Losing your Soul

Several years before I retired from Missouri State University in 2005, I was so caught up in an active academic career, involved in campus life, community activities, professional activities, and serving in the Army Reserve that I felt like my very soul was at risk. Somewhere between completing a terminal degree (1977) and retiring from Missouri State University (2005), my soul seemed to have gone missing or was so shriveled I could not find it. Souls need attention, special feeding and watering, to flourish. I suspect that I am not the only person to come to this realization.

            You might not think it possible for people to lose their souls, but Jesus thought so. “What is the profit,” he said, “in gaining the world and losing your soul” (Mark 8:36). Charles Dickens also thought so, and in his novel (A Christmas Carol) portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge as a soulless man, who rediscovers his soul at the end of the novel. “Soul” is the essence of being truly human—a quality always pushing us, come hell or high water, toward moral excellence. A man or a woman with no soul has lost the qualitative edge of being human, of keeping life in balance and everything in perspective—in other words, “losing yourself to gain the world” (Luke 9:25) distorts perspective and throws life into serious imbalance. Clearly Scrooge was disoriented. He had fed his soul so much material “stuff” that he had lost touch with humanity—particularly his humanity. In my case, somewhat like Bob Cratchit, I sat in a tiny windowless office cluttered with neglected professional projects (real soul food by the way), and fed my soul unimaginative papers by incurious students, but in the grand scheme of things virtually irrelevant. Souls cannot survive on such an unbalanced diet.

            Can governments lose their souls? Certainly, they can. Government at every level involves people who set a tone for the administration and carry out its policies. National socialism in Hitler’s Germany, at best, was government without conscience or humanity, and its systematic massacre of Jews and other eastern Europeans clearly qualifies it as soulless. The same is true of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government, for attempting to annihilate its own citizens, the Kurds. In our own country, the suppressive disfranchisement (and worse!) of black citizens in the deep south for over one hundred years can only be explained by the shriveled souls of white citizens. And what should we say about attempts in various states to eliminate budgetary support for our most vulnerable citizens—the mentally ill, disabled, children, and the elderly? At best, it is not an action that anyone would confuse with moral excellence. And Mr. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by congress? The Congressional Budget Office estimates that its passage may cause some 10 million American citizens to lose their health insurance by 2034, with some $900 billion in cuts to Medicare. Only shriveled souls could be pleased at such an inhumane result.¹

            Can a church lose its soul? You wouldn’t think so, but in my religious tradition it has been happening for some time now. For the sake of what some in the tradition regard as “right” theology, Southern Baptist intolerants dismantled a fellowship of, more or less, independent cooperating churches. They centralized their authority and have been, since 1985, purging the denomination of diversity. Shortening the borders of the tent and shallow thinking make for better control but do not encourage the development of healthy souls.

Without a healthy soul, we will never find our way to the moral high road, or as Paul put it, to the more excellent way (1 Cor 12:3–13:13). Without soul one is condemned to sit among the mattresses of the dead (a line from a poem by Wallace Stevens, The Man on the Dump). Allowing a soul to shrivel away is bad enough. Being unaware of the loss altogether is a crisis of epic proportions!²

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/by-the-numbers-republican-reconciliation-law-will-take-health-coverage-away-from#:~:text=as%20their%20employment.-,Medicaid,had%20an%20illness%20or%20disability

²This essay, reedited and updated in part, was first published in the newspaper, the Springfield News Leader, Springfield, MO, before 2009, and republished in my book, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest? American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Cascade, 2009), 34-35.

Rethinking “Evil”

I'll be the "meet the author" guest at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, Missouri on Saturday, April 13 from 1-4pm. The Bookstore is featuring my new book: Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith. If you happen to be in or around Springfield at that time drop in and check out the book - and take a few minutes for a chat.

