Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

We ARE the bowls of wrath - Lazar Puhalo

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”
--Revelation 16:1

It is simply a fact – a difficult reality – that some parts of the world which are now inhabited are becoming uninhabitable, and global warming is the source of this destruction of habitable land. The dangerous heat waves that we are expressing this year are now becoming a regular part of our reality, and many areas with arable land which produces food crops are becoming dried out and dead. These areas are also becoming slowly uninhabitable for human beings and other mammals. The refugees from these areas must go somewhere, and so the still viable human habitats are going to become so overcrowded that those areas will become rapidly degraded also.

We will hear fundamentalists, as usual, blaming God for this. Some of them will surely say this is God’s punishment on mankind for such and such or so and so.

However, as we have mentioned in an editorial back in 1975, the plagues listed in the Book of Revelation will come to pass, not by God’s action against man but because of man’s own avarice and callousness.

There is no doubt that we are seeing the beginning of an extremely tragic era and man’s history – or rather another stage in a tragic era that began decades ago. All the talk about the moral failings in sins of mankind pales to insignificance in the face of the great societal sin against God’s creation, against our own biosphere. There is no greater immorality than the denial of climate change and the refusal to engage in the problem.

The gross indifference and depravity of climate change deniers, of those who deny the human element and global warming, is mirrored in their self-absorbed indifference to the fate of their children and grandchildren. In discussing this matter, one idea that is important to refute is the idea that the results of this callousness and indifference toward our environment are in any way “God’s judgment or punishment.”

This is really a matter of societal suicide by means of self-indulgence and sheer arrogance. Human beings are themselves the living Bowls of Wrath mentioned in the Apocalypse – the Book of Revelation.

 

 

“23 Minutes in Hell” or “23 Minutes in Fear?” Richard Murray

“23 Minutes in Hell” or “23 Minutes in Fear?”

Regarding those who claim to have had mystical and near death experiences regarding visitations to hell, I have no doubt many of them had heartfelt experiences. 

But, I also believe that what we have erroneously been taught to fear about hell can also allow for distorted, strange, and angst-ridden visions to result. And as to what testimony we should receive as personally authoritative, we each have to follow our spirit-quickened consciences of course. 

But, I don't take the bulk of these people's testimonies who have returned from Hell to have the strength of eternity. I have read several of their testimonies, including the "23 Minutes in Hell" book. The ones I have read all say that the number one quality of Hell is that nobody can EVER escape its torturous environment once they enter it. 

Well, my counter observation  is merely this-- they themselves were able to escape it, and the one fellow after only 23 minutes. These people don't just claim they saw Hell through an external window, but that they actually entered and experienced it, so their own quick escape seems to contradict their claim, at least to the inescapable aspect of it. 

And even if they did get a brief vision of it on some human level, how can they then claim to have witnessed an "eternal" aspect of it from only a brief time there? I can certainly see how our fractured and deceived inner states of being-- shame, guilt, bitterness, fear,and pride-- could all create hysterical delusions of toxic terror and hopeless agony. 

Jonah, when he was in the belly of the fish, thought he had been there for "eternity," but in truth it was only three days. And he was a changed man when he came out of the fish's belly. Jesus confirmed that Jonah's experience in the fish was a prophetic allegory of His own descent into hell. What seems one way to humans seems quite another way to God. 

I agree with F.F. Bruce that "eternal conscious torment" is inconsistent with the revealed nature of God in Jesus. This is why Jesus boldly declared in Acts 2 that the heavenly Father would NEVER abandon His son's soul in hell. 

And, regarding the people who claim hell is eternally inescapable because they have literally been there and back, let's not forget this champion truth. Jesus, according to Ephesians 4, kicked the gates of hell off their hinges as He "led captivity captive" and "ascended" into heaven so that He could "fill all things"— on, beneath and above the earth. 

