To my delightful surprise, a little piece of Landers, California has been my abode since 2012.
Periodically, I get antsy staying in one place but these times pass and
I rightfully remain grateful to all those who made my sandbox happen. The weather is just a wee bit hot in summer
and comfortably chilly in winter, no complaints. The neighbors are few as my dogs and I hike our
sandy roads. One neighbor, Janet, stops
by with her dogs every few days and we share a smoke on the front porch, mixing
in a little intelligent conversation about world events, family and politics. This is adequate socialization for this
content senior life observer.
This past February I was told an emergency appendectomy was
in my immediate future at our hospital on the hill in Joshua Tree. Five or six hours later the surgeon arrived
and I entered the never, never land of anesthesia heaven, trusting in the
competency of hospital staff. Upon
awaking from my deep sleep, I slowly became aware of how close eternity had rubbed
up against me. In the recovery room, G.
Goslaw began bleeding, an alert nurse recognized the situation and took
aggressive action to get me back into surgery to stop the bleeding. In her words, “I didn’t think you were going
to make it”. I am haunted by the
realization that the end could very well have been in 2017, my last days on
this earth.
Most of us live very busy lives but in times like these we should
ask, when death does arrive, will we humans experience some sort of eternity? If so, what will eternity look like? The answer to the first question is a no
brainer, there either is or there isn’t.
No eternity means that our lives are reduced to our circumstances and
relationships through whom we hope for a future beyond death. This believing in ourselves may be enough for
some but it seems a bit superficial, life becoming all about me and mine. This is the very definition of Godless
secularism, get all you can while you can, every decision is only a pragmatic personal
calculation but how that decision may affect others is less important. Is it any wonder that our country has
progressively become mired in selfish expectations and attitudes? Should there be no eternity, a great many of
us will be proved wrong, disappointed and unaware of the loss.
Let us, therefore, quickly dismiss that possibility. The second question is more fun to consider,
what will eternity be like? What is the destiny
of the human spirit? Every few years
someone rises from a near death experience to tell us what eternity is like on
the other side, a light at the end of a long tunnel, an overwhelming sense of
peace, the great judgement day. Our
religions deposit supposed truth upon the people, whether it be something
called nirvana, the fires of hell or 99 blessed virgins. As for me, eternity without my dogs won’t cut
it, which only proves that our expectations have an eerie way of trapping us in
earthly drumbeats. Listen as we must,
these opinions are all different and may only be the simple winding down of our
computer brains, none of us really knows.
In the recovery room, there were no lights, possibly I
wasn’t dead enough to bring back any messages or I wasn’t worthy enough to be
that messenger. Others have, Socrates of
Greek antiquity and King Solomon of Hebrew history each brought back unusual
understanding. The boy David, the
twelfth son of a shepherd family found great courage under the stars of biblical
times. My spiritual background is from an
evangelical perspective that has only one picture of eternity, the heaven and
hell scenario. One might wonder if this
thinking (dogma) is intended to scare the faithful and sinner into submission
to a man-made institution. Sure, the
Spirit of God operates in the church as he does among all of us but is the thinking
of God the same as the thinking of the Church? I trust not.
I can trust Jesus who came out of the desert with a message
for the forgotten people, not the religious and proud crowds. He said, your circumstances have no real power
over you because this world belongs to the God of the galaxies and he has your
back. Eternity is here and now as well
as beyond death. This was new news to the forgotten people, no one had talked
to them before about eternity, as Jesus put it, the kingdom of God. The forgotten people clamored to listen to this
strange talk from Jesus. Is this kingdom
talk a new thing? Is the kingdom really
for me? Why has no one else spoken of
this kingdom? Does this kingdom have rules?
Will this kingdom improve our daily
lives?
Jesus told a little story recorded for us in the gospel of
Mathew, this parable or “The story of the wedding banquet”, is a picture of
eternity (Mathew 22: 2 through 14). The
story begins, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding
banquet for his son”. Fourteen little
words tell us the size and shape of eternity more profoundly than a multitude
of volumes written from human understanding and for a profit. Eternity has one boss (king), we human beings
are family (sons), eternity is a party for the ages (banquet), eternity is
about the unification of we humans to God (wedding). Which one of we humans would want to miss
this eternal party? Not I, nor any other honest person, most of
all some of us believe that none of we human beings will miss out!
