowing and reaping end, one is taken off the wheel of rebirth, all is pardoned by the Maker of souls in that shining moment of Grace. One is free to leave this classroom for higher and brighter things because Humility, the beloved virtue and door to God’s Presence, has been learned. Pride (as was intended) is gone from the mindset, has left the temple. And if souls later return to Earth, they return as servants with gifts to give. In the arts, in the sciences, in sanctified ministries.
Is such construction too demanding or complicated, extra-dimensional, impossible? Let’s tell that to the Author of Joy and Quantum Physics, the Designer of string and String Theory.
JAMES 2: 13
However it may be one thing is certain: In the end God wins, and when He does He will not be standing by a small, burning cage, or dismissing the cries of agony from an immenser one. Neither will He be ignoring the yearnings of separation from His children, the nicer suffering more modern teachings present.
Until then, can we as Christians be comfortable riding the currents of every commonly held doctrine of our faith, including this one of eternal punishment or isolation from Him? How can we say we love all humankind, and Love as Jesus did, while we envision ourselves in Joy in a projected future bliss, aware of the sinners, the ‘unsaved’ and unbelievers ̶ including parents, siblings, children ̶ believers in other faiths, imprisoned and suffering in hell? It’s not without irony that Islam’s extremists see everyone they label as ‘infidels’ condemned in this way.
Then should we not, as Jesus and later Peter and Paul and the other disciples did, challenge some of the tenets held by our peers (most famously demonstrated by our Lord’s reply to those waiting to stone an adulteress under Jewish doctrine, the Scriptural cruelty of that epoch) and under guidance of the Holy Spirit hold up to scrutiny, and with compassionate inspection, some of the insistent themes of our theologies that are or may be errant?
See if you can sit through The Stoning of Soroya M, a true film about a wrongly condemned Muslim wife, and not close your eyes during its climactic final scene.
Wasn’t the Lord intimating clearly in that moment, that the Scripture demanding an adulteress’s stoning was in error and should not be believed, much less followed? Without saying it, for that was His genius, was He not revealing that Scripture’s falsity with its cruel and awful directive as a man-fashioned doctrine?
MATTHEW 15: 8,9
Then how much more harsh and awful is the teaching of eternal punishment, of endless stoning, of unending flames for a fellow soul? Apologists for divine cruelty of all faiths do not fully know the God of Love and Light, in whom there is no darkness.
Omniscience and Infinite Mercy are two qualities of God that texts for eternal hell can never bind together with the gift of free will.
Let’s see it in this way: What a hurtful tender would be this present from His Heart if in its giving endless agony was, for many, foreordained.
We as Christians, and Jews and Muslims as well, have made idols of our sacred texts, and imparted an infallibility to them they cannot possibly possess: Because for centuries these texts passed through human minds and hands, and both of these are soiled; soiled by egos with ill agendas, cravings for power and control, susceptibility to Satanic whisperings. Our holy books sifted in this way, it must be necessary to apply the added filters of mercy and reason to them, under guidance of the Holy Spirit. (With this said, I still hold the scriptures of my faith in the highest esteem, and read them daily, like many of other faiths do theirs. They are still the greatest literature we have. Just as a single candle dispels the darkness, so in one shining Gospel passage is there light enough to change a life forever.)
Whatever reflects Love, that is of God, whatever does not, is not of Him; this is the filter to apply to our beloved books. Distortions of love, departures from the appeal of First Corinthians 13, have no part in this filtering under the aegis of the Holy Spirit.
Hellfire and stonings find no passage through its mercies, or adhesion to its endurances.
Such love-deprived texts are the tares sown near the healthy seed ̶ they constrict the wholesome air and obscure the nourishing field.
GALATIONS 5: 6;14
Even Billy Graham, in this autumn of his life, has said he now believes not every syllable in the Bible was inspired by the Lord, and could not have been (e.g. The sanctioning of slavery; death for a mother weaving a garment from wool and linen; isolating the infirm and barring them from Temple; stoning an insolent child ̶ all condemnations in the Old Testament, all doctrines introduced by men with susceptible minds and controlling hearts).
