Thursday, August 31, 2006

Hell 1

This was from Marc who shares with me an interest in alternative explanations of hell. Marc thinks he might believe in an "empty hell" which is an idea some Christians have borrowed from Universalism. Check the wiki article for more on that. I'll tell you a little of what I believe about hell soon... But first:

Bonus Question on Chemistry Exam (apparently:-):

“Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?”

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

We can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially with birth and death rates as they are. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, and then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct... leaving only heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

No safety in number 1

A friend, Clare Davidson, has written an interesting article on the insurance consequences of Katrina. What interests me is the important connections between people that our society refuses to acknowledge. "My wealth is mine, I earned it" - yet there are, in fact, real ways in which individual wealth springs from the unconscious benevolence of others if not the deliberate exploitation of others. Read it at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5273974.stm

I got this from Mom and thought it was an opportune connection:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap. Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse,
but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap... alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer
had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Ha Ha Ha

Restless Rock just hocked a huge luugy: http://peterwoods.blogspot.com/2006/08/leeeeb-meeeb-alohnnd.html and check the snotty comments.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Mixing Taale

My mom-in-law, Jeanne, works in the Overberg and brought back two stories from a fishing village school. You won't get this if you don't understand Afrikaans.

The teacher asked her class to name as many fish as they could. So they listed Galjoen, Hake, Snoek and so on. The list was long but the teacher pushed them a bit saying, "Surely you know more than that coming from fishing families?"

One little boy eventually piped up, "I know one more! Break-vis."

During a geography lesson she asked the class to think of places that began with letters in the alphabet, but the class struggled with "f" until some bright spark volunteered "f-lone."

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Sermon: wives and husbands

I found Sarah’s comments on the lectionary helpful. Please take moment to read her piece.

Ephesians 5:21-33 has been used to justify the hierarchical arrangement of family life, with the husband as head and the wife as second-in-command. It has been used to justify the deliberate oppression of women in other spheres of life too. Sarah reminds us that this is based on a mistranslation of the original text.

Take, for instance, the New American Standard Version, which places verse 21 (“Submit to each other out of reverence for Christ”) as the concluding line of the previous section which deals generally with how the community should behave with each other. It then inserts a heading and proceeds with the first line of this new section being “Wives submit to your husbands.”

Here are the two ways of rendering the translation of Ephesians 5:20-22:
New American Standard

“…always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Heading: Marriage Like Christ and the Church
Wives, be subject to your own husband, as to the Lord.”

New Revised Standard Version

“…giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Heading: The Christian Household
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.”

The effect in the NRSV is to make verse 21 the introduction of the section dealing with wives and husbands, so that the idea Paul is talking about here is about being mutually subject to one another in marriage. He then goes on to explain this in detail for wives and then husbands. We are talking about nothing less than a feminist agenda nearly 2000 years before the Suffragettes contemplated it.

It is interesting that Paul uses more space to explain this idea to husbands than to wives. As Sarah reminds us, boys grow up into power, assuming leadership and decision making with relative ease because they are groomed for it. Similarly girls are taught from an early age to be servile. Girls do not easily take on the yoke of power, and wear it uncomfortably when they do. Similarly, boys struggle with humility and serving others. Paul knew this and so spent a little more time explaining this radical idea of mutual service to men who need a little remedial work where humility is concerned. He didn’t spend much time explaining it to wives, as he assumed they were already accomplished. Paul compares the submission of husbands to that of Christ, who, though Divine, humbles himself and becomes a servant of his own creation, even being prepared to die for his beloved.

The other lectionary reading for this week is John 6:60-69, where Jesus challenges those who find his teaching difficult. It is no wonder that at this point in Jesus ministry people are disappearing back home, no longer able to sustain the hard choices he exacts of his disciples. No wonder! Jesus asks of the 12 if they too will leave and Peter responds, “To whom else can we turn?” An interesting response…

Sarah recalls the story of one of Peter’s first encounters with Jesus. He was fishing that day but had had no luck; his nets always empty. Jesus came near on the beach and shouted to the men in the boat to cast their net on the other side. This would have involved rearranging the configuration of men and nets, a tedious process which would go against the grain as these men would have developed an habitual tendency to use one side of the boat. But eventually realising they had nothing to lose they did so. Suddenly, they cannot find enough hands to bring up the net now heavily laden with fish.

