Seeing Hell

March 4, 2011 By Coleman Glenn 2 Comments

(Edit: I should warn you this post contains some profanity)

This evening I went to Wendy’s to grab a quick dinner before going to see Beastly with the high schoolers group.  I took my tray to a table and sat down, and after a few seconds a heard a voice from the next table over say, “What the hell are you doing here?”  I looked over and saw that it was man sitting at a table with a little girl maybe 6 years old, talking to a woman who was standing beside him.  He was clearly angry.  “This is my time with her – I have her this weekend.  You’re not supposed to be here.”

She said, “I don’t care.  She’s coming with me.”  The little girl looked miserable.  The man said something I couldn’t hear, and the woman said, “Well, I’ll slap you if you try to throw me out of here.”  The man started raising his voice and cursing.  He repeated what he’d said – it was his weekend with her.  The woman shot back – I didn’t hear everything she said, but stating firmly that she was not leaving until she had the girl.

After a few minutes of arguing, the woman turned to the girl and said, “Who do you want to go with, me or him?”  The girl didn’t say anything for a second, then mumbled, “You.”  The man said to the woman, “I cannot believe you would do that.”  The woman stepped toward the girl and the man stood up and shielded her with his body.  The girl stood up and burst into tears.

For a few more minutes the two kept arguing – I didn’t hear all the words, but I think there were threats of calling the police.  Finally, the man shouted (or it seemed like shouting, but in retrospect it wasn’t loud enough that everyone in the restaurant would hear), “She’s my daughter too!  I didn’t go through all that garbage to not get to see her!”  I’m not sure what happened then – I think as the woman stepped toward the girl her handbag swung at the man, and he threw it back in her face.  The woman grabbed the girl’s hand, turned and walked her to the doorway; the man stormed out past them, hurling his full cup of soda against the drive-through menu as he walked past it across the parking lot.

Hell.  That’s hell.  I’m not taking sides – I don’t know the whole story.  But when a little girl has to watch that happen, that’s hell.

This is why I don’t think poverty’s the biggest problem in the world, or hunger, or the environment, although those are real and important to deal with.  But the world’s biggest problem is cruelty.  It’s evil.  And the root of all evil is the love of dominion from the love of self.  That’s what destroys families, that’s what destroys marriages, that’s what destroys society, that’s what destroys a person’s soul.  The scary thing is to know that it’s in me as much as anyone else.  I pray the Lord to fight against it in me and in everyone in the world.

Heaven and Hell 380: The love of dominion of one over the other entirely takes away marriage love and its heavenly delight, for as has been said above, marriage love and its delight consists in the will of one being that of the other, and this mutually and reciprocally.

Divine Providence 146: But the hardest of all combats is with the love of ruling from the love of self. He who subdues this easily subdues all other evil loves, for this is their head.

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Sacramone Responds – More on Predestination

April 22, 2010 By Coleman Glenn 3 Comments

Earlier this week I posted a link to a blog post by Anthony Sacramone condemning the idea of double predestination (i.e. that some people are born for heaven, others for hell).  As you might expect, his post set off a firestorm of angry comments in response.  Today Sacramone posted a response to some of the comments.  Once again, it’s well worth reading.

I really appreciate the way Sacramone repeats, “I don’t know the answer.”  It’s a vital acknowledgment.  In the New Church I think we have a tendency to say, “Now that we have the Writings, we don’t have to say that anymore – we DO know the answers.”  To some extent, that’s true – the Writings provide answers to some key questions.  But the New Church motto, taken from Swedenborg’s vision of “Nunc Licet” temple recorded in True Christian Religion n. 508, is “Now it is permitted to enter with understanding into the mysteries of faith.”  We’re permitted to enter in – we haven’t eliminated mystery altogether.  You can’t even see that other famous heavenly temple, the Temple of Wisdom, unless you “see from the light of heaven that what [you] know, understand, and are wise in, is so little in comparison with what [you] do not know and understand, and in which [you are] not wise, as to be like a drop to the ocean, consequently as almost nothing” (True Christian Religion n. 387).

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Anthony Sacramone on Predestination

April 19, 2010 By Coleman Glenn 2 Comments

Anthony Sacramone of the Evangel blog at First Things has a great post that tears down the Calvinist doctrine of double-predestination (i.e. that God chose some people to be born for heaven and some for hell and there’s nothing anyone can do about – God grants faith to some people, and if you’re not one of the lucky few, you’re out of luck).  Here’s an excerpt that I particularly like:

If Calvinism, especially in its supralapsarian form—which argues that God foreordained the eternal fates of humans not yet created in a world not yet created, never mind fallen—is true, then most of us are lost, and not just because, in the words of Dirty Harry, we don’t feel particularly lucky, but because we are asked to love a monster. A deity who out Hitler’s Hitler in a blood-thirsty self-preening is too repellant to contemplate, never mind adore. Especially one whose obsession with his own glory reduces every person to nothing more than an adornment. If this is true, let’s please stop talking about the sanctity of human life. In this horrific scheme, there is nothing more expendable than a human being. “I need more glory—throw another baby on the barby!” (Whether non-elect infants go to hell has been a long-fought controversy within the Reformed world, admittedly, but there’s nothing it its confessions or theology that seriously argues against it.)

Pretty well sums up my thoughts on the idea of a God who would condemn most people to hell but save a few “for His own glory.”

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