Burning Leaves and Burning Hell

Burning dried leaves at midnight is relaxing. There’s something Zen-like about flames (whatever that means) even spiritual may I say. Lately I’ve taken to enjoying these little things that my mother used to do like pruning and watering the plants, pulling out grasses and weeds, looking at flowers, things that I considered mushy then, but now I find therapeutic. (SHE’S STILL ALIVE AND KICKING! Lest my writing sounds like I’m reminiscing of someone departed. Nah, I’m a son and a son is allowed to miss his mother who’s now with his sister somewhere in the northern Philippines driving her and her husband nuts.)

There is really joy in these things if one finds the time to do it, like burning dried leaves and staring at the flames at midnight while scratching your head...removing flakes…

I was burning dried leaves and looking at the beautiful dancing flame with its rainbow of colors, sometimes blue, sometimes orange, sometimes green, sometimes a mixture of all of them depending on the materials mixed with the leaves like copper, aluminum foil, and coconut shell etc. The flame was beautiful. I was thinking, how something so beautiful can be associated with hell, punishment, suffering, and damnation. I mean if it’s the burning sensation that we’re talking about with hell, negative degrees temperature can burn just as well and can hurt as well as a flame, but of course ice crystals are beautiful too.

I am reflecting here and not speculating. This is one of those strange things that I do. I stare at things and just let my mind meander wherever it likes to go. Of course I have to be careful when

I do this lest I’d be mistaken for a nut. Well…

Granted that hell is fire and that it was meant be the place for the condemned to suffer their fate in eternity isn’t it a bit strange even incongruent that the punishment for the immortal soul or spirit is predicated upon the sense and perception of the flesh? --to a physiological and psychological phenomenon.

Of course it cannot be proven that the soul or spirit is the entity that gives us sense and perception because it is an established medical fact that there are medical conditions where in an individual cannot feel pain (Dr. Noel Cruz knows about these things). Or it can be argued that the spirit or the soul is the entity that gives us sense and perception it’s just that it sometimes malfunction. Which of the two is more acceptable then? A non-feeling spirit or soul, or a feeling but sometimes malfunctioning spirit or soul.

Hell must not only be about pain or suffering. There must be something more to it, something more fearsome than torture, something more threatening than just heat and burning, and worms, and sulfur etc. These things are not to be feared for they are merely sensations, a stimuli and stimulus and response and blah, blah, blah (see Dr. Noel Cruz for the medical clarifications), which without the organic shell meant nothing. Now if ever an inconsumable body will be provided for the condemned then hell will be nothing more than a continuation of the absurd life here on earth. Then Camus would be proved right—one must imagine Sisyphus happy. For what would be existence in hell then but a Sisyphusian existence, fated to roll the stone up and watched while it rolls back down. In short, the absurdity of suffering in hell, if we take Camus’ reasoning, will sooner or later be accepted by the sufferer and sooner or later will make the best of it like Sisyphus reaching the top of the mountain looking at the futility of his effort, smiles and contemplate the absurdity of his situation smiles again and watched the stone roll back and then roll it up again…infinity is a short time to get used to torture no matter how creative the torturer is. Pain the opposite of pleasures the human referent for hell and heaven and how shallow are they…how shallow.

There must be something more to hell.

The problem here is language. It is the limitation of language to express what is inexpressible. So, interpretation must go beyond what is expressed to what cannot be expressed by language. Hell is Gehenna and Gehenna was a place in Jerusalem (I could be wrong about the place) where they burn the garbage. I think it’s not the burning that is important about hell but rather the separation, the uselessness, the distance, the disposing, the etcetera.

The same goes with heaven here. It cannot be all about the bliss or the singing and laughing…there must be something more to it--more than the Romano-Hellenistic- Epecureanistic-Utilitarianistic-Hedonisitc-Anglo Linguistic and blah, blah, blah definition of pleasures and delights, quantitatively or qualitatively if we take Mill’s classification of hedonism and pleasure.

As I’ve mentioned before, the real problem is language. It’s a case of a term having no referent and a referent having no term—accuracy and all that Wittgensteinian blah, blah, blah about language. One cannot accurately express divine concepts in human language. Isa 55:8 "My thoughts," says the LORD, "are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours.

Barth (an influential neo-orthodox theologian and a Christian existentialist) is right when he said that Christian faith is faith in Christ and not on the “exactitude” of the biblical account of Christ. Christ is the norm for faith; the Bible is merely the record of the Christ. One implication is that the fundamentalist dogmatism (beep beep to the Fundamental Baptists) on the interpretation of every adjective and every adverb of the Bible does more harm than good for faith because it reduces the understanding of Christ to semantics and hermeneutics—Christ can be known by what Barth calls “special revelation” because only God can say what means and methods are appropriate for his revelation and salvation and to make a book, a text, words, even the Bible, as man’s ultimate authority is to put another sovereign in the place of the living God. (I think Barth is afraid to use the words blasphemous and idolatrous.) Christ is sovereign over holy books that proclaim him. This is not to deny the sanctity and the role of the bible in the life of the Christian it is just to show the nature of the Bible and its place in the revelation of God and the Christ—a record of men testifying about God, not the record of God Himself. (I don’t want to use the simplification used by Barth’s critic because it’s too simplistic and under emphasizes Barth’s analysis. I am sad that I have no access to these people’s (Barth and Bultmann) “real” works but I get by through essays that I read about them and their theology. Books are expensive here in the Philippines.)

Man is limited to man and only God is the measure of God.

The Bible is sacred but it is not Christ himself. Christianity is Christ centered. Faith in Christ is faith in God and only a faith that comes from God is a faith worthy of God for only God is the measure of God and God has reached out to man through God through Christ.

Wowowwwee! Migraine these insights are, but very, very enlightening. All I’m trying to say is that there are parts in the Bible that cannot be simply, by reason or beyond reason or by linguistic limitation, interpreted literally but look where the staring at the flames and meandering went...If God judge peoples on what and how they think and not on what Christ had done for them, surely I’d secured for myself a ticket to hell. But I have something better, the blood of Christ and the seal of the Holy Spirit a safe passage, from God himself, to heaven.

 God’s grace is sufficient.

Yes there is hell and there is heaven but it must be beyond human description a place better and happier and in the case of hell a place worse than a place for physical suffering. There must be something more….

And if you’re wondering what’s the connection between burning dried leaves, hell, heaven and the Christology of Barth. Don’t. I’m just looking at the flames and letting my mind fly while scratching my head, removing my dandruff…ouch…blood…I need to change my shampoo he, he, he.