In Hell – a Meditation on Understanding God

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. [Mark 9:43-44]

People focus on the first part of this, the part about cutting off the hand. I know a Christian man who turned those words into a sermon on masturbation. Sometimes, it’s possible to take the Bible too literally.

But the second part frightens me: "[H]ell . . . where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

This frightens me because it's opaque. I wonder, what does it even mean: "Where their worm dieth not"? Some interpreters say that this means that the populace of hell will perpetually be eaten by worms. But that interpretation doesn’t satisfy because it doesn’t fit the actual language well.

Instead, I imagine persons stripped of all that makes them human: all personality, all language, all love, all hate – everything. Imagine Christopher Hitchens without language; Amy Winehouse without music. What’s left is just, well, wormlike – like a worm, without character; like a worm, responding to fierce pain, forever

It makes my mind uneasy.

Genesis speaks of God breathing into man and giving him life. But that in-breathed life, I think, was more than blood surging through veins. I think it was intellect, too, and personality. This idea is captured by another word for breathing-in: inspiration. Without the presence of God, humankind has no inspiration.

God breathed into the world. And the time will come when God withdraws his breath from the world. I think that these worms are immortal humankind without the breath of God.

I expect my New Age friends to here lay down a gripe about God: what kind of a God would cause such suffering to exist, and to exist forever? And I suppose that if God were a kindly old man, it wouldn’t happen.

Tonight I read in the Biblical book of Numbers. I read chapter 11, where the Israelites, freed from slavery in Egypt, bellyache about the good things that they had in Egypt: fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic. They complain that in the wilderness that God had brought them into they have only manna, provided by God. So God gives them quail – literally tons of quail. But here’s the thing about this concession to their appetites: the quail meat sickens them with a plague while it is in their mouths, before they even chew it.

God to the Israelites: "I’ve had it with your shit."

In the next chapter, Moses’s brother, Aaron, and Aaron’s wife, Miriam, speak against Moses. God gives Miriam leprosy. Moses prays to God to heal her; God does, but first he makes Miriam be a leper for a week.

God to Miriam: (See, God to the Israelites).

So God is no kindly old man. I could more-or-less understand a kindly old man. God is harder to understand.

That doesn’t trouble me. Someone once said that nothing stretches the mind so much as meditation upon God. That might be true, for some. (Regrettably, some people look for God in their mirrors.) Meditation upon God would not stretch the mind if God were containable within our skulls.

We are limited in what we know about God. So, for example, the Bible starts at the making of the universe; it is un-describe: history before the universe was made.

So I compare my knowledge of God to the play Burial at Thebes. Suppose I knew only a shard of that story: that a young woman, Antigone, defied her king. If I knew only that, I might lack sympathy for her.

But if then I actually read the play, I would learn that Antigone’s brother had died a traitor, and that King Creon forbade all persons from burying his body or giving his body the respect due the dead. And then I would learn that her disobedience was in rescuing her brother’s body from its dishonor, and then, discovered, she refused to plead for mercy from the king. Therefore, King Creon ordered her to be shut up in a cave, without companionship, without light, without food, without water, and to remain there until dead. Knowing the whole story, I have sympathy for Antigone.

This informs my knowledge of God. When I come to an un-scalable wall in my understanding of God, I understand that I know only a shard of the whole story. If a day comes when I see God, I will know more; maybe I will know all. And that would make all the difference, like knowing just a piece of Burial at Thebes, versus knowing the whole story.

It would be good for people to know that they know next to nothing. That would provoke curiosity and learning. That would shrink smugness and conceit. That would grow humility; and people are most brave, strong, and wise when they are most humble. This I believe.

God answering prayers for meat with quails that bring a plague; God punishing Miriam by giving her leprosy; God withdrawing his breath from the world, leaving the damned to suffer forever as dumb creatures: these are chilling. They are not pictures of the friendly, happy God sometimes described from pulpits.

This God isn’t easy to understand, especially because the Bible also speaks of his great forbearance and mercy. But like Burial at Thebes, God must be fully known to be fully understood. And I know that when it comes to God, I have only a shard of knowledge. And maybe that’s all I’m capable of here and now.

Ron Paul: Ten Virtues

If Barack Obama were the things my conservative friends say about him, I’d hate him too. But I know too much about the president to see him as a cartoonish villain.

I’m determined not to see the Republican candidates cartoonishly, either. So: I’ve written ten things I admire about Ron Paul. Ron Paul seems to be taking fire from all sides right now.

I’d never vote for the good Congressman. That doesn’t mean he’s without virtues. Here’s my quick list of his praises.

1.  He’s consistent. What he said last year before one audience, he says this year before a different audience.

2.  He’s brave. It takes courage to enter the political arena – particularly at the presidential level. He’s not naive. He knew his past would be pried open. That did not stop him.

3.  He’s energetic. It’s exhausting to run for president. He’s holding up. You never hear of him making an exhaustion-induced flub.

4.  He’s blunt. He has to know that his anti-war stance goes against the grain of the Republican base. He has to know that his belief that the government should not regulate marriage defies the Republican base’s hatred of gay marriage. But Paul doesn’t try to finesse his opinion or equivocate about it.

5.  He’s independent. This is the flip side of being out of the mainstream of his party. He makes up his own mind.

6.  He’s a good father. He must be: one of his sons is a senator.

7.  He’s a good husband. He’s been married to his first wife since 1957. There’s been no whiff of sexual scandal.

8.  He’s smart. Love him or hate him, Jon Stewart is a smart guy. And Paul stays with him in their debates. And Paul holds his own in the candidate debates. Other candidates have shown that that’s not necessarily easy.

