The Ones Who Walked Away
In her short story, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas,” Ursula K. LeGuin beautifully illustrates the tension present between the deontological and consequentialist ethical perspectives. This fictive story imaginatively describes a utopian city, where everyone is healthy, happy, and educated, and no one is in need. With this utopia, however, comes a terrible secret: the good fortunes of the city can only be had by the misfortune of a child, who is kept locked in a room, cold, dirty, and miserable. When the citizens of the town reach a certain age, they are required to see the plight of the child, and it is in that moment that they must decide whether to accept the miserable existence of the child in exchange for the utopian way of life, or to walk away from Omelas.
I would like to use the story of Omelas--not to discuss the difference between ethical perspectives--but as a foil to talk about Christian doctrine. I claim that in orthodox Christianity there is a similar tension between the doctrines of grace and justice. Thus, traditional Christianity offers the vision of a beautiful city, which is traditionally called heaven, which is the supreme utopia, in which everything is reconciled and there is no weeping or pain. However, this Omelas too has a dirty room, which is traditionally called hell. I find it an interesting parallel that just as for the citizens of Omelas there is a maturity point which demands knowledge of the suffering child, so also a significant developmental event in the life of Christians involves grappling with the idea of hell. My question then, is whether we can stay in the city of traditional Christianity, acknowledging that hell is the price to pay for the abundance and joy that is offered in heaven, or shall we walk away from this Omelas, unable to live in an eternal utopia all the while aware of the secret of the basement.
Here I will acknowledge a couple things. First, I realize I am somewhat begging the question by comparing the injustice of the suffering child to the recipients of hellish punishment. In traditional Christian thought, hell is reserved for those who deserve it, while presumably in the story of Omelas, “child” is used primarily because children represent innocence. My response is two-fold: a) a foundation for modern law is the notion that the punishment must fit the crime—eternal hell seems an overwhelming punishment for a finite amount of sin; b) recent development theories in psychology suggest that humans have much less control over their actions than we tend to credit to ourselves—genetics, environment, and a finite amount of choices rather force one’s hand in many decisions made throughout life. Second, the idea of hell is fundamentally tied to a certain Christian view of anthropology—namely, that the paradigmatic characteristic of humanity is that of lostness, or alienation from God. In challenging the doctrine of hell I am also challenging the doctrine of Fallenness that has pervaded Christian theology. Secondary to this view of anthropology is the concomitant theology of salvation, which also must be fundamentally changed if one were to walk away from Omelas. I realize that in bringing up these other topics I open up the scope of conversation tremendously, and perhaps too broadly, but what can I say? Theology is a tapestry, to unravel one idea is to fundamentally change the picture. Finally, I would like to state that when I speak of walking away from Omelas, I do not mean walking away from the Christian faith, but rather walking away from the faith as articulated in orthodoxy (which I suppose one could, if so inclined, say is the Christian faith, but I would debate that). This is where my foil of the Omelas story falls apart a bit, because in the end, I’m not so much asking “will you walk away from Omelas,” as I am asking “will you get the hell out of Omelas?”
Book Update:
I have been reading ferociously this year…I will highlight some of my favorites so far:
The Fidelity of Betrayal. Peter Rollins, a postmodern philosopher, asks whether to be truly faithful to Christianity we must betray it in search of a “religion without religion” that Derrida speaks of.
Dawn. Elie Wiesel writes a powerfully compelling story that grapples with tensions between justice, retribution, violence, and situatedness. This was one of the most-best books I have ever read.
The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. John Caputo is another postmodern philosopher and former student of Derrida. I am only partially through this book but it is one of those that will forever change my theology. Caputo undoes the theological construct of the sovereignty of God in favor of a “weak” God who is present with those who suffer precisely in his weakness rather than strength, an idea springboarding off of Paul’s “logos of the cross.”
10 comments:
I hope I've understood you and if I haven't please correct and/or dismiss.
Your story reminds me of Dostoevsky’s question in the Brothers Karamazov posed by Ivan the atheist to his brother he says: "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature – that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance – and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!"
Which some have called the greatest apologetic against the faith (suffering of children) which also challenges your proposal against mankind’s “fallen-ness.” If we are capable of these depths then we must be Fallen. And on the other hand at the opposite end of the spectrum we cannot over look the Mother Teresa’s, Gandhi’s, MLK’s of the world. I mean, if we are capable of these heights then we must be Holy.
