Islamic fear of hell

I believe that the message of the Qu’ran to the believer is at its core one of the fear of hell. The Qu’ran is full of exhortations warning of hell fire for a range of sins. The Muslim can have no confidence that when he comes before the throne of God and has his deeds weighed on the scales of justice they will be found in the right. The believer may just as likely be plunged into hell for the weight of his evil deeds as no one can atone for them. These existential uncertainties combined with repeated warnings against those who go astray are at the heart of the fear-based motivation taught in the Qu’ran.

There is a sharp and constant duality in the Qu’ran between heaven and hell, bliss and torment. Virtually every Sura contains praise for the Qu’ran, a recounting of a past people who disbelieved a past apostle, directions to see God’s hand in nature, and stern warnings to all unbelievers of the painful doom that awaits them. It is true that Scriptures like the Bible have equally compelling descriptions of hell and eternal punishment, but one can sit and read the Bible for vast stretches without encountering hell or what will happen to those who will end up there. But in the Qu’ran hell is almost omnipresent, the flames licking out from page after page, the warnings drummed into the brain again and again. Paradise is mentioned almost as an afterthought to the torture which will befall those not rightly guided in eternity. Even those who have put their trust in Allah and his apostle Muhammad will have to undergo a weighing of their every deed on a scale which will determine their eternal fate. “Those whose good deeds weigh heavy in the scales shall triumph, but those whose deeds are light shall forfeit their souls and abide in Hell forever. The fire will scorch their faces and they will writhe in agony” (Qu’ran 23.102-104).

The punishment awaiting the unbeliever is not left to the imagination. For example the reader is told of unbelievers, “On that day you shall see the guilty bound with chains, their garments pitch, and their faces covered with flames” (Qu’ran 14.49-50). Of those who oppose God’s message it is said, “Hell will stretch behind them, and putrid water shall he drink: he will sip, but scarcely swallow. Death will assail him from every side, yet he shall not die. Harrowing torment awaits him” (Qu’ran 14.16-17). The details go on: “Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. They shall be lashed with rods of iron” (Qu’ran 22.19-20).

In the face of a “revelation” that was completely new to pagans, Jews, and Christians alike the Qu’ran reserves many threats for those who fail to accept it. I believe these threats are the means by which Muhammad preserved the community of those who made the leap and embraced his new message. Perhaps their hearts would waver, perhaps they would doubt if what the prophet was saying was really from God, perhaps the pressure from their relatives to return to the old ways would weigh on them. But to counter all these countervailing currents, God himself speaking through Muhammad warns the new community not to spurn his words. Indeed, the greatest punishments await those who deny the veracity of the Qu’ran. “On that day those who disbelieved and disobeyed the Apostle will wish that they were leveled with the dust; they shall hide nothing from God” (Qu’ran 4.40). I believe this same pressure weighs on the modern Muslim who might be tempted to forsake her faith for any other path. The modern apostate who denies the Qu’ran is in the same position as were the pagan Arabs or the Jews of Medina who scoffed at it over a thousand years ago: they will burn in hell. There is no middle way, one must either commit to believing the message wholeheartedly or perish.

It can be fairly stated that many of the passages of hell are contrasted with the vision of paradise as flowing streams in gardens, an eternal bliss for the believer. Indeed this vision of paradise is often cited in our time as a motivation for jihadi martyrs. Perhaps the Qu’ranic vision could be compared to the carrot and stick approach, offering blessings for the obedient and eternal torture for the unbelievers. And the Sufis of course have reacted to the fearful view of God by positing a relationship of ecstatic love as an alternative. But it should be noted that the Sufi movement is a reaction, and what it is reacting against is the notion of a malevolent God who casts the majority into hell based on arbitrary predestination. Despite the promises of grace and the reward for good deeds how can one be certain of obtaining paradise? No one can begin to remember all their deeds, so what if the bad outweigh the good? And indeed some teach that neglecting prayer or other sins may doom the Muslim. The militant Sheikh Abu Hamza Al-Masri speaking in London said:

Why are there so many martyrs among us? Because we are a nation graced with Allah’s mercy. Because with every Shahid Allah saves seventy of his family members who were destined to go to the fires of hell. This is a nation graced with Allah’s mercy. Many are the members of our families who are destined to go to hell for neglecting their prayers, for abandoning religion or for committing forbidden acts and they need the intercession of those Shahids and the intercession of those who know the Koran by heart. (MEMRI.org)

The Qu’ran is a spoken warning, with the threat of punishment either implied or stated. “This is a warning to mankind. Let them take heed and know that He is but one God. Let the wise bear this in mind” (Qu’ran 14.52). An ominous date with destiny will come to all who deny God and his apostle. Anyone who takes the message of the book seriously must live in anxiety over whether or not God will accept their life and their works or will find them lacking. This sense of dread based on the warnings of the book is what guards the faithful from straying too far from the path.

Missing Verses?

