Suicide

Suicide is enough of a problem in this country that we have a national suicide prevention call center (1-800-273-8255).¹ Nevertheless, America does not have the highest rates of suicide worldwide.² On a recent TV show a character committed suicide for no reason that was apparent to investigators. The investigators later discovered that the man had inoperable brain cancer, and they concluded that he committed suicide rather than face the suffering he would experience in his last days. The show prompted the question: why do people commit suicide? The leading explanation for suicide seems to be depression, but there are many possible reasons.³ One possibility is that someone decides everything they care about has passed away so they simply make plans for them to go as well. In this regard one might immediately recall the movie Soylent Green and the suicide of the scholar who remembered how to read books (played by Edward G. Robinson).⁴

            There are several examples of suicide in the Bible but they are not condemned by the biblical narrator. On the contrary, some of those people might even be said to have died nobly.⁵ In short, suicide is not condemned either in the Old or New Testaments, as is, for example, murder (1 John 3:15; Exodus 20:13 [usually translated “You shall not kill unjustifiably]). Josephus, on the one hand, calls suicide “an impious act against God our creator” (War III.viii.5), but on the other he writes approvingly of acts of suicide by a large body of Jews (War VII.viii.6-7).⁶

Prior to the Christian period Greeks and Romans had different attitudes about suicide. For example, Socrates committed suicide rather than be exiled from Athens. Some Roman authors (for example, Cicero and Seneca) at times seem to glorify suicide but they grant “the act greater complexity on other occasions.”⁷

In the early Christian period (second century) the solicitation of martyrdom as a positive act on the part of Christians blurs the distinction between suicide and martyrdom so that even martyrdom might be viewed as suicide, as the legendary Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas clearly shows.⁸

In the fifth century, St Augustine wrote the book, The City of God, in it making Christianity's first overall condemnation of suicide. His biblical justification for this was the interpretation of the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," as he sees the omission of ‘thy neighbor,’ which is included in ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,’ to mean that the killing of oneself is not allowed either…

In the sixth century AD, suicide became a secular crime and began to be viewed as sinful. In 1533, those who died by suicide, while accused of a crime, were denied a Christian burial. In 1562, all suicides were punished in this way. In 1693, even attempted suicide became an ecclesiastical crime, which could be punished by excommunication, with civil consequences following. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas denounced suicide as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. Civil and criminal laws were enacted to discourage suicide, and as well as degrading the body rather than permitting a normal burial; property and possessions of the suicides and their families were confiscated.⁹

From this very brief schematic history of attitudes about suicide in Western civilization it does not appear that the prohibition against suicide in modern society is to be tracked to an early Christian consciousness of the sacredness of life, but it grows out of a later ecclesiastical development that condemns suicide as usurping God’s prerogative to give and take life (Job 1:21). Prohibitions against suicide do not rest on concerns for the welfare of the individual as much as they rest on it being an offense against God. Modern attitudes about suicide, however, seem to be motivated by humanitarian concerns for the welfare of the individual. In my view, if suicide involves an offense at all, it is not against God (if God there be), but against Being, since it is an unnecessary diminishment of all existence.

“My personal view of this situation is that being conscious even with pain, is better than being insentient; or put another way, life lived with physical difficulties and pain is better than a death that instantly banishes all pain—for as long as there is life there is hope…But I cannot fault those who might choose a quick death over an inevitable painful lingering death.”¹⁰

How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=e4NRXpFLxvS0BYKAm_gM&q=suicide&oq=suicide&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l3j0i131j0l2j0i131l3j0.5202.7118..11130...0.0..0.85.500.7......0....1..gws-wiz.uBfIwY_C6vY&ved=0ahUKEwjR9O7j9OXnAhVGOq0KHQLABs8Q4dUDCAg&uact=5

²https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

³https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-people-kill-themselves/

⁴https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/soylent-green-1973

⁵https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/related-articles/suicide-in-the-bible

⁶Young, “Suicide,” IDB 4.453-54

⁷Cicero and Seneca on suicide: https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/06/09/the-course-fortune-gave-me-cicero-and-seneca-on-suicide/

⁸Droge, “Suicide” ABD 6.230-31.

⁹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_suicide

¹⁰Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion: “End-of-Life Issues” Tuesday March 15, 2016: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=End-of-life+Issues

What’s wrong with being Proud?

