The Murderous God - Part 5: To Hell with Me
“Hell” by Dieric Bouts (1450)
“scratching the surface”
I cannot begin to tell you how many times my memory has been jogged about another biblical story that has typified the God of the Bible as a shameless and arbitrary taker of human life (not to mention the destruction he visits upon other species). Up to this point, we’ve only looked at a couple of acts of divine genocide, one by water and the other at the hands of his people, along with a story about God getting a father to nearly kill his son followed by another in which God ‘The Father’ follows through on his promise to wack his own Son via one of the world’s worst forms of lethal torture. While each of these are among the most prominent examples, there are so many other stories which again and again depict a blood-thirsty deity in the Jewish and Christian religion’s Scriptures.
Like the time where one of God’s elite prophets, Elisha, ordered a heavenly hit job on forty-two kids, all because they were making fun of the fact that he was bald. I mean, I AM partially bald! It’s not one of my favorite physical traits. But I’m pretty sure that if a child, let alone a large group of children, teased me about it, my sense of justice would not lead me to direct God to sick a pack of carnivorous animals down on them!
Several years ago a clever YouTuber provided a concise summary of God’s executions in the style of a 1990’s video game. Before we move on, here it is for your temporary amusement…
I said temporary, because it is one of those things you laugh at and then quickly recall how appalling it is that this legacy of death is associated with an allegedly all-loving Supreme Being, and even worse that such horse shit is passed off to children.
Yet in my opinion, as fucked up as all of this is, it pales in comparison with the epic act of violence we will turn to now.
“The End”
There is a subdivision of Christian systematic theology called ‘eschatology’, which literally means the study of the end times. While there are books of the Bible (e.g. Daniel) and passages (e.g. Matthew 24:3-31) that are considered important texts in constructing a comprehensive biblical view of ‘the end’, none looms as large in my opinion as the Book of Revelation, the final book in the Christian Scriptures.
Now for those of you not steeped in Christian theology as much as I unfortunately am, let me spare you the trivialities of the meaningless debates Christians engage in over their nuanced understanding of how the world ends—things like premillennialism vs postmilliennialism, pretribulation vs posttribilation, la la la la la la…nobody in their right mind fucking cares about this anyways. Instead, let’s cut to the heart of the matter. Specifically, we are going to look at two key takeaways on how God supposedly closes the curtains (kinda) on his perfect saga of redemption and what this says about him as the proposed ultimate hero of the story.
Jesus ain’t so meek and mild anymore!
By “God” I also mean Jesus, as in the Christian doctrine of the Triune God—Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit (not going down that rabbit hole of nonsense here). For the sake of time, we’re going to bypass the wrath of “God” or the “Lord”, which I take it to most often mean the Father. Let’s just say that Sky Daddy has managed to ‘save the best for last’ when it comes to his biblical record of rage. Rather I’m going to highlight only the destruction, suffering, and death that comes at the hands of Jesus—most often referred to as the ‘Lamb' in Revelation—or the agents of his wrath. For sure, the more popular self-sacrificing, forgiving, pacifist (“turn the other cheek”) Jesus of the gospels is getting his full Old Testament God on in Revelation! Or as was classically satirized by Saturday Night Live, let’s just say that as the Bible is taking it home, Jesus is seriously tapping into his inner Quentin Tarantino!
So let’s take a brief stroll through the final pages of the ‘Good Book’ to see how far Jesus has come since his meek-and-mild-crucified-hippie-carpenter days of the ‘first coming’.
In the sixth chapter of Revelation, Jesus unleashes the four horseman of the apocalypse where they, we are told, “were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth” (v.8). This included the ability to “make people kill each other” (v.4). It got so bad that people “hid in caves” and “called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (v.15-16).
