Easter, 1994

To Mike Armistead from his brother in Christ, Philip

Greetings! Christ is Risen!

At our Disciple II class last Sunday I mentioned my "delirium" of the previous evening. As I continue to distance myself from that, I find an increasing clarity and pleasure with regard to an idea that started there (and which I have already spoken about), namely the appearance of Jesus in a bodily form who then ministers to each person present in a way which is designed to enable that person to approach more nearly God and his fellow man (= man or woman).*

[* The real lesson of that, by the way, is surely our ingestion of the substance (body) and life (blood) of Christ such that while he fully dies on the cross, he does not entirely die, for he is now alive in the disciples. Hence we, you and I and all disciples, are to become apostles (embodying the Christ) and are to go about at parties (and wherever) providing the sort of ministry I imagined at my party and which we all discussed.]

Yesterday morning some very interesting thoughts arose in an early morning meditation on that idea. While rather speculative and even playful, they are appealing to us as Christians, I think, and I thought I you might be interested in them, if for no other reason than entertaining insights into the idle (Christian) mind.* I call it (a vision of) the Apocalypse according to Philip!**

[* Kant's comment about the work of Plato.]

[** Perhaps it is incumbent upon every adult, thinking Christian to formulate his vision of the apocalypse as did St. John the Divine.]

But first some preparation is in order.

1. Gotama (also known as the Buddha) recognized that everything was a composite* and was in constant danger of decomposition. For example, the wonderful life a person might have in his family will finally decompose, fade and pass away. The pyramids are decomposing. Indeed the doctrine of the Buddha itself will decompose and be lost. The doctrine of John Wesley (as well as that of Jesus) may already be decomposing and, if not renewed, will ultimately vanish. This is an important truth, an insight into which can prove very helpful.

[* Even the so-called soul. The soul was merely a conglomeration of energies which held together because of a craving for an identity and personality. And its "solidity", a mere myth, was perpetuated by an insistence on this entity which follow the soul even into death and prompted its rebirth. The solution to the problem of the incessant rebirths lay in non-craving, in which case the energies called the soul would dissolve and release and escape into nothingness (Nirvana), or rather into non-being. This consideration is also of value in the further discussion of the life in heaven presented below.]

2. What we see as a particular existence or course of action or motion may be something entirely different; and it is such a way of looking at the world (a Weltanschauung) that enables us to have any understanding at all. The reduction in the size of a person who is further removed from us is a function of the distance and space, and thus is only apparent (and not what it seems at all). The orbit of the moon is actually a composite of two entirely different forces, the moon is traveling is a straight line past the earth and, at the same time, the moon is falling onto the earth.

3. What we call the human personality is primarily enabled by memory and the ability to see things in time. Without this latter capacity, we exist in an ever present now (as most likely do the animals) and what we now call memories would be merely tendencies to do this or that, e.g., when we hear certain sounds in the kitchen, we feel a need to go to the kitchen. Remove memories and you have merely an existence which may indeed include a capacity for language and discourse, but without the least connection to any thing whatsoever. This is very evident in nursing homes where (Gotama's description of the) decomposition of the memory and the personality takes place. This likely suggests the difference between pre-history and history, the latter helping (to some extent) to explain how it is that we are where we are, while the former being embodied merely in tendencies and predispositions as a human race.

I was impressed the other day when three generations of women came in to see about acquiring a special, commissioned glass sculpture for the youngest of them. There was the mother/grandmother, the daughter/mother, the granddaughter/daughter. I became a little detached and, allowing them to browse together, was able to observe them a bit. It became apparent that each was being independent, her own person, but always in a context of the others, so that the behavior was what Kant calls communality, i.e., each affecting each, each being both an effect of the behavior of the others and a cause of the behavior of the others. The mother was affected by her daughter and by her own mother's presence; the grandmother was able to see herself in her daughter as she related to her own daughter, etc., and, most surely, had her own (now likely deceased) mother in mind in memories of interactions. I suggest this interaction goes back to the beginning of time and certain actions or gestures or attitudes might be followed backward for hundreds and even thousands of years. Hence something that God did in Christ, for example, might still be alive and in us without us even knowing it, even as the movement of the moon is the interaction of two forces of passing by, and falling onto, the earth.

