Oct 8·edited Oct 8Liked by Joel D. Aguilar Ramírez
Part of what I hear you saying is that our understandings of Heaven and Hell have become so gummed up with an economy of rewards and punishments that it's almost impossible to think about them outside those trappings. If we're really going to think anew about what it means for God to reconcile all things to Godself, we almost need to start from scratch.
For me, that final reconciliation still includes—must include—participation in the bodily resurrection of which Christ is the first promise and model. How that happens, I don't know... I admit that my brain, so tied as it is to the physical, committed to the idea that God doesn't just arbitrarily upend the laws of creation, can't really fathom how that will work out. But I hope. I hope that the final reconciliation of all things in their source satisfies my need to know that the losses we experience in this life, the "locust years," are somehow restored. And that we'll *know* that restoration, feel it, and not just find peace in oblivion.
That said, there's things about oblivion that don't sound so bad either. To be curled up back in the womb of God in a kind of perpetual nap, knowing that love is just on the other side of a cracked door... Maybe that would be enough.
... But I also hope I wouldn't be satisfied with that. I hope I'd be bold enough, in the end, to demand a future, exceeding all my sensuous understanding, where I *know* my family still. Where I *know* and experience the restoration of those things unfinished, that I wasn't ready to lose. I hope, in the end, that Christ's imagination is kinder and wilder than mine.
Thanks for this! That is why my hope has changed from hoping an escape from this realm, to hoping for transformation of this realm. The beauty about it is that we become co-participants in redemption, transformation, reconciliation, and so on and so forth. I want to be part of that! And, I think that God would like us all to be a part of that.
Oct 8·edited Oct 8Liked by Joel D. Aguilar Ramírez
This is reminding me, too, in a new way, of how much I appreciate James Cone's perspective on such a hard question. In *The Cross and the Lynching Tree*, he manages to both spiritually dignify the Black desire for "escape" from earthly injustice and violence, and also urgently, prophetically demand an anti-racist world with all its material implications -- and in a way that doesn't set the two desires in rivalry with one another... Thanks for provoking me into trying to imagine that, too!
Yes, it does take more faith to live the way we are called to live without understanding what awaits us after death. For my own part and how I intend to continue forward I refer to my essay, Today We Escape: "Does God power the eternal lights of Heaven through the sacrificial scapegoats of the inhabitancy of Hell? I don’t think so—something tells me that God’s Kingdom is a perpetual motion machine, a philosopher’s stone granting eternal life and reward for those who possess it, and what are we possessing but the will to not engage in rivalry no matter the cost?"
We postulated recently about God's lack of conventional existence and perhaps we can extend that to say that Heaven does not exist by conventional meanings but finds its existence similarly in and through us.
Part of what I hear you saying is that our understandings of Heaven and Hell have become so gummed up with an economy of rewards and punishments that it's almost impossible to think about them outside those trappings. If we're really going to think anew about what it means for God to reconcile all things to Godself, we almost need to start from scratch.
For me, that final reconciliation still includes—must include—participation in the bodily resurrection of which Christ is the first promise and model. How that happens, I don't know... I admit that my brain, so tied as it is to the physical, committed to the idea that God doesn't just arbitrarily upend the laws of creation, can't really fathom how that will work out. But I hope. I hope that the final reconciliation of all things in their source satisfies my need to know that the losses we experience in this life, the "locust years," are somehow restored. And that we'll *know* that restoration, feel it, and not just find peace in oblivion.
That said, there's things about oblivion that don't sound so bad either. To be curled up back in the womb of God in a kind of perpetual nap, knowing that love is just on the other side of a cracked door... Maybe that would be enough.
... But I also hope I wouldn't be satisfied with that. I hope I'd be bold enough, in the end, to demand a future, exceeding all my sensuous understanding, where I *know* my family still. Where I *know* and experience the restoration of those things unfinished, that I wasn't ready to lose. I hope, in the end, that Christ's imagination is kinder and wilder than mine.
Thanks for this! That is why my hope has changed from hoping an escape from this realm, to hoping for transformation of this realm. The beauty about it is that we become co-participants in redemption, transformation, reconciliation, and so on and so forth. I want to be part of that! And, I think that God would like us all to be a part of that.
Amen!!
This is reminding me, too, in a new way, of how much I appreciate James Cone's perspective on such a hard question. In *The Cross and the Lynching Tree*, he manages to both spiritually dignify the Black desire for "escape" from earthly injustice and violence, and also urgently, prophetically demand an anti-racist world with all its material implications -- and in a way that doesn't set the two desires in rivalry with one another... Thanks for provoking me into trying to imagine that, too!
Yes, it does take more faith to live the way we are called to live without understanding what awaits us after death. For my own part and how I intend to continue forward I refer to my essay, Today We Escape: "Does God power the eternal lights of Heaven through the sacrificial scapegoats of the inhabitancy of Hell? I don’t think so—something tells me that God’s Kingdom is a perpetual motion machine, a philosopher’s stone granting eternal life and reward for those who possess it, and what are we possessing but the will to not engage in rivalry no matter the cost?"
We postulated recently about God's lack of conventional existence and perhaps we can extend that to say that Heaven does not exist by conventional meanings but finds its existence similarly in and through us.
For those interested:
https://dlbacon.substack.com/p/today-we-escape