Building Our Own Towers

So here’s my heretical statement of the day: we need to think less about heaven.

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. At the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, Morrison told the story of a blind, but wise old woman, who teaches a group of children that using stories to understand other people is the greatest ambition of language. I highly suggest reading the entire speech, for it is magnificent: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html

Despite its beauty, most of this speech will not apply to this post. One section, however, considers the story of the Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11:1-9

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth (ESV).

This has been a standard of biblical teaching in my life for as long as I can remember. It’s a really easy story for kids to understand: the people tried to build a tower to heaven, and God didn’t like it. Why? It’s often seen as an arrogant defiance against God, humanity seeing itself as worthy of living beside Him regardless of His wishes.

Another way that I’ve liked to look at it is that the people wish to “make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” This is their way of rejecting God’s plan for them to spread and grow. This was their attempt to stand still and be gods in their own eyes.

Either way, God confused the builder’s languages so they couldn’t communicate. And it’s just about impossible to build anything unless you can communicate. This was their punishment for trying to reach heaven before their time, for trying too hard to live higher than man was meant to live.

And I thought this way for twenty-three years, until I found Toni Morrison’s speech in a textbook I was teaching from. She threw a new light on the traditional interpretation, through this section, a part of the blind old woman’s speech to the children:

“The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower's failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.”

Beautiful.

The story is really complicated by verse six, the reason God gives for why their languages should be muddled: “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

This section troubles me, while at the same time filling me with optimism. It first makes me wonder why God would want to stifle humanity’s growth so substantially. Were humans so immature that God had to set them back thousands of years? Then this verse makes me wonder about our world today—a world I see on the cusp of rejuvenating that one language. The spread of global language through the internet, what our society can accomplish when we are able to achieve one language, boggles my mind.

But Morrison made me think that the confusion of the languages wasn’t God punishing mankind. Confusing our languages was His way of making us grow, of teaching us to love each other. It was a parent making His children go to school, to learn, to turn into human beings rather than letting them experience joy when they were young.

If God is love, then this was His way of teaching us to love each other.

It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Luke, when the Pharisees began harassing him about heaven and God’s plan:

Luke 17:20-21—"20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, 21 nor will they say, "Look, here it is!" or "There!" for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you (ESL)."

Of course, at the time Jesus was in the midst of them (while they did their best to ignore what He was really trying to say). But His message was clear—concentrate more on the people around you, on the Kingdom of God around you, than on the heaven that is to come.

Every time we concentrate on achieving a personal heaven rather than helping and loving our fellow man, we are building another tower.

Is this heresy?

Satan Moved

This study delves into the nature of Satan. As Milton showed, Satan’s actions and motivations are intriguing and complex, so this will necessitate the use of several subheadings.

1. Movement

The “Unmoved Mover” is an Aristotelian concept of all motion in the universe. In his Physics, Book VIII, Aristotle examines change and motion, attempting to show that the concept of time, of there being a “before” and an “after,” requires a catalyst, an agent of change. That agent of change he calls the “first principle.” The later cosmological theory arose that God is that agent of change, the first principle who began all movement in the universe, because otherwise it would have no reason to move.

I've heard this argument (though oversimplified) to counter the theory of a Godless Big Bang—if there was an infinity dense form of matter in the center of the universe, why would it spontaneously decide to explode? There must be a catalyst.

 (Aristotle’s ideas were picked up in the 13th Century by St. Thomas Aquinas [my personal favorite church figure]. Pertaining to this study, Aquinas wrote the Quinque viæ [Five Ways], five arguments considering the nature of God, and De Substantiis Separatis [Treatise on Separate Substances], a study of the angels. He’s much more readable and concise than many of the other authors and his theories are easier to apply to modern theology.)

 2. Angels

 Now let’s consider the nature of the angels. The popular Christian belief is that they serve as messengers and servants for God, such as the angels who greeted the women in Jesus’ empty tomb, or the angel who told Mary she would be with child. But these angels are also God’s creations, made before men. A good way of looking at their creation is through the words of St. Augustine, an incredibly important 5th Century father of the church. In Book XI of his work The City of God, Augustine argues that “the angels already existed when the skies were made. The latter, however, were created on the fourth day. Do we therefore say that the angels were created on the third day? No. For it is well known what was made on that day: the earth was separated from the waters. Perhaps on the second day? Indeed not, for the firmament was made then...No wonder, therefore, if the very angels pertain to these works of God, just as that light which receives the name of day.”