Man is definitely a dualistic creature capable of both heraldic good and horrific evil. The most Orthodox teaching from Church history is the theology of Deification (Theosis). Man is on a slow trajectory of fusing with God. Or as I like to put it, we are slowly stepping into our “God boots” as we internalize the teaching of Christ . . . our feet are constantly growing . . . someday the boots will fit.
So I think you are right in that we need to re-learn the word sozo or salvation in the Greek. Throughout much of recent Church history we have primarily focused on the eschatological glee of heaven when referencing salvation. But salvation has a two pronged meaning. One is projected hope toward the future but the other is an internalized ontology of the now. We can both; have it now and look forward to in the future. Though I think salvation-in-the-now will remain largely untried by most of us because I think most of us are far too petty. I mean I prove this everyday. Though, there are times that I catch glimpses of it and marvel in it . . . as I’m sure you can relate.
Though I want to affirm that the Church has traditionally taught that the Kingdom of God was ushered in by the most innocent man the world has ever seen, suffering in the most hellish way possible. The Church has never taught anything less. The goodness of God entered the badness of man and somehow we called this ... Good Friday. I recognize that this is a most mystically charged paradigm changer . . . however it remains the oldest and most orthodox of all teachings and I don’t think it is going anywhere.
And p.s. enough with this quasi-sophisticated approach to man’s depravity (pshychologically-engrained-anthropology-gets-me-off-the-hook-bull-crap). I hope that did not sound to rough . . . it was said in sarcastic love.
First of all, Eric, welcome to the fold.
Dave, let me get this straight. You're proposing that there's no hell?
What exactly do you mean by that because hell is kind of a vague concept. You're arguing there's no fiery chamber where sinners burn for eternity under the earth? Ok, didn't that come from the creative Greeks? You're arguing that there's no weeping and gnashing of teeth? But Jesus said so. You're arguing that there's no eternal punishment? That is interesting.
If you can specify better what aspect of "hell" you're disputing.
My concept of hell was shaped by C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce: it is merely distance from God. Not that God punishes sinners but that sinners choose to move step by step further and further from God until finally there is no return after death and their spirits spend eternity separated from his goodness and his protection which they spurned their whole lives. This results in weeping regret and frustrated gnashing of teeth as people eternally face the consequences of their evil choices. It sounds just to me because it is a result of their choices. Especially because it is so easy to avoid that fate. None of us can live up to "goodness". All we can do is invite Jesus to enter and reshape our lives with his atonement, his grace, and above all his example for us to follow.
I have to say that I fully support Dave’s plan to remove Hell from his belief system. As the entire world around us changes every day, why should religion have to stay completely static?
The proposed change seems to be a perfectly logical evolution for Christianity. After all, the fire and brimstone component of the faith was chiefly useful for European theocracies to keep their peasants in line. Now that secularists are in charge of most of the world’s governments, we have little need for such things. We’re free to practice a warmer, fuzzier version of Christianity that seems likely to keep us happier in our earthly lives.
Next, let’s get the Catholic priesthood to abandon celibacy vows and Muslims to stop covering up their women with burkas. This could be the start of some real progress!
Eric, let me second the welcome to our community.
I love the Brothers, and I think that Ivan's questions are piercing. Indeed, we are capable of good and evil, and any real sense of justice must take account of the evils committed by humankind. However, saying that man is capable of evil is not the same as the notion of total depravity, which I would argue against. Further, and of more interest to me, is the question of the orthodox teaching of the church reflecting a depraved God, or at least a depraved depiction of God by the powers that formulate such a doctrine. Here I think it is helpful to compare God and man in relation to capability of depravity. Whereas man is finite, and can only commit a finite amount of evil, the concept of hell is traditionally one of infinite punishment (Joe, I know that C.S. Lewis's version is different, I will present my thoughts on that in a moment). Thus, I would say that the only one who is truly depraved in this doctrine is God, who inflicts infinite torture in response to a finite amount of sin.
I'm also not quite sure what you meant in the last paragraph, Eric. Are you saying that anthropology and psychology are useless, or that you just don't like using them in hermeneutics? I would consider much of church doctrine as born out of a context of a particularly greek anthropology and philosophy, which I think is fair game to challenge.
