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.
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