“Since research has shown only India to be a more religiously devout nation than the United States, and since Sweden is notorious for being the most secular, [Peter] Berger has famously said that America is a nation of Indians governed by a bureaucracy of Swedes.” – Ralph C. Woods, Contending for the Faith.

In Mac OS X’s history — four and a half years — we’ve had 43 security updates fixing security issues, but only 2% of them were critical. In Windows XP, which has been around for less time, they’ve had 77 security updates but 66% of them were critical in terms of the industry’s nomenclature. So we’ve had very, very few critical issues. – Steve Jobs.

So, you may ask, why did I switch to Apple?

Second of two in a series.

I can’t even begin to guess how many times and in how many ways I’ve heard evangelicals describe hell as being “out of the presence of God for eternity.” I think this comes from an incomplete exegesis of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord.” Seems pretty straight forward; the threat is an eternity in hell away from God’s presence. But I don’t think that is exactly what the passage is talking about. Take it in its context and “the Lord” refers not to God the Father nor the Trinity but to Jesus Christ. The next verse speaks of His return and that can only be Jesus. In the pervious verse those who face such a judgment are those “who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” so, though God is in proximity, it is Jesus Himself who is the closest antecedent to “the Lord” in verse 9.

Furthermore, the rest of verse 9 and part of verse 10 read, “away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints”. It seems clear that Jesus and not the Trinity or the Father are in mind in this context. All of this to say that “eternal destruction” is not restricted to the idea of it being only an absence from God’s presence. All 2 Thes 1:9 teaches us is that those who don’t obey the gospel will suffer destruction away from Jesus’ presence and his might, not necessarily away from Jesus personally or physically. Indeed, Revelation 14:9-11 would seem to indicate that the eternal punishment of the unrighteous is eternally before Jesus; “he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

A related question is if when we’re in heaven we will be aware of hell. I have heard people emphatically say that we couldn’t be filled with joy if we are aware of hell and those we knew who are now suffering there. Heaven would not be enjoyable if I am there seeing a close relative or friend suffering. The answer to this one is much more complicated. There is no clear verse of scripture we can go to to argue either side. The closest I can think of is the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31. My hesitancy to appeal to that passage is that it is a parable. The point of Jesus’ teaching there is not what heaven and hell will be like, but the urgency of listening to the witnesses available in this life. Still, I don’t think Jesus completely distorted the afterlife in order to teach this lesson so if we’re careful not to go too far we can learn something here. First, the rich man is in “Hades” and is in torment. Hades is probably not synonymous to hell but is probably much more like Sheol from the Old Testament, e.g. the place of the dead (see Acts 2:27, Rev 20:13-13). But in this parable whether the rich man is in Sheol or in hell is immaterial, he is in torment so hell is in view. There is a chasm between the unrighteous rich man and Lazarus and Abraham which cannot be crossed (Luke 16:26) but communication can apparently take place across it and the two sides can see each other. There is no changing of position after death but both sides are aware of each other. This seems to indicate that hell is not only visible to Jesus but also to us.

The question of our reaction when we see a sister or brother who rejected Christ suffering eternal punishment then abides. Again, I have no scripture to base this on but only some reflections on God’s nature, sin and our poor understanding. I think we will be sorry to see those we loved in this life suffering just as we will be happy to worship in heaven beside our spouse and children and parents. But hell is not cruel. It is not an expression of God’s injustice. Those in hell will receive exactly the measure of punishment they deserve, no more and no less. God is just. I think in some fashion our reaction will be sorrow that they did not accept the gospel when they had the chance, praising God for His justice in punishing sin, and worshipping Him because we know that we were no better nor smarter than those in hell and the only reason we are not with them is because of His mercy and grace.

Apple released iPod generation 4. It uses the click wheel that is currently on the iPod Mini and it adds some really cool features in the operating system. I was looking forward to getting them in my 3rd generation iPod via a software update. Alas, they are only available on the 4th gen.

I don’t understand why. There are no more controls on the new one than on the “old” one so why don’t we get the same features? Oh yea, it is an incentive to upgrade. GRRR.