The word "evil" has its roots in the Middle Ages (Middle English, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High German, Gothic).* Hence it appears to be a relatively late word in the family of languages that translators have chosen, along with its later associated ideas, to use in translating much earlier Greek texts. As used in English today, the word "evil" is a sinister word with supernatural associations. We generally reserve its use in the human community for the most "profound immorality and wickedness," and/or to describe an abstract supernatural force, which is the matrix of all wicked acts that are counter to all that is "good" or "right" in human life. Basically the word "evil" or its cognate in another language, in a secular context seems to mean "well beyond the limits of acceptable conduct."

I began this brief study by looking at value-laden language in English. There appear to be five sets of contrasting moral expressions in English. The expressions contrast human behavior in terms of positive and negative behaviors. The contrasts, as I describe them here, are what I gather to be polar opposites. As we use them in the Western world, each contrast arises out of a different context and each contrasting term carries a different significance deriving from the context in which it arises.

            The five sets and, in my view, the contexts from which each derives are as follows:

good/evil: religious or secular contexts based upon personal views;

good/bad: social contexts based upon particular community values;

right/wrong: social contexts based upon particular community values;

moral/immoral: social contexts based upon particular community customs;

legal/illegal: legal contexts based upon particular law codes.

The first contrast on this list (good versus evil) might be considered an abstraction and hence a basis for the other contrasts, which are then regarded as specific instances of good versus evil in the human community. At least I found the paired contrast between "good" and "evil" has appeared more often in the New Testament texts. When I checked the contrasting pairings of good versus evil in the New Testament, however, I discovered that it was apparently the translator's call whether or not to render certain Greek words by the English word "evil," for in the pairings of good versus evil other words are sometimes contrasted with good. In the contrasting pairings of good versus evil two Greek words (kakos and ponēros) are generally translated by the English word evil; sometimes the Greek words are translated as bad, wrong, or harm. In the pairings good or right is used to translate the Greek words kalos and agathos.**

One significant deviation from the usual contrast is the use of the Greek word phaulos for the negative value in the contrast of good and evil; phaulos is translated by the word "evil" in 2 Cor 5:10, but in Rom 9:11 it is translated as "bad." This latter Greek word in the lexicon has the following semantic value: "ranging in meaning from 'easy, light, simple' to 'common, bad'" (Danker/Bauer, 1050)—evil is not given in the lexicon as one of the translation possibilities for phaulos. In other words, in every instance where "evil" appears as a translation of the paired opposites the underlying Greek word might just as easily have been translated throughout as bad or wrong, or perhaps by harm.

To judge from the pairings of good versus evil, New Testament writers do not seem to conceive of "evil" in the abstract (i.e., disassociated from any specific instance of harm) as readers might think or as translators seem to suggest when they translate kakos or ponēros as "evil." If the evidence justifies this conclusion, one may reasonably therefore argue that the New Testament does not recognize the idea of an abstract principle of evil in the universe.***

Satan, for example, is portrayed in the New Testament as a kind of wicked actor who does bad things to people. The only passage that gives Satan a comprehensive role is Rev 12:9, where Satan is described as the "deceiver of the whole world." Nevertheless, Satan is not described as an abstract principle, but an individual actor. Even a passage like Eph 6:12 ("…against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places") is likewise particular rather than abstract.

So how does it seem to you?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*See Webster's Third New International Dictionary, s.v. "evil."

**These are the passages I checked in the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament that contrast good versus evil: Rom 3:8, 7:21, 9:11, 12:21, 13:3, 16:19; 2 Cor 5:10; Heb 5:14; 1 Pet 3:11, 17; Matt 7:11, 7:17-18, 12:34-35, 20:15; Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9, 11:13.

***See also: "What should be done about Evil in the World," Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, March 13, 2013; and "Does God Collude with Satan," Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, June 20, 2018.

HALLOWEEN: Do the Dead Walk?

At the end of October we celebrate (?) one of the strangest folk observances of our annual calendar. Coming on October 31, as it does, the custom has become associated with All Saints Day in the Catholic traditions. All Saints Day, in the West falling on November 1, is a church celebration in honor of all the saints who have passed on; it is followed on November 2 by All Souls Day, a day of solemn prayer for all the dead. These holy days in honor of the dead effectively render October 31 as All Hallows Eve—from which we get the name “Halloween.”

