There is a point where you know you haven’t a chance.
Many years ago, a 22-year-old nephew came out from back east for a visit. He was a real city slicker, nice enough but unaware of anything to do with the outdoors. We took him and his girlfriend canoeing in a lake, and at one point decided to land at a dock we had once rented. Without grabbing on to anything or paying attention to balance, he stood up on one side to step onto the dock. The canoe began to sway. He tried to fight it by counterbalancing and ended in making it worse. That we would capsize seemed all but inevitable, but something in me sparked and I commanded in an unusually authoritative voice, “sit down!” He did, and we were saved from losing our cooler and lunch and seat pads and all that. What had seemed inevitable had been stopped, almost as if by a miracle.
That time we had a chance. But there was another time less than two years ago when I steered my bicycle into a ground squirrel hole on the dirt bed of a converted railway line. The path was filled with them and sooner or later any rider would hit one, but usually the bike can be righted. This time was different. The wheel caught just wrong and pulled me over at nearly a ninety degree angle. It was far too wobbly to fight, and something told me to give in to the circumstance, relax, and fall. I did, and got some cuts and a pulled shoulder that bothered me for several months, but nothing more. I had hit the point of knowing that I hadn’t a chance and gave in to avoid the worst.
I am now reading a book, The Warning by Christine Watkins, which gives testimonials of people who have had “Illuminations of Conscience,” when life flashes before the mind’s eye and one sees all the hurt one has caused, either by commission or omission. Many of the people were those I could say were worse than I, drunkards who beat their wives and abandoned their children, or those who were more like me, who had lived careless rock- and- roll lives, rolling around the earth like a loose cannon. Their self-condemnation, usually with Jesus or Mary or a saint in the background, caused me to squirm, but what the heck. We are, most of us anyway, in the same boat, right? If the guy who beat his wife had a chance, I was way ahead of him. Heaven would not be assured, but with a little effort it seemed reasonable that I could find my way to glory too. Which seemed reasonable until I read the testimonial of the nun.
She had felt the calling since childhood in post-war Germany and had done absolutely nothing wrong as far as she told in her story: no hidden love affairs, no fellow nun she had spread gossip about, no secret alcoholism. She was stationed to California, and then sent by request to study Christianity at a school in Jerusalem. While there, she met a Protestant student who insisted she walk with her on the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher – that is, where Jesus walked to his crucifixion, where he was crucified, and where he was buried, respectively. She refused the invitation many times because she did not like to dwell on the ugly side of Christ’s mission. Finally she relented, and they left for the Via in the early hours to avoid the tourist traffic. At first she did not even kneel at the Stations of the Cross along the Via, but then something touched her. By the time they reached Golgotha, which is at the upper portion of the cathedral of the Sepulcher, she felt another call to Christ’s suffering.
There is an altar built over the exact spot where the cross of Jesus was placed. It is easy to find, for the ‘mount’ of crucifixion was really an extremely large bolder just outside the old walls of Jerusalem, and the resourceful Romans had chiseled a few holes in the rock to easily and quickly slide the crosses into, holding them firmly until they could be pulled up, thrown away, and replaced. A small altar has been built over the hole that is said to have held Jesus’s cross; to touch it, as most tourists do (and as I have), one has to crawl beneath the altar on one’s knees in an obvious act of submission. Here, the nun now felt the need to do just that, but upon putting her fingers in the hole, she was struck with the Illumination of Conscience, where all her bad thoughts and deeds – and lack of good deeds – were brought forth.
As said, with many others in the book, the sins revealed in their Illumination were truly grave. So the nun thought her own were as well. For instance, she saw that she would coyly smile in discussions so that she might be noticed or get her way. She would sometimes glance at a mirror and notice how good looking she was. She would talk happily with men with subtle flirting. One gets the gist – these are her sins. She did not see that Hell was waiting for her if she did not change, as many others had. Instead, she had seen her slight vanities and power plays and had suffered for them. Oh Lord, forgive me, for I am not perfect!
She was in rapture for two hours beneath that altar, and afterwards understood the value of suffering – of how human sin hurts God so much.
To which I could only think, “You’ve got to be kidding!” If the minute sins of the nun caused both God and her suffering, I must be balanced on the lip of the fiery abyss, with only the slight fact that I was still alive in this world holding me from eternal damnation. I hadn’t a chance. Even if I had the humility to confess each imperfect act I have ever committed, I could never remember a tenth of them. For heck’s sake, not a day goes by that I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t always find a handsome elderly gentleman starring back, but I hope to. Not a chance.
It did bother me, and probably will continue to nag a bit, but an intuition of the situation came to me. I cannot say with certainty that it is correct, but it seemed right, and so I will tell it:
We are told that God is infinite love and mercy, and yet would condemn us, or let us condemn ourselves (however it is put) to eternal suffering in Hell. Yet we know that most parents would not do that to their children in most circumstance, even after those acts that are truly grave. How can this be? How can human parents be more loving and merciful than God?
