Tag Archives: eternity

The Devil and Love

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I was recently stopped in my tracks while watching television.  A relatively sophomoric comedy series that I had been watching, called Reaper, managed to make a statement within that caused me a great deal of pause.  I had hoped to be able to find a clip of it on the internet, but, well, apparently not too many other people were struck as deeply by it as I was. . . Perhaps because not too many people were actually watching the show during it’s run.

The show follows Sam, a 21 year old who finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents had sold his soul to the devil.  Now he’s become a bounty hunter for the devil, rounding up the souls that have escaped from hell in order to get them back down to their eternity of torture.  Yeah, some real deep stuff.  However, Sam spends a lot of time with the devil, and as such, gets to have some rather intimate (and silly) conversations with him.  One of them, the one that sparked my interest, was regarding a girl that Sam was interested in.

When the devil was offering his advice, Sam interjects and asks him, “I thought you didn’t believe in love?”  Here’s the rest of the conversation:

Devil: I don’t believe that humans can feel true pure love. But I know that it exists. I’ve experienced it myself. I’m not human, remember?
Sam: You actually loved somebody? Who? [Devil looks up] You mean God? Didn’t you try to overthrow him or something.
Devil: Well, let’s just say we had a little fight. I may have been a tad impetuous.
Sam: But you loved him.
Devil: With everything that I was, I loved him. And he loved all of us, too

Now, although I tend to consider the idea of Satan being a fallen angel to be somewhat questionable, based on the lack of direct Scriptural support of the idea, Satan must come from somewhere, and seeing as we are unaware of there being anything that God has not created, well, Satan must come from God.  He and God have interacted directly several times in the Scriptures, most notably in the account of Job.  Satan knows God, he knows the Scriptures, he has been in the presence of God and therefore must know the True Love that radiates from the Creator.  As such, whether or not Satan was at one time an angel, he knows that love, and to be separated from it must be complete torture.

Obviously this brings so much to question about the nature of who Satan is.  But for the ease of discussion, let’s consider him a fallen angel.

For whatever reason, Satan and God had a disagreement of sorts, which caused Satan to be expelled from God’s presence.  I can’t even imagine how he would have been able to do such a thing considering the idea that God radiates true love, which would, in theory, bring about complete allegiance, wouldn’t it?

But think, for example, about Judas.  Judas was one of the men Jesus requested to be at his side as one of the apostles.  He needed Judas to betray him so his plan could be completed.  Although standard Christian doctrine does demonize Judas, he was a necessary fixture for Christ’s work, and, well, Jesus brought him to his side to put him in the position to fall to the temptation of betrayal.

Judas’s act was, in many ways, unavoidable.  Could Satan’s have been as well?  Is there some greater master plan in effect that we have not completely understood yet?  Although God saw his creation as good, is it possible that we need to go through some sort of purification process here on earth in order to complete his plan?

Looking at Satan in this light changes the picture slightly.  Just as we see images of the Christ in earlier Scriptural accounts (such as Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land), is it possible that we see such images of Satan?  Could Judas be one of those?

The Bible story really is the account of the battle between Satan and God.  We start right at the beginning with how Satan tarnished God’s creation, and we see at the end in Revelation, the destruction of Satan with God’s tarnished creation.

But is God’s love incapable of also reaching Satan himself?  If Satan had known God’s love, he must surely want nothing more than to return to it, right?  If Satan is the creation of God, then he too must be viewed as the Prodigal Son, off on his own to make his own way, only to find out that he is stuck in depravity and wishes to return.  What if the story of the Bible really does come down to God’s intended salvation of the devil?  That might be pushing it a tad, but just random questions based on a random thought coming off of a rather non-philosophical TV show.

There’s a relationship between God and Satan that we’ve never fully been able to understand.  The conversation that occurs in Job makes that all too clear.  If it weren’t for Satan’s existence, would we even require our Father?  Our focus definitely wouldn’t be on salvation.

My gears have been turning on this for almost a month now, and I’m still not really all that much further yet.  But, I couldn’t help but put the question out here and see anyone else’s thoughts on the matter.  Where does Satan truly fit within the picture of Christianity?  Right now I think the basic thought of him doesn’t extend much further than that of Hades, the ancient Greek god of the Underworld.  But there must be more to him, right?  He’s not God’s brother (assuming that Zeus is the Greek equivalent to the Father).  He is God’s creation (by all probable reasoning).  If God has a purpose, a plan, for all of his creation, surely he didn’t create Satan to be condemned, did he?