The Bible has little positive to say about pride, and vigorously condemns it in every instance or virtually every instance (it depends on whether you use the Protestant or Catholic Bible). In Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) a usual synonym for pride is arrogance (Prov 8:13; Isa 9:9, 13:11; 16:6; Jer 48:2) or haughtiness (Jer 48:29; Zeph 3:11). Its opposite is humility (Job 22:29; Prov 3:34; 29:23; 2 Chron 32:26), which God honors (Prov 22:4; 2 Chron 7:14, 12:7). I only found two positive statements about pride in the Catholic Old Testament (Judith 15:9; Sirach 50:1).

 

            In the New Testament pride (alazoneia, 1 John 2:16)¹ is condemned, as is its synonym (uperēphaneia, Mark 7:22), which is defined in the lexicon as "a state of undue sense of one's importance bordering on insolence, arrogance, haughtiness, pride."² These two words in the New Testament describe completely negative character traits (Luke 1:51; Rom 1:30; 2 Tim 3:2; Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).

 

            A severely negative view of pride has persisted in Western culture—without doubt because of the influence of the Bible in Western culture. For example, near the end of the 14th century in the "Parson's Tale" Chaucer listed pride as the first of the seven deadly sins, and the root of all the others (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust), noting that the only remedy for pride is humility or meekness, a virtue in which a person "considers himself worthy of no esteem nor dignity."³ In the 17th century Milton traced the beginning of the woes of humankind to the pride of Satan.

 

The infernal serpent, he it was, whose guile stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived the mother of mankind, what time his pride had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring to set himself in glory above his peers, he trusted to have equaled the Most High" ("Paradise Lost," Book One: lines 34-40; see lines 27-58).

 

Keeping the biblical attitude toward pride in mind, it is surprising to learn that self-respect is considered a synonym of pride. In fact, one definition of pride is "a sense of one's own worth and abhorrence of what is beneath or unworthy of oneself: lofty self-respect."⁴

 

            Here are a number of sayings that recognize pride's positive character (even Paul seems to acknowledge it in Gal 6:4, but without using the word "pride"):

 

Take pride in your work. A job well-done is a meaningful accomplishment/ Take pride in your appearance/ Civic pride should be encouraged/ Pride is a personal commitment—it is an attitude that separates excellence from mediocrity/ There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. "Good pride" represents our dignity and self-respect/ Be proud of who you are instead of wishing you were someone else/ Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed—courage is what makes you do it.

 

Viewed from the biblical perspective, pride is firmly condemned by God, but from a secular perspective pride may well be an essential positive trait of being human. If pride or being proud can often be positive, the biblical view of pride appears to be inadequate and misleading in that it masks the true nature of pride.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹In Classical Greek alazoneia is translated as pretension, imposture, boastfulness, a piece of humbug: Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed.), 59.

²F. W. Danker, Greek-English Lexicon (3rd ed.; University of Chicago, 2000), 1033.

³https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/parst-tran.htm.

⁴Webster's Third International Dictionary Unabridged (2002), 1799.

End-of-Life Issues: Hospice, a Lingering Death, and Palliative Care

When physicians recognize that their patients who are near the end of life are suffering severe pain, they prescribe palliative care—that is, patients are made as comfortable as possible with medication, while they linger—awaiting an inevitable death.  Comatose patients, for example, may have feeding tubes inserted into their stomachs, and, unless fortunate, are housed in "nursing" homes while awaiting their end.  It is not a pretty sight.

 

            Prolonging a life that is clearly at its end is based on the idea that life of any quality is precious, and being alive is better than not being alive.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is believed that all life is given by God (Genesis 2:7, 21-22) and that the taking of human life is prohibited by Exodus 20:13: "You shall not kill" (usually understood as "not kill unjustifiably").  Hence all life is cherished and must be continued—including even the lives of those who are not able to reverse a painful terminal illness caused by disease.  Such persons are sedated by narcotics that hopefully render them impervious to their worst suffering, while their lives continue slowly to dribble away.  Persons who are fully cognizant of their situation and who desire help from a physician in ending their lives before the terrible suffering of their inevitable end, may or may not be able to find the help they need.  I am assuming that the decision to end life by choice is to save themselves and their loved ones the indignity of the unnecessary suffering.  There are likely other reasons as well; for example, they fear the suffering.

 

            Public opinion is decidedly opposed to what many consider suicide, euthanasia, "mercy killing," or even murder. Southern Baptists, for example, devote one Sunday each year to study what they call "sanctity of life" issues (sanctity means holy or sacred).  For Catholics suicide, euthanasia, and murder (1 John 3:15) are "mortal" sins (the term is taken from 1 John 5:16-17), meaning it is a serious sin for which one is condemned to hell if the sin is not forgiven.