 Therefore, according to Augustine, angels are associated with heaven, created when it is in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Angels were around before, or while, God created the rest of existence.

 Another church father, St. Jerome, in the 4th Century, says this while commenting on the Epistle to Titus: “Six thousand years of our time are not yet completed and how many eternities, how many times, how many origins of ages are we to think first existed in which the Angels, Thrones, and Dominations and the other orders served God without the succession and measurement of time and did God’s bidding.”

 3. Time

 My previous blog entries have dealt with the idea of time (see God Pressed Play and A Timeless Heaven). In a nutshell, time doesn't work for God as it works for us, such as in Jerome’s notion that the angels served God without the measurement of time. Just as humans will enter a timeless Heaven, thus losing our earthly concepts of “before” and “after,” the angels in Heaven live in a constant, unmoving state.

But there was a change. The Bible shows us examples of angels bringing messages, revealing future events, interacting in the timeline of humans. The angel in the tomb said, “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” What changed the angels from unmoving being? What caused time to begin for the angels? Who or what was the catalyst to begin the wheel turning?

Next point—the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were created by God out of dirt and ribs, respectively, and placed in the Garden of Eden. While there they named animals, ran around naked, and overall had a great time being sinless and living in God’s perfect world. Then the snake came around, tempted Eve, who tempted Adam, and everything got messed up.

The point of all of this? Time didn’t exist for Adam or Eve until the snake tempted Eve. He was the catalyst, the agent of change, the one who ended their perfection. After that point, everything suddenly became very real, very deadly, and very time-conscious:

Genesis 3:22-23—Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken (ESV). 

Genesis 3:18-19— “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;… you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Underlined are the sections which really get across the idea of change, or time. Before they were expelled from the Garden, there was no death or time. There is no evidence that Adam or Eve aged, got sick, or got closer to death in any way. There’s also no way of telling how long they were in the garden before the snake showed up and ruined everything because, just like with the angels, there was no measurement of time.

4. Satan

 The history of Satan is quite complicated and is made no easier by popular retellings involving fire and brimstone, pitchforks and red horns, and strangely enough—goatees.

Less-hilarious traditions state that Satan was once the greatest, or brightest of all the angels in heaven, until he rebelled against God and was cast down from heaven, along with those angels who sided with him. Biblical basis for this story is Luke 10:17-19—

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you” (ESV).

 And Revelations 12:7-11, which is generally assumed to be the story of Satan’s fall from grace—Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers who accuses them day and night before our God. And                       they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (ESV).

5. Satan Moved

Now to connect the dots. We know this:
• God is the Unmoved Mover
• The Angels and Heaven are outside of time, while Earth and humans are within it.
• Satan rebelled against God and was cast down to Earth.
• Satan caused Adam and Eve to sin against God and they were cast out of Eden.
• Time causes death (yeah, I know, but I have to say it)

Therefore, Satan’s true sin was not only disobeying God’s will, but introducing the very concept of time into the universe. God is the Unmoving Mover. As existence stood, it was just God and His angels. Then Satan changed; Satan moved. And with movement comes time.

With Satan’s rebellion, time was created—the “before” and “after.” God created Earth, separating it from Heaven like the land from the waters, because time existed, to have a place to throw Satan.

Then the Spirit of God hovered “over the face of the waters,” over the Earth that was dark, without form, and void. And God said, “Let there be light.” He created another timeless paradise on Earth, another attempt at Heaven, on an Earthly plane. His creations, this time, were humans. But Satan appeared and moved again. Eve would not have acted if not tempted; Adam would not have sinned unless Eve handed him the fruit. And the Garden was abandoned.

Death and time would not exist in the world if those events had not occurred.

As Aristotle said, there has to be a “First Principle.” God began it all, but never intended there to be time, which leads to death. Satan’s sin was that in rebelling, he forced time to occur. When Satan moved, he flung himself into the timeline, separating himself from the timeless Heaven and a timeless God.

A Timeless Heaven

This time around I have more of a thought than a question. I don’t expect many to disagree with me about this, but it could provide the opportunity for some interesting discussion. This idea works off of the same principles of time that I developed in my last post (God Pressed Play).

Here’s the premise: God lives outside of our timeline, which is how He is able to have a plan and allow freewill at the same time. What we experience day-to-day is not what God sees, because He is not limited by a linear existence.

So: the realms of Heaven and Hell also exist outside of Earth’s timeline. Although I have little knowledge of the natures of angels and demons, I would imagine that as they inhabit these realms, they also live outside of our timeline (though maybe not to the same degree that God does).