In others words, Jesus, though He was weighed down with every sin of every human who ever lived had ever committed, proved that hell was NOT inescapable. Jesus not only escaped it, but He also "gutted" it of its misperceived power over humanity’s postmortem destiny. 

So perhaps these visions of Hell are simply our worst nightmares and fears amplified by suggestion, condemnation, and accusation which we feverishly project onto our postmortem expectations. But, as the Beloved John says, God continually shows Himself “greater than our heart” by showing us that no matter the garish nightmare state we may fearfully concoct, He WILL deliver us from it. 

I propose that God sees this whole dynamic far differently than do we. 

What if Hell (aka God's judgement fire of 1 Corinthians 3), from Gods viewpoint, was in truth a medical facility for the woefully wounded, the carnally crushed, the incessantly insecure, the insidiously indifferent, the feverishly fearful, and the murderously mad? 

What if Hell, from God's view, was a place of intimate healing where He rehabilitates humanity from all their self-obsessing, self-sabotaging, and self-cutting ways which result in them creating fanatical fig leaves of delusions behind which the fearful and unbelieving hide from God? 

What if God patiently endures and ministers to these sick people in, through, and around their delusions? What if God applies the intense "therapeutic treatment" needed to awaken these poor souls to the truth - - an ultimately irresistible truth which will set all men free - - God loves them and gave His life to cure them from their sicknesses?

Like the most intense form of chemotherapy we know in the physical, all the sin-masks and sin-identities which have cancerously grafted themselves onto our being will be irradiated and destroyed with the wise and curative fire of God. 

The human under judgment May suffer a searing "identity crisis" which, though in the long term will bring great positive transformation, may, in the short term, produce cathartic anguish and weeping.

On thing is for sure. God’s parental punishments are illuminative, curative, restorative, and rehabilitative. He is the Great Fatherly Physician who rescues and restores us from the gutter most to the uttermost.  And His quality work takes a lot longer then a mere 23 minutes to rightly perceive and understand.

"The Inklings and Culture" - Review by Ron Dart

Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson & Laura N. Van Dyke (eds.), The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).

There has been, within Canada, a committed history of interest in the Inklings. My mother was faithfully involved with the Toronto group that published Pilgrimage: The Toronto C.S. Lewis Society (a magazine on Lewis and the Inklings in the 1980s-1990s, final edition 2009). The Canadian C.S. Lewis Journal: The Inklings, Their Friends & Predecessors that closed shop Autumn 2001 (lasted almost 30 years, 100 publications) was, in its last decade, published on the West Coast. But, it was with the founding of The Inklings Institute of Canada at Trinity Western University that a more mature and integrated vision of the Inklings came into being. The publication of The Inklings and Culture is the well-birthed child of such fine parenting.

The fact I took in Lewis and the Inklings with my mother’s milk, and, in some small way, contributed to The Inklings and Culture, means my decades-long journey (from the earliest years) was amply rewarded by heeding and reading the many and polyphonic voices in this well-tuned Inklings symphony.

The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada is, indeed, a harvest and feast of a read. The tome is divided into 4 parts and 27 chapters. Each part is packed with insights and probes that make for creative reads and varied interpretations of the pure gold of Inklings life and thought: Part I: Literary Influences, Part II: The Christian Imagination, Part III: Artistic Responses, and Part IV: Contemporary and Theological Issues are not to be missed.

Most of the Inkling worthies step on front stage (MacDonald, Lewis, Sayers, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield – some more obviously Inkling than others) and other lesser-known writers and artists who historically anticipated or had affinities with the Inklings in direct and indirect ways (Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Sewell, Bede Griffiths, and Reinhold Niebuhr are also mentioned and discussed).