Now a fact of history which will be provocative for our thinking. In the reports of the late Lewis Grizzard's death, I read about his last minute marriage. I know nothing of the circumstances, but it did remind me of the last minute marriage between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. I have come to consider this an (at least single) act of decency on the part of Adolf. He had kept Eva out of sight because a certain persona was necessary for his purposes of portraying the superman (sovereignty over the drives and weaknesses of other men). He had (I can easily imagine) earlier promised her that they would indeed be married one day. At the end (within an hour or so of his death), when his deranged mind was full of venom for the betrayal by the world, especially by the "lack of will" on the part of the Germans (as can be seen in his last testament), something touched him strongly enough that he melted to a certain extent and kept his promise to his adoring Eva (who, by all accounts, was a rather plain person and could have been easily dismissed out of hand).

This is touching to me (though not to most people), and it provides what I am coming to call a "wink of God". Adolf Hitler is usually considered the most evil man in all the world; and certainly by all usual measures he would be a strong contender, i.e., by the count of misery he caused.* And yet even in him there was at least a tiny bit of decency coming through at the end. Indeed, when God finished Hisher creation, Heshe did not merely say that it was good, but that it was very good (Genesis 1:31). And our brother Adolf, too, exemplified that goodness that is in all creation, for he was not a demon but rather, like us, mixed with good and (apparently lots of) evil.

[* But the logic is fallacious as everyone who understands the difference between the heart of Satan and that of Christ will know. For the mark of evil is the selfish heart and not what that selfish heart is able to accomplish. Hence my heart may be as evil as Hitler's, but I have no opportunity to exhibit it to the world and therefore appear by all accounts to be a proper man; indeed I may not even realize the enormity of my own evil, i.e., the evil I can do, simply because I have not have the opportunity to reveal my heart even to myself.]

Now to our task of "uncovering" the vistas of heaven. The final people, according to the Revelation of St. John the Divine, will uniformly honor and reflect Christ in a community which I take to be as perfect as the Holy Trinity itself, and indeed one member of which is Christ. Hence the day will come when every knee will bow and all persons confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And furthermore, this glorification of Christ will be entirely spontaneous and not induced or forced in any way whatsoever.

Now, unless the end comes quickly and I become one of these last day people, I will be a spirit at that time; and, as such, I will be able to experience no life unless I can connect with a body.* But (I further imagine) I can only do this with some existent body at a point in time where that particular body is resonating, as it were, with some action, thought or behavior, to which I can associate myself as having produced or promoted in some way during my life in the world. For example, Adolf will be able to associate and recognize and feel all acts of decency in the people of the last days of the sort similar to his last minute recognition of the needs of another (Eva). Now since without such a resonance it will be impossible to maintain a memory and life,** and since there will be no evil or sin in the world whatsoever, most of the memory of Adolf will (presumably) have vanished and he will exist only to the extent "his" decency is present in the world.***

[* This is a very old notion among Christians, for it is a part of our Apostles' Creed.]

[** This conclusion is based on the first of the three premises above, namely that everything is in decay and hence the memories, too, fade and pass away without something to maintain their vibrancy.]

[*** The germ of this idea was suggested to me by the thinking of the Reverend Moon of the Unification Church, a group with whom I otherwise feel very little kinship. The idea is that a spirit is not given a special body, but must share a body with a living person. Indeed it is by sharing such a body that life is a meaningful term. Evil spirits, according to this thinking, find bodies which they then try to influence to evil, e.g., illicit sex, which (sensations) the evil spirit can then feel and enjoy through the feelings of the acting person's body. The same holds for good spirits in search of sensations associated with beneficent actions and thoughts.

As an entirely incidental matter, this alleged communion between a person and the spirits of these dead people (primarily [but not entirely] one's ancestors, according to Moon's thinking) can explain the "phenomenon" of reincarnation, e.g., familiarity with strange place, déjà-vu, etc., without having to presuppose an actual reincarnation and preexistent soul. It is interesting and novel (and troubling to reincarnationist, who find here a contrary hypothesis which is asserted with as much force and basis [merely a thought!] as their own).]

I imagine this life that Adolf will lead in the spirit world (whereby he is able to connect with bodies of the last day people here and there in his one act of decency) will be exhilarating. But during those periods when no body (no one of the final day people) happens to be exemplifying that act, he will be dead or as one asleep.*

[* Whether he is aware that he goes to sleep is not clear in my concept.]