            The roots of Halloween have been associated with a number of ancient traditions: the ancient Roman celebration of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds; the Roman festival of the dead, called Parentalia; and most closely with the Celtic festival of Samhain. The major focus of Halloween, as we know it, seems to have evolved out of the superstitious and dark side of the human soul—so costumes largely feature such mythical creatures as monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, walking skeletons, witches, and devils. Today we relegate such supernatural creatures to the realm of fantasy, myth, fairy tale, and fiction—at least most of us do. In the bright light of day it is easy to be a rational human being, but in a dark empty room in the late evening when the hair on the back of your neck stands up at a sudden sensation of an unseen nearby presence, we may have second thoughts. In the distant past, however, before critical thinking became widespread through public education, such creatures were regarded as real entities that could actually do harm, and people relied on certain protections against them—prayer being one. And today not everyone, even in America, possesses the liberating knowledge that these creatures are merely fictional characters, figments of our dark side.

            The Bible is surely one reason that people are still uneasy about such mythical creatures, since it reinforces human superstition at many points. For example, the gospel writer we call Matthew apparently believed that dead people could come out of their graves and go on a walk about (Matthew 27:51-54). It is a strange story (appearing only in Matthew) but Matthew tells it graphically like an actual historical occurrence (as opposed to a symbolic or legendary story). Except for one phrase in 27:53, “after his raising,” Matthew describes the incident as if it were happening simultaneously with the death of Jesus (27:50, 54). The phrase in Matthew 27:53, however, effectively throws the event forward some three days or so (in Matthew’s chronology) to a time following the raising of Jesus (Matthew 28). The effect of this chronological leap forward is that it associates the report with the Christian myth of the “harrowing of hell” or the “descent into Hades,” when Jesus at his death descends into Hades to free those dead saints who have been in Hades awaiting release. Vestiges of the myth are found in the New Testament (Eph 4:8-9; 1 Pet 3:18-19), but it is fully developed in the post New Testament period. The phrase in Matthew 27:53 may be due to a later editing of Matthew’s gospel, since the incident as a whole seems clearly to go with the death of Jesus and not with his resurrection. So what do we say about Matthew’s sense of history as reflected in this story?

            It appears to originate in a superstition that dead people can rise and walk. A description similar to Matthew’s story is found in Ezekiel’s description of the people of Israel in the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:12-14). The Lord says: “I will open your graves…and place you in your own land.” Matthew’s description of “tombs opening in an earthquake” (compare Matthew 28:1-2) and “bodies of dead saints being raised” (compare Matthew 28:9), and “the saints coming out of the tombs and walking about in the holy city” is a very graphic account. Not even Paul, however, would describe the raising of Jesus as Matthew describes the raising of the saints. (Paul insists that Jesus rose with a “spiritual body,” not a physical body; see 1 Corinthians 15:42-57.) Matthew’s report could be an early Christian legend (a non-historical traditional story told for the purpose of encouraging faith). And that is exactly what Matthew’s report did for the centurion and the soldiers (Matthew 27:54); the “event” confirmed for them (and for Matthew) the identity of Jesus as “son of God.” But dead bodies actually coming out of their tombs and walking about Jerusalem around 3 pm in the afternoon (Matthew 27:46) seriously strains credulity for a post-Enlightenment thinker. In order to think of the incident as “history” a 21st century reader will have to “suspend disbelief,” something we do with all ghost stories—in a sense we simply ignore the incredulous aspects of the report. We know that the dead cannot come out of their tombs and wander about the city, no matter how serious the earthquake—or do we know that?

            Has Matthew given us a kind of ghost story suitable only for telling around the campfire on a dark night, or is it an actual historical occurrence that confirms the identity of Jesus, or is it a legend that only the true believer can appreciate? As a post-Enlightenment thinker, my money would be on the ghost story.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Works Consulted

Nicholas Rogers, Halloween. From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Richard Bauckham “Descent to the Underworld,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (6 vols.; ed. David Noel Freedman, et al.; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2.156-59.