Rosie O’Donnell once again shows just how much she understands the intricacies of politics and the gay rights agenda. Key quote: “It will be the first time, except for prohibition, that bigotry has been added to the Constitution”

She’s done this kind of thing before. Either she just doesn’t get it or she’s completely unprepared when the media jam a microphone in her face and ask question. Prohibition is not bigotry and neither is defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Personally, I don’t think the definition of marriage belongs in the Constitution but that is a different discussion.

“We were used to such messages in the communist days. Everybody has open eyes and can understand that this is propaganda. It was a weak film that tells us nothing new.” — VACLAV KLAUS, president of the Czech Republic, after watching the MICHAEL MOORE documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Moore’s movie is not necessarily lies, but it is images strung together so that when the viewer connects the dots, a false assumption is made. Here‘s a movie about Moore. Oh yea, and here‘s a pretty cute spoof the the movie
poster.

I could no longer resist the urge to blog on Moore’s film once I read the quote above!

First in a series of two.

A finite creature commits a finite number of sins over a finite time period. So why is the punishment an eternity of suffering? Doesn’t it seem “fair” to punish those sins in an appropriately finite span? This question has lead some to embrace annihilationism, the idea that the wicked pass out of existence either at death or after a time of punishment. They miss out on an eternity of God’s glory by being snuffed out. Some believe that this punishment is more appropriate than an eternity of suffering.

It sounds more palatable but it isn’t biblical, it isn’t how Jesus spoke of the fate of the wicked. “And these [the wicked] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:41). If eternal in the first part of the sentence is temporary then our salvation is only temporary likewise. That one sentence from Jesus should be enough to put the idea of a temporary punishment to rest.

So we’re left with the question of how it is “fair” that finite sins warrant eternal punishment. After all, didn’t Jesus pay for sins in a finite amount of time upon the cross? I’ve heard it explained in few different ways. The first way is to acknowledge that finite sins were committed but they were committed against an infinite God and therefore warrant infinite punishment. I just don’t understand how God’s infinity affects the amount of punishment is appropriate for a sin. I don’t get the connection. Is, then, a sin against a 6-month-old child less severe than one committed against a 90-year-old man? Or perhaps the inverse is better. The child has more years of “existence” before him than the 90-year-old man does so the sin against the infant is worse. See? This just doesn’t seem to fit.

The other way I’ve heard it explained is that that sin hangs, unforgiven before God for the rest of time. It is like taking an ink pen and making a dot on a graph. The act, the sin is a single dot but now that that pen and move it across the graph in a never-ending line. The weight of that ink now approaches infinity and so it is like with our sin. As it sits unforgiven, the weight of it grows. Again, this is not satisfying to me. I can’t think of a biblical example of a sin becoming worse the longer it remains. Indeed, Paul, in Romans 12:20 cites Proverb 25:22 advising kindness to our enemies “for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Wouldn’t “burning coals” be better heaped by not forgiving the sins our enemy has committed against us if this second model is true?

Here’s what I think of eternal punishment. I believe that the sins we commit in this life which have not been atoned for by Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection will condemn us to hell. “And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.” (Rev. 20:12). That would include the sin of unbelief. But is that it? Is that the end of sin? Now those people who are judged retain the guilt of their sins and add nothing to them? I don’t think so. I think those souls remain in the sin of unbelief even though they know better. I think they hate and blame God for the position they find themselves in. They continue to mount sin upon sin and deserve their condemnation.

Fine, where do I get that? Admittedly, it is a bit of conjecture but it comes from reflecting on a few verses about hell. In Mark 9:48 Jesus describes hell as the place “where their worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched.” The context is Jesus command to take radical action to separate oneself from sin, better to suffer loss and enter the kingdom than to go to hell. Those things that cause you to sin are supposed to be removed but for those who go to hell they remain. Enter the kingdom without the sin-causing hand or go to hell with it. Admittedly, that’s kind of thin but it seems more plausible to me than the other answers. Furthermore, though Sheol is probably best understood as simply the place of the dead in the Old Testament, I think some of the ways it is spoken of there may hint at what I’m suggesting. For example, in Psalm 6:5 David asks, “in Sheol who will give you praise?” Is it not a sin to not worship God? Isaiah 38:18 says something similar.