A mind to reason and a heart to feel are what the Reverend Graham exhibited in that moment of revelation, if not in his entire ministry.
Can we imagine in this era telling a Kathryn Kuhlman or Mother Teresa, Joyce Meyers or Lindsay Roberts, to keep silent in the church because of their sex? Some texts have expiration dates, and some should never have been written at all.
(Explanations for that forbidding command usually rest in the culture of that era, in which women were kept from being educated and so the belief was held that they could not speak with any sense of elocution, risking embarrassment to the church in front of non-believers.
But St. Peter and other of the disciples were not educated men. All who have read Peter’s addresses in Acts and in his letters must know such eloquence did not come from him, but from the Holy Spirit. And so it would have been with any woman of faith the Holy Spirit inspired.
Then if that passage fails in the light of deeper scrutiny, what of others which have strained if not tortured paths to a believable justice? Applied eternal agony being foremost among them.
“Vessels” or “cups fitted” – souls, predestined for destruction being another. I submit that when he wrote that line, St. Paul was not writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, neither the one forbidding women to speak in church. In his own letters, Paul makes reference to times when he wrote under guidance – “and I believe I have a Spirit” – intimating there were other times when he possibly did not.)
It is this approach of speaking challenging truths to the Faithful and faithless of their times, assisted by signs and miracles, that caused a brave early Church to spread and thrive; and what I believe will inspire the coming last Renewal before Christ Jesus, our Friend and Brother, returns.
JOHN 14: 26, 27
When all is said and done, and in support of this anointing, all I have to offer is the above scripture. And because I know the Holy Spirit stood sponsor to this writing, I will stand this passage up to all the ones proclaiming there is a hell of endless agony, where numberless souls will go ̶ no, that hell does not exist. Burning in an iron cage created by our Father God is not the destiny of any human soul. That cage is created by His enemy, and that enemy will fail. Its bars of hate, pride and envy will disintegrate in the Light of His Love and Mercy.
Bring all things before the Lord, while gently breathing in His Name. Here are His words in prose, spoken in the twentieth century to an attentive and careful listener:
“Take joy wherever you go. You have been much blessed. You are being much blessed.”
Such stores of blessing are awaiting you in the months and
years ahead. Pass every blessing on.
Love can and does go round the world, passed on the God-currents from one to the other.
Shed a little sunshine in the heart of one, that one is cheered to pass it on, and so My revitalizing, joy-giving message goes.
Be transmitters these days. Love and laugh. Cheer all.
Love all.
Always seek to understand others and you cannot fail to love them.
See Me in the dull, the uninteresting, the sinful, the critical, the miserable.
See Me in the laughter of children and the sweetness of old age, in the courage of youth and the patience of man and womanhood.”
From: ‘God Calling’
First Printing, 1935
LUKE 17: 21 “THE “KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU.”
Not just within some, as certain Bible translations have it, but all.
Finally, in earthly literature too, the Holy Spirit inspires.
“Because our being is assured us, to be or not to be is not the eternal question. Neither is that region after death the undiscovered country from whose borne no traveler returns. No, whether here or there, the ultimate question is: when will we choose to be what we are within and let the obstructions fall away that keep us from God’s Presence. Those who have seen the context of that hour will tell you its Grace emerges when, figuratively or not, we bow and bend our knees; when the ego’s posturing, the proud man’s contumely, stands exposed for what it is: a self-possessed child or stubborn caviling intellect that mocks or dismisses all which would ennoble to leave us mired in entertainments that keep us unrelieved. Whatever you may believe don’t miss that moment of surrender because it is beautiful beyond belief. It will cleave your heart in two. It will be as if a gentle waterfall inside it now spills its Living Water until its outpouring in Joy fills your soul with peace ̶ and the splendor of all creation in that instant is revealed. Whichever walk in faith or discipline you choose, waste no time or energy with any other goal, for after its releasing you will never be the same ̶ you will see, touch and breathe as you never have before, and the fear of death will lose its hold forever. And even in this moment, with a tender, embracing ecstasy, God awaits your look within.”