I like Lewis's concept of heaven and hell, in part because he collapses the distance between them. In his theology, hell is not so much a punishment but a consequence of sin, particularly a psychological consequence. Thus, the actions one makes in life form who one is, and bad actions mold a being who is unable to appreciate and enjoy the life of heaven. What is beautiful about this, though, is that the citizens of hell are always able to journey to heaven. The question they are confronted with when they arrive is whether they are willing to change in order to be able to stay there. I like that hell, in this view, is not punishment. I think this gets got off the defendant's chair. However, I also think this view doesn't take into account the rather overwhelming evidence supporting the role of situatedness in determining to a grand extent one's actions. For example, I would statistically very unlikely to be having this conversation if I were not a white male born to a middle class family in a post-industrial economy. I'm not saying there is no choice, just that situatedness significantly influences ones ability to have, much less make, different choices. All that to say, perhaps C.S. Lewis's citizens of hell are merely rather unfortunate to be born to a situation of poverty that predisposes to violence, or a situation of narcissistic wealth that makes one unable to comprehend unselfishness. Again, I affirm that people can rise above these situations, but I also affirm that the playing field is far from level.
Nic, I can't really tell whether you are being sardonic or not, and I suspect you mean to be ambiguous about it. I would not only ask whether religion can be dynamic, I merely say it absolutely is. I would like to say that my project is not a warmer fuzzier Christianity, nor am I that concerned with happiness per say. Rather, I think if Christians want to talk about justice or love, we need to look in the mirror and get rid of the massive zit of hell that everyone awkwardly stares at during lunch conversations.
Great final image there, Dave.
If there is no punishment, can there be justice? Can God truly be all "goodness" if there is no evil? And if there is evil, then he has to be distanced from it by a deep, deep gulf, if he is good.
I'm not convinced that God is in control of hell or that he administers the punishment. Because if I did, then yes I would be on the same page with you and have a problem understanding that. It would be, well, sadistic. It would not fit with my understanding of him. So my solution is to understand it as the unavoidable, necessary result of His goodness and our choice to either accept it or refuse it. But I don't see any way to throw out the idea of hell.
There may be people that we think don't deserve to go to hell that we've been taught will. But we don't really know. The teaching on that is sketchy. So we can't throw hell out out of compassion because in the end those people may still "go to heaven."
Additionally, I have to ask you, what is your alternative to hell? If there is no result to our choices in life, what is the point of dying?
I have more to say, but I'm going to hold it back and hope that someone tackles this thread before we move on.
A Book Suggestion:"A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality Of Jesus Christ In A World Of Religions" by Clark Pinnock.
I'm wondering if there isn't an underlying question about the nature of reality--especially the reality addressed by Christian teaching. When we talk about physical reality, most of us are willing to concede that our preferences are irrelevant: what is simply is, whether it's what I like or not. But when we start talking about "spiritual" matters, we often begin to say things such as "I like to think..." Does this indicate that we consider such ideas to be matters of choice rather than matters of knowledge?
I wish that I could refer you to the philosophical writings of Dallas Willard on "the disappearance of moral knowledge in the twentieth century", but I believe that isn't yet in print. So I'll instead suggest the work of Lesslie Newbigin: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society might be a good place to start. (I've read several of his books along this line previously; this is the one that I've just started, but it seems to be on point.)
I'd also like to suggest that part of the scandal of hell is a symptom of a view of Christianity and salvation that diminishes (or eliminates!) one of the important elements of the gospel as taught by Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament), that the life of following Jesus is about becoming, being shaped. (See Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy.)
What does that have to do with the hereafter? Let me try to highlight just one facet. The NT teaching on the resurrection is that all will be raised to judgement in the presence of God; what does it mean to be in the presence of God? Taking a cue from the light imagery of 1 John 1, one thing it means is that there is no hiding, no pretense, and not even any self-delusion. We get to see ourselves as we are--and that in inescapable relation to God as he is. That won't be a lukewarm experience.
(I quite recently heard repeated the old question about just why people who presently try to avoid God think they're going to enjoy his presence in the resurrection.)
I've rambled a bit, but my point is this: if I think about "being saved" as fire insurance, or getting my admission ticket punched, the idea that the uninsured get punished is ugly. But if living in Jesus is something richer than that, including who I am becoming--and who I will be and how I will be when the veil's off and I see everything as it truly is--then it's clear that I'm headed toward one of two very different endpoints.
