Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.   

 

Why Even an Anti-Christ Reads the Bible

Cartoon by Will McPhail

willmcphail.com

 

 

I.

 

Someone asks why it is that for a self-professed anti-Christ and atheist I seem to refer so often to the Bible. And I suppose it's a fair enough question (though I don't much care for the implication that I'm some kind of crypto-theologian).

 

Well, apart from the fact that it is always wise to know what one's enemies believe, the fact is that the Bible continues to play an important cultural role and has crucial significance in the work of many of the authors that I love most. 

 

Writers such as D. H. Lawrence, for example, whose work can be read as a prolonged struggle to (re-)interpret the Good Book in a very different spirit than that sanctioned by the Church. As one critic notes:

 

"His writing, at all stages of his career, contains frequent references to biblical characters and symbols while, even when not invoking any particular passage from the Bible, his language is permeated by the rhythms of the Authorised Version." [1]

 

 

II.

 

Michel Tournier is another writer who, by his own admission, was a great reader of the Bible - a book that he describes as a huge attic in which you can find pretty much everything you may need; a constant source of inspiration.

Like Lawrence, Tournier might also be said to perform a creative misreading of the Bible for his own (perverse) ends:

 

"Impatient with conventionally pious glosses, which are too often likely to support the puritanical status quo which he deplores, he reads the Bible against the grain [...] seeking other and more surprising meanings. Further than this, he will recast a story completely, to change its meaning, like a composer who writes variations on a well-known musical theme. If the variations are memorable, they may for ever affect the way we react to the original melody.

      This (mis)reading of the Bible is thus central to the production of meaning in Tournier's texts and in particular to the ethical and metaphysical reflections they develop." [2]

     

Again, like Lawrence, Tournier takes up the cross (i.e., the religious challenge presented by Jesus to imagine a new way of life), but he doesn't follow the latter; indeed, he loses Christ in order to find himself and his own way of being in the world. 

Both writers offer a disrespectful and disloyal reading of the Bible (some would say blasphemous); they treat it as "a corrupt text which needs to be interpreted and even reformulated" [3] in line with their own inner experience. 

 

Above all, what Lawrence and Tournier both desire is a version of the Bible which reinstates the body as central and "re-establishes the link between spiritual love (agape) and carnal love (eros)" [4].

 

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Lawrence's The Escaped Cock (1929), a short novel which, for me, is the culmination of his work, placing the Christian tradition back within a wider religious context and giving us a Jesus unafraid to come into touch and rejoice in the sensual world.    

 

As David Gascoigne writes (with reference to Tournier's fiction):

"The moral implications of placing the body back at the centre of religion in this way are far-reaching. All human appetites, even the basest, are open to spiritualisation: it is not just the soul, but the whole person which is saved." [5] 

This is the gospel according to D. H. Lawrence and Michel Tournier ... And to fully understand it, you will need to know your Bible ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See T. R. Wright, D. H. Lawrence and the Bible, (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 1.    

[2] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, (Berg, 1996), pp. 98-99. 

[3] Ibid., p. 119.

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 120. 

Greta Thunberg: Child Saviour or Witch?

We cannot help regarding the phenomenon of Greta with wonder, fear, 
amazement, and respect. For in her the spirit of modern childhood 
is profoundly, almost magically revealed.  

Following a recent post, someone who identifies as a practicing Christian and environmental activist writes quoting scripture in support of Greta Thunberg: And a little child shall lead them [Isaiah 11:6].    

I have to say, I'm always a little troubled by this idea of an infant saviour - even when it turns up in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. And with reference to the case of Miss Thunberg, it's a startling model of redemption she offers; one that denies people hope, deliberately spreads panic, and desires that the entire world suffers, as she herself has suffered, on a daily basis.

