Romans 11:36, Marcus Borg, and New Testament “fire” verses have me thinking. First, I freely admit that my thinking is of the variety most often labeled mystic by those who need labels. Everything purely factual and logical, scientific and modern falls far too short of the realities of the Divine I have been blessed to experience. The following thoughts are heresy in the sense that Tolstoy used the word. They are outside of the declared truth we use to tell others they must come and be just like us in order to be “orthodox.” They are outside the realm of the arguments we have long used to tell people they must repent of their difference and become like us. So, they will have to be labeled heresy by any who choose to continue the old game.
Anyway, the idea that everything is from God, through God, and to God contradicts so much theology I have been exposed to along the way. But, there it is in Romans. Tempting as it is to pass over it as just another way of saying that God is the Author and Finisher of all things (with many of them being ended eternally in damnation), I believe it says more. If current existence is all through God, then perhaps any existence in actual defiance and separation from God is earthly illusion. From God’s side it may look very different in both the present and future tense (both nonsense when speaking of the timeless I Am). Perhaps no matter how hard man tries to declare himself separate from God, it is impossible because nothing separate from God exists! I have a mental image of an ant running about in my hand claiming, “I don’t believe in you. You don’t control me!” And, even that falls short because I did not give the ant life, I am not its purpose for existence, and I will not end its life.
But what of all those “fire” verses and the interpretation of eternal punishment for those not saved by believing our exact doctrine, praying our precise words, or observing the sacraments in our prescribed ways? They could fit with the thoughts above in terms of those who refuse God’s love experiencing total destruction. I think eternal fire could easily be interpreted that way because even at the time of the writing of the New Testament, human mythology included the idea of things returning to life after total consumption by a fire of limited duration (think Phoenix). To state that there would be no possibility of return, it would be logical to poetically make the fire itself eternal.
But there is another possibility. There are also verses that speak of coming through the fire as pure gold, or with all of one’s bad works burned away and escaping death as by a near miss. What if exposure to the Divine is the fire? There are verses to support that view. Will the God who knew every person before they were formed in the womb truly consume and destroy most of them? Or will the Holy Fire burn away all their impurities causing them to no longer be who they imagined themselves to be? Perhaps after exposure to the Fire, every head will bow and every knee will bend — not in submission on the way to hell, but in the worship the verse actually seems to indicate.
Taking these things from a more Eastern view, the two possibilities are not opposites. To become one with the One by choice, or by ceasing to be separate and “evil”, so that all is unity and holiness are essentially the same when viewed through Eastern eyes. That gives me pause given that the Divine is far beyond all of our reckoning and arguing.
Brief side trip:
Years ago a secular psychiatrist, who was an atheist, told me the reason he did not believe in sin. He said in all of his years of practice he had yet to meet a human being able to stand up and defy the significant humans in their lives even when they were causing the person great pain. He definitely did not believe a human being could comprehend that there was indeed an all powerful Creator and then knowingly defy that Creator. At the time, I found his comment insightful about human capacities but dismissed his anti-theology because I was of course a prize winning memorizer of many literal verses dictated directly by God at least onto the original scrolls if not the paper of my well used King James Bible that proved his ignorance and evil. Now, I am not so sure. How does the idea of willfully living in separation actually match up to either the revealed nature of God or the nature we can observe of man?
Back to the original thought: I know this much. In this life, now here, where I can feel the effects, to be in the presence and will of the Divine is paradise. To feel unaligned and separate is to experience hell. Perhaps in eternity there is only one choice which can be stated two ways. We enter the eternal union in bliss, or we have any perception of separation burned away to nonexistence. The end would be the same — final unity of all things in the One they were Created by and for all along.
If any of my meaning has found its way into these words, it is a blessing. What I am typing about is beyond the capacity of words and language as the Divine is beyond all things human. I am glad that eternity is not in my hands or dependent on my understanding. I will live now in the presence of the Light and celebrate the existence of the Kingdom which has already overtaken us as I would have said in my literalist days, “Just like Jesus said.” And, I will invite others to join the party because its worth joining, now.
peace
, but what if we take that as an archetype of the response of humans to actual encounters with the Divine?