By A. Daniel Bodine
Although the noise level is definitely lower this time, what proclamations there've been of divine retribution or deserved justice coming from educated leaders in the wake of Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami still beg the curious and reoccurring question: How does God get blamed for natural disasters? And is continuing to point a finger at him not one of religion's biggest problems?
Maybe I rubbed shoulders with too many “flower children” or too many “to question is the answer” liberal philosophers over the course of my lifetime, but the doctrine of eternal damnation in a burning hell--vis a vis a crack in the earth's surface, especially--just doesn't fit in with the scheme of religion's role. I see it as being a source of divine goodness you would do well to attune yourself to.
The doctrine of an eternally burning hell, on the other hand...Hey, there's not anything in there about shutting down for water breaks? Shouldn't something like a U.N. ACLU step in to block the condemnation of all those innocent people? Including those from the recent Japan tragedy? I hate to differ with the very respectful theologians who are espousing this stuff, but I hate belittling personal common sense, too. Life is a carnival show?
Indeed, it seems more than a tad bid contradictory or incongruous to say on one hand that God is Love, and then on the other turn around and proclaim he's sent, or is sending, billions of tortured souls screaming in agony on a one-way trip to the bottomless pits of hell--simply because they didn't know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Yes, many people privately still believe this admittedly. But it's hard to reason. And when it becomes a public issue, such as with Japan, public comments are appropriate.
This is a difficult, incomprehensive doctrine. As one “modern”-day minister referred to it the other week, what if a missionary in some foreign Buddhist country had a flat tire on the way to explain Christianity to a family? And Judgment Day came? That ignorant family doesn't get a bypass token? Go figure, Jethro. Instead of a Can-Do God we've reduced God to a can't-do god. He can't catch those people, can he? Huh? Ka-boom!
To me such proclamations as innocents burning in hell has too much self-righteous, personal aggrandizement to it. But maybe I've got too much of that “other” religious school in me. If so, I learned my lessons the hard way—one bumbling, stupid, costly mistake after another. For sure that's how you learn to view things out of the box, or from a different perspective. Nevertheless, condemnations of hell continue, albeit fewer. Attribute that to bad habits being hard to break maybe—especially those that are self-serving.
Conversely, the decline in old-fashioned believers is causing a schism among the evangelical community, believe it or not. One leading minister, for instance, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is always a good read on traditional evangelical religious thought—admirably at just about any topic you want to throw at him—if you want to keep up with the genre, that is. He blogs on the issue of a real burning hell occasionally at AlbertMohler.com.
In January, looking at causes for the decline in today's believers, Dr. Mohler wrote “Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens.” (Ah, the usual whupping post--the liberalism of our culture. What would right-wing conservatives do without it?) Credit Mohler with knowing something about this country's history, however.
“The classic liberals of the early twentieth century, often known as modernists, pointed to a vast intellectual change in the society and asserted that Christianity would have to change or die.” Mohler wrote. “As historian William R Hutchison explains, 'The hallmark of modernism is the insistence that theology must adopt a sympathetic attitude toward secular culture and must consciously strive to come to terms with it.'”
“This coming to terms with secular culture is deeply rooted in the sense of intellectual liberation that began in the Enlightenment,” Dr. Mohler continued. “Protestant liberalism can be traced to European sources, but it arrived very early in America—far earlier than most of today's evangelicals are probably aware. Liberal theology held sway where Unitarianism dominated and in many parts beyond.
“Soon after the American Revolution...(t)heologians and preachers began to question the doctrines of orthodox Christianity, claiming that doctrines such as original sin, total depravity, divine sovereignty, and substitutionary atonement violated the moral senses. William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian, spoke for many in his generation when he described 'the shock given to my moral nature by the teachings of orthodox Christianity.'”
Dr. Mohler then traces the doctrine's revisions to such preachers as Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, whose “method is to point to salvation and the need 'to become positive thinkers'”; up to today's “emerging church” movements whereby “current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christians affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible's teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible.
“The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.” A good read he is, Dr. Mohler. Always. And a good pronouncer.