This essay first appeared as a blog on Wry Thoughts about Religion on October 16, 2011, and was subsequently published in The Fourth R 25.1 (Jan-Feb, 2012), 25-26.

Does God Collude with Satan?

In Baptist Bible study we were pondering 2 Cor 12:1-10, where Paul claimed he was given [by God] a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to harass him so that he would not be puffed up by the abundance of visions and revelations he had experienced in his trip to the “third heaven” (2 Cor 12:7). We will all no doubt agree that this strange passage tends to perplex the modern Christian mind. But there is an even more serious difficulty in the passage. It rather obviously implies that God colludes with satanic powers by using an angel (aggelos) of Satan to harass Paul. Is there other evidence suggesting that it could actually be the case that God colludes with Satan?

There is a similar statement in 1 Cor 5:1-7 where Paul directs the gathering at Corinth “to deliver” an immoral member of the gathering “to Satan for the destruction of his flesh” so that “his spirit may be saved” (1 Cor 5:5). To be sure this is also a difficult passage, but it is nevertheless clear that Paul encouraged the Christian gathering to collude with Satan for the salvation of the man’s spirit. Compare a similar statement in a text from the Pauline school: the author refers to two persons who “have made shipwreck of their faith”…“whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim 1:20).

I checked at random a few commentaries in my last blog (see them here) to see how 2 Cor 12:7 was regarded in the academic community. They all agreed that the passive voice in 2 Cor 12:7 referenced God as the one initiating the action that brought Paul harassment by an angel of Satan to teach him humility. There is a similar incident in Job where God is described as allowing Satan to afflict Job’s body at the request of Satan (Job 2:10). That does not appear to be the case with 2 Cor 12:7, where God directed the harassment of Paul by using an angel of Satan.

In the Jewish Scriptures, dubbed by Christians the Old Testament, God has no evil opponent to challenge his authority. Satan does not make an appearance in Israelite history until after the fall of Judah to the Babylonians (read about it here). In the early years of Israelite history God was the source of divine justice, as well as “evil” acts. For example, God sends an evil spirit to torment King Saul (1 Sam 16:14-23; 18:10; 19:9); he also sends lying spirits into the mouths of prophets to deceive Ahab (1 Kgs 22:1-40) and prompted King David to sin (2 Sam 24).  When Job’s wife counseled him to “curse God and die,” his reply indicated that it was common knowledge that both good and evil came from God (Job 2:10, see also 42:11; compare also 2 Sam 12:11; Ps 78:43-51; Jdg 9:23).

There must be some mistake here! How can it be that God would have anything to do with facilitating evil deeds? A standard definition of God is “perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, whom people worship as creator and ruler of the universe.” So what is good about colluding with the powers of darkness to bring harm to anyone? The very definition of a Christian concept of God precludes the idea that God would do evil against anyone or incite anyone to evil or that God would work in concert with the forces of evil either to the detriment or betterment of anyone. Is not this statement attributed to Jesus: God “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt 5:45)? The thrust of the statement is that God provides the blessings of the considerable bounty of the earth to the Good, as well as the evil and unjust alike without discrimination.

So how should we explain the not inconsiderable clash between God as reflected in the Jewish Scriptures and New Testament? My own view is that through history and within the various world cultures and religions that have existed through time people have basically fashioned their own understandings of God in harmony with the culture in which they were raised and according to the ethical understandings they had at the time. In short, our Gods are, at least in part, a projection of how we understand (hopefully) what is best in ourselves, an idea in modern philosophy attributed to Ludwig Feuerbach.¹ How else do we explain the diverse religions of the world?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹ https://phenomenologyftw.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/feuerbach-on-religion-anthropomorphic-projectionism-and-his-influence-on-atheism/: Here is a quote from the article: According to Ludwig Feuerbach “God is an anthropomorphic projection of the human mind, and as such embodies man’s conception of his own nature. This [view] was originally conceived by Xenophanes and Lucretius, and by Spinoza.” Here are three brief quotes from Feuerbach’s writings (translated by Zwar Hanfi), The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach (Anchor Books; 1972):  “Man’s notion of himself is his notion of God, just as his notion of God is his notion of himself—the two are identical” (page 109); “There is nothing more, and nothing less, in God than what religion puts in him” (page 112); “To every religion, the gods of other religions are only conceptions of God; but its own conception of God is itself its God—God as it conceived him to be, God genuinely and truly so, God as he is in himself” (page 114).