 

            Christian tradition uniformly condemns suicide, although neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament prohibits it and throughout antiquity suicide was "accepted, admired, and even sought after" (A. J. Droge, "Suicide," Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6.225).  The Hebrew Bible does narrate several accounts of suicide, and those committing suicide are neither criticized nor commended by the biblical writers (Judges 9:54; 16:29-30; 1 Samuel 31:4-5; 2 Samuel 17:23; 1 Kings 16:18).

 

            Currently physician-assisted suicide is legal in four states (California, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington); one state has legalized physician-assisted suicide by a court ruling (Montana); forty-one states prohibit it, and in four states the situation is unclear. (http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000132)

 

            My personal view of this situation is that being conscious even with pain, is better than being insentient; or put another way, life lived with physical difficulties and pain is better than a death that instantly banishes all pain—for as long as there is life there is hope!  But I must also admit that I have been at the bedside of those who were suffering a lingering untimely death (specifically my sister and my mother, as well as others).  It seems to me that being at the extremity of life and being fully conscious of the inevitable fact that my own life is dribbling away in suffering is a very different thing than living with difficulty and pain.  Hence I cannot fault those who might choose a quick death over a painful lingering death.

 

            What is the state's interest in prohibiting, rather than regulating, physician-assisted suicide?  Should the state even be involved in enacting laws that prohibit people from ending life with dignity (as they might see it), and forcing them to choose between either unconscionable suffering or spending their last days in a drug induced virtual coma?

 

Opinions vary and are hotly debated.  How do you see it?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

WILL THE EARTH ABIDE?

Even to consider the question seriously starts the tectonic plates shifting beneath one's feet. If the earth passes away, it takes along with it human consciousness, history, and civilization. As unthinkable as it may be, the impermanence of the earth has been considered even by the biblical writers, although God pronounced his creative act "very good" (Genesis 1:31).  The biblical myth, however, is that God once destroyed every living thing on the earth (Genesis 7:4, 21-23), so something went very wrong.  The flood event was not understood by the writers as a destruction of the earth, but (as we would say) a global destruction of life, which God promised never to do again by floods (Genesis 9:11-17).  God promised that the earth and earthly life cycles would continue "while the earth remains" (Genesis 8:20-22), which is not quite a promise that the earth is permanent.  Hence, in this expression the biblical writer raises the specter of the earth's impermanence.

 

            The threats of destruction involving the earth in Hebrew Bible are usually like the flood incident—threats against a particular people for a particular reason (e.g., Zephaniah 1:14-18; 3:1-8).  The earth abides, but certain peoples are destroyed.  Even the "Little Apocalypse" of Isaiah 24-27 (First Isaiah) predicts only a devastation of the earth and not its destruction. Isaiah 65:17-20 (Third Isaiah), however, foresees a "new heavens and a new earth" and asserts that "the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind."

 

            Paul's letters seem inconsistent.  In one letter he suggests that even the (old) earth is anticipating redemption, because of its being in bondage to decay (Romans 8:19-23), which suggests that the present earth will continue after its redemption.  Yet in another letter he writes that "the form of this world is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:26, 31).  The writer in Second Peter unambiguously announces the destruction of earth:

 

The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up. (2nd Peter 3:10).

 

The prophetic writer, John, echoes Third Isaiah in foreseeing the advent of a "new heaven and a new earth," and echoes Paul in announcing the "passing away" of the first heaven and first earth (Revelation 21:1-4).

 

            Do you suppose that God's mind for some reason was changed about the creation being "very good," and as a result what began "good" in God's judgment will end up in a fiery cataclysm?  If so, why would God decide to destroy a "very good" and perfectly innocent creation?  Animals, plants, and the "material stuff" of earth are not unrighteous, evil, or unethical, and scarcely deserve punishment.  Such insentient things and creatures would scarcely even be able to appreciate that they were being punished.  Perhaps the biblical writers are wrong in foreseeing the end of the world, for they cannot actually read God's mind. When it comes to God, all of us human beings are limited and see things only "in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:9, 12)—even prophets, preachers, and TV evangelists.

 

            Nevertheless, that said, the transience of our habitable blue and white planet earth has always been threatened by natural causes.  A large enough wandering comet striking earth would cause catastrophic devastation.  In 1908 a comet about the size of a football field, among other things leveled 2000 square kilometers of forest in central Siberia. Perhaps some other cosmic catastrophe might occur, such as a "super nova within ten or twenty light years of the solar system," an event that some conjecture was the cause of the passing away of the dinosaurs "some sixty-five million years ago." Super novae are huge exploding stars.