So go to him about two months later. Just before the Japan tragedy, he continued defending the inerrancy of scripture doctrine of the old school when he wrote “Doing Away with Hell? Part One,” and “Doing Away with Hell? Part Two.” Yes, hell is still real and folks do go there, he assured readers in the face of the growing disbelief in the subject..
In Part One, he wrote, “Our responsibility is to present the truth of the Christian faith with boldness, clarity, and courage...Hell is an assured reality, just as it is presented so clearly in the Bible. To run from this truth, to reduce the sting of sin and the threat of hell, is to pervert the Gospel and to feed on lies. Hell is not up for a vote or open for revision...”
In Part Two he wrote about the shift in the concept of salvation. “Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been re-conceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell.”
A few days later then the earthquake so large it actually moved the earth on its axis struck Japan. It set off a 23-ft. tsunami with the initial speed of a jumbo jet that raced inland for six miles. Rescue workers are still pulling bodies from the debris. To say nothing of the danger from damaged nuclear plants. Who else knows what the final outcome will be but God?
Dr. Mohler tiptoed through the fine Japanese tulip gardens in a graceful follow-up piece, but I'm guessing nevertheless ruffled some petals somewhere in calling for prayer not only for the present people of Japan but also for any future lives that can be saved—all because the nation isn't Christian. Knowing he had a position to take, again, he took it admirably; and left no doubt he was talking about eternal salvation from hell itself.
“...We must pray that this horrible disaster may be used to call the people of Japan to the Lord as their only hope and refuge. The nation is still shaped by its Shinto, Buddhist, and Animist roots...The true test for American Christians will be whether our commitment to the Gospel of Christ will lead to a renewed effort to reach...Japan with the message of Jesus Christ, the Solid Rock.,” he wrote.
Dr. Mohler is but one of a long line of religious figures who somehow can't resist the temptation to link God and damnation to natural disasters. Even Tokyo's mayor got in on this incident with a quip, although he quickly apologized for it. But CNN religion editor Dan Gilgoff, following it up, reiterated March 16 in “6 other calamities blamed on divine retribution,” that, indeed, “blaming human sinfulness for natural and man-made disasters is nothing new.”
He listed two other most recent tragedies, Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said Haiti's earthquake was due to the Haitians historical “pact with the devil,” for instance; while Texas evangelist John Hagee blamed New Orleans' disaster on “the level of sin (by the people in the city) that was offensive to God.”
Such rationalizing flies in the face of moral logic, I dare say. It is an affront to someone's credibility; and is one of the major reasons studies are showing major religions not only are in decline now but in some countries, if present trends continue, are actually facing extinction as well, you could add, too.
That latest prediction was made by a team of mathematicians in a paper released this past week in Dallas. In a CNN Belief Blog story, it was reported the researchers studied 100 years of census data, and released the findings at a meeting of the American Physical Society. One of the authors stated they started the study out of curiosity after doing a related study on the extinction of languages.
In other reporting on the meeting, Dan Margolis writing in peoplesworld.org in a story entitled “Scientists suggest reason for religion's decline,” stated the researchers found “the unaffiliated are the fastest growing religious minority in all 50 states of the U.S.”
Which, of course, truly is sad. And possibly why so many of our spiritual tanks are on empty. What are we without spiritual uplifting, after all? Or, as the great believer George Ripley figured once, recorded in American Transcendentalism Web, the true purpose of religion..
| was the development and cultivation of the human personality in all of its divine fullness, and...was opposed to any creed or formula that stifled the free expression of these higher faculties in the individual. The "kingdom of God on earth," for Ripley, would only be known in all of its splendor when the goals of society and church were reconciled through the recognition of the divine in all of humanity, each being an agent of his or her own salvation, not by adherence to dry theological creeds, but by the cultivation of a morality based on the knowledge of God perceived inwardly and intuitively. |
But if plutocracy—e.g., government by too-big-to-fail, wealthy corporations--continues shrinking the middle class (along with, too, people's individual human rights) thru social minimalism, what else can you expect? But to have God minimalized also.
Is He truly behind some cosmic, eternally burning pits somewhere? With no exit sign on 'em?
Again, go figure, Jethro.
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