Book Review: Raising Hell by Julie Ferwerda

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Raising Hell by Julie Ferwerda

So, although this isn’t exactly marking the return of regular articles by myself, seeing as I’m still in the grips of newborn baby craziness, I do have something I wish to share with you this week, and that is the book Raising Hell by author Julie Ferwerda.

Julie is the wife of semi-regular contributor to the site, Steve Ferwerda, who goes by the ever-appropriate handle of Steve on the site here.  A few years back they started seeing the Bible in a new light and as a result, have come up with some incredibly unorthodox theories regarding some of Christianity’s most closely clung-to doctrines, the one being at the forefront for this book is the doctrine of hell.  Due to their excitement regarding their new view on Scripture, as well as the actual characterization of God, Julie seems as if she tries at times in this book to hold back her extreme happiness at figuring out the true ‘Good News’ of the Gospel, which is that not only is there no hell, but that all are truly to be saved through the work of The Anointed One.

And who can blame her.  The message she presents quite clearly within these ~300 pages is magnificent.  The idea that not only does God will for all men to be saved, but that his very willing of it means that they will all be saved.

This is, of course, taking an incredibly shallow look at the ideas shared within this book, as she goes even further by reviewing such generally un-questioned topics as the immortality of the soul, God’s ability to withstand evil, the true meaning of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and even eternity itself.

Now, even the back cover of the book will warn you (through amusing ‘quotes from readers’) that Julie is not classically trained in theology.  Even the preface to the book describes her as more of a Biblical enthusiast than a theological scholar.  However, that doesn’t seem to deter her from making some incredibly strong arguments for her stance on these doctrines in which the Christian church at large don’t even feel are necessary taking a second look at.

She even goes so far as to use universally accepted Greek lexicons to show discrepancies in translations which may have led the Christian church astray from the original intentions of the texts.

I have to admit that when I was initially asked if I would review the book, I was hesitant.  First, although it may seem odd for someone like me who spends his leisure time writing about Christianity, I don’t really like reading such theological studies.  Add into that the fact that I shared the trepidation many would have with such a book being written by someone who is self-trained in Scriptural interpretation (which is, of course, quite hypocritical of me as well, I’m aware), and I really just didn’t see myself as one who would be best to present this book in a good light for the purposes of, well, you know, assisting them in getting others to read it.

However, after reading it, I have to say that it is a great piece of literature to begin the debate on these questions that I think need to be asked.  Whether or not you come out of reading Ms. Ferwerda’s book convinced that there is no hell, you will at least see reason to believe that we need to review Christianity’s traditional doctrines against Scripture.  And that is something I can definitely stand behind, as that’s one of the mission statements of this website.

And she provides some incredibly tools to use in such a study, almost all of which are available online.

Honestly, there is very little bad I can say about this book.  She takes some difficult dogmatic and apologetic discussions and makes them pretty darn easy to understand, even for those less dogmatically inclined.  Her usage of analogy goes a long way for striking most of her arguments home.  And although I’m not completely sold on everything she argues, I have come out of reading this book with a whole lot to think about, including different angles to view subjects I was already mulling over.

But, of course, no review would be complete without listing at least a couple of cons regarding the piece of literature in question.  The first one is regarding her usage of wikipedia.  Now, I’m hardly one to downplay someone’s usage of the site, as it has all too frequently been my go-to source for researching almost any topic.  But it seems a tad irresponsible when discussing topics such as these in a published format.  Her usage of the site is by no-means all-encompassing.  She lists many varied sources within her endnotes.  I just found myself cringing at the uses of wikipedia when they did crop up, especially in extended quotes within the text itself, as, well, wikipedia is generally considered a questionable source of information, changes often, and, well, if the information listed within should be used, would have had it’s own endnote to the original information source it was providing the information from.  Meaning, if the information was coming from a credible source outside of some random wikipedia editor, why not credit the original source material?