In chapter nine, Jesus releases a plague of locusts who “were not allowed to kill” the remaining people of the earth “but only to torture them for five months” with an extremely painful but non-lethal sting like that of a scorpion (v.3 and 5). As in the previous example, those on earth sought “death” but were denied this reprieve so they could enjoy the full extent of the suffering that Jesus had planned for them (v.6). Later in the chapter, at least a third of the population is graciously put out of their misery by means of “three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur” (v.18). Still, those who remained did not heed this divine discipline and continued to practice things like worshiping “idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood” (v.20)—God get’s really insecure when people do that in the Bible—or other things like “theft” or “sexual immorality” (v.21), which from elsewhere in the Bible we know includes homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Of course, all of these acts are certainly worthy of the mass suffering and death just witnessed!
While this is most likely a statement of the judgment to come from God (the non-Jesus parts), in chapter fourteen we read a final warning to all those who were still stubbornly not on Team Trinity. We are told that they “will drink the wine of God’s fury” and, notably, that “they will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” and that the “smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever” (v.10-11). Apparently, Jesus loves the smell of a good eternal BBQ of human flesh.
Lastly, no way is Jesus going to personally miss out on this party! That brings us to chapter nine-teen, where he who is “faithful and true” (v.11), the “word of God” (v.13) and “the king of kinds and lord of lords” (v.16) rides in on a “white horse” with eyes “like blazing fire” and dressed in a “robe dripped in blood” (v.11-13). From his mouth he takes “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” and that “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (v.15). Now some of you might not be aware of the historical reference for this analogy of treading the winepress. Basically, the most common way in ancient times to extract the juice for grapes in order to make wine was to literally crush the grapes with bare feet. This is understood by most Christian theologians to a be fulfillment of a prophecy found in Isaiah 63:3, where the coming Messiah will say in the climactic final moment of his judgement on his enemies, “I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.” So according to the Bible, Jesus will personally and brutally kill off the rest of humanity in a blood bath befitting the scale of ‘the great flood’ of Genesis. Well I suppose we have to at least give God points for consistency.
as if the first time wasn’t bad enough
So all of this is pretty horrific. To use another biblical metaphor, God’s body count could best be described, “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 12:17). But no exposition on the bottomless cruelty of the God of the Bible would be complete without a look at his oven of unspeakable suffering that we all know as ‘Hell’. Yes, for a final ‘curtain call’ God brings everyone back to the stage for one last final review (Rev. 20:11-13). Just to be clear, this is after all of us have already died once, some of us previously taken out directly by God’s lethal whooping stick. Now for the ‘elect’ who have believed in Jesus (John 3:16) and acted in ways that appeased God (like don’t kill and also don’t be gay; Rev. 22:12, 14), this resurrection is good news. For the rest of us, well…yikes. We all get thrown in “the lake of fire” which is then described as “the second death” (Rev. 20:14-15; see also 22:15). Yes, God is apparently not content with killing off his enemies once. He’s got to do it twice. And this time he ups the ante big time!
Now there is some debate over whether each of us, according to God’s judgement, go to either Heaven or Hell immediately after we die the first time. Most conservative theologians believe we do, with a smaller number who believe in something called ‘soul sleep’, where the souls of those who have died are unconscious until the final judgement described in the twentieth chapter of Revelation. If you are with the majority, does that mean that God drags the dead, who were already damned to Hell, out of the pool of fire only to issue a cruel ‘psych’ and then throw you back in the deep end? Either way, it does seem to be worse than whatever punishment they had previously experienced. Maybe God just turns up the burners for round two.
So what is ‘Hell’ like? Christianity.com has an article that draws upon the teaching by Andy Naselli, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament at Bethlehem Seminary. He identifies four primary descriptions of Hell.
One, it is very dark. Like at the bottom of the Mariana Trench dark. The article references Jude 1:13 that describes it as “blackest darkness”. I remember this one time growing up when my family went hiking in the lava tubes of Lassen Volcanic Park. Our flashlight ran out of juice before we got back to where we could see sunlight. All we had was that little red light on our VHS camcorder that indicates you are recording. It was only a few minutes of feeling our way out with the assistance of that small red glow, but it was pretty scary. I’m assuming Hell’s darkness is much worse.