Peter caught a glimpse of what Jesus was offering.

“In other words, in one moment the big question on Peter's mind changed from ‘Will I catch enough fish today to survive?’ to ‘Can I gather enough people to take in all of this abundance?’ That's what made Peter a fisher of people.” (Breuer).

Peter went from the anxiety of his poverty to seeing how this poverty might be reversed. It was this that made him follow Jesus. He wanted a society in which he and people like him, no longer had to look forward to a lifetime of drudgery. This was the reason so many women followed Jesus, because he offered them the “good news” that the oppression they had suffered for so long could be reversed. It is why, even today, the church is still one of the few places where women are over-represented – because here they can exercise power in ways (almost / sometimes / should be) equal to men.

To follow Jesus is always to engage with the possibility of making a world that is more just. But it is always premised on the change beginning personally. If I want to see change in the world, I must be ready to change my own heart.

Peter and his men had to overcome their habits to cast the net on the other side. Then he had to give up his livelihood and spend long months away from his family. Several times he had to completely re-evaluate his world-view. Even after he became the Rock on which Jesus built the church we find Peter caught in a radical realignment of his prejudices as Paul and others force him to grapple with the Gentile question. Eventually, even Peter, the conservative Jew, dispenses with the requirements Jewish law and Gentiles become equal citizens in God’s Kin-dom.

Becoming a Christian is not about arriving. It is about starting a journey in which every day challenges one’s perceptions, habits and prejudices. One can never become comfortable. But the energy for this process of constant revision is afforded by the hope that the world these changes are making is a world worth living in.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Frentik

I've been swamped and finding it difficult to reflect on life, let alone write.

For those who read this blog, I want to ask your thoughts and prayers for SHADE as it approaches Jamboree V. It is a stressful time and as always, we are short of money.

Also, please remember the Methodist Church. The debate about same-sex unions has become intense with Parliament discussing a Civil Union's Bill. Our Executive have ruled against any minsiter conducting a marriage ceremony for gay or lesbian couples. We intend to protest, and if necessary to defy this ban.

Gun Free SA has been working hard at making sure the Firearms Controll Amendment Bill does not weaken the Act. So far we've been relatively successful, but it strains the organisation's resources at a time we need to be focussing on community work. GFSA also needs to raise a wopping R600 000 to finish the year.

Mmmm, where'd I leave that Lotto ticket...

Friday, August 18, 2006

Cowboys don't cry

This sad story comes from Yvette:

Recently she was driving through to one of the service centres of Yabonga with a colleague when they happened upon a man running toward Jooste Hospital pushing a wheelbarrow. In the wheelbarrow, they could see someone covered by a blanket. They stopped to offer assistance but by the time they had turned around and met up with the man again, staff from the hospital - who must have been alerted by someone else - had already arrived and were helping out.

Yvette’s colleague found this incident sad and wept openly.

He then confessed that he used to work for an undertaker where he was also a driver, ferrying coffins between churches and graveyards. It was a well-paid job, which he was sad to lose. Apparently he was asked to leave because he would cry at the funerals. He found them terribly sad, even though he did not know the person being buried.

I guess that wouldn’t work… the undertaker crying…

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Hot water!


Check out Magali's comment for June 06. She sent me a pic of her geyser. Anyone prepared to venture the depreciation on Magali's house as a result of this terrible happenstance?

Check out Wikipedia's excellent article on synchronicity.

One of the most important aspects of my job, is creating significance from seemingly meaningless events, so I take a perverse interest in how human minds recognise patterns - even when patterns aren't actually there.

For instance, people need comfort when grieving and the natural temptation is to resort to the stories of my tradition, like heaven and "God's will". Thus we impose a pattern on a person's life which makes sense of their death. The problem is that the patterns can be more disturbing than comforting: God's will becomes God's punishment.

I prefer to think of life as chaotic and unpredicatable. Coincidences, like Magali's geyser, serve only to illustrate for me how chaotic the world is and how absurd our pattern recognition system can be if we look for patterns without consistency.