 

            Our Sun is a star, or put another way, the stars you see in the night sky are suns.  They have a limited life span. "Billions of years from now, there will be a last perfect day on earth. Thereafter the Sun will slowly become red and distended," on its way to becoming a red star, then degenerating to a white dwarf; ultimately it becomes a dark and dead black dwarf.  Our earth would have then long since become uninhabitable to life as we know it. Sagan's description of the death of the earth echoes Second Peter: Earth will "swelter even at the poles" and then,

 

The Arctic and Antarctic icecaps will melt…Eventually the oceans will boil, the atmosphere melt away to space and a catastrophe of the most immense proportions will overtake our planet.

 

Will we earth people be able to survive without our mother, the earth?  We were spawned millions of years ago in an earthy primordial soup of dust from the stars and nourished at mother earth's breast on our way to becoming human beings. Perhaps, we will, but what might we become without her?

 

How does it seem to you?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980): comets, 73-76; death of the sun, 230-32; death of the dinosaurs, 283; origins of life, 30-31; super nova, 238-39.

Does God have a Character Flaw?

From my very earliest memory in Sunday school I learned that the Bible teaches that "God is Love."  For example, in First John 4:8, 16 the writer describes the essence of God's character as love.  Imagine my surprise one morning recently when in Baptist Bible study we stumbled across another facet of God's character: God also hates, and even bears a grudge.  The prophet Malachi "quotes" God as saying: "I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated; I have laid waste his hill country and left his inheritance to jackals of the desert" (Malachi 1:3; Romans 9:13).  And apparently God continues to bear a grudge against them, for Malachi adds: they are a "people with whom the Lord is angry forever" (Malachi 1:4).

 

            Why would God hate Esau and treat his inheritance so cruelly?  Recall that Esau had sold his right of primogeniture (rights of the first born, Deut 21:15-17) to his brother Jacob (Genesis 25:29-34); Esau's poor judgment in selling his birthright (Genesis 25:29-34) for a little bread and a bowl of lentils may have been the cause of God's hatred of Esau and might explain why his descendants (the Edomites, Genesis 36:9, 43) were later conquered by the Israelites (2 Chronicles 25:11-25; 2 Samuel 8:12-14).  At any rate the descendants of Jacob, the Israelites (Genesis 32:28), were ascendant over the Edomites because it was what God wanted (2 Chronicles 25:20) because God favored Jacob's descendants (Genesis 32:28), and bore a grudge against Esau's descendants.

 

            I can understand God being irritated at Esau for his poor judgment, but it seems an insufficient reason to hate him and bear a grudge against his descendants.  Hate seems to have been another character trait of God as understood in the Jewish Bible, for Esau is not all that God hates.  Job thought God hated him as well (Job 16:9), and even the Israelites at one point thought God hated them (Deuteronomy 1:27).  And John did portray God claiming to hate the Nicolaitans (Revelation 2:6), as God also did the Ephraimites (Hosea 9:15).

 

            God also hates human character flaws: robbery (Isaiah 61:8), evil in the heart, and false oaths (Zechariah 8:17).  A list of other human character flaws that God hates appears in Proverbs 6:16-19 (haughty eyes, lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run to evil, bearing false witness, and the one who sows discord), including certain Judean feasts and celebrations (Isaiah 1:14; Amos 5:21), along with evildoers (Psalm 5:5), and idol worship (Psalm 31:6; Jeremiah 44:4).

 

            In the Baptist tradition I have always been told that "God loves the sinner but hates the sin."  But that really does not appear to be the case in the Bible.  God also seems to hate those who do the "sin" (i. e., whatever God may happen to disapprove of).  It is true that the Deuteronomist claimed that God hated every abominable thing (again, what God disapproves of, Deuteronomy 12:31), but it also seems to be the case that God hates those that perpetuate abominations, as those, for example, in Proverbs 6:16-19.

 

            Unless a person holds the view that the Bible is literally the words of God or words inspired by God in some way, one might recognize that describing God as "hating" is a quite primitive anthropomorphic description of God—that is, the attribution of human characteristics to God.  In other words the biblical writers were describing God in their own image as if God were only a bigger and more powerful human being—something the Greeks and Romans suggested by the physical size of their statuary representations of the Gods, and their descriptions of the reprehensible behavior of the Olympians.  The Biblical writers simply transferred human characteristics to God—including gender.  However, God as spirit (John 4:24) does not have gender (i.e., God is neither he nor she), and God therefore does not experience human emotions—either those we consider positive or negative.  God, if God there be, is not of the human tribe, but rather wholly other.