After a hard night’s sleep, I woke to understand that God truly understands us more than we do ourselves. He knows exactly when to use a stick on us and when to offer a carrot, so that we might be reconciled with Him. Unlike us in this life, he has all the time in the world to do this and then some to accomplish this. On the other hand, we have free will – this is a central issue for God of ultimate importance. So we have the right to refuse his carrot and to become hardened and rebellious by his stick. But our death is not necessarily our real death. Eternal hell for most of us might simply mean eons of time in different circumstance where we refuse to live with the will of God. Perhaps there is a deadline, but that would be something that only God knows. Otherwise, he is working on us to bring us back to him, for only God knows how long.
Outside of the view on the extant of our life and what that means (which is a big, I admit), most of this would be acceptable to Christian churches. Where the other difference would be is an understanding that one size does not fit all. For instance, those who are given the Illumination of Conscience are ready for it and/or in need of it, to turn back (or become more perfect) towards God. Most of us are either unready or not in need of such terrifying exposure, at least at the current time of our existence, which might be far longer than we can know. For many, the Illumination comes at death, where Christians are told we have a last chance for repentance. For Catholics, this usually means being sent off to Purgatory, where we are worked on just as we have been in this life, to become perfect in the eyes of God.
Eternal damnation for some at death? It just might be, but those in this book who were shown that they were on the certain road to death were often, unlike the nun, much like the rest of us. Yet we, unlike them, are not given this chance to work off our sins before death and Hell. And that’s what I mean: one size does not fit all. Life of the soul is eternal. One purgatory is not the same as the other. We might continue as humans in another place, or as spirits in a human-like environment without an Illumination. Who knows but God? Who knows why some holy rules are made, then taken away? God knows best, after all. He is eternal love and mercy. He knows us better than ourselves and wants to bring us back. It seems all we have to do – all that we really have the power to do – is desire to go back to him. Then he will use whatever carrot or stick, whatever threat or promise, which will be best for us.
Or so it came to me. Perhaps it is only wish fulfillment. God does not have to make sense, after all, as he makes the rules and can change them at will. But it seems likely that at his essence he wouldn’t mess with our feeble and imperfect desire to return to him. Rather, he would help in any way he permits himself under free will, and then some, for as long as it takes. This understanding does not take away the stick, as some modern feel-good religions do, but it gives us a better understand of what we consider to be punishment – that however harsh, it is ultimately meant and really is for our own good. It would seem to me that truly believing this would give us the one chance we need, both for those of us who have done terrible things and for those whose worst sin is looking in the mirror to see only what they want to see.
There is a point where you know you haven’t a chance.
Many years ago, a 22-year-old nephew came out from back east for a visit. He was a real city slicker, nice enough but unaware of anything to do with the outdoors. We took him and his girlfriend canoeing in a lake, and at one point decided to land at a dock we had once rented. Without grabbing on to anything or paying attention to balance, he stood up on one side to step onto the dock. The canoe began to sway. He tried to fight it by counterbalancing and ended in making it worse. That we would capsize seemed all but inevitable, but something in me sparked and I commanded in an unusually authoritative voice, “sit down!” He did, and we were saved from losing our cooler and lunch and seat pads and all that. What had seemed inevitable had been stopped, almost as if by a miracle.
That time we had a chance. But there was another time less than two years ago when I steered my bicycle into a ground squirrel hole on the dirt bed of a converted railway line. The path was filled with them and sooner or later any rider would hit one, but usually the bike can be righted. This time was different. The wheel caught just wrong and pulled me over at nearly a ninety degree angle. It was far too wobbly to fight, and something told me to give in to the circumstance, relax, and fall. I did, and got some cuts and a pulled shoulder that bothered me for several months, but nothing more. I had hit the point of knowing that I hadn’t a chance and gave in to avoid the worst.
I am now reading a book, The Warning by Christine Watkins, which gives testimonials of people who have had “Illuminations of Conscience,” when life flashes before the mind’s eye and one sees all the hurt one has caused, either by commission or omission. Many of the people were those I could say were worse than I, drunkards who beat their wives and abandoned their children, or those who were more like me, who had lived careless rock- and- roll lives, rolling around the earth like a loose cannon. Their self-condemnation, usually with Jesus or Mary or a saint in the background, caused me to squirm, but what the heck. We are, most of us anyway, in the same boat, right? If the guy who beat his wife had a chance, I was way ahead of him. Heaven would not be assured, but with a little effort it seemed reasonable that I could find my way to glory too. Which seemed reasonable until I read the testimonial of the nun.
She had felt the calling since childhood in post-war Germany and had done absolutely nothing wrong as far as she told in her story: no hidden love affairs, no fellow nun she had spread gossip about, no secret alcoholism. She was stationed to California, and then sent by request to study Christianity at a school in Jerusalem. While there, she met a Protestant student who insisted she walk with her on the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher – that is, where Jesus walked to his crucifixion, where he was crucified, and where he was buried, respectively. She refused the invitation many times because she did not like to dwell on the ugly side of Christ’s mission. Finally she relented, and they left for the Via in the early hours to avoid the tourist traffic. At first she did not even kneel at the Stations of the Cross along the Via, but then something touched her. By the time they reached Golgotha, which is at the upper portion of the cathedral of the Sepulcher, she felt another call to Christ’s suffering.