We are also told elsewhere in the Bible, including by Jesus, that there will be “weeping” and a “gnashing of teeth” in Hell (Matthew 8:12). The weeping part is pretty straight forward. Gnashing of teeth? Well if Acts 7:54 gives us any clue, it could mean that basically people are angry and mean as…well, Hell in Hell! Maybe everyone in Hell is either crying in the fetal position or scratching, beating, and biting everyone within striking distance.
Great, we are only half way there!
Thirdly, Hell has an “unquenchable fire” (Isaiah 66:24). All I know is that at worst I think I might have had a second degree burn once or twice. The images I have seen of third degree burns are awful. Perhaps in Hell, whether literal or symbolic, it feels like like you body is constantly being burned to these extremes. Nice.
Lastly, you are utterly rejected and kicked out of “God’s presence”. Now I’m already thinking that not being around a guy who would take countless souls and submit them to the first three qualities of Hell is probably a good thing. But giving believers the benefit of the doubt that somehow, despite all the we have observed about God even in just this short series of five writings, he is all-loving, all-just, all-powerful, etc., I can imagine that not being allowed to hang out with such a cool Cosmic Dude again would really suck.
But wait, there’s more!
All contestants who failed to win in The Price is Unquestioned Obedience to a Tyrannical God get all four of these prizes…wait for it…FOREVER!!! That’s right, it’s an eternity supply of Divine ostracization, extreme burning, unending tears and violence, all in a state of complete darkness!
Note: For a sincere defense of this soul-less and barbaric doctrine, check out this article by Greg Morse on John Piper’s website, DesiringGod.com. Morse does well to follow in the footsteps of Piper, one of my ‘favorite’ theologians who has made his mark as a chief apologist for intolerant and bigoted Scriptures. Also, yes there are some who hold to anialationism, like Seventh Day Adventists. It’s a minority position, but I guess it makes them feel better that while they are all rocking out in Heaven, at least their friends and family members who didn’t make the cut only experienced a brief moment of extreme, torturous punishment before God wiped the universe of their very existence.
ONE LAST TIME
OK, back to the final book of the Bible. As we’ve done in the previous installments, let’s return one final time to our favorite Christian parent’s cult conditioner, the YouVersion’s Bible App for Kids, to see how accurately they displayed some of the unpleasantness of the Book of Revelation.
We start off with a rather pleasant sub-title for the story of Revelation, “A Forever Promise”. And who doesn’t like “new”! Look at that city! We’re off to a great start. Hmm, that’s odd. The verses that are the focus of today’s story time are from the first and second to last chapters. We’ll come back to that.
OK, this is a really cool scene where Jesus shows up to give the Apostle John a vision of the great things to come! Notice that Jesus apparently decided to go with the non-blood stained robes for this visit. Probably a good call.
In the next graphic, we get to hear Jesus brag about how at least he knows he will live forever. Damn, it must feel good to be God!
So OK kids, brace yourselves! Here comes scary Jesus! This is going to be really rough, but we want you to know everything about God, even the part where he kills off and then torments forever all those who dare oppose him, including very likely many of your friends and family members if they aren’t down with JC. Ok are you ready?
FAST FORWARD!!
Just kidding, we have to work up to this. What’s needed are years of slow and steady desensitization to God’s violence, like a father who gradually over time escalates his levels of physical abuse with just enough ice cream cones and the occasional trip to Disneyland to keep you psychologically paralyzed. You know, until you get to the point where your identity is so wrapped up in all of this shit that you will tolerate just about any level of dysfunction.
So given we have not gotten our precious little ones to that stage of indoctrination yet, let’s censor out all of the carnage that we just skimmed earlier and get straight to, “and they lived happily ever after!”
First off, we are treated to some lovely images and descriptions of all the cool “new” stuff! After all, who doesn’t love that new earth, sky and golden city smell. Very subtly, the old is simply “gone”. And as we just said, the kids aren’t quite ready for the details on that.
And we’re also told it will be like a wedding, except in this case those who are not invited are…no! Not going there.