This is not true of those who died without experiencing malice, e.g., infants and the mentally affected. These will have no memories and hence no personality, but they will have joy, for they will be able to experience as children all that takes place, only without reference to themselves.* Hence no memory, but still awake (unlike Adolf who goes to sleep whenever anything takes place which is devoid of his own experience of goodness).**

[* This suggests an innate "shyness" on the part of people away from that to which they are strangers, to which they feel alien. Hence children, without the constraints of culture, might feel entire openness and acceptance and the lack of judging and hence no reason not to enter into the scene of life with full gusto. See Genesis 3:8, John 9:39-41.]

[** This sort "going to sleep" can be experienced by everyone. Even when I am intently engaged in a conversation, and my name is mentioned by someone in another, adjacent conversation, even though I do not know what the context is, I do hear my name. Hence while I was "asleep" to the other conversation, I am always awake to my name. So it could be with the acts of goodness what we will recognize as something we added to the world and which is still present in the last days, something durable.]

Thus the memory, as Gotama indicated, is a composite and eventually fails if not renewed; but in the last days (according to Revelation), only goodness be present and hence only good memories will be renewed. Therefore the evil memories are effectively expelled and cast into the Lake of Fire, along with Death, never to escape again; for the flames of oblivion never go out (there being no deeds in the last day people to rescue and revive them); and along with them, as we have seen, that part of the personality which is based on them and which continues to live only through those memories.

Thus far we have a picture of good and evil as it is conceived and accepted universally, in a karmic sort of way, namely a relationship between good (and evil) and reward (and punishment). This picture satisfies all moral thinking. But does not adequately account for the promises of Christ.

Now Christ, as the embodiment of goodness, will be perfectly alive in the last days because he will see in each and every one of the last day people his own goodness, and all the time, constantly; hence there will never be a moment in which he is not fully alive and fully present in the world. Indeed, more than anyone else he will see himself in all, for all will be motivated entirely by the Holy Spirit, Who is one with Christ.

Now we are prepared to consider those who accepted the Lordship of Christ while on earth and who earnestly desired to be like him.

Since a Christian is one who has sincerely sought unity and identity with the Christ and attains that through a common heart, namely the Heart of Christ, that person is so united with Christ that heshe is able to experience in the last day people all which that people exemplify, i.e., since the heart of the individual Christian has united with that of Christ, the good sown by Christ, while not actually sown by the individual himself, is nonetheless precisely that which heshe would have sown had the opportunity been at hand, i.e., if we take the wish for the deed, then it would have happened; hence they too are totally alive (but only in and through Christ), although, like Adolf, they are unable to remember anything evil from their own past, for its "ghost" or "vibration" will not be before them in order to be preserved, but rather, like all dead things, slowly fades away back into dust like the inexorable destruction of the Pyramids.

Hence, in the final analysis, there is nothing but joy in heaven and on earth, and the Lake of Fire has destroyed all that is not perfect and loving.

A further comment on the communion of saints will be helpful. Leibniz once conceived of the world as made up of independent entities which acted strictly on their own and without concern for, nor under the influence of, anything else. For example, while I am such an entity, my hand is also, and each finger and each cell of each finger and so on. Hence whenever I wanted to raise my hand, my hand, my fingers, and each cell, also wanted to rise and each functioned independently of the other. The reason for the apparent cause and effect (my raising my hand) was what Leibniz called a Preestablished Harmony of God, namely God had so constituted the world that I and my hand and my fingers, etc., all wanted to rise at the same time.

Now I am using the Leibnizian model with a twist. I want to imagine (for purposes of my notion of the final day people) that in my body, besides myself, are other souls, e.g., Philip-2, Philip-3, and that these are completely independent beings each of whom considers my body to be his own. There is a certain harmony established such that we all happen to want to do the same things at the same time, and so, when I raise my hand, Philip-2 and the others do the same thing, and each is conscious of the same exertion, etc.

Now then I transfer this notion to the final day people and imagine them to be in that sort of situation where Christ is able to be present in a way similar to how I have described it just above, and indeed all Christians with him (and also occasionally all others, e.g., Adolf, who can occasionally find a resonance to the good that they happened to have done, even though they never made a commitment to good which enables them to be called brother/sister of Christ and to experience the total good/love).