 

And if God does not hate, neither does God love.

 

In truth, each of us invents God in a way that satisfies us.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Doing Right and Wrong

Sin and sinner are words that belong to the vocabulary of religion and are primarily oriented toward God.  In the final analysis even when one "sins against" someone else (Matthew 18:21; Luke 17:4), it has the effect of an offense against God (Luke 15:18, 21).  In a secular society with the exception of life within religious communities the concept of "sin" is an oxymoron.  Secular societies in a representative democracy function on the basis of laws, and actions are judged legal and illegal.  Something illegal is "against the law" or "against the body politic"; that is, it is against the people who comprise the community with whose approval the laws are made.  Something legal is "permissible," not necessarily "right."

            Doing right and wrong are moral and ethical concepts; they are not legal or illegal concepts.  For example, I would judge it wrong to obey immoral laws, or put another way: breaking immoral laws is ethically the right thing to do.  Of course, whoever breaks even an immoral law will nevertheless suffer the consequences—even if their actions are seen as a moral act (i.e., the right thing to do).  "If you do the crime, you must do the time."

            An example of immoral laws, now recognized by all civilized nations, are laws regulating the purchase, sale, and ownership of slaves—that is the buying and selling of human beings as chattel (property).  It may be a shocking thought today but, 200 years ago such laws were not only legal, but regarded as natural and "right."

            This way of stating the situation raises the question: on what basis does one judge the morality of one's actions?  Or put another way: how does one know what is right (moral) and what is wrong (immoral)?  In my view an action is only right if it benefits one's fellow human being in some way, and it is wrong if it does harm to a fellow human being.  Or put another way, actions done for the greater "good" of others are right and any action that brings harm to another is wrong.  Hence the standard of right and wrong is how one treats a fellow human being.

            What is the theory that might lead one to this principle of behavior?  Oddly I have come to a humanist ethic through traditional Christianity and the Bible.  It began with this concept:

If anyone says "I love God," yet hates his brother; he is a liar.  For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)

Of course, as it is stated, this statement reflects a narrow community ethic (i.e., love for one's fellow congregant), but the principle is broader: love for a fellow human being is made the standard for judging one's love of God.  Paul's idea that "the whole law is fulfilled in one saying: you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14) may actually go beyond the narrow limits of the saying in Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 19:18), where it refers to fellow Israelite.  In Paul's thought it may achieve the ethically broader concept of love of humanity (cf. Galatians 5:13).  That is to say, love for humanity meets the requirements of the Israelite law.

            Clearly a saying attributed to Jesus in Q, "love your enemy" (Matthew 5:43-45; Luke 6:27-35), does exceed the narrow limits of a community ethic; the saying includes one's fellow human being—even up to and including a hated enemy whose goal it is to destroy the one aiming to love even the enemy.  The saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew 25:34-45 is clearly not a community ethic, and evokes a broad humanitarian concern: one serves God by extending compassion and aid to "the least of these" in human society (Matthew 25:40, 45).  In other words regular service in a soup kitchen is higher up on the scale of service to humanity than teaching Sunday school.

            In many ways this ethical standard is an impossible ethic to keep when viewed on a broad scale in terms of whole companies, communities, and nations; for in acting in the best interests of some, one will inevitably injure others.  For example, a major employer in a small town is faced with radically reducing the company's number of employees and drastically cutting the wages and the benefits of the remaining workers in order to keep the company from failing altogether.  In this example what faces the employer is a mixed decision that will "injure" all employees, some it will ruin economically, while the economic viability of others will be compromised.  In other words in a complex world often all one can do is aim for the greater good of the largest number of people, while keeping the injuries incurred by the rest as small as possible—a decision that is neither black nor white but rather a dirty shade of gray.

            To judge by the blind impact of natural disasters not even God can do any better.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Is the Universe Just?

"Just" is: "acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good."  This definition includes the idea of justice, which is an impartial administration of rewards and punishments—that is to say, if the universe is just, what you receive in common space and time should be balanced.  By universe I mean: "the whole body of things and phenomena; the totality of material entities," and the cosmos is "the universe conceived as an orderly and harmonious system."

