Hellbound?:
I finally got a chance to watch this 2012 film. Wow! Not an easy movie to watch. Some parts (Westboro Baptist Church, in particular) just almost impossible to sit through. I hated that so many of the strict evangelicals they interviewed insisted on framing "the way the world works" so narrowly that there was no way to even begin to argue. They start off with "well, since this is true, then THIS has to be the case..." but their initial "since this is true" is so far from how I view things that there is no common point to even begin a dialog!
I did end up thinking a lot better of Brian McLaren, though. He's really come a long way in his thinking since his earlier evangelicalism, and he just keeps getting better. There was a lot of real depth to his perspective, I'm impressed. I also liked the Frankie Shaffer interviews. That man has been through hell already, and is now creating a bit of heaven, I believe. What a powerful witness.
But, my biggest problem is with the presupposition that the film only partially questions; that something special happens when we die, and that the concept of an eternal individual personhood even makes sense. The film essentially presupposes that its only atheists who don't believe in continuint conscious life after death, and if you do believe in some kind of God than you must also believe that an individual, specific, conscious identity survives after death in some kind of heaven or hell, for eternity (which is a concept that doesn't even make sense if you believe that God is the creator of the universe, since time is a property of the universe--not an independent reality). As for me, I don't even need to contemplate death to wonder if there is someone unique and absolutely defined who is called "Ann," someone who could objectively exist for more than just the present moment. I am not the same person I was as a child, or young woman. I don't expect to be the same person tomorrow as I am today. And, when I really look inside myself, I don't find "Ann." I find bits and pieces of my mom, my grandmother, of Jan, of my friends, my enemies, all the people who have been important to me in my life, and even some whom I never really thought of as important. "I" am a jumble of past and present influences, thoughts, experiences, actions, feelings, ... I keep changing. What kind of separate "me" would I expect to continue after death? How would that work?
I think maybe a lot of our western problem with the concepts of life, death, and something beyond is too much individualism. We see ourselves as intrinsically separate from everything and everyone else. Eastern philosophy is more in tune with everything being a part of everything else. My present, shadow, imagined existence will pass away even before I die -- tomorrow I will be something different than I am today. But, the core of life that is in me (the "real self" of Hindu thought, for example) is unchanging and is shared by all life, perhaps by all existence. I do believe that THAT self is not bound by time, and that it surpasses the universe itself, and that I am a part of it as everything else is also. And, I believe that the words or thoughts we use to express that concept, ("God" in our language): wonder, gratitude, compassion, creativity -- are expressed best, lived out best, in "love God and love your neighbor." As Hillel said, "everything else is commentary." I think that "heaven" is the world as it could be if we all were true to our shared true self and lived this reality. Hell is what we create when we allow our illusions to lead us to behave differently from what that "real self" is telling us to be. I do think these concepts refer both to "now" and to "eternity" (or maybe that our choices have lasting, permanent effect would be a better way to say it). I think we are given a finite amount of time to live out our purpose in life, and the compassion and gratefulness we experience and share become part of what lives on in the world in others who continue as part of us, as I continue as part of all those who influenced my life. And, hell is lost opportunities, the negative influences I've left because of my selfishness, the harm that I have done or allowed to happen because of my lack of care -- and those things live on too from generation to generation. The film depicts universalism as being a philosophy that says you can do either good or ill in this world, but after death God eventually saves everybody. I see universalism more as a belief that the essence of life, of being, in all that exists originates in the one source--which can be neither created or destroyed, and which never changes. However far we run afoul of it, we are created in God's image, God is inside us, and nothing can change that.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how differently most of us look at the possibility of our own death vs. the death of those we love. We, most of us, fear losing those we love much more than we fear death itself. I am wondering if how we look at our own life isn't telling us something about the real nature of life. When I think about dying there is a brief sadness about plans I might have, things I wanted to accomplish or experience, maybe wrongs that I would have liked to right. But, basically, it's not a huge deal. I am not really capable of thinking that the "essence" inside me can die -- it maybe returns to the cosmos, or is reborn, or returns to God. Whatever. It is simply that I am incapable of feeling that what I truly value about life, the "real me," is temporal--can die. Maybe other people don't feel that way, but it just doesn't seem to me that there is any possibility of losing what I really value. I guess that is the part I think is God, the spirit of God in me. [God told Abraham that his name is "I am." The source and essence of being.] I believe it is the same spirit of God in everyone. But I guess in being one layer more separated from that spirit in another person, I am less intuitively convinced that I cannot lose the essence of someone I love. Part of me fears and dreads that the separation might be permanent. Over time, I have come to feel that I have not lost anyone from whom I've been separated by death, but it's a much greater struggle to get to that point, hence a much greater grief and dislocation when we are separated by death.
So, a lot of musings that may or may not have much to do with the film or the discussion of heaven and hell, but I'm inclined to bring it all down to what Paul wrote in Corinthians; "love never fails." Everything else fails. Doctrine easily becomes ideology, and ideologies keep us from being open to the truth. My friend Ori Soltes wrote in his last book: "We believe what we believe and the proof of the correctness of our beliefs is simply that we believe as we believe." I'm not saying that it's not all worth our questions and hard thought, but ultimately only love never fails!