9.  He’s financially shrewd. He apparently made millions with his (now controversial) newsletters.

10.  He’s educated. He graduated from medical school, and he’s written six books on economics – albeit his own brand of economics. But six books on economics are six books on economics.

Throw Republican Darwinists Out of Congress

At Denny’s, for $11.83, I get a cheeseburger, fries, and iced tea, and the server calls me "Sir".

Fundamentally, it’s a commercial relationship. I pay money to the server’s employer, and she brings me food and treats me with respect.

Some relationships are mixed. My brother and I pay our secretary, and she keeps the office functioning smoothly. But I think there is friendship there, too. Maybe if she won the lottery, I would loose that illusion. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.

I wonder, were I to count, whether I have more commercial relationships on a daily basis than empathic ones.

Naturally, I value the empathic relationships more. Bonds can be broken, but I value more the people who love me than the people who pay me.

I think this is usual. Men and women sometimes go into the military for the benefits that come with it – education, training, and a chance for a better life. But if a soldier puts himself between danger and his fellows, he does it out of love, not for his salary.

But I wonder if this exaltation of love over money holds true across society. Is it true for the one percent, the very wealthy? They sit at the pinnacle of a pyramid of people, most of whom they might not know; they pay these people to labor to add to their wealth. Is there any relationships they would not give up to stay at the top of that pyramid?

And the Ayn Rand right finds more to admire in this than in supposedly silly altruism – like the self-sacrifice of, say, Jesus Christ. They would not say so, and many of them might not know it, but it seems to me that the right wing in America wants to exalt a Darwinian world of winners and losers over one based on compassion.

This is even reflected in the favored term: "Job Creator". This name is like a magic talisman that is waved before the supposedly greedy and weak, to defeat efforts by them to impose upon the Job Creators any tax for the comfort or benefit of the 99 percent.

"Job Creator", the term, shows the power that the possibility of these commercial relationships has upon modern minds. Never mind that if out of their abundance the one percent gave a little more to put the middle class to work, we would be the Job Creators. If that happened, more of us could earn and spend, and by that spending we could create jobs for others so that they, too, could earn and spend. And never mind that the Job Creators are not, in fact, creating new jobs. In their Darwinian, economic minds, the lack of demand destroys any incentive to invest.

Yet the myth of the right wing is that we should in fact cut the payments that these Job Creators owe to the general welfare of the nation. Then, so goes the myth, the Job Creators will be free to create commercial relationships with the rest of us, and they will blanket the nation with the benefit of their economic largesse in the form of unlimited commercial relationships. From the Job Creators will stretch mystic chords of money from top to bottom.

This is also known as trickle-down economics, re-incarnated for our time.

But it doesn’t work. Taxes are at historic lows, and the economy still struggles.

Historically, in times like these, government becomes the default job creator. When demand is low, government creates jobs.

There’s plenty of work that needs to be done. Our bridges, roads, airports, rails, and schools are crumbling. Paying contractors to fix these problems would boost our economy in the short term, and it would benefit the nation in the long term.

But if we don’t want to increase the long-term debt, the money to fund this infrastructure improvement has to come from tax increases.

Tax increases on the middle class would harm the recovery. The middle class really does spend money that it doesn’t pay in taxes. But the very, very rich – they are just banking money. Putting more money in their pockets just puts more money in their pockets.

Tax ‘em.

The Republicans in Congress fiercely protect the one percent. They do so with a vigor that they don’t feel for the middle class. Congressional Republicans were happy to increase taxes for the middle class until popular outcry made them turn around. That’s the benefit of electoral accountability. But nothing will make Congressional Republicans increase the contributions of their very rich patrons for the benefit of the middle class.

That’s why we need to vote them out of office. In the primaries, the present office-holders on the right need to be replaced with candidates of more centrist leanings. But if the Republican primary voters won’t supply centrist candidates for the general election, Republicans need to be replaced by Democrats. Because Democrats will impose a modest tax increase on the rich to benefit the middle class in these scraping times.

Aren’t most of us for that?

The Night of the Santa

Tonight, I'm sucking on my Sherlock Holmes pipe.

And I'm deducing the following: clearly, Santa Clause is a vamprire.

Think of it: he does all of his work at night; he's been around for centuries; he lives in a far, obscure, and lonely place, served by his slave minions; he flies through the air. Convinced?

Now that we know, what do we do?

Well, that really depends upon your point of view.

One idea is to cover any cross you have hanging near the fireplace. Simple courtesy, people!

The other end of the spectrum is to trap him and hammer a stake through his heart. Preferably a stake made from a tree that had mistletoe.

But frankly, I favor the first idea. Not that I approve vampires. I really don’t.

It’s this: when it comes to killing vampires, people just don’t know what they’re doing. They think that they do because they’ve watched Blade and True Blood.

But let’s get real. That’s Hollywood. I don’t know about you, but I can’t watch a movie about my own profession without groaning. When I see a law movie, I only actually see ten percent of the movie. That’s because the rest of the time my eyes are rolling up in their sockets.

Is it the same with you?

It has to be the same with killing vampires. I mean, people who really know what they’re doing probably laugh through vampire movies. And those are the very people who don’t get a visit from Santa Clause.

So, as they say: don’t try this at home.

Because you wouldn’t want an angry Santa.