Lewis decidedly leads the pack of articles with 15 of the 27 reflections dedicated directly to him, whereas Tolkien is featured in 5 articles and Sayers in 3 of the essays. MacDonald, Chesterton, Williams, and Barfield are momentarily on stage. But, there can be no doubt that Lewis is the main actor that speaks his speech well – not trippingly on the tongue as some do. The quality of essays and themes covered are of a high level and not to be missed. There can be no doubt that Hilder, Pearson and Van Dyke have done Canada well in their harvest of scholarship. The Canadian Inklings children have now matured as well-rounded, comprehensive, and creative adults, the table spread a bounty not to miss, much nourishment in the feast. I might also add that Hilder’s “Introduction” and Van Dyke’s “Chronology” makes the tome a greater, grander and fuller bounty not to miss.   

There can be no doubt those who anticipated the Inklings (MacDonald, Chesterton) and the Inklings did, in their unique way, unconceal, and by doing so, reveal a mother lode of mythic, imaginative and literary gold within the Western and Christian Tradition that had been somewhat concealed by a hyper form of right of centre Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. It was this healthy and full-bodied Christian romanticism and humanism that was the genius of the Inklings and why their presence ever persists to inform, instruct and point the way to finer and fitter trails worth the taking. There can be no doubt that The Inklings and Culture is Canadian scholarship at its evocative best and the impact of such a hefty tome will linger for many a decade and be a library from which future Inkling scholars will turn to slake a deeper thirst, the wine full-bodied and palette tasty.

Ron Dart           

Q&R: How Naive Violence Fantasies Endanger Your Family - Brad Jersak

QUESTION

Recently, I had been reading David W. Bercot's insightful book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. 

 

Our backstory: My spouse and I used to be "Preppers" and besides food, water, and other emergency supplies, we and all of our friends stocked up on guns and ammo. We claimed we were not doing it out of fear but to be wise and to have enough to share with others. In the past several years, I now see it as future-tripping and religious rationalization.

 

Apparently, the attitude among many conservative "Christians" is our need to fight for the right to bear arms and to be ready to defend property, self, or in these times, fight in a revolution.

 

For several years, I have been coming to terms with loving and blessing and forgiving my enemies. But a few chapters in Bercot's book, he shows via the scriptures that Jesus and Paul were nonresistant and never retaliatory. They never took up the sword or defended themselves verbally or physically.

 

My heart can believe Jesus functioning like that but we are having a hard time picturing ourselves acting without aggression if we found someone breaking into our home or doing some evil act against us. Any thoughts you care to share?

RESPONSE

Great question. There are a few ways to think about this.

 

I'll let Brian Zahnd address it briefly via a blog post. We think about this together a lot. https://brianzahnd.com/2014/07/hitler-invaded-house/

 

I would also recommend two other resources that show how preparing for violence is the real naive idealism versus Jesus' instructions, which are actually the higher realism:

 

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1tm7j16

 

John Howard Yoder, What Would You Do? - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12887640

 

I also respond to the question here: https://www.ptm.org/q-r-christ-in-violent-world-brad-jersak

 

What I mean by the naivety of violence versus the realism of non-violence is this:

"The Entire Country is Haunted" - Wayne Northey

"As we’re seeing more and more every day, this entire country is a real-life Indian burial ground—one that criminals parading as teachers, religious leaders and politicians took great care to cover up." - Alicia Elliot

Years ago, I ceased “proudly calling myself Canadian.” I had persistently been disabused of imagining our country to be “righteous,” built, so the false narrative goes, upon “Christian” values–thought squandered in modernity–to which the “godly” of the land must call Canada back to save “our home and native land.” So as said the false narrative goes.

Our motto, finalized in 1921 along with a Coat of Arms, came about thus:

A Mari usque ad Mare comes from the Bible’s Psalm 72:8, which reads in Latin: Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae. The King James version puts it into English: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

…

On 29 September 1921, after viewing the final design, Joseph Pope, federal under-secretary of state at the time, wrote in his diary: “Our Arms are very handsome … everything that can be desired. The motto A Mari usque ad Mare, which is an original suggestion of my own, I regard as very appropriate.”