            How we humans have conceived the universe has changed through time.  In antiquity it was a primitive three-tiered construct: earth in the center, the primordial waters beneath the earth, and the fixed luminaries in a domed structure that protected the earth from the waters above.  In Biblical faith God used weather, the elements, and historical events to reward and punish, although not always in a just way (for example, his treatment of the Amalekites, 1 Samuel 15).

            Until the twentieth century our view of the universe was limited.  In the second century CE Ptolemy proposed a geocentric system for the movements of the heavenly bodies in what we now know as our solar system: the sun, moon, five planets circulated around the earth below the (so-called) fixed stars, which were so distant they seemed never to move.  The view of the universe in the middle ages is reflected in the theological system by Dante Alighieri (1300s), which included both the various levels of Hell and dwelling places of saints, angels, and the deity, with earth at its center.

            In the 1600s, Copernicus proposed a heliocentric system: the sun was the center of our solar system.  The earth rotated on its axis and circulated along with the planets around the sun.  This explanation was resisted by the church until the nineteenth century, because an earth-centered universe was best harmonized with the Bible and Christian doctrine.

            Today we live on an insignificant planet on the outskirts of a galaxy of perhaps a hundred billion planetary systems in a universe of perhaps one hundred billion galaxies (Carl Sagan).  Our universe has no edge but is unbounded and expanding outwards toward some unknown destination.

            The question with which I began (Is the Universe Just?) assumes too much.  Since the universe is not sentient, it could not be "just."  The universe does not think or see, so there is no way that it could perceive an imbalance in justice—much less consider correcting it.  The aggregate of existing stuff and entities that fill the void of space act more or less in accord with what physicists and astronomers (i.e., scientists: people who study the universe) call the laws of physics.

            In short, the universe is inflexible.  It blindly follows its own rules, some of which we know; most of which we do not.  Do not expect the universe to balance out your allotment of good and bad in life.  We only have to recall a few of our recent tragic encounters with the physical world on this blue and white planet to know that there is not an ounce of compassion in the universe over the loss of human life, unjustified suffering, and property damage caused by the physical elements: the San Francisco earthquake (1989), the Indonesian tsunami (2004), hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005), the Joplin tornado (2011), hurricane Sandy (2012).

            What happens in the world is not the result of evil.  Rattlesnakes and disease, for example, are not caused by the devil or by God.  Rattlesnakes are true to their nature; disease is a natural phenomenon that human beings can cure, and control once we discover the causations—like we have done with chickenpox, diphtheria and polio, for example.

            For these reasons I cannot seriously entertain the idea that God is a universal Spirit pervading all things in the universe with a divine presence—a leaf, the sunrise, a drop of water, a gurgling brook, etc.  The universe is simply too hostile toward human beings to think it reflects the character of a benevolent Spirit.  Nor can I seriously consider that God actively runs the universe in a benevolent hands-on way (Colossians 1:16-17), correcting, like Don Quixote, its excesses and imbalance.

            We seem instinctively to know that the universe is not just, and recognize that benevolent Deity is not controlling the universe in our interest.  That is why a common feature of religions in general is to hope/believe/expect that Deity will balance our books in the afterlife, if such there be—that is, to compensate us for any imbalance of good and bad we experienced in life.

Is that true do you suppose?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Wings Books, 1980).

Society’s Benefits not open to All

I recently had a complete knee replacement at Mercy Orthopedic Hospital and it appears that Hillary is absolutely correct, for even surgery "took a village."  In my case the surgeon, Dr. Richard Seagrave and anesthesiologist, Dr. David Delahay required the assistance of PA Kevin Kluthe and PA Rick Richards, who monitored the depth of my "sleep"—an important task since two main risks of major surgery are blood clots and infection.

            Once out of surgery (around one hour) a vast cadre of professional nurses, rehabilitation therapists, and volunteers took over my care.  They formed the point of a spear of the most serious service-minded people I have ever met.  For example, upon leaving the room after performing some assistive task (taking blood, giving pills, etc.), they all would invariably turn and ask, "May I help you with something else?"  Let me put it this way: once the catheter was removed, my walker and I always had an escort to the restroom.

            I received pastoral visits from ministers at opposite ends of the theological spectrum in an overtly Roman Catholic hospital (religious pictures and slogans in the halls, and a crucifix on every wall): the hospital chaplain, Rodney Weaver (a former Navy chaplain) endorsed for the military by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and the Rev. Dr. Roger Ray (a former Disciples of Christ minister), pastor of a  non-orthodox church of progressive religious faith (Community Christian Church).