It seems entirely plausible to me that sin continues in hell after death just as worship continues after death in heaven. We know that God is just and righteousness and however He determines the amount of suffering for sins that the unrighteous must endure, we know that it is exactly right and perfectly just. So if the Bible says that punishment is eternal and that God is just, then however it works out, God’s punishment of the wicked is both eternal and just.

Added: A person in hell cannot one “day” stop hating God and confess their sins and be forgiven and thereby leave hell. Their hearts remain unregenerate, God has not changed their heart to incline it towards Him. Furthermore, there is no one there to preach the gospel to them.

According to a report by the U.S. intelligence community, in the coming decades, “governments will have less and less control over flows of information, technology, diseases, migrants, arms, and financial transactions, whether legal or illegal, across their borders…The very concept of ‘belonging’ to a particular state will probably erode.” To use Benedict Anderson’s famous phrase, nation-states are imagined communities of relatively recent date, rather than eternal or inevitable realities. In recent years, many of these communities have begun to reimagine themselves substantially, even to unimagine themselves our of existence. In Europe, loyalties to the nation as such are being replaced by newer forms of adherence, whether to larger entities (Europe itself) or to smaller (regions or ethnic groups). It remains to be seen whether or not the nation-state will outlive the printed book, that other Renaissance invention that may also fade away in the coming decades. If even once unquestioned constructs like Great Britain are under threat, it is not surprising that people are questioning the existence of newer and still more artificial entities in Africa or Asia, with their flimsy national frontiers dreamed up so recently by imperial bureaucrats. As Paul Gifford notes, many Africans live in mere quasi-states: “though they are recognized legal entities, they are not, in the functional sense, states.” – Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p 10-11

This is a fascinating observation. The idea we have of nations is not how it has always been. Kingdoms didn’t always range across entire geographical areas. They were more often city-states, not nation-states. People most often identified themselves by ethnicity, Gauls instead of French, Anglos instead of English, etc. This idea is beginning to reassert itself in ethnic or religious subgroups; Kurds, Croats, Shiites, etc. since the end of the Cold War which seemed to press the world into the nation-state mold.

What Jenkins is hinting at is that modern technology may help accelerate a return to that kind of identity. Instant communications across the globe transcend the old geographical borders of rivers, mountains, deserts, seas and distances. The lines on the maps are becoming meaningless and blurred by such technologies. How can nations regulate the Internet for example? What is illegal to post on the Internet in America is legal in Sweden and accessible in America.

This “coming change” is not a problem for global Christian missions. If you take a look at Operation World you’ll see that though it is grouped by nations, when it comes down to the people they are grouped by tribes, tongues, and other factors that transcend national borders. The Chin people are a tribe that live across the Burma/India border. The Chin people are neither Indian nor Burmese, they are both. Christian missionaries are not interested (or at least should not be interested) in reaching “nations” but in reaching “peoples”. We don’t declare a nation to be reached with the gospel as often as we do a people group. Christian missions will survive any mega-shift in this area because we have never been bound to the old model. We use it when helpful, observe it when necessary (visas and passports), and ignore it otherwise.

But I think the story may be different for Islam. Their idea of mission is very much tied to national identity. Iraq is a “muslim nation” and so the more hardline Muslims want Sharia law instituted and they see it as jihad that American unbelievers are on their Muslim soil. The thought process is not so much for the conversion of the individuals but of the nations. If a mega-shift comes that largely dismantles the nation-states, I’m not sure Islam will know how to function. Those people groups that are already Muslim will likely remain Muslim. Those nation-states that are in flux, either moving toward or away from Islam, will not be so clear. This is especially ironic since when Islam started the region of the world it began in was pretty much like this. Europe had divided into nation states but Arabia was still largely tribal. Islam has so adapted itself to the world as it is that a shift in geo-politics will most likely throw them for a loop. For example, they may want England to be a Muslim nation, but when if England ceases to be a unified, identifiable nation?

I do not care if Bill Clinton was reading next week’s Wall Street Journal financial reports, I wouldn’t want to hear what he has to say. Nor do I care about his 900-page spin on his do-nothing presidency.

On a related note, I’m glad that my comments aren’t currently working.

I turn 42 at the end of the month and so for my mid-life crisis I got my ear pierced. I can think of two families we know who won’t like it. But they don’t go to my church and anyway, my wife and family dig it so that’s good enough for me.