And “Dominion?”

. . . the term dominion was chosen to represent Canada as a whole when the British North America Act was drafted in 1867 [the year of the birth of Canada as a nation, known as Confederation].

In 1992, I bought a T-shirt produced by my then colleague Menno Wiebe of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, that reads:

In 1492 the Americans discovered Christopher Colombus on their shores. What do you suppose they thought about that?

A few notes about the above history, and some theological context:

The word “dominion” is from fraught translations in Genesis 1:26 & 28 with reference to nature; and in Psalm 72:8 with reference generally to people. In short, though tragically taken this way repeatedly over the centuries¹, it should never have been taken as “domination.”

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"The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship" - review by Ron Dart

Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson & Laura N. Van Dyke (eds.), The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).

There has been, within Canada, a committed history of interest in the Inklings. My mother was faithfully involved with the Toronto group that published Pilgrimage: The Toronto C.S. Lewis Society (a magazine on Lewis and the Inklings in the 1980s-1990s, final edition 2009). The Canadian C.S. Lewis Journal: The Inklings, Their Friends & Predecessors that closed shop Autumn 2001 (lasted almost 30 years, 100 publications) was, in its last decade, published on the West Coast. But, it was with the founding of The Inklings Institute of Canada at Trinity Western University that a more mature and integrated vision of the Inklings came into being. The publication of The Inklings and Culture is the well-birthed child of such fine parenting.

The fact I took in Lewis and the Inklings with my mother’s milk, and, in some small way, contributed to The Inklings and Culture, means my decades-long journey (from the earliest years) was amply rewarded by heeding and reading the many and polyphonic voices in this well-tuned Inklings symphony.

The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada is, indeed, a harvest and feast of a read. The tome is divided into 4 parts and 27 chapters. Each part is packed with insights and probes that make for creative reads and varied interpretations of the pure gold of Inklings life and thought: Part I: Literary Influences, Part II: The Christian Imagination, Part III: Artistic Responses, and Part IV: Contemporary and Theological Issues are not to be missed.

Most of the Inkling worthies step on front stage (MacDonald, Lewis, Sayers, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield – some more obviously Inkling than others) and other lesser-known writers and artists who historically anticipated or had affinities with the Inklings in direct and indirect ways (Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Sewell, Bede Griffiths, and Reinhold Niebuhr are also mentioned and discussed).

Lewis decidedly leads the pack of articles with 15 of the 27 reflections dedicated directly to him, whereas Tolkien is featured in 5 articles and Sayers in 3 of the essays. MacDonald, Chesterton, Williams, and Barfield are momentarily on stage. But, there can be no doubt that Lewis is the main actor that speaks his speech well – not trippingly on the tongue as some do. The quality of essays and themes covered are of a high level and not to be missed. There can be no doubt that Hilder, Pearson, and Van Dyke have done Canada well in their harvest of scholarship. The Canadian Inklings children have now matured as well-rounded, comprehensive, and creative adults, the table spread a bounty not to miss, much nourishment in the feast. I might also add that Hilder’s “Introduction” and Van Dyke’s “Chronology” make the tome a greater, grander, and fuller bounty not to miss.   

There can be no doubt those who anticipated the Inklings (MacDonald, Chesterton) and the Inklings did, in their unique way, unconceal, and by doing so, reveal a mother lode of mythic, imaginative, and literary gold within the Western and Christian Tradition that had been somewhat concealed by a hyper form of right of centre Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. It was this healthy and full-bodied Christian romanticism and humanism that was the genius of the Inklings and why their presence ever persists to inform, instruct and point the way to finer and fitter trails worth the taking. There can be no doubt that The Inklings and Culture is Canadian scholarship at its evocative best and the impact of such a hefty tome will linger for many a decade and be a library from which future Inkling scholars will turn to slake a deeper thirst, the wine full-bodied and palette tasty.

Ron Dart