Bravo, CG, and welcome to the club. Lewis led me to this understanding of our spiritual movement, but it is there in the gospel and you spelled that out really well.
And I loved your pointing out the "I like to think" phenomenon, but I don't think it is actually an indication that people think it's a matter of choice. Most of all, people just want to soften the blow of their opinions on religion; it's just one of those topics your not supposed to go into too much in America. On top of that, people feel so clueless, they have to qualify their statements and turn to the only thing that they can count on where logic and knowledge seem not to exist, their emotions, their gut.
I wonder if Dave would say that he holds to that "diminishing view of Christianity" that you pointed out. If not, there's something else driving him to reject hell. It seems to be his compassion, that letting people move away from Himself and then letting them eternally suffer as a result is not in God's character as Dave understands it to be, a character formed solely of compassion.
There's a great moment in Psalm 62 where the writer says, "One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving." Truth is paradoxical. God is paradoxical. Compassion needs justice to be real. Both exist fully in him.
Would anyone agree with this statement: there are people in this world for whom we should not have compassion? Or do we lean more towards this statement: we should have compassion for all people?
This goes back to my questioning of whether democracy is a Christian idea or not. God does not seem to be democratic. Not all people have a voice in the end. Many are silenced. Maybe that's why Dave is arguing against hell: it's undemocratic. We should send a liberation army and try to hold elections by next fall.
By the way . . .
We have an exciting new topic coming up in the month of May (a little late now), but I beg you, all of you, to return to this April topic of Dave's until it's finished (especially DAVE!). We need to hear more from you. You need to flesh out more of this. It would be better to have this conversation face to face, and maybe it's tedious to work it out piecemeal like this, but there are a lot of powerful minds engaged that should all have access to that conversation.
Incidentally, my hope for Tea Night has been restored.
Salud!
hey all,
sorry i haven't had time to respond...in the meantime, here's a fascinating article on the doctrine of hell:
http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=746
Thank you, Dave, for sharing this article. Finally, there's some meat to your argument.
I was intrigued by the first part that summarizes Stott's annihilationism. The image of wind separating the wheat from the chaff among others seems to support his idea that hell is not "eternal conscious suffering" but rather the eternal eliminating of those who reject God, that if you choose to reject God, you will not be assigned to a spot in fire that constantly burns and annoys you, but that that fire with consume and annihilate you so that you cease to be.
But this idea seems too fresh and new and maybe too good to be true, so I appreciate that the writer is trying to find middle ground between it and the traditional view of hell.
I am utterly fascinated by this description of Gehenna. I was primed for this article before I read it. Oddly (another instance of significant timing), just three or four days ago I happened to read Jesus's mention of Gehenna and the note in my Bible describing how it was a valley located just outside the walls of Jerusalem where Manasseh had committed his worst atrocities (sacrificing children in fire) which by Jesus's time had become a trash heap. But this article goes so much deeper describing it's depictions in Jeremiah and Isaiah as the place where the bodies of the enemies of Israel will be tossed.
I love how Jesus's words seem to always work in waves of meaning. There is the gut level understanding of your first ignorant reading of them ("You are the salt of the earth" first meant to me that we are to be humble). Then there is the contextual understanding (salt was used mainly to preserve meat back then and thus he is saying that we are to preserve and sustain the earth by transmitting his goodness).
Gehenna or hell is clearly bad on a gut level. But I think there's a deeper and more precise message behind the words that we can glean from the context. And I think we can excise faulty influences on that message by contemplating its specificity. How much of our vision of hell comes from the Greek idea of Hades grafted on to this geographical idea of Gehenna (a real place of specific suffering). Gehenna doesn't sound like an "underworld" of eternal damnation, but just a figure for the result of being parted from God.
Finally I want to point out an interesting paragraph that I think especially Nick should see:
"Generalizations have their limits, but a good generalization is generally true. More often than not, I suggest, the church has gone on to recapitulate the sins of Israel: calling God’s wrath down on sinners, setting itself “over” and “against” the world, hiding its true light under a bushel.48 The Roman Empire fell. Christendom was born. The Holy Roman Empire,49 as it came to be known, ruled the world, threatening all who would not toe the line with the fires of eternal torment.50 There is a place for nuanced historiography, but to those who were oppressed by the church when it was at the height of its powers, this would not be seen as a caricature. The secular critique of Christianity, for all its one-sidedness, is not without foundation."
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