Addressing a UN climate conference last year, she virtually placed a curse on all their houses, as if she were less salvator mundi and more some kind of witch. Indeed, seeing how she's enchanted an entire generation and left so many world leaders - including the Pope - spellbound, describing Greta Thunberg as a witch seems entirely justified: she's like a Swedish Joan of Arc.
   

I'm not saying this to denigrate her, or dismiss her message. But I do think we need to exercise caution when dealing with charismatic individuals who claim to possess (or be possessed by) special gifts and who speak with absolute conviction, seeing the world as they do in stark black and white terms.

When Greta presents her arguments within the bounds of science, I don't have a problem. But when she offers us an interpretation of the facts that veers towards apocalyptic vision, then I have my concerns - for her and for all those who share her vision. Their love - for the planet, for humanity - becomes questionable and subtly diabolic, to borrow a phrase from Lawrence, exerting as it does a destructive force. 

Women like Greta - and her mother - who campaign to save the world and save the future, may have kind hearts and the very best of intentions. But, underneath, there's something malevolent; an unconscious desire for revenge on those they blame for the crisis that afflicts them at a personal level. You can almost see it in their eyes. Still, this malevolence is just as necessary as superficial goodness - maybe more so, especially when it comes to exposing the world's own corruption and stupidity. 
  

Like that other witch-child, of whom Hawthorne writes, Greta is a being 'whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves'. We say she's neurologically diverse, or has Asperger's, a condition that manifests itself in all kinds of ways; depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, selective mutism, etc.

And again, it gives Greta a peculiar look in her eyes that is also Pearl-like: 'a look so intelligent, yet so inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious' that one almost questions whether she's a human child. Who knows what this brave but tormented sixteen-year-old will be like as a fully grown woman. I wish her well and hope she discovers a little peace and happiness; hope, above all, that she doesn't martyr herself to her own cause.      

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter' (Final Version, 1923), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Quotes taken from Hawthorne's 1850 novel can be found on pp. 93-94.  

Note: The lines underneath the image of Greta Thunberg are paraphrased from Lawrence (writing of Pearl) in the First Version (1918-19) of the above essay, SCAL, p. 252. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as Pippi Greenstocking, click here. 

The Rainbow

 Joseph Anton Koch:  

Landschaft mit dem Dankopfer Noahs (1803)

 

Yesterday, a lovely rainbow across the skies of West London: even Hounslow was briefly redeemed by this trick of the light and band of faint iridescence colouring the heavens. But any joy is short-lived and, ultimately, there is always something threatening rather than hopeful in this mythological and meteorological phenomenon and one starts to feel oppressed. 

For despite symbolizing gay pride and the hope of social and political equality in the secular imagination, the appearance of a rainbow invariably takes us back to Genesis 9 and God's post-diluvian pledge to Noah and sons:

I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature: never again will all life be cut off by the waters; never again will be there a flood to destroy the earth. I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and all life on earth. 

This is all very nice, though it might be thought too little, too late and hardly compensating for the global catastrophe caused by the very same loving Father who sent the rains for forty days and nights in the first place, ensuring that every living thing perished and was wiped from the face of the earth. It also provides significant wiggle-room; for in promising not to send another global flood, God carefully avoids promising not to exterminate life via some other means in the future. In effect, he is saying that whilst there'll be no more drownings or water torture, he doesn't promise not to one day burn the earth to a cinder.

The rainbow, however, doesn't exclusively remind us of the Old Testament deity playing his games of abuse. We also think of Lawrence's great novel of 1915 and particularly the closing passage in which Ursula sees the rainbow as the promise of a new day and a new evolution - though one which again noticeably follows an act of violent destruction:

"And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle, corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." 

- D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 458-59.

Why are those prone to genocidal fantasies so seduced by rainbows? Is such sentimentality inherent within the psychopathology of those who thrill to the thought of apocalypse and dream of utopia at any cost? 

Beware of the grand idealists who say creation of the new can only follow the total destruction of the old. And beware of those who place, chase, or even sing rainbows ...

