Certainly i don't think Jesus intended us to take this so literally that we (for instance) start asking questions about how the rich man can make himself heard by those in paradise, given the chasm and the presumed distance; it IS a parable!
But it's clearly several things at once, and one of them is a warning. Another has to do with the relationship between Christ and the scriptures, as you point out--and particularly his resurrection.
It's certainly a warning, but I don't think it's clear what the warning is of. I could see why people take it as a warning about the afterlife. I personally take it as a warning about ignoring Jesus and his message. I think that his life was meant to change ours and to point the way, and that we as a species, as societies, and as people will generally be the worse off if we ignore God.
The parable of Dives and Lazarus is an oddling. Most parables are about everyday homespun stuff, that the listeners mi ght have experienced if they were there. A woman makes dough. A shepherd loses a sheep. A man gets beat up by thieves, then another man helps him. A seed grows into a bush. A man has dishonest servants. All experiences the listeners may have had, or known somebody who had, or at least can easily envision it happening.
The Dives and Lazarus story breaks this mold. A communication link opens between worlds, and a discussion takes place between a good place and a bad place. Nobody had seen/heard this sort of thing. It's not based on a familiar, commonplace, ordinary life experience. It's something different, something weird. It's the science fiction of parables.
Should this observation color how we see and discuss this parable?
Certainly. Though I’m blessed if I can see how, exactly.
It reminds me of those rare breakthroughs where Jesus and co. are having an ordinary day and then he says something like “I keep sending you people prophets” or “I saw Satan falling from heaven” or “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad.” I imagine everyone stopping to stare at him while he blinks, says “What?” And then “Carry on…”
I'd also agree that the story is strange even by biblical standards, and thanks for the correction about the role of Abraham.
I think the dire warning about wealth is in line with the gospel and - in this instance - hades is being used as an intensifier, drawing an irony out from the extreme income inequalities present in Jesus' time and upending them in a cataclysmic reversal. It seems like a literalization of the "Magnificat." He filled the poor with good things and sends the rich away empty, or even worse.
It's an extreme story but it isn't outside the general punches in Luke's gospel. And Hades is a simple consequence to the way one conducts life.
And there is a despair in the ending, perhaps foreshadowing the resurrection, the way he says "even if someone came back from the dead, these guys wouldn't change" per vs 31.
This seems to continue in the vein that hell isn't punishment, per se. These people had Moses, the prophets, all of it. Even after the resurrection, they still don't get it? I guess it comes as no surprise, at least the text seems to say.
It's certainly a warning, but I don't think it's clear what the warning is of. I could see why people take it as a warning about the afterlife. I personally take it as a warning about ignoring Jesus and his message. I think that his life was meant to change ours and to point the way, and that we as a species, as societies, and as people will generally be the worse off if we ignore God.
Yes. The only reason for telling people stories about the life to come is to affect the way people live their lives in the here and now, by making it clear that the two are linked in some way.
But while it is a warning (to the rich, to those who do not listen to the message), it is also a consolation (to the poor, to those who do listen to the message), that as much as they are tormented in this life, they will find comfort in the next *and* that those who have comfort in this life will find only torment in the next.
Either way, we can't expect the nature of our existence in this life to continue after death. There's only one possible scenario in which things turn out OK for everyone, and that's in world of equality, where no-one suffers because of the inequitable distribution of what we have collectively. If we truly heeded these words, those of us with more would do everything we could to redress the balance in this life, rather than waiting to receive our just deserts in the next.
I like the idea of it being science fiction of its age, but it's a shame the mice don't make it into this version.
I wonder if there's some kind of economics. If one person receives "better," then the other must necessarily receive "worse." And at some point you're getting into fundamental states.
I think I read something once about how some language in the OT is like that, God hates this and loves that because there wasn't really language for degrees of preference. It was binary all or nothing.
So if there's a good place, there must necessarily be a bad place to compliment it. Can we even comprehend "good" without a frame of reference?
Yes, of course we can. Good is a multivalued space, where one good contrasts with another (similar to RGB or CYMK in color spaces). We aren't in a simple bipolar situation, with a single kind of good available to contrast with a single evil.
To come at it a different way, if you were correct and no one could know good without evil, that would mean that before the Fall (angelic or human), God himself couldn't know good, as that's all there would have been at that time. Which is clearly nonsense.
Yes, of course we can. Good is a multivalued space, where one good contrasts with another (similar to RGB or CYMK in color spaces). We aren't in a simple bipolar situation, with a single kind of good available to contrast with a single evil.
To come at it a different way, if you were correct and no one could know good without evil, that would mean that before the Fall (angelic or human), God himself couldn't know good, as that's all there would have been at that time. Which is clearly nonsense.
There's something there. If a dog poos on a rug, it's only bad if there's a human to criticize them. If no human, it's organic material that'll decompose on its own. It takes our judgment to render things good and bad, and in a sense that was the original sin, no?
Sense making is what makes us human, what elevates us above "animals" if anything does. And we make a right mess of it. We like this so we over-cultivate it. We deplore that so we try to exterminate it without noticing it was necessary. We're rather clever, but stupid.
Funny, I work with disabled adults and sometimes I