Surprise, surprise, this is not the small ball touted by the
religious crowd but sounds much like universalism, which says that, to God
everyone is a son deserving of an eternal party. The religious crowd will question, don’t our
choices in this life determine our eternal future? If the individual is a part of the wrong
religion or worst of all, no religion at all, surely these folks will be
excluded post death, will they not? In
response to these seemingly logical questions, one might ask, do those who
teach an exclusionary eternity understand the heart of God. Jesus excluded no one from the love of God, not
his enemies or his critics or those who nailed him to the cross, “Father
forgive them!”. Such words sound
inclusive not exclusive. Another instance,
the two thieves crucified with Jesus, one repented in this life and he was told
that this day the kingdom of God was his to share prior to death but Jesus
never condemned the other thief to some other reality. The love of God never gives up on any of his
sons, he just waits, saying, your time will come (the lost parables).
Either God loves the world (John 3:16) or he doesn’t. Divine love reduced to the religious few is
the religion of the Old Testament. To
the extent that the New Testament enforces this understanding of spirituality, the
N.T. has missed the revolution that Jesus began. The hell advocates are certainly missing the
revolution, no surprise, you see, most of us miss it most of the time. The parable of the banquet says that the
exact same thing, the Kings invitations to the party is ignored by the people,
each preferring to actively pursue other things, “But they paid no attention
and went off – one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them
and killed them (v.5).” Have you ever
wondered where violence originates, violence that always makes no sense and is
self-destructive, could it be that to us, anything is better than accepting an
invitation to spiritual accountability?
In response to our avoidance techniques, God (the king)
directs his servants out into the streets to invite anyone and everyone they
meet to the party. “So the servants went
out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as
well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests (v. 10).” May I
be blunt? Does this story uttered by
Jesus not teach that a heavenly destination is in the cards for all of us? Moral standing may not be the primary
qualification for eternity. The shared human
destiny is an eternity with God, who does not discriminate, by race, religion,
wealth, sex, skinny or fat, ugly or buff or relative goodness. And that there, in eternity, we all will
discover what spiritual reality is truly all about, at the party.
About this time, I hope you are questioning my universalistic
assumption about this passage. When the
invitations of the king are rejected by the people who kill his servants, the
king takes revenge by sending his troops to murder and burn out those selfish
subjects (v. 5)? Is this divine
intervention or a John Wick movie about revenge? Can’t you hear that line, “they killed my dog”? As if that injustice was to justify all the
killing to follow in the movie. Worse
yet, this so-called God, who acts out with the sword, must be related to that other
ancient religion that persists to this day.
Anyway, the biblical parable of the wedding banquet describes a very
human deity who responds to injustice just as we do, with violence from a
vengeful heart. This venom can’t be the
God of the galaxies, but the Bible, in this parable, claims this earthly
behavior is a divine right, violence is a part of the character of God. A simple question, how does this violent
depiction of God square with the message of Jesus who said, love even your
enemies? Jesus goes on to say, love your enemies so that “you may be the
children of your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:45)”. This is not the picture of a violent vengeful
God.
The conclusion I have reached is that the red-letter edition
of the Bible, the words purported to be from the lips of Jesus, are a mixture
of his words and the succeeding generations of religion defenders and handwriting
duplicators, who were not fans of the Jesus spiritual revolution. The violent elements to the parable were
added to water down the wide open message of Jesus. In verses 13 and 14, the king, God, has an
encounter with a man at the party without wedding clothes, the king feels
insulted and passes judgement upon the man.
“Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are invited but few are chosen.” The religious few relate to these words but
really, the ultimate reality, God, is he so easily insulted and apt to take revenge? Is this parable Greek mythology or spiritual
truth? Sadly, the answer is that it has
become both.
Heaven is a place for spiritual growth freed from the burdens
and distractions of this earth. Let’s
play God a moment, how would you design such a reality? The parable of the wedding party may be
helpful to reduce the fog of some of our misunderstandings about eternity. While all our spirits may have the same final
destination, the seating arrangement at the eternal party may or will be
different. Some of us will be up close
to the action around God, while others of us will be seated in the darker places. Just possibly, as we get it together in the
hereafter, those closest to the light will pass on into another reality.
Should this be the future for the human spirit and justice combined
with love is the character of God, how will God determine the pecking order in
heaven? Who gets to proceed first to the
light? My own opinion is that those of
us who had no chance at finding God’s Love in this earthly life, will go to the
head of the line. They will experience
the blessed light and the next reality sooner than we darker souls. The worthiest of all contenders for this
priority are the millions of we humans that were aborted in the womb, their
bodies torn apart before they had a chance at the life we take for
granted. This would-be justice! Enough with the suppositions, the Ultimate Reality
is the boss.
G.Goslaw
Landers, CA.