Therefore: The nature of our existence once we leave the Earth will change to match the realms we are joining, either Heaven or Hell.

We can only gather so much about Heaven from the Bible and, of course, we’re not going to be able to understand most things right now, even though it’s commendable for us to try. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10:
“But, as it is written,
‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

So, let’s do a little more searching into “the depths.”

I know that there is to be no marriage in heaven (“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven”- Matthew 22:30). This suggests that the relationships we built on earth will be quite different once we reach Heaven. There are several verses that consider the states that our bodies will take, that they will move from a natural form to a spiritual one:

1 Corinthians 15:43-44

“It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

But a great part of our Christian tradition, one of the points that I’ve been taught for as long as I can remember, is that once we get to Heaven, we’ll see all of the loved ones that died before us. It’s a great picture—joyfully reuniting with family and friends that we haven’t seen in years. That tradition is built off of such verses as 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14:

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

Obviously, Christians have been worried about who they’ll see in Heaven for quite a while.

But, let’s go back to the issue of time.

I suggest that when we go to Heaven, we will not only reunite with all of the loved ones who came before us, but will also meet all of those who died after us. Here’s a wonderfully illustrated table to help explain:



So, we are all on Earth, which is in linear time—we move forwards, whether we want to or not. The little black dots on the Earth timeline represent deaths. The red lines then correspond to their winding up in Heaven or Hell. If you’ll notice, no matter when on the Earth timeline someone dies, they end up in the same place in heaven—a nonlinear eternity.

If I were to add dates to the Earth timeline, it would show that someone who died in 1411 arrives in Heaven at the exact same time as someone who dies in 2012.

The coolest part of this theory? When I die, I’ll be able to see my grandparents and great-grandparents, and Moses, King David, Emperor Constantine, Abraham Lincoln, and Pope John Paul II. But, I’ll also be able to meet my great-grandchildren, and my great-great-grandchildren, and my great-great-great-grandchildren, and all of the other “greats” all the way up until Jesus decides to come back into the linear timeline and end Earth’s existence.

There’s a couple of other ways I could go with this. There could be an issue with Luke 23:43, where Jesus tells the criminal on the cross next to him: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Today.

But what does “today” mean when an eternal being is trying to explain Heaven to a linear one?

Now it’s a language issue. But I like the idea that I’ll be able to see all of my ancestors and descendants, all at once, when I get to Heaven.

I hope that isn’t heresy, cause it’s pretty cool.

God Pressed Play

Alright, let’s take this post out of the strictly Biblical and delve into a more Theological concept: the problem of free will and God’s plan.

I find that the problem always comes back to the concept of Time. But I’ll get to that.

Here is what we know:
• God is omnipotent- He can do anything, change anything, destroy anything,
breathe life into anything. He is limitless.
• God is omnipresent- He is everywhere, in space and time. There is no
geographic location in heaven or earth devoid of him (Hell, I suppose, is the
exception, by His design). Likewise, there is no time, past, present, or
future when God is absent.
• God is omniscient- He knows all. Nothing is hidden from God, neither in the
mind nor on the earth.

Because we know these, we know something else: we can never truly understand Him. It is one of the great ironies of our faith, that we are compelled to understand the nature of God, without the ability to ever fully comprehend Him.

From the English Standard Version:

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Philippians 2:13 “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

These verses speak of God’s Plan, a concept that I’ve been taught in Sunday School since I was old enough to understand language. They said, “God has a plan for you and He knows what will happen long before you do. He knew what would happen before you were even born.” It’s a rather comforting thought for most Christians—God has the entire realm of existence planned from beginning to end. Every thought, word, and deed is set in stone. We can do nothing but try to understand what that plan is.


The Ancient of Days, by William Blake, showing God as the architect of the earth.

So here’s the problem. How does prayer work?

Luke 11:9-10 “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

Another inspiration verse, and another fact that I’ve been taught since childhood. God listens to our prayers and needs, and responds to them (with “yes,” “no,” or “wait”). So what this verse is telling me is that if things aren’t going the way I like, then all I have to do is ask and, if He finds it wise, God will change his plan?

That seems wrong.

Then there’s the classic question of free will- do I make my own decisions? Because God knows everything, does he direct everything? Then, has he destined that there are those who will never follow Him, that will die without ever knowing His salvation?

That seems wrong too.


That was just the introduction. Here’s where things get weird and my own potentially heretical theories pop up.