            The point of these musings about my surgery is that contemporary America is a highly technical and well-educated society that on the whole is compassionate, and for all our problems, generally tolerant of the religious views of others.  In many ways we seem to be an inclusive society, but in truth we have yet to achieve that increasingly elusive goal. The opportunities of our great society are easily open to the upper rungs of the economic ladder, but only in a limited way to the labor class; and the opportunities available to the lower and impoverished class are severely limited.  This increasing gap between the highest and lowest levels of society means that the lowest levels have fewer opportunities for good health, higher education, and economic advancement. As an economic group their prospects for the future are bleak.

            Federal and State legislatures would do well to bear in mind this dangerous economic gap when making laws negatively affecting the economic prospects of the poorest.  People in this country are raised on the ideas of equality and opportunity, and on a belief that they can improve their situation, yet the economic imbalance separating the lowest rungs on the economic ladder from the highest is large and not decreasing.  Our economic pyramid is very wide at the bottom leading the lower and impoverished classes to become continuing sources of protest, and a growing gap could conceivably lead to revolution (the French Revolution of 1788 that was begun by the starving French peasantry comes to mind).

            We have made some positive strides, particularly in religious tolerance, as suggested by the fact that I could on the same day in a Catholic hospital receive pastoral visits from its (Baptist) hospital chaplain and a progressive Christian pastor.  But candidly I did wonder where the rabbi and the imam were.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Who Am I?

I am told I am many things;
 

some of them may well be true.
 

 

I am Homo sapien,
 

cousin to the chimpanzee,
 

a warm bloodied mammal
 

spawned in some protozoan sea;
 

Adam's child of dust from the stars,
 

shaped with spit and spittle
 

by the finger of God;
 

raised like cotton in the hot Delta bottom
 

land of the muddy Mississippi;
 

a Baptist of the post-war South by tradition,
 

a critic of convention by training,
 

skeptic by faith,
 

humanist by disposition;
 

by profession reason's servant
 

raising horizons,
 

altering consciousness states.
 

 

Epitaphs are for others to write, he thought.
 

Yet in water he did write
 

by flesh, blood, and bone
 

with premature words
 

a conflicted legacy;
 

his wry curiosity producing
 

only odd forgettable marginalia
 

to conventional views of reality.
 

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

what should be done about EVIL IN THE WORLD?

This blog is now published in The Fourth R 26 (2013): 15-16 under the title “Where does Evil Come From?”