Two church fathers quote a verse they say is from Scripture that is no where to be found in any manuscript we know of. The first is Justin Martyr who accuses the Jews of cutting out portions of Scripture that spoke with clarity of Jesus. He quotes a verse that he says was clipped from Jeremiah as follows:

`The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.’

The second is Irenaeus who confusingly quotes the same verse twice attributing it first to Jeremiah and then to Isaiah both within the same book (Against Heresies). His quotes follow:

And that it was not a mere man who died for us, Isaiah says: “And the holy Lord remembered His dead Israel, who had slept in the land of sepulcher; and He came down to preach His salvation to them, that He might save them.”

And

As Jeremiah declares, “The holy Lord remembered His dead Israel, who slept in the land of sepulcher; and He descended to them to make known to them His salvation, that they might be saved.”

If anyone out there knows anything about this subject (papers, books, whatever) I would love to hear from you. It is fascinating to me and I’d like to see if more is known about the quote.

Gibbon on the Reformation

Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire writes briefly about the Reformation:The chain of authority was broken, which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death…

… The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff; the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and disputes were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right: the free governments of Holland and England introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh, or a smile, by the modern clergy. (Gibbon, V. LIV)

I believe Gibbon has hit on the central puzzle the church faces in the modern world: how to deal with “the liberty of conscience.” Gibbon is right in noting that the Reformers did not revolt to place “liberty of conscience” on the throne but to replace the erroneous doctrines of the Catholics with their own “correct” doctrines. But once the Pope was dethroned, nobody replaced him as the authoritative voice of the church. Some have tried to replace him with Luther, Calvin, or the Westminster Confession but the fragmentation just keeps increasing.

Big Country

In yesterday’s New York Times Magazine there was a story about Arthur Miller in which he remarked about the Bush-Kerry contest:

“How can the polls be neck and neck when I don’t know one Bush supporter?”

In contrast to Miller is my dental hygienist who has told me that when Clinton won election twice she did not personally know one person who voted for him (this is in Idaho). All this to say that it is a huge country. You can drive for two days and be in a place where people think completely at odds from what you and yours do. And even within local areas we tend to run in packs and not associate with those who think differently than us, so we don’t know what “the other” is thinking.

The vastness of our country is amazing.

Socrates demon-posessed?

Socrates was under the influence of a spirit, which Plato quotes him as describing:

There is something spiritual which, by a divine dispensation, has accompanied me from my childhood up. It is a voice that, when it occurs, always indicates to me a prohibition of something I may be about to do, but never urges me on to anything ; and if one of my friends consults me and the voice occurs, the same thing happens : it prohibits, and does not allow him to act. And I will produce witnesses to convince you of these facts.

[Plato: Theages]

Xenophon writes in his Memorabilia:

He offered sacrifices constantly, and made no secret of it, now in his home, now at the altars of the state temples, and he made use of divination with as little secrecy. Indeed it had become notorious that Socrates claimed to be guided by ‘the deity:’

Only, whereas most men say that the birds or the folk they meet dissuade or encourage them, Socrates said what he meant: for he said that the deity gave him a sign. Many of his companions were counselled by him to do this or not to do that in accordance with the warnings of the deity: and those who followed his advice prospered, and those who rejected it had cause for regret.

This may offer some insight as to what inspires men like Joseph Smith and Muhammad to do some of the things they did.

no challenge to the state

I am erratically reading After Christendom by Stanley Hauerwas as part of a paper on mosque/state separation in Islam. This quote jumped out at me:

The inability of Protestant churches in America to maintain any sense of authority over the lives of their members is one of the most compelling signs that freedom of religion has resulted in the corruption of Christians who now believe that they have the right religiously “to make up their own minds.” There is every sign that this is now also happening among Roman Catholics. As a result, neither Protestants nor Catholics have the capacity to stand as disciplined people capable of challenging the state.

theology of the body

There’s lots of good stuff over at the Books and Culture site right now. This in particular caught my eye, from Theology of the Body by Laura Merzig Fabrycky:

“How has it been, then, from the beginning? God created us male and female—as individuals, naked and unashamed. We were created for relationship, reflecting his Trinitarian essence. We were designed to be given, spent, and poured out to others, not to use and abuse others to gratify ourselves. The hardness of our hearts in sin and separation has made abuse of the other ubiquitous. Through marriage, we participate in a mystery, reflecting how God relates to and loves himself in the Trinity, where each person mutually submits to and loves the other fully. Therefore, we are called to withhold nothing from our spouse in the same way the Godhead does—not just by God’s law, but by our very design as humans in the image of God.

In the “becoming one flesh” of sex, “each takes the other in, expanding the meaning of self.” Only in such self-giving marital love can a man or woman make sense of himself or herself as a gift; it is a perversion of marriage—God’s creation of marriage—to do otherwise. We are not our own. Procreation, God’s invitation for us to join him as co-creators, is the procession of life springing from the mutual love of the two who are one flesh, in the same way that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

Fabrcyky is discussing the work of John Paul II on a theology of the body, and the implications this theology will have for years to come in the church. Important and good stuff.