Why Being Offended Doesn't Justify Bear Attacks on Children

Despite what Larry David argues with the neighbourhood cops in a classic episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (S2/E3), it's difficult to fully accept that being called a bald asshole by some local teenage girls constitutes a hate crime. It's impertinent, yes - and one can see that it might be hurtful to more sensitive members of the bald community - but it hardly warrants police action or being accorded the same degree of seriousness as the use of racial slurs for example, or homophobic abuse. 

Still, Larry's demand that a form of official reprimand be forthcoming - if only a stern word with the parents - is as nothing compared to what happens when the prophet and miracle-worker Elisha is also mocked for being a bald asshole in the second Book of Kings, 2:23-24. 

Making his way to the town of Bethel, about ten miles from Jerusalem, Elisha is accosted by a large group of youths who make fun of his baldness and challenge him to ascend unto heaven in a whirlwind like his master Elijah: Rise up baldy! they jeer. In response, Elisha calls down swift and savage retribution upon them: God bringing forth two she-bears from the woods who maul over forty of the youths.

It sounds insane and, of course, like most of the Bible, it is insane - not to mention morally indefensible; a divine act of psychotic overreaction and disproportionate cruelty at the behest of a delusional fraudster who is today venerated as a saint!

When will religious people learn that whilst they have the right to be offended, they don't have the right not to be offended; nor to extract violent and bloody revenge upon those who are deemed to have caused offence - be this in the form of suicide bombings or the unleashing of wild animals.

       

Why the Internet is a 21st Century Tower of Babel

Surely one of the more shocking episodes in the Old Testament (from which there are many to choose) is described in Genesis 11 and concerns the building by humanity and destruction by God of the Tower of Babel. For those of you unfamiliar with this passage, but too lazy to Google it, here it is, in full, with some very slight modifications made to the text as it appears in the edition of the Bible cited:

"At this time the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Babylonia and settled there. 

      They said to each other, 'Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.' They used these bricks instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.  

      But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that men were building. And he said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us confuse their language so they will not understand each other.'

      So the Lord scattered mankind once more over all the earth and their attempt to build a great city was abandoned. That is why it was called Babel - because the Lord confounded the language of the world."

- The Holy Bible, New International Version, (The Bible Societies in Association with Hodder and Stoughton, 1984).

From this we certainly get a further insight into the psychopathology of the Almighty. Not to make too fine a theological point of this, it's clear that God, like all tyrants, is a cunt: petty, paranoid, violent and vindictive.

His concern here is unambiguous; namely, that a united mankind, speaking and working as one, using materials of their own invention to build a safe and secure home for themselves post-flood, are empowered by their own technological ingenuity and feel an element of pride in their own mortal achievements.

Clearly, God can't have that. That is to say, he can't allow a self-sufficient humanity to threaten his omnipotence, or to realise its full potential as a species. And so, quite deliberately, he sows discord and confusion amongst a people where once there was fraternity and mutual understanding.

Of course, it might be argued that it's a good thing to generate cultural and linguistic difference. Though such an argument, when it comes from the mouths of the faithful who usually insist monomaniacally upon Oneness, seems ironic to say the least. In fact, anyone who reads Genesis 11 and comes to the conclusion that it shows us a God who is pro-difference and plurality is being more than a little disingenuous. For what it really betrays is the ugly and divisive nature of religion as it reinforces tribalism, nationalism, sectarianism; things that have caused immense misery in the modern world.     

Happily, in this digital age, we have decided to defy this judgement of a dead deity and build not a tower of bricks via which we might storm an imaginary heaven, but a global electronic network via which we might instantly connect and communicate with friends, family, and strangers all over the world, exchanging images and ideas, important news and mundane chit-chat.

Ultimately, the Good Book has been defeated by Facebook ...
     

Film Kills (1): At the Pictures with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Close-Up (Kiss), 1928

Cinema is the production of icons and the proliferation of moving images. From a biblical perspective, it is clearly sinful. 