Beggary in the Bible

The Bible has very little specific to say about beggars (prōsaitai; "beggars, panhandlers, mendicants") and the practice of begging (prosaiteō and epaiteō). It has more to say, however, about the poor (ptōchoi), those who are economically disadvantaged and oppressed, or disillusioned. But the poor are likely a social class, corresponding to Lenski's peasant class who lived at or near the bare subsistence level.¹ By contrast beggars would likely be in the expendable class, people who live at the very bottom of every agrarian society.²

 

            Searching begging-specific words in the Septuagint of the Protestant Old Testament (Greek Septuagint manuscripts are older than the Hebrew Bible manuscripts), the following passages use begging-specific words: Psalm 109:10 (being reduced to begging is a curse on a wicked man). In the Old Testament (Catholic) Sirach 40:30 (begging is described as a shameless enterprise); Sirach 40:28 ("it is better to die than to beg").

 

            In the New Testament begging-specific words are used six times: Mark 10:46-52: the son of Timaeus (bar Timaeus), a blind beggar "sitting by the road," is healed by Jesus.³ The Gospel of John has the story of a blind man (John 9:1-40), whose friends and neighbors had seen him as a beggar who "used to sit and beg" (John 9:8).⁴

 

            The parable of Jesus about the steward of a rich man (in my judgment misnamed "the "Dishonest Steward," Luke 16:1-7), who complains when he is fired: "I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg" (Luke 16:3). Note that he was fired on the basis of a rumor and had no prospects for the future. Indeed, taking up begging by necessity would in effect be a death sentence, since it would thrust him into the ranks of the expendables.⁵

 

            Luke has another similar story (it is not called a parable) about Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31). It is not a story about a beggar but rather a story about a poor man (ptōchoi), Lazarus, who lay at the rich man's gate full of sores, desiring to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table (Luke 16:20).

 

            No doubt many of those in the peasant class (ptōchoi) were often reduced to begging (1 Sam 2:31-36, Psalm 37:25, Exod 23:10) or chose to sell themselves into slavery (Lev 25:39-42, Deut 15:11-14), since they had no other options. The peasant class (ptōchoi) receives more attention than do beggars in the gospels. The gospel writer we have dubbed Luke, for example, writes into the heart of his paper protagonist, Jesus, a special place for the poor (ptōchoi) unmatched by the other three gospel writers (the ptōchoi appear in Mark [5x], Matthew [5x], John [4x], and in Luke [10x]).  And it seems that Luke simply overlooks beggars as the subject of Jesus' care and concern; for example:

 

Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, which includes captives, the blind, the oppressed (Luke 4:18).

The kingdom of God belongs to the poor (Luke 6:20).

Jesus sent a message to John: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them (Luke 7:22).

The wealthy are told that when they give a banquet they should invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind (Luke 14:13).

The rich ruler was told to sell everything he had and give to the poor (Luke 18:22).

Zacchaeus said that he was giving half of everything to the poor, and would repay those he defrauded four times the amount he cheated them (Luke 19:8).

 

            But Beggars receive no consideration in these litanies about the disadvantaged. On the other hand, the Bible has nothing to say about the modern problem of panhandling as a professional vocation.⁶ People who stand at major intersections of your city, weather permitting, warmly dressed and carrying handwritten signs each appearing highly similar are a far cry from the expendables of antiquity. But their presence still raises the question of how should one respond to them.

 

            The same question came up once when working in Egypt. Our Muslim expatriate Palestinian driver was asked by one of our company about a tragic beggar sitting beside the road. She asked, "Saadi, how much should we give him in Egyptian pounds?" Saadi replied: "That's between you and your God!"