The problem, as I said earlier, is time. If today I have a problem, then I pray and God hears me and he answers my prayer. This is the way we think, linearly. The problem is, God is not linear. He exists outside of our time, the very concept that he is here with us NOW, is ridiculous. God cannot be limited to here and now, or there and then. That speaks against his omnipresence. This is why we say that He knows what you want before you ever ask for it. You just have to ask.

But think of God as outside of our own time led me to an interesting line of thought, one that ended in the theory that I used to title this post: God Pressed Play.

I'll use Windows Movie Maker as my object lesson.



I used to use this program all the time in college, to make slideshows for clubs and presentations. The multiple bars along the bottom allow me to insert music, pictures, videos, and transitions. Then I can edit them, flip them around, crop them, cut them, delete them. I watch what I have, then change what I don’t like. When I’m happy with the finished product, I publish it to movie form and the file type changes from a Windows Movie Maker Project file (.MSWMM) to a standard video file (.WMV).

I propose that this is what God did. He saw the potential and created a project. He made the earth, then changed the waters, then added life. He watched it and saw what the forms of life were doing, so He backed up and changed things. He added more layers, more complexities, then watched it again. The timeline is linear, but God is not on that linear line. He sat above it, at his computer screen, moving the timeline back and forth, and deciding where it would go. He saw a conflicting part, a discordant note, and allowed it to play out because He knew how much more beautiful that resolution would be for the overall project. The process repeated, over and over again. Eventually, he reached November, 2011, when I prayed for help as I presented a paper at a conference. Perhaps God changed the project, or perhaps He decided to leave it the same.

And this continued until He decided that the project was finished. He watched it again, to be sure, then he clicked publish and saved the file as something else. He brought up the movie in a separate program, got a bag of popcorn, and pressed play.


Some of you may worry that this theory reaches too closely toward Deism: the view that God has set the universe in motion, but does not interfere with how it runs. But that is not the case at all. He listened to humanity while he was creating it; He changed the course of events while he was deciding what the course of events would be. In that way, our prayers don’t change His plan; God listened to our prayers before his plan was complete. What we live in now is the .WMV file, the version that he perfected and sat down to watch, after answering all of the prayers and addressing all of the problems.

As far as I can tell, this theory solves the problems: God is still omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He still has a plan for existence. He still listens to our prayers and decides our fates, and we have the free will to decide our own destinies.

So, this is my theory. God Pressed Play. Tell me, friends: Is this heresy?

Possession

I recently saw the movie The Devil Inside, Directed and Written by William Brent Bell.



In a nutshell, it’s another faux-documentary horror film, cashing in on the success of the Paranormal Activity franchise. A woman named Isabella embarks on a mission in Italy to discover what really happened to her mother, who allegedly murdered three people during her own exorcism. Isabella joins up with two unauthorized exorcists and becomes involved in a series of exorcisms while she tries to discover the truth.

I personally loved the acting, particularly by the demon-possessed mother, played by Suzan Crowley.


The way the filmmakers depicted the possessions and the exorcisms were gruesome and terrifying. Unfortunately, the movie did broadcast many of its moves and there were very little surprises storyline wise, but it kept my attention because I had no idea how these things were going to take place.

And it felt rather short—only 83 minutes.

But this isn’t supposed to be a movie review. This is the story of where my mind went after seeing it. That next Sunday my preacher taught on prayer on fasting, using The English Standard Version of Mark 9:14-29

14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. 15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. 16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said “I believe, help my unbelief!” 25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” 26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”

This is a familiar passage, but one that has always puzzled me. Why could the disciples not cast out the demon? Why is this demon different from all the others? Why does Jesus make a point to ask how long this has been happening?

So here is my real question: Is it heresy to suggest that the boy was not possessed at all? That the “demon” who throws the boy down, making him foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and become rigid, is actually just a medical condition, such as epilepsy?
Could this be why the disciples were not able to help the boy? Jesus gave them authority over demons, not over this—they were pastors, not doctors. Jesus knew when He saw the boy that this was no demon, which was why He asked how long the boy had been like this. It was a life-long condition, not a recent possession. And to “expel the demon” was actually to heal the child.

But how to explain that to his disciples? Jesus said, in verse 29, that “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” Could this be His commandment to his disciples for how to help heal the sick? Could this be Jesus’ way of saying, “Medicine won’t be able to heal this boy for thousands of years. For now, pray and fast, and let God do the rest?”

For thousands of years, people have taught and believed that the boy was demon possessed.


The Bible, no matter the translation, says the word “demon.” I suggest that it could be otherwise. Is this heresy?