Critiquing Christian Catalogs

I seem to receive quite a few catalogs from different Christian publishers and I think a lot can be gleaned from looking them over. One of the catalogs I get on a regular basis is the Zondervan Church Source “Ministry Resources” catalog. This seems to be about as mainstream “evangelical” as the come. It appears to operate on a lowest common-denominator assumption that people are all in the thrall of the entertainment culture and that therefore everything that Christians produce must be dumbed-down and ‘relevant’.

I don’t believe that anything in this catalog is older than 10-20 years at the most. I guess the church just started getting it together then. Most of the material in the “Adult Discipleship” section is glossy; the material is usually CD and DVD sets with some kind of guidebook accompanying it. The covers are happy people who look like models engaged in life. They could just as easily be on the cover of the money management magazines I get or even J. Crew I suppose. If I had to interpret the messages being sent based on just the covers, I would say it’s:

“be happy, healthy, successful, and mainstream by following this program.”

The purpose-driven series has its own page with all kinds of purpose-driven follow-ups: Teens, Small Groups, Health and Recovery, and Church Leaders all can be purpose-driven. My gut instinct tells me that whenever any Christian book succeeds, the publisher pressures the author to crank out tons of follow-ups to fully capitalize on its market-appeal.

The Bible-Study section looks marginally interesting but turns me off in its attempt to be ultra-hip. And of course we have the menagerie of Bibles designed to suck in a reader who would be bored with just a plain-old text. Let’s see, there is the Serendipity Bible, the Word on the Street, the NIV Life Application Study Bible, the Journey, and on and on. Apparently in America today people have to be coaxed into reading the Bible by jazzing it up.

There are lots of different approaches to church all of which seem to indicate that something is seriously wrong with the church in America (despite all the years of programs, books, and catalogs designed to fix it just like this one). So we have titles like “The Church You’ve Always Wanted”, “Escape from Church, Inc.”, The Emotionally Healthy Church”, “The Connecting Church”, and on and on. Frankly, I think most of the churches in the USA have by now been so saturated with this kind of literature that it’s hard to believe many are left out there that have to be escaped from.

The focus of this catalog is on Church leaders and if this is all they are reading than I think we are in trouble. There is over two thousand years of Christian literature, dogmatics, exegesis and instruction to draw from and yet we have a shallow offering of market-driven drivel on display here. Not that these folks aren’t good-hearted, but offerings like this cannot sustain a church. It would be better for them all to have a copy of the Anti and Post Nicene Fathers and study their way through those books than to waste their time with this pop culture, Christianity lite. I’ll try to review more catalogs as I have time.

creating community

How do you bring community to a church lacking it? I believe I see some needs in our church and don’t know how to start addressing them. Just simple things really like people having each other over and growing together more outside of the few hours we spend together on Sunday morning. I know how *not* to do it—with programs. I think the best way to do it and get things rolling is to model it; to just start having people over and encouraging relationships.

If church is just about word and sacrament, and not love—it’s no good. How is love expressed, what is love? Well, one bare minimum should be interest in and support for each other. And how can I support someone in their struggles if I don’t even know what their struggles are? I think fostering real love and community requires intentionality. It means deliberately pursuing love as a goal, not just hoping it will happen.

Al Gore on the Church

There is an article in the New Yorker on Al Gore that I find intriguing. I like Gore’s sense of humor but can’t stand his politics. Apparently he likes to eat these days–at least the reporter chose to emphasize his big meals! But what I thought was interesting was Gore’s view of Christians and the right:

Gore’s mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush’s public kind of faith.

“It’s a particular kind of religiosity,” he said. “It’s the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it’s not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don’t hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don’t hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It’s the vengeance, the brimstone.”

And later in the interview:

We passed the Southern Baptist Convention building. Earlier in the day, Gore had made a point of telling me that he and Clinton used to pray together in the White House. I asked him which church in Nashville he and Tipper attended now.

There was a pause in the front seat.

“We’re ecumenical now,” Gore said, finally.

Tipper said with a laugh, “I think I follow Baba Ram Dass.”

“The influx of fundamentalist preachers have pretty much chased us out with their right-wing politics,” Gore added.

I don’t know how Gore could possibly say that Bush’s Christianity is about brimstone. The guy who sends out Ramadan greetings to Muslims all over the world? The guy who says Islam is a religion of peace? Lots of brimstone there Al. I simply can’t understand how liberals can read and think so well on lots of issues but revert to tired stereotypes when it comes to Christianity. Gore is essentially comparing the Christian right to the Wahabbis and other fanatics around the world. I guess the common theme of taking your scripture seriously might unite these varying groups, but I don’t know what Gore means by these kinds of jabs at Christians.

If the Democrats wanted to start winning elections tomorrow they could re-consider abortion. A pro-life wing of the party might actually compete with the GOP amongst Christians on the right, but it will never happen with thinkers like Gore trotting out the same old bromides.