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹Lenzki, Power and Privilege.

²Hedrick, Wisdom of Jesus, 182-83 for a brief discussion of the social classes.

³In the parallel passage in Luke 18:35 he is called "a blind man sitting by the road begging." Matthew does not have the story of bar Timaeus, the beggar, but has a story of the healing of two blind men (Matt20:29-34; 9:27-31).

⁴John has turned what was originally a story about the healing of a blind beggar into a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees.

⁵Hedrick, Wisdom of Jesus, 145-62.

⁶Millar, Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, 93-94.

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).

The Interface of Reason and Faith

The Devil may be in the details of the definitions I am using:  reason is "the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences"; faith is "a belief that is not based on proof."  Reason proceeds on the basis of skepticism, critical inquiry, and logic; faith works on the basis of credulity, a priori premises, and confessions.  In short, the two processes of thought are by definition two completely opposite ways of apprehending reality.  For example, reason says that a person who is dead and not in some kind of deep coma, remains dead; s/he does not return to a living state.  Faith, on the other hand, argues: true; in general a person who is dead does not come back to a living state, but there is one exception.  God "raised" Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.  Behind this particular Christian response lies the a priori premise of an unseen divine being, and the confession that Jesus was raised from the dead, both of which are evident only to a believer.  Reason, on the other hand, demands that some rational proof be offered to justify this exception to the way of all flesh.

               Faith pleads an open universe where God has elbow room to make things deviate from the observed usual.  But reason, willing even to accept the idea of an open universe where things may deviate from the usual, still demands proof that the deviation from the usual is based on natural cause and effect rather than by the manipulation of an invisible divine hand outside the natural order of things.

               At bottom, reason and faith are fundamentally two contradictory ways of viewing reality, but up to a point they can co-exist and in some cases even cooperatively in the same mind.  Where they part ways is in the deference given to the primary confessions of a given faith.  These a priori premises of the faith are non-negotiable, i.e., without them, by definition, there is no faith.  To join a given Faith one must give assent to its confessions, and if one changes one's mind after joining, then one can be taken before some official body of the organization on heresy charges (and, yes, such trials do take place with some regularity), and if convicted of heresy one either recants or is put out of the community.

               Apart from the primary confessions it is possible for a member of a given faith to practice a rational 21st century existence as long as one does not make the mistake of thinking there is a 1:1 correlation between what one believes is so and what is actually so.  Should one make that mistake, alibis will be required to accommodate the difference between belief and actuality.  For example, Faith asserts "this is my Fathers' world," i.e., God controls it, and can be expected to act in the best interest of the created order.  Yet we also experience in the world pain, disease, natural disasters, and tragedy.  How can that be reconciled with a benevolent God controlling the universe?  When one comes to the point of recognizing that a disconnection exists between "good" God and dangerous creation, the disconnect must be bridged to enable one to hold on to both concepts at the same time.

               One of the many alibis explaining away this phenomenon is as follows:  The world was originally created as a benign place. We, however, now live in a fallen creation because of Adam's willful sin.  The creation will, however, in the end be redeemed (Romans 8:18-23), but such a belief does not solve the problem of God's failure to render benevolent care to the creation and its creatures in the here and now.  Here is another: Whatever bad happens to people is for their benefit.  The word "bad" used in this connection is really a misnomer; for the tragedies that come upon humans can be explained as part of God's refining process through which human beings grow and improve.  So the "bad" is really a "good."  Such a solution to the problem, however, turns God into a stern disciplinarian who shapes his creatures through pain and suffering—a far cry from a kind and caring "Father" (compare Luke 11:11-12).

               When the alibis can no longer bridge the gap between benevolent deity and dangerous world, a fundamentally different way of viewing reality is required, and a gap appears in the confessional wall sheltering the faithful from the insistent voice of reason.  We surrender items of personal religious belief with great difficulty, yet reason persistently continues its nagging and prodding.

               How do you see it?

 

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