There is an altar built over the exact spot where the cross of Jesus was placed. It is easy to find, for the ‘mount’ of crucifixion was really an extremely large bolder just outside the old walls of Jerusalem, and the resourceful Romans had chiseled a few holes in the rock to easily and quickly slide the crosses into, holding them firmly until they could be pulled up, thrown away, and replaced. A small altar has been built over the hole that is said to have held Jesus’s cross; to touch it, as most tourists do (and as I have), one has to crawl beneath the altar on one’s knees in an obvious act of submission. Here, the nun now felt the need to do just that, but upon putting her fingers in the hole, she was struck with the Illumination of Conscience, where all her bad thoughts and deeds – and lack of good deeds – were brought forth.
As said, with many others in the book, the sins revealed in their Illumination were truly grave. So the nun thought her own were as well. For instance, she saw that she would coyly smile in discussions so that she might be noticed or get her way. She would sometimes glance at a mirror and notice how good looking she was. She would talk happily with men with subtle flirting. One gets the gist – these are her sins. She did not see that Hell was waiting for her if she did not change, as many others had. Instead, she had seen her slight vanities and power plays and had suffered for them. Oh Lord, forgive me, for I am not perfect!
She was in rapture for two hours beneath that altar, and afterwards understood the value of suffering – of how human sin hurts God so much.
To which I could only think, “You’ve got to be kidding!” If the minute sins of the nun caused both God and her suffering, I must be balanced on the lip of the fiery abyss, with only the slight fact that I was still alive in this world holding me from eternal damnation. I hadn’t a chance. Even if I had the humility to confess each imperfect act I have ever committed, I could never remember a tenth of them. For heck’s sake, not a day goes by that I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t always find a handsome elderly gentleman starring back, but I hope to. Not a chance.
It did bother me, and probably will continue to nag a bit, but an intuition of the situation came to me. I cannot say with certainty that it is correct, but it seemed right, and so I will tell it:
We are told that God is infinite love and mercy, and yet would condemn us, or let us condemn ourselves (however it is put) to eternal suffering in Hell. Yet we know that most parents would not do that to their children in most circumstance, even after those acts that are truly grave. How can this be? How can human parents be more loving and merciful than God?
After a hard night’s sleep, I woke to understand that God truly understands us more than we do ourselves. He knows exactly when to use a stick on us and when to offer a carrot, so that we might be reconciled with Him. Unlike us in this life, he has all the time in the world to do this and then some to accomplish this. On the other hand, we have free will – this is a central issue for God of ultimate importance. So we have the right to refuse his carrot and to become hardened and rebellious by his stick. But our death is not necessarily our real death. Eternal hell for most of us might simply mean eons of time in different circumstance where we refuse to live with the will of God. Perhaps there is a deadline, but that would be something that only God knows. Otherwise, he is working on us to bring us back to him, for only God knows how long.
Outside of the view on the extant of our life and what that means (which is a big, I admit), most of this would be acceptable to Christian churches. Where the other difference would be is an understanding that one size does not fit all. For instance, those who are given the Illumination of Conscience are ready for it and/or in need of it, to turn back (or become more perfect) towards God. Most of us are either unready or not in need of such terrifying exposure, at least at the current time of our existence, which might be far longer than we can know. For many, the Illumination comes at death, where Christians are told we have a last chance for repentance. For Catholics, this usually means being sent off to Purgatory, where we are worked on just as we have been in this life, to become perfect in the eyes of God.
Eternal damnation for some at death? It just might be, but those in this book who were shown that they were on the certain road to death were often, unlike the nun, much like the rest of us. Yet we, unlike them, are not given this chance to work off our sins before death and Hell. And that’s what I mean: one size does not fit all. Life of the soul is eternal. One purgatory is not the same as the other. We might continue as humans in another place, or as spirits in a human-like environment without an Illumination. Who knows but God? Who knows why some holy rules are made, then taken away? God knows best, after all. He is eternal love and mercy. He knows us better than ourselves and wants to bring us back. It seems all we have to do – all that we really have the power to do – is desire to go back to him. Then he will use whatever carrot or stick, whatever threat or promise, which will be best for us.
Or so it came to me. Perhaps it is only wish fulfillment. God does not have to make sense, after all, as he makes the rules and can change them at will. But it seems likely that at his essence he wouldn’t mess with our feeble and imperfect desire to return to him. Rather, he would help in any way he permits himself under free will, and then some, for as long as it takes. This understanding does not take away the stick, as some modern feel-good religions do, but it gives us a better understand of what we consider to be punishment – that however harsh, it is ultimately meant and really is for our own good. It would seem to me that truly believing this would give us the one chance we need, both for those of us who have done terrible things and for those whose worst sin is looking in the mirror to see only what they want to see.
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