But the BEST part about Heaven is not Earth 2.0 or the blinged-out New Jerusalem! No, its who get’s to hang with the Big Man for all eternity.
Catch that boys and girls? “His people”…
“His people”
Make sure you don’t forget that. You definitely do NOT want to be NOT one of His peoples. We will fill you in later on what happens to those people.
But back to the happy stuff! So what awaits those of us who are “His people” (again, don’t forget that)? Well, you’ll never get sad, get an owie and most importantly you will never die! High fives everybody!
(Little Billy raises his hand)
Children’s Pastor: Yes Billy?
Little Billy: What happens to all my friends who don’t believe in Jesus?
Children’s Pastor: OK, Billy. Like I said, you can trust us to teach you more about that later when you are ready. Lot’s of ‘grown up’ things there. But let’s just say that they do live forever, but that it feels like a really bad owie. Now you don’t want your friends to feel like that forever, do you?
Little Billy: (Tears forming at the sadness of his good friends being in horrible pain forever.) No, I don’t!
Children’s Pastor: Well then, you need to do whatever you can to bring your friends to church…so they can become one of God’s people.
Little Billy: (With an anxious look on his face.) OK Pastor.
OK, so just to underscore the point one more time, remember that God says that Heaven is only for those people who are “My Children, those who are faithful to me.”
Oh, and Heaven is one really long pool party that just so happens to look like a perfect balance of ethnic and racial groups, with the exception of God-approved modest apparel with white and tan colors only.
Lastly, let’s review! And this won’t be hard kids…there is just ONE QUESTION you need to know the answer to from today’s lesson…
And there you have it boys and girls…
To hell with…me?
So where does this leave me? I’m not only a person who once confessed to be a Christian who now has essentially come to be an atheist, but I was once a leader in the church. AND now I’m trying to influence others to embrace secular humanist thinking, especially my own children! I’m pretty sure that puts me on the Hell Express (Luke 17:1-2; James 3:1)!
I know there are some who have reacted to my decision like Buddy the Elf when he finds out his dad is on the “naughty list”.
Most, as far as I can tell, have manifested the ambivalence of David Puddy towards Elaine once she finds out that her boyfriend seems OK with her being Hell-bound.
“The Burning” - Seinfeld (Season 9, 16th episode)
But now I want to put all humor and sarcasm aside. The things I have labored to set before you here and in the other four parts of The Murderous God actually represent a source of profound grief. I believe that both the stories of God’s violence and the doctrines that have underpinned the culture and actions of the followers of this Homicidal Maniac have, in reality, brought Hell to earth in far too many ways. The ‘good’ that allegedly comes from religion is, in my opinion, massively overestimated, a subject I have spoken on in other writings and will likely continue to explore in the future. I’ll just say for now that much of the ‘law and order’ we are supposed to cherish is nothing but a smug superiority and ‘civilized’ system of abuse that is intrinsically connected to religious thinking. We have seen this old hymn played on repeat over and over again throughout history, from a global and societal level in religiously fueled wars and racist colonial aggression to the individual level of spiritual, physical and psychological abuse.
And I cannot speak of this kind of Hell without owning my part of it. Many ‘know’ me for my life in the public eye, ‘leading’ in ‘ministry’ (before I left) and in general the non-profit space. In my own little world, I was greatly admired and looked up to. And yet I now view my years in ‘ministry’ as ones in which I mostly promulgated the very spiritual and psychological religious abuse that I experienced as a child, much of which I view as a natural result of worshiping a God of such vile nature. This includes encouraging the development of broken mental constructs in my two daughters, particularly my oldest daughter, that may take many years to dismantle. Some they may never recover from, only to repeat the very same mistakes in their public and personal lives that I have made.
So I want to conclude by asking, begging even, that we all take a very long and painful look at the God of the Bible. He is not the benign source of inspirational love he is often portrayed to be. Then we should begin the even harder work of looking inward to see how we individually and at all levels of community have, in both ostentatious and in more subtle ways, become the horrifying realization of the legendary murderous God of the Bible.