From: ‘God Touches’
First Production, 2009
If the words “They will burn in hell forever” are never again forthcoming from a pastor’s, a minister’s ̶ from one person’s ̶ lips, well… thank you, Sweet Lord, for giving me a soul to nourish, a mind to reason, and a heart to feel.
JOHN 7:38
“He who believes in Me… from his innermost being
will flow rivers of living water.”
PHILIPPIANS 1: 18
To those who out of fear would now reach for stones wrapped with scriptures, to hurl at this new parchment, there is this message from the Lord: That they pray before they do, because it is shielded by His mantle.
To all who have taken no offense at what is written above, but who may not know and would like to have a Spirit-inspired life, to feel the Living Water streaming from inside them and be freed from the wheel of reincarnation ̶ and touch the light of Creativity ̶ here are the words to take you there, words you will not regret in eternity… that are best said on one’s knees, recalling it is pride that stands barrier to God’s presence, while humility is the gateway:
“Dear Jesus, I’m sorry for all that I’ve sown in error in this life, whether by omission or commission, and I invite You to cleanse my heart now as Lord and Savior. Bless me and make me whole through your pardoning Grace, and let the Holy Spirit ever guide me in the way I should go.”
[Then should you have the chance to be baptized in the Holy Spirit someday soon, by immersion or no, seize the opportunity. For now and from now on reading the scriptures and other anointed works will bring the flame to brilliance that just now has been lighted in you. Then Baptism when it comes will awe and overwhelm you, and fan it to transcendence.]
LUKE 23:34
If you were able to say the words above aloud or just sincerely in your heart you are, even now, free in eternity. Free from the debt of reaping what in ignorance was done, because that debt was paid by God long ago.
Yet the real and greater learning has only just begun, because it will take eternity to understand Eternal Mind, and even Heaven will not be a place of stagnation. There will be deeper schools of consciousness to attend, soul-expanding celestial music to absorb, higher and more beautiful states of being to be realized.
ROMANS 8: 17-19
And poetry to live:
Then we, one day, shall be as these
Who move without a movement’s sound,
Whose gentle sight but beauty sees
And touch a Golden Peace surrounds.
And Love’s expectant joy beholds
In us the coming of the King ̶
Whose sovereignness but Freedom holds
And rule a lasting treasure brings.
And we, one day, shall be as these
Whose seamless robes of Light are spun,
Upon whose brow a jewel reveals
Our heirship with the King’s begun.
And we, as these, one day will be.
It is as if on Earth our soul is being shaped to beauty by a Master Sculptor, while the gift of free will gives us voice in the schedule of that fashioning. But when we say yes to His Gift and Will, He accelerates this workmanship. We step off the wheel of repetitive dwellings in Earthly temples, and grasp the way provided towards our brighter home ̶ the enlightened consciousness emanating from His Radiant Love, that greater mansion not built with hands.
Epilogue
Let any who still would burden our Faith with eternal fire for other souls begin their argument with greater expressions of love, now ̶ through original writing of equal tenor, more sustainable logic and gentler poetry; and with believable mercy championing the flames.
The accepted scriptures may be on that side, but the Holy Spirit will not be, and this will be evident: cruelty’s apologists have no poetry their assertions can share with any beauty. Such beauty resides with the Holy Spirit, in a higher place, in our brighter future.
Appendix to Preface
Reincarnation is not transmigration – human to animal embodiments, or their reverse, do not occur is the assertion of most metaphysical literature. But it would not surprise me to learn we are sometimes re-united with our most beloved pets, both here on Earth and in the spirit…
A partial list of historical figures (some of them Christian – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Tolstoy among them) who believed in reincarnation, and whom few would say had ordinary credentials or little impact on history include:
Emerson, Schweitzer, Socrates, Plato, Pythagorus, Goethe, Jung, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Blavatsky, Balzac, Twain, there are many others.
As was written: “A gift practiced to sacrifice and exhaustion in a previous embodiment, yielding immense talent in a later one.” Or, as with some who arrive: “…as servants with gifts to give. In the arts, in the sciences, in sanctified ministries.”