The essential thing about being human is choice. Our freedom means we can overcome the chaos of life. But this means being consistent in our choices. By such consistency, I impose upon the world an order. It is a tiny - no, puny - order; a logic which is completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of the universal stream of chaos.

And yet, it is significant. How? The scientific endeavour is a clear example of how the cumulative weight of thousands of tiny, logical efforts has been able to offer humanity the chance at controlling the chaos. Democratic (more than just the ballot) process also demonstrates a remarkable power to "change" history.

If there is a mysterious power at work in the universe, we don't need to alarmed. It is not in bar-codes and 6 coloured rainbows. No, this power is human and the results are far more surprising! What do these numbers mean to you? To me they represent the ingenuity and resilience of the human animal:

1994 Year of South Africa's freedom
1919 Year of the creation of the formula for the chlorination of drinking water
2003 Year of the newest democracy on earth: East Timor
299,792,458 Speed of light in metres per second
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 Pi

Friday, August 11, 2006

Fear

I thought Ze's missive on the recent Heathrow scare a timely wet blanket on the hype. All the inconvenience aside, let's be realistic about what we need to be afraid of. Who are you more afraid of, the fundamentalists in Iran who might be starting a nuclear arms programme or the US Senate, many of whom believe that Israel's recent war on Lebanon is a precursor to the Second Coming and who have their collective finger hovering over a button that controls the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world?

Thursday, August 10, 2006

In My Name

We’re using the Heartlines series on SABC as a discussion focus for the confirmation class. This week’s episode is about Faith who comes from rural Natal to Jo’burg after her mother’s death. She comes hoping to earn enough to pay for her sister’s tuition at school. She prays fervently for success but ends up being raped and losing her job cos she was away from work recovering. She ends up being taken in by a Chinese man who helps her recover her hope and she in turn helps him. Because of her ordeal she finds leaving the little shop, where she lives and works with Mr. Lin, impossibly frightening. She becomes trapped in the shop because of her fear.

The scene that seems to me the centre of the story is powerfully symbolic, though I’m not sure if the writers intended it this way. She is cleaning the shop when a pigeon flies in. It is trapped and panics, fluttering across the delicate china on the shelves. Eventually Faith manages to catch the pigeon and slowly walks out with the bird in her hands. When she releases it with a smile on her face, she only then realises that she has walked quite some distance beyond the safe confines of her prison. Though she flees, panic-stricken back into the shop, the healing has begun.

It seems to me that this is metaphor for prayer and an answer to the theodicy question (“Why does God allow suffering?”). In order for God to love, God must be vulnerable, for love by its definition, requires vulnerability. One cannot love someone who is impregnable. One can only love that which one is capable of hurting. So, by creating humans who can love, God creates the possibility of God’s own destruction. God is trapped. God is like the pigeon in the china shop and the only person who can set God free is the one who is trapped there too.

As Faith walks out the shop to her freedom – and the pigeon’s freedom – it is difficult to distinguish whose freedom is being won and who is doing the liberation. In fact, it seems more appropriate to say that Faith and the pigeon need each other.

And so it is with God and humanity.

Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in my name, God will grant you.” We ignore the phrase “in my name” too easily or we make it a rubber stamp on the prayers we send to heaven as if the right postage stamp will guarantee the success of our supplication.

Jesus is asking us to do something very specific. For the ancients a name was the sum of a person’s character. Jesus’ name in Hebrew (Yeshua) means Saviour / Salvation / Redemption / Freedom. When Jesus asks us to pray in his name, he is asking us to pray in that character - the way he lived his life. Prayer is not what we do before a meal or before bedtime, or a superstition to garner God’s favour, or a shopping list of our fears and dreams. I

Prayer is a life lived for freedom – ours and God’s.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Guerrilla Eucharist


Read John 6:24-35

There is an old piece of Jewish humour that tells of a man who had dinner at a restaurant where he ordered the soup of the day. It came with two slices of bread. After his meal the owner of the restaurant came and enquired about his meal. “Lovely,” said the man, “But I would have preferred more bread.”

The next day, the man came back to the restaurant and the owner, recognising this strange patron, made sure that when the man ordered the soup of the day, he had four slices of bread next to his soup. When he checked in with the man at the end of his meal, the man replied, “Lovely as always but, again, not enough bread.”