But if the authors of Exodus are primarily concerned with the making of graven images of God and the worship of pagan idols, there seems to be something else, something deeper, troubling them too; namely, a genuine concern with the very notion of representation as it relates to questions of reality, truth, and appearance. 

We find the same concern amongst the ancient Greeks - Plato providing an obvious example. His insistence on presence and authenticity makes him suspicious of most art forms and his critique of writing as a pharmakon can easily be made also of film. Indeed, it's central  to D. H. Lawrence's criticism of cinema: because the actors on-screen are not physically present before us, this invalidates both their performance and our response to it. 

As a matter of fact, Lawrence says very little about the cinema, but when he does it's uniformly negative and hostile. In the poem 'When I Went to the Film', for example, Lawrence suggests that cinema is essentially - in its very form and function - an obscene and pornographic medium and that the content of the film is, therefore, in large part irrelevant. 

This is because, for Lawrence, film sensationally stimulates false feeling and counterfeit emotion. It is both ideal and ecstatic; projecting shadows of people as if onto the wall of Plato's cave on the one hand, whilst provoking masturbatory thrills on the other. It is the art form par excellence of what he refers to as sex-in-the-head: i.e., a desire on the part of hyper-conscious, visually-fixated individuals to experience everything in their minds and to exchange the sheer physical intensity of life lived in the flesh for a new piece of knowledge and a bucket of popcorn. 

Lawrence's concern is not that this results in a loss of soul, but in a denial of the body and corporeal reality: "The amazing move into abstraction on the part of the whole of humanity", he argues, "means we loathe the physical element ... We don't want to look at flesh-and-blood people ... We don't want to hear their actual voices" [1]. Rather, we wish only to interact with them mediated via technology.

In his novel of 1920, The Lost Girl, Lawrence privileges the dying art of the music hall over that of the newly emergent cinema, prioritizing live speech and presence over celluloid sensation. It's much the same argument as he makes in his poetry: film is cheap and easy and it costs the audience nothing apart from the price of a ticket: no feeling of the heart, no appreciation of the spirit is necessary - just wide open eyes and a desire to be titillated.

Whatever we might think of this critique - and it's far from convincing - there is no denying that our curiosity towards images is always erotically charged. Sex might not be the origin of the world as Courbet suggested, but it's certainly the origin of cinema and our insatiable will to knowledge. The faces of Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino "plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy ... one literally lost oneself in the human image" [2].

This cinematic jouissance - brilliantly theorized by Patricia MacCormack [3] - is a major concern for some people. For others, what matters is the violence that is done to the real; i.e. the fact that the production of images results in the murder of objects, not that it causes audience to moan from close-up kisses and simulated sex. I'll say more about this in part two of this post.

Notes: 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Men Must Work and Women as Well', Late Essays and Articles, (CUP, 2004), p. 283.
[2] Roland Barthes, 'The Face of Garbo', Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, (Paladin Books, 1973), p. 62.

[3] See Patricia MacCormack, Cinesexuality, (Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2008).

 

Life's a Drag

'A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, 

for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.'

                                                                                           
                                                                                          - Deuteronomy, 22: 5                                             

Really? I mean what's the problem here: why is God so troubled by everything?

I suppose it's because the simple pleasure of cross-dressing creates an element of uncertainty and causes the poles of male and female to vacillate via an abolition of differential opposition. 

Cross-dressing demonstrates how the signs of sex can easily be separated from biology. In other words, it reveals gender and sexual identity to be nothing but a playful and performative game involving clothes, hair and cosmetics; a question of style, rather than a fateful combination of anatomical fact and metaphysical essence.

Personally, I have always found something enchanting about 'men dressed as women' and 'women dressed as men'. Like Wilde, I am of the view that wherever there is loveliness of appearance, then there is no fraudulence. 

And besides, as Judith Butler points out: we are all transvestites.