Heaven and Hell

Tonight, my reader, I would like to talk about a central conundrum in Christianity – the question of heaven and hell.

As a Christian, the most difficult question that I need to ask myself is – ‘why hell?’ If I were to look at the Old Testament God I would be able to comprehend, for the old God is portrayed as a fear-inspiring, jealous and vengeful God. Even though he seems arbitrary in his issuance of the concept of ‘justice’ I feel more amicable towards this plain, realist concept of ‘might is right’ than the seemingly unaccounted for penalty of death in the New Testament.

If Christ was so forgiving even in his last moment towards the Roman guards who crucified, speared and humiliated him – “Father, please forgive them for they do not know what they are doing,” when they have obviously witnessed and defiled Him, why does he turned away from trillions of people who might have simply not given much thought to his Words or have rejected Him based on imperfect information? I always believed that God gave us a brain and thus we should use it. Since, the concept of God is obviously not falsifiable in any conceivable way, rational people (a breed whom he created along with the less rational ones) who have faith in science (which is but one of the many ways which allow us to study the wonder of his creation) would naturally conclude that it is a futile search and conclude at best that they do not know. If there were no compelling reasons to believe, other than a personal experience with God that follows after believing, how do rational people who have not believed convince themselves to do so?

The best explanation that I have heard in defense of the separation of believers and non-believers states that non-believers who rejected God would not delight in His presence and hence, it might be tormentous to put them in Heaven with God, for an expansive eternity. I buy that argument because I cannot imagine myself worshipping somebody whose cause I do not believe and whose rule I abhor. Nevertheless, akin to societies on earth, people do not always have to love their governments for them to want to obey the laws and for them to want to live in relative peace and comfort. I am pretty sure that there are tonnes of people who would prefer a long-lived tyrant to a lifetime of imprisonment in the depths of licking flames. Even if people would prefer to opt out of bible studies, Everyday (as opposed to Sunday) school and thanksgiving, I do not necessarily think that they have opted for hell by default. I think exclusion in the form of confinement or neglect would suffice as a form of segregation. Is there a need to really punish them FOREVER by placing them in the throes of licking flames and allowing their bones to be burned to an ashen white?

When I imagine almost 70% of the people whom I love burning in Hell for their failure to accept a set of belief that is pockmarked by unintelligible reasons, unbelievable crimes and unfathomable laws, I cannot will myself to accept that this belief issues the best possible Truth. I would choose to burn in Hell than serve a God who burns people I love endlessly because they have failed to love Him. A Father who professes to love me unconditionally and beyond ways I can comprehend, would find it impossible to burn the people whom I love more dearly than myself and yet be able to profess that at the very same time. It is a blatent double-think that prescribes two mutually exclusive conditions that ought not exist simultaneously under any logical circumstances. But perhaps, God does not use logic and he most definitely does not need to, he has other tools and rules and way of thinking that is higher than ours. Christianity is a rounded concept, and whenever you reach a logical dead-end like this, you only have one way out and that is called ‘the leap of faith’. The Leap requires that you drop your logical armament and proceed with an unassailable blind faith that would shield you against any atheist corruption. And herein lies another manifestation of my eternal antagonistic selves. I have leapt across the abyss of reason and yet as I walk on I realised that a boulder tied to me with an infinitely long rope has fallen off into the bottomless abyss. Amen.

A nice rendition of my favourite hymn

It’s always hard to believe that God is around when He seems so easy to be assailed by logic and reason. One can only trust with a foolhardy heart that He is there. He might not be of course, but as Pascal says, there is a hole in the heart that is in the shape of God. Sometimes it’s strange how Atheists share an equally unreasonable faith about (the absence of) God.

The Prowess of the Believer’s Argument

At some point, science generates questions which pass beyond its own ability to answer them. Such questions have been called metaphysical: they form a distinctive and inescapable part of the subject matter of philosophy. Now, in considering the particular metaphysical problem that I have mentioned, people might have recourse to an authoritative system of theology, they might find their answer in the invocation of God, as the first cause and final aim of everything. But if this invocation is founded merely on faith, then it claims no rational authority beyond that which can be attributed to revelation. Anyone who lets the matter rest in faith, and enquires no further into its validity, has, in a sense, a philosophy. He has staked his claim in a metaphysical doctrine, but has affirmed that doctrine dogmatically. It is for him, neither the conclusion of reasoned argument nor the result of metaphysical speculation. It is simply a received idea which has the intellectual merit of generating answers to metaphysical puzzles but with the singular disadvantage of adding no authority to those answers that is not contained in the original dogmatic assumption. –Roger Scruton

A Beautiful Irish Hymn

While I was walking home yesterday, I heard the bells at the St Andrew Cathedral tolled. The Evensong was commencing that very hour and having wanted to go to service for the longest time, I decided to go in. It turned out to be a really wonderful service and for the first time, I felt truly at home in a church. And while I was there, the congregation sang this hymn. I thought the Irish melody was so beautiful..

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
be all else but naught to me, save that thou art;
be thou my best thought in the day and the night,
both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word,
be thou ever with me, and I with thee Lord;
be thou my great Father, and I thy true son;
be thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one.

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might;
be thou my soul’s shelter, be thou my strong tower:
O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise:
be thou mine inheritance now and always;
be thou and thou only the first in my heart;
O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.

High King of heaven, thou heaven’s bright sun,
O grant me its joys after victory is won;
great Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be thou my vision, O Ruler of all.