What I mean by “evil” is an unethical, deliberate malicious act that results in harm to human beings in some manner. By this definition, however, not everything hurtful happening to humans is evil. For example, an accident involving harm to another party is not an evil act, although it may maim or even result in someone’s death. What is lacking is deliberate malicious intent, and the one causing the accident may be as grieved as the friends and family of the injured party.
      Nature is benign. Although “red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson, In Memoriam, canto 56), it does no “evil.” The forces of nature (floods, tornados, hurricanes disease, etc.) are not acting with malicious intent; they are simply natural forces operating according to natural laws—by that I mean they act according to the usual observed patterns for such things in the universe). The natural world and the animal and plant worlds are therefore ethically benign. When you get cancer or are bitten by a poisonous snake, maimed by a bear, or your home is destroyed by a tornado or flood these forces are not acting with malicious intent toward you, they are just being true to their nature.
       Unless, of course, you happen to subscribe to a belief that both the world of human beings and the world of nature fall under the influence of unseen mysterious, malicious, unethical forces that are able to use the usually benign forces of nature and even unsuspecting human beings for their own devious ends. In other words the natural world is benign unless you believe that Good and Evil are personified Spiritual Entities competing against one another in both natural and social worlds. These spiritual forces are popularly believed to harness the usually benign forces of the natural world and its living elements (flora and fauna) to their own ends, whether good or evil.
       Traditionally in the Judeo-Christian West, God gets the nod as the proponent for the Good. But what should we say about evil? Here the picture is not so clear. In the Hebrew Bible before the fall of Judah to the Babylonians (587 B.C.) there was only one figure in Israel that dispensed both good and evil in the world. Prior to the deportation of the Judahites to Babylon, God alone was believed to be the source of both good and evil (Job 2:10). Frequently one finds in Hebrew Bible the repetitive expression “the Lord repented of the evil” he planned to do (Exod 32:14; Jer 26:13, 19; Jonah 3:10; 1 Kings 14:10; 2 Sam 24:16), or “the Lord brings evil” against . . . . (Josh 23:15; 1 Kings 9:9; 2 Kings 21:12; Ezekiel 5:13-17; 2 Sam 17:14; 2 Kings 6:33; Neh 13:18; Job 42:11). Particularly impressive are the descriptions of God putting lying spirits in the mouths of his prophets to deceive (1 Kings 22:13-23), or the idea that God uses evil spirits to do his bidding (Judges 9:23; 1 Sam 16:14-16, 23; 18:10; 19:9). Evil intentions and actions were, of course, always thought to lie within human beings (Gen 6:5; 8:21; 50:20).
     After the Persian conquest of Babylon (539 B.C.), Cyrus the Great King of Persia permitted the exiles to return to Judah (Ezra 1:1-11), and sometime after their restoration in the land (described in Ezra and Nehemiah) Satan gradually becomes the source of personified evil. This evil force the Judahites developed from their exposure to Zoroastrian religion in which there were two competing forces in the universe, one Good and the other Evil. Initially Satan (accuser/adversary) was described as a functionary of the divine court (at this point he is not the incarnation of evil, Zech 3:1-2); his principal activity appears to be accusing or finding fault with human beings (Job 1:6-13; 2:1-6). The shift in theological thinking gradually coming after 539 B. C. is evident in a passage in the late text of 1 Chronicles 21:1 (ca. 350 B.C.) where Satan appears as the figure inciting David to number the tribes of Israel. In the earlier (ca. 650 B. C.; that is, prior to 539 B. C.) parallel text, which the Chronicler “borrowed” from 2 Sam 24:1, it is the Lord who incites David to number the tribes of Israel. This shift from the Lord to Satan is apparently due to changes in theological thinking in Israel.
     In the Jewish Apocrypha the earliest reference to an evil competitor to God comes in the Book of Jubilees (ca. 150 B.C.), where he appears as Mastema, Chief of the unclean demons (Jub 10:8). But even as late as the beginning of the second century B.C., Sirach can trace to God the “evil” aspects of nature (vipers, teeth of wild beasts, hail, famine, etc., Sirach 39:28-31).
       In the New Testament period (after 50 A. D.), Satan and the Devil are conceived as one figure (Rev 12:9; Mark 1:13—compare the substitution of Devil for Mark’s Satan: Matt 4:1; Luke 4:3). This figure, appearing as the chief opponent of God in the world, is known by a number of other names and designations; for example: Beelzebul (Matt 12:24); Belial (2 Cor 6:15); Prince of the Power of the Air (Eph 2:2); Ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11)—among others. One statement by Jesus in Luke alludes to Satan’s former association with God’s Heavenly Court (Luke 10:18; but compare John 12:31). Revelation 12:7-12 describes a war in heaven in which Michael and his angels fight against the Dragon, who is called the Devil and Satan. Michael wins the battle and Satan is cast down to the earth, where he makes war on those who for a short time “keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.” A description of a battle among the stars appears in The Sibylline Books (Book 5: at the end of the second century C.E.), which features the Morning Star, Lucifer (Latin), popularly thought to be waging war in the “heavens” (512-30).
       Lucifer (transliteration of the Latin: Lucifer “Light-bringer,” or Morning Star) is a special problem. Lucifer does not appear in the New Testament as an evil force, as such, although the equivalent term in Greek (Phosphoros) does appear in 2 Pet 1:19, where it is translated “morning star.” It does not, however, in 2 Pet 1:19 refer to an evil opponent of God. The name or description also appears in the Hebrew Bible where the word is translated “Day Star” in the RSV; in the context the word is applied to the King of Babylon (Isa 14:12-15). Later Christian writers (3rd century following) associated Lucifer with Satan. Origen (De Principiis, book 1, chapter 5) has been given credit with being the first specifically to argue that “Lucifer” is to be associated with Satan as the evil force in the world opposing God (Roberts/Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 259-60).
       This brief summary brings me to an important question: is there in actuality a malicious Spiritual force in the world opposing God, or are we humans alone the source of deliberate malicious evil? It seems to me there are at least three responses: (1) recognize nature as benign and human beings as the only source of deliberate malicious evil in the world. (2) accept the idea that there is a God, and allow God to be the sole ruler of the world, and hence God is the source of both good and evil. (3) admit that pagan thought was more insightful than Hebrew thought in recognizing that a “good” God simply could not be the source of evil, and so they invented another competitive unseen wicked Power in the universe.
       The third option creates a host of theological difficulties, not the least of which is: does any force actually control the world—other than Mother Nature? And if so what do we do with Flip Wilson’s famous line: “The Devil made me do it”? What do you think?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University