The owner was perplexed but determined to satisfy his customer, so when the man returned the following day he was prepared. He had asked the bakery to bake two special loaves of bread and when the man ordered the soup of the day, it was placed before him with these two fresh loaves on either side of the bowl. He demolished the lot. The owner approached, confident he had finally done his patron proud. He asked after the man’s meal.

“Lovely,” came the reply, “But I see you have gone back to giving me two pieces of bread.”

---

I like the “I am” sayings in John’s story of Jesus for their rich symbolic depth. But I like the John 6 saying most of all because it is Jesus at his most Buddhist. His conversation with the weary seekers who have followed him all over Galilee reminds me of a Buddhist master at his most oblique. Jesus offers smoke and mirrors for their concrete questions.

In Buddhism there is a concept called Tanha, which translated literally means thirst. Its technical usage in Buddhism can mean desire, craving, wanting, longing, yearning, hunger, appetite and so on. The second of the Four Noble Truths describes Tanha as the origin of all suffering. As we seek to fulfil our desires we realise that all satisfaction is impermanent and therefore cannot really satisfy. We may become addicted to transient satisfiers or cynical and jaded, even frustrated, angry and resentful - maybe even murderous.

The third Noble Truth describes the path out of suffering which is to seek that which is permanent. This comes through meditation by which we are enabled to see the permanent things in life.

Jesus says: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Very Buddhist…

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, we are introduced to the power of Tanha to destroy. The main character, Blanche DuBois, has a nervous breakdown as a result of her infatuation with her sister’s husband. Blanche travels on a streetcar (tram) called “Desire” in order to get to Stella’s house and this streetcar becomes a symbol of the force that leads to her destruction. Just as her streetcar journey is ultimately doomed, so is her own desire.

It is worth dwelling on that symbol. Desire gives us life and movement. It propels us into new places, friendships, adventures and commitments. All life has desire. Without it, we cease to be alive. And yet, if not held in check, it becomes as destructive as a run-away vehicle, taking us over the edge into our destruction. How closely these three go together: Desire, Life and Death.

Be this as it may, it still seems strange that Jesus replies in the way he does to the faithful who travel so far to be with him. These are poor people, whose last hope is this strange man who listens to their problems and often grants real reversal to their pain and oppression. No doubt they are hungry after chasing all over the countryside for him, hence their question (almost accusation).

So how is it that Jesus be so fuzzy now? (Remember the previous story was the feeding of the 5000) More to the point, how can Jesus be so callous as to suggest that he is the bread these people need in the face of their poverty, when they beg him to use his power to reverse their plight?

But then we should also ask, how can we, who follow Jesus down the generations, hold aloft a morsel of bread in the face of global hunger and proclaim it as this world’s salvation?

“I am the Bread of Life.” Indeed! What arrogance!

---

Satisfaction is not guaranteed. In fact the reverse is guaranteed. Even if all the hunger in the world were satisfied, it would not be enough, we would want more…

This is not to say we shouldn’t fight poverty, but we will not succeed if we think we can solve global poverty by only feeding hungry people. We need to address the cause of hunger - the cause of poverty - and that is greed: the insatiable desire for more…

And so in the face of global hunger a morsel is the answer. You will be satisfied when you control your desires, rather than they control you. It is by disciplining our cravings that we approach the mystery of God and consequently, the possibility of righting the world’s injustice. The ultimate answer to world hunger is not in providing food, but in curtailing greed.

So the church should be teaching the rich to fast, and teaching the poor to speak up about the fast they are forced to endure. The poor who are the majority in almost every country of the world need to be shown the power of that morsel. Imagine the poor churches of our country celebrating communion with those tiny wafers in front of the opulence of Parliament, or shopping centres where the wealthy wallow in a glut of consumerism. Imagine them wearing filthy rags and parcelling out those tiny sips of wine, while all around them in the busy intersection luxury vehicles pass by brimming with suits. How about a communion service on pension day at the welfare office, where the bread is replaced by the slip of paper each pensioner signs to receive his or her measly allowance? What about a communion service at a fine restaurant where the celebrants ask for the waiters to bring them wafers instead of the main course? Maybe you have an idea. Rise up and spread the Word…