Tuesday, October 24, 2023
heaven and hell
A friend of mine and I were discussing what we thought happened when we died. She said something about heaven being a perfect remote island but she would be miserable there, since she always loved people.
Well, that didn't sound right; maybe I misrepresented her ideas. But it got me to thinking. If heaven is such a perfect place, wouldn't everyone be perfectly suited for wherever they were put? In other words, if she loved people so much, she would have perfect people around her all the time, right?
According to her, the only perfect people she knew were people she couldn't stand. This made me laugh because it reminded me of the old joke about how one's friends are more likely to be going in the other direction.
But what really bothered me about it was just the general belief that there is a perfect place, and a similar place, perfectly bad, and that somehow these places were created and used for people who as far as I can tell are all a combination of good and bad, with nobody a hundred percent one way or the other. In other words, having a heaven and hell as they have been generally defined (perfectly good and perfectly bad) requires God to put all people in inappropriate places: God must either ignore the good in you, and send you to hell, or ignore the bad in you, and send you to heaven. If you're 50/50 then God really has a problem, right?
In my life I have seen karma work in miraculous ways. I have seen karma as a law infused in every living thing and every living situation. Therefore I rejected this theory. The God I know works in karma, not in ignoring whole swathes of your life. I decided it was safer to bet that I'd pay one way or another for every mistake I made, and that as well every good deed I did would be rewarded in some way. I'm willing to accept that some of this karma would happen in another lifetime, in another place, but I'm not willing to accept that some of it would be simply ignored, in the interest of having a place that was perfectly good or perfectly bad.
She said something about her ideas coming from the Bible. But in fact I don't remember the Bible ever laying out what people thought heaven and hell really were, or where they were, or how God would go about making these decisions. I asked her what she thought would happen to two different people: one, a serial killer who found God at the last possible moment, after a lifetime of horrific killing; and two, someone like Mother Teresa, who spent her entire life saving children, only to find she'd lost faith in God by the time it was all over. The Bible does mention something about belief being the main requirement, which would put the serial killer in the good place. Does that mean that all of good deeds of Mother Teresa will simply be ignored? I think this theory would give God a headache He would have no intention of taking on for Himself. Why would He set up a problem like this? If He got to the first round of people and encountered this, He would be expected to change the system and start over.
On the other hand, if the whole thing is like karma, only possibly spread out over multiple lives, then God wouldn't have to worry about a thing. Both the serial killer and Mother Teresa would get their just desserts, and we'd all be better for it. God wouldn't have to do a thing, just step aside and let karma do the work. This is beginning to sound more like the God I know.
There you have it. Let me review: There is a miraculous order to the universe which we can attribute to God, but its order is mostly based on karma, and we can see the laws of karma in everything. We know that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so we suspect that something happens to us after we die. If we just have faith in the ubiquitousness of karma we can rest and know that we will go somewhere and get whatever we deserve. And this will look more like the world we know than like what traditional punters have called "heaven" and "hell." If we imagine that there's a heaven and hell out there, we have to say that karma no longer matters, and that you will either be improperly rewarded or inappropriately punished one way or the other. This would be true for the vast majority of humanity and possibly not true for a single, 1 out of 1000 case where someone is either completely bad or completely good. I'll be the first to say, I doubt even the Dalai Lama and besides, he doesn't believe in the traditional sense. I'm not sure what the Bible says about such people but I can assure you that the writers of the Bible were much like modern people in that 1) they needed to assure themselves that there was a heaven and hell but 2) after that they hadn't really given it much thought.
I have, however, heard some people point out that if heaven were really a place that was 100% perfect, that would be a little boring. Well, YES. We would all have to simply be changed so that we could get used to it. So we would lay all this on God: you change me so I wouldn't go nuts wherever you send me, and then you make that place so that it has perfect variety of people like what I like. So that perfect is perfect for everyone who is there. And we'll assume that someone is doing the same for that other place.
I suspect that the God I know, will act like the God I know.
Well, that didn't sound right; maybe I misrepresented her ideas. But it got me to thinking. If heaven is such a perfect place, wouldn't everyone be perfectly suited for wherever they were put? In other words, if she loved people so much, she would have perfect people around her all the time, right?
According to her, the only perfect people she knew were people she couldn't stand. This made me laugh because it reminded me of the old joke about how one's friends are more likely to be going in the other direction.