Letting our imagination go free for a moment more, we can take the constellations as our cue and imagine that as we move further and further back from objects (the individual stars like our sun), there appear to us shapes which are simply not possible close up (like the Big Dipper). If we can imagine a certain spiritual distance, we might think that the last day people are Christ, for the totality of Jesus will be represented perfectly in the last day people, and there will be nothing in them that is not from Christ, and the saints will associate freely in all, and the rest of creation will be represented somewhere and to some degree, and there will be no memory in existence of anything else except this. With one exception: those who are entirely in Christ will retain the memories and stories of how it is that He came to the earth and lived and died so that this very last day world might arise from the ashes of the Garden of Eden.

Conclusion and Analysis: This concept enables us to find a justice which is complete, namely all evil is destroyed; and if evil persons are thought of as that in us which thinks and does evil, then all evil persons are destroyed also. Our souls are composites and that which is evil is eradicated and expelled from existence.* The infants and mentally affected are able to enjoy eternal life as children, for they have life (and hence immediate joy and happiness) but no memories (and hence no sense of becoming as they are, and thus no understanding); for they, blest in a special way and differently from adults, are able to accept without judgment and therefore accept absolutely.** Finally, there is complete identity of joy and spirit of those who died in Christ, for since only he is exemplified in the last day people (there being no sin whatsoever), and since he and his disciples are one in spirit, every where they look they see only life which resonates with themselves.

{* Instead of the unification of the disjointed good and evil people the film, The Broken Crystal, this model presents the abstraction from the evil and the remainder only (the decent) as being alive.]

[** The state of the children is perhaps best rendered by the image of the Hindu God Krishna and the cow maids, the latter being so happy in the presence of the blue colored god that they are delirious and are not even able to recognize Krishna. Hence the children would be ecstatic without joy, for joy is necessarily dependent upon understanding, and without memories, the children would be unable to understand how the last day world arose.).*** ****

[*** To properly and more completely grasp the heavenly bliss of infants and children, another consideration is needed which is given in Appendix I.]

[**** This consideration also explains why such a concept is called rational play (Vernünftelei) by Kant, for it is an attempt to fit various notions together into a system, but without having an object before the eyes (which was the case with science and with mathematics [the former having an empirical, the latter an a priori object independent of experience]). A similar "rational play" I find most especially in the book of Hebrews.]

This is my apocalypse!

Appendix I*

[* Added June 27, 1997]

The conception of the heavenly bliss of infants and children is entangled with some complexities and requires a finer sifting, as it were. We stated that Adolf Hitler, both personally and as representative of all who are without Christ, is able to be awake (alive) in heaven in those moments and upon those prompts when some decency or goodness is in the air to which he has a special affinity, e.g., in his unselfish and fundamentally decent treatment of Eva Braun. But this thinking would suggest that the infants and children would have nothing to awaken them, for (obviously) they are not conscious of any decent act which would resonate as a memory when prompted by a replay of that act in the heavenly realm. The solution to this problem calls for some help on the part of Immanuel Kant.

Kant proposes (in his work on religion) a (characteristically) ingenious conception of human goodness and human sin. According to Kant, each man is a creature of total goodness. In fact there are three sorts of goodness: the animal (including self defense, taking care of young, sexual drive, eating, etc.), the rational (comparison and understanding) and the moral (capacity to act for the sake of the moral law alone, i.e., without further incentive). Now on his own, each individual is only good. But the human is not a complete creature except in community, and so a society is called for and it is here, in the interaction among these otherwise good mans, that the predispositions for good "turn bad". According to Kant's theory, in a grouping there are intrusions, which can even be considered as inadvertent, e.g., perhaps Adam of the proverbial garden scene wanted to show Eve this or that and would actually be forcing her. but perhaps only out of some excitement related to her anticipated joy at the sighting, and Eve would then automatically go into a defensive behavior (a good predisposition in itself). All of which is innocuous on its own.