And that leads me to the other con I can give.  The book, understandably, comes across quite biased.  Although there are many attempts to reference and review alternative interpretations of the text, I felt at times that they were, well, reviewed without much consideration.  I don’t believe this really negatively affects the message of the book itself, but perhaps causes a feeling of neglecting the readership, many of which currently hold these alternative interpretations to be the truth.

However, neither of those issues really affect the true message I see within these book covers, which is to never stop searching the Scriptures.  We see a woman at the beginning of this book, who held to orthodox teachings, become a confident researcher of God’s Word, willing to stand for what she had found and proudly pronounce salvation for all.  Although this book is not intended as a narrative, I found it very hard to see it as anything but such.  We see into Julie’s mind as she reviews these topics, and the sheer excitement she would feel whenever she would find something new.  And through that narrative we see a much more important message than whether or not hell does indeed exist.  We see that there can still be an honest excitement for God and his Word.  We see that God does instill in people today that love for him and his teachings.  We see that all this comes from a simple search for him through his Word.

I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the concepts of universal salvation or just interested in reviewing tradition vs. Scripture.  You can find more information about Julie, as well as her books, at JulieFerwerda.com, and more about this book in particular at RaisingHellBook.com.

 

Why Are We Afraid of Death?

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Image obtained from flickr.com

This past week an old friend of mine passed away due to a motorcycle accident.  I haven’t talked to this friend in years, and to be completely honest, we were never close friends.  All the same, I did consider him a dear friend, and his passing has definitely stuck with me.  I haven’t had too many friends die in my lifetime, so, this being one of the few, I have found myself stuck thinking about it.

 

For way to long of a period of time have I found myself staring at his facebook wall, seeing all of his friends writing messages of love and about memories they shared together, thinking about how I too should add myself into the mix and show my love for this friend who passed well before what I considered to be his time.  Of course, I haven’t written anything, as everything I’ve come up with has felt either too simple or too forced to truly express the impact this individual had on my life while he was alive, and even more since his death.

This has brought me to even larger thoughts about how the religious view death.  In word, we speak of it as a celebration.  However, in act, we, of course mourn.  But, even more so, every death acts as a judgment performed by man about man.  I haven’t heard any negative judgments about Dillin, and I highly doubt that I will.  That being said, however, I’ve heard stories about pastors all too willing to pass judgment about other friends of mine who have passed on due to their death being a result of suicide or being drunk at the time.

Why are we so quick to judge?  Is it within our nature to need to know for certain where our fellow humans ended up on the other side?  Is it more frightening not to know where they ended up than it is to know that they will be condemned for eternity?

It’s in this case that I find myself feeling slightly Catholic about the situation.  In every death, I see the possibility for unbelief.  Now, although I may personally lean more heavily towards the concepts that all men can/will be saved, even if they die as an unbeliever, I still find myself praying for those who have died, whether or not I have a question in my mind about where they should end up.  And shouldn’t that be the case?  Instead of flat out saying that one of the fallen is going to hell, shouldn’t we pray for those who have fallen that they might meet their Savior on the other side?

And even if we are completely certain that the darkest depths of Satan’s wrath awaits them on the other side, such as I would assume most people believe the likes of Hitler and Stalin are experiencing as we speak, shouldn’t we pray that salvation awaits for them, instead of joining in their condemnation?

I think this need to judge comes from our own deep seated fears of death.  Although Christians may claim to have a relatively Gnostic view of death (meaning that they believe life to be nothing but a prison keeping our souls from living their intended life), I think we fear the beyond, we fear being wrong, we fear death.  And that fear causes us to go on the defensive about every situation death is involved in.  We feel the need to strengthen ourselves against that fear by stating beyond a doubt where the final resting place lies for those who have died.

Do we know?  Can we ever know while on this mortal plane of existence?  Of course not.  So why should we even consider placing the stamp of condemnation on anyone?  Hell, Christians get fed up with people damning the world around them when they use the word damn as a standard expletive, but they seem to be perfectly fine with the idea of placing that label on those who have passed on.

Why?

Now, in the case of Dillin, there can, of course, be no question.  He was a genuine person with a genuine heart and soul.  Yet, it is with Dillin in mind that I continue my prayer for the fallen.  I pray that God’s mercy does, in fact, extend to all of his children, as is promised in Scripture.