But what really bothered me about it was just the general belief that there is a perfect place, and a similar place, perfectly bad, and that somehow these places were created and used for people who as far as I can tell are all a combination of good and bad, with nobody a hundred percent one way or the other. In other words, having a heaven and hell as they have been generally defined (perfectly good and perfectly bad) requires God to put all people in inappropriate places: God must either ignore the good in you, and send you to hell, or ignore the bad in you, and send you to heaven. If you're 50/50 then God really has a problem, right?
In my life I have seen karma work in miraculous ways. I have seen karma as a law infused in every living thing and every living situation. Therefore I rejected this theory. The God I know works in karma, not in ignoring whole swathes of your life. I decided it was safer to bet that I'd pay one way or another for every mistake I made, and that as well every good deed I did would be rewarded in some way. I'm willing to accept that some of this karma would happen in another lifetime, in another place, but I'm not willing to accept that some of it would be simply ignored, in the interest of having a place that was perfectly good or perfectly bad.
She said something about her ideas coming from the Bible. But in fact I don't remember the Bible ever laying out what people thought heaven and hell really were, or where they were, or how God would go about making these decisions. I asked her what she thought would happen to two different people: one, a serial killer who found God at the last possible moment, after a lifetime of horrific killing; and two, someone like Mother Teresa, who spent her entire life saving children, only to find she'd lost faith in God by the time it was all over. The Bible does mention something about belief being the main requirement, which would put the serial killer in the good place. Does that mean that all of good deeds of Mother Teresa will simply be ignored? I think this theory would give God a headache He would have no intention of taking on for Himself. Why would He set up a problem like this? If He got to the first round of people and encountered this, He would be expected to change the system and start over.
On the other hand, if the whole thing is like karma, only possibly spread out over multiple lives, then God wouldn't have to worry about a thing. Both the serial killer and Mother Teresa would get their just desserts, and we'd all be better for it. God wouldn't have to do a thing, just step aside and let karma do the work. This is beginning to sound more like the God I know.
There you have it. Let me review: There is a miraculous order to the universe which we can attribute to God, but its order is mostly based on karma, and we can see the laws of karma in everything. We know that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so we suspect that something happens to us after we die. If we just have faith in the ubiquitousness of karma we can rest and know that we will go somewhere and get whatever we deserve. And this will look more like the world we know than like what traditional punters have called "heaven" and "hell." If we imagine that there's a heaven and hell out there, we have to say that karma no longer matters, and that you will either be improperly rewarded or inappropriately punished one way or the other. This would be true for the vast majority of humanity and possibly not true for a single, 1 out of 1000 case where someone is either completely bad or completely good. I'll be the first to say, I doubt even the Dalai Lama and besides, he doesn't believe in the traditional sense. I'm not sure what the Bible says about such people but I can assure you that the writers of the Bible were much like modern people in that 1) they needed to assure themselves that there was a heaven and hell but 2) after that they hadn't really given it much thought.
I have, however, heard some people point out that if heaven were really a place that was 100% perfect, that would be a little boring. Well, YES. We would all have to simply be changed so that we could get used to it. So we would lay all this on God: you change me so I wouldn't go nuts wherever you send me, and then you make that place so that it has perfect variety of people like what I like. So that perfect is perfect for everyone who is there. And we'll assume that someone is doing the same for that other place.
I suspect that the God I know, will act like the God I know.
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
opportunity knocks
We are selling our house in New Mexico, which is in essence my wife's retirement, and although she has spent much of the proceeds already, she is receptive to the idea that 1) I need to get out of here part of the day, 2) we could put some of the money into land or a small house, as a kind of investment that we couldn't touch; and 3) there are lots of small little parcels (<$20k) around.
One of the items on my bucket list is to have a small bookstore, but the town already has one, and I know and like the people, so pure competition there would be somewhat pointless. My goal would be not so much to make a lot of money but rather to not lose too much, and have a place to finish my books, which require extended concentration which I'm not getting at home. My wife can handle the racket here which is mostly of her own making, and she actually sees the value of getting my whole unable-to-retire self out of the house. So the various plans: a house with no other purpose, a bookstore, or a Quaker bookstore....
Hey wait a minute. I need a place to print and make my pamphlets; we don't have enough room here and I can't even get the big printer out because there's no place to put it. So with a little house I could start out each morning and print a few dozen pamphlets, and advertise because I'd have a few in stock. It would be Quaker printing house and a place where I could print a few dozen, make a nice dark cup of coffee, and sit and watch the trains. At about $130 a month, it might be worth it to both me and her.
One option of course would be to fill it with Quaker books (and shelves) and just make it a Quaker bookstore. I figure that I could supply a small house with good Quaker books for about five or six hundred and a good set of shelves to fill up the entire place might cost about the same. If it's got a purpose within the Quaker world I might be able to get co-investors or people who are at least willing to watch the place once in a while, dusting the shelves and making themselves a nice dark cup of coffee to watch the trains by. This place I have my eye on is right by a very strange train intersection, roads and a big train going northwest, I think, but I would set out as my goal making it clean, open, presentable, and simple, Quakerly. It's already gray. But it looks a little <20k dilapidated.
The thing is, if it was Quaker, it wouldn't be technically mine. My wife is thinking, we could put wayward sons there if necessary. Or we could use it as a kind of retreat from here, each going and shutting ourselves off. I want to grow a garden (not sure if the place is too close to the train). I have personal uses for the place.
So right now I'm leaning toward keeping it a personal second house, and then a gradual building it up until it's ready. A local carpenter making shelves, for example, or a trip to Philly to bring back a few boxes of good books. If it were to open then it would just be my bookstore, and it would open when it was ready. It doesn't have to open tomorrow; we just have to raise $130/mo., or whatever. All this seems pretty cheap and reasonable. Doable.
Of course, if the Quakers owned it, we might get out of the taxes on it. That might be something to consider. I know the area has Quakers but also know they don't have a set place to meet. Maybe I could change that. No better place than right by a railroad track, as we used to say in southern Illinois.
It would be wild to have a Quaker bookstore in western Illinois. I'm not sure how many Quaker bookstores there are. It would give me a reason to get out of my chair in the morning.
One of the items on my bucket list is to have a small bookstore, but the town already has one, and I know and like the people, so pure competition there would be somewhat pointless. My goal would be not so much to make a lot of money but rather to not lose too much, and have a place to finish my books, which require extended concentration which I'm not getting at home. My wife can handle the racket here which is mostly of her own making, and she actually sees the value of getting my whole unable-to-retire self out of the house. So the various plans: a house with no other purpose, a bookstore, or a Quaker bookstore....
Hey wait a minute. I need a place to print and make my pamphlets; we don't have enough room here and I can't even get the big printer out because there's no place to put it. So with a little house I could start out each morning and print a few dozen pamphlets, and advertise because I'd have a few in stock. It would be Quaker printing house and a place where I could print a few dozen, make a nice dark cup of coffee, and sit and watch the trains. At about $130 a month, it might be worth it to both me and her.
One option of course would be to fill it with Quaker books (and shelves) and just make it a Quaker bookstore. I figure that I could supply a small house with good Quaker books for about five or six hundred and a good set of shelves to fill up the entire place might cost about the same. If it's got a purpose within the Quaker world I might be able to get co-investors or people who are at least willing to watch the place once in a while, dusting the shelves and making themselves a nice dark cup of coffee to watch the trains by. This place I have my eye on is right by a very strange train intersection, roads and a big train going northwest, I think, but I would set out as my goal making it clean, open, presentable, and simple, Quakerly. It's already gray. But it looks a little <20k dilapidated.
The thing is, if it was Quaker, it wouldn't be technically mine. My wife is thinking, we could put wayward sons there if necessary. Or we could use it as a kind of retreat from here, each going and shutting ourselves off. I want to grow a garden (not sure if the place is too close to the train). I have personal uses for the place.
So right now I'm leaning toward keeping it a personal second house, and then a gradual building it up until it's ready. A local carpenter making shelves, for example, or a trip to Philly to bring back a few boxes of good books. If it were to open then it would just be my bookstore, and it would open when it was ready. It doesn't have to open tomorrow; we just have to raise $130/mo., or whatever. All this seems pretty cheap and reasonable. Doable.
Of course, if the Quakers owned it, we might get out of the taxes on it. That might be something to consider. I know the area has Quakers but also know they don't have a set place to meet. Maybe I could change that. No better place than right by a railroad track, as we used to say in southern Illinois.
It would be wild to have a Quaker bookstore in western Illinois. I'm not sure how many Quaker bookstores there are. It would give me a reason to get out of my chair in the morning.
