Day 547 Tuesday September 14th, 2021

Your image of God creates you. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to organize people around fear and hatred than around love

Your image of God creates you.

This is why it is important that we see God as loving and benevolent and why good theology still matters. One mistaken image of God that keeps us from receiving grace is the idea that God is a cruel tyrant.

People who have been raised in an atmosphere of threats of punishment and promises of reward are programmed to operate with this cheap image of a punitive God. It usually becomes their entire view of the universe.

Unfortunately, it’s much easier to organize people around fear and hatred than around love. Powerful people prefer this worldview because it validates their use of intimidation—which is quite effective in the short run! Both Catholicism and Protestantism have used the threat of eternal hellfire to form Christians. I am often struck by the irrational anger of many people when they hear that someone does not believe in hell. You cannot “believe” in hell.

Biblical “belief” is simply to trust and have confidence in the goodness of God or reality and cannot imply some notion of anger, wrath, or hopelessness at the center of all that is. Otherwise, we live in a toxic and unsafe universe, which many do.

In his book Inventing Hell, Jon Sweeney points out that our Christian view of hell largely comes from several unfortunate metaphors in Matthew’s Gospel. [1] Hell is not found in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It’s not found in the Gospel of John or in Paul’s letters. The words Sheol and Gehenna are used in Matthew, but they have nothing to do with the later medieval notion of eternal punishment. Sheol is simply the place of the dead, a sort of limbo where humans await the final judgment when God will finally win. Gehenna was both the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem—the Valley of Hinnom—and an early Jewish metaphor for evil (Isaiah 66:24).

The idea of hell as we most commonly view it came much more from Dante’s Inferno than the Bible. Believe me on that. It is the very backdrop of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It makes for good art, I suppose, but it’s horrible, dualistic theology. This is not Jesus, “meek and humble of heart,” which is his self-description in life (Matthew 11:29). We end up with two different and opposing Jesuses: one before Resurrection (healing) and one after Resurrection (dangerous and damning).

Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), but the punitive god sure doesn’t. Jesus tells us to forgive “seventy times seven” times (Matthew 18:22), but this other god doesn’t.

Instead, this other god burns people for all eternity. Many of us were raised to believe this, but we usually had to repress this bad theology into our unconscious because it’s literally unthinkable. Most humans are more loving and forgiving than such a god, but we can’t be more loving than God. It’s not possible. This “god” is not God!

- Richard Rohr

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Announcement

Step By Step: Accompanying Each Other Home

A Half Day retreat with Diarmuid O'Murchu

When: Saturday September 18th, 2021

Time: 9:00AM - 1:00PM

We invite you to join ZOOM with this link and passcode:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5193158573

Passcode: 1234

Meeting ID: 519 315 8573

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Timetable for Sept.18, 2021

09.00 – 0915: Welcome and Introduction (Emmaus Team)

9:15 - 10:00: Diarmuid: First Input

10:00 - 10:20 Breakout Groups

10:20 - 10:45: Open Forum

10:45 - 11:00: BREAK

11:00 - 11:30: Diarmuid: Second Input

11:30 - 11:55: Open Forum

FIVE Minute Stretch Break 12.00- 12:30 Diarmuid: Third Input

12:30 – 12.45: Open Forum 12.45 – l3:00: Closing Remarks and Closing Blessing (Diarmuid and Victoria)