But then Eve (to continue this example) notices that her resistance to Adam's intrusions was more or less successful (a utilization of her rationality and her capacity to compare and figure things out) and then turns automatically to a utilization of that power to get Adam not only to leave her alone, when she wishes to be alone, but to do whatever it is that she might want him to do. Thus rationality has revealed a coercive tool to the children of man which, although has a spring in the goodness of the nature of these creatures, is soon recognized (by each man) as important for other more sinister or at least selfish reasons; and thus the bent to evil.*

[* A further development in each man, by means of rational musings, indicates that aggressive behavior is immoral, i.e., that it cannot exist, as a principle, in any two mans except that it be particularized, but in which case it is no longer universal and hence no longer moral. For example, while I might be willing to use others for my benefit and advantage, I am not willing that others hold me in that way. And so, in this thinking, I come to the notion of the moral law (or the Golden Rule, which is the moral law applied solely to humans), namely: all person are to be treated as things of intrinsic and innate value (= dignity) and never merely and solely as means to some personal end.]

Now we can turn our attention again to the predicament with regard to the children and infants in heavenly bliss. Since these mans are conceived of as having died before they were able to utilize their rational powers sufficiently to fall into sin, i.e., before the interaction with others of their own kind had progressed to the point of descent into sin (as described above), and since these powers do not herald evil, but only a rational consideration and comparison which is generally called understanding (although which is then used for selfish purposes once understood), these children, like the Lord himself, can be considered as free of sin and to whom the notion of sin is meaningless (from a subjective standpoint) and thus repentance and redemption with it, and for which reason they are considered to be among the utter righteous, at least to this extent: since there is nothing in memory which could thought of as dying, i.e., evil or sinful behavior, and since the predisposition of the man is good, and therefore (except for this idiosyncrasy of interaction among the mans) the man is a good creature and is willing to do all good (as long as the aggression is not experienced), these creatures naturally and morally gravitate to full awakenness, albeit without the least understanding of their bliss.* Hence we come naturally to the concept of the cow maids of Blue Boy Krishna frolicking with him and the cows, a delight which encompasses delirium and which all other mans view in ecstatic amazement.

[* To make this as clear as possible, we note that it is only sin and the memory of sin that dies; all other memories are alive. The infants have only confused memories, where no distinction is made between memory and imagination, and this unabashed pleasured is reflected in the story of Krishna's cow maids. To the non-Christian adult, the person who places his trust is something or someone other than Christ, then due to the death of certain memories, there is a lack of full understanding and so always a more or less bewilderment. For the Christian, since there is full awareness of one's total life, including the conscious decision to work with Christ for the Kingdom of God, the individual is said to be

lost in wonder, love and praise!

Appendix II*

[* Added June 27, 1997, and under the inspiration of Sam, a fellow Christian who feels that a bit of pain and suffering is needful to comply with the wording of the Bible, and especially the New Testament; and for which reason this appendix may also be called: Sam's Appendix, a part of him, at least at one time.]

In order that there might be a solid connection between this conception and the verbiage of the Christian scriptures with regard to undying suffering for one's evil, we can easily see that Hitler (our stereotypical sinner) faces the judgment of a moral court in which his future is outlined to him (per the main body of this essay), and even to this extent: that the memory of this court is preserved so that Hitler will always be aware that he is missing something wonderful which is experienced by the others, but without being able to tell what that is (and so unable to make any comparison), and also that this memory loss is due to a natural and necessary working of the laws of existence. Thus he will know that he is denied some pleasure, but not what it is nor why he is missing it. In other words, he will be like a man who enjoys life, but is unable to explain certain blocks in memory much as a man who cannot remember his own birth, but is certain that heshe will have been born.

Hence there is a pain at the judgment and there is a continuing awareness of a deprivation, but not the degree of that deprivation and so always an awareness of a lack of completeness, but no further physical pain, all that having been consumed by the Lake of Fire which never dies and never allows memories to return.

General Note to this Conception of the Apocalypse*

[* Added June 27, 1997]

This general conception depends upon the notion of diversity within the human soul, namely that when we are happy we are happy, and when we are sad we are sad, and the happiness does not invade the sadness and vice verse. Thus the happy man is conceived of as different from the sad man, although they share the same inner sense of identity, i.e., I think of myself as now happy and as now sad. In this vein we can speak of people being thrown into the Lake of Fire and being destroyed (along with death and hell) so that only the good people (the personification of the good memories, or at least the non-sinful ones [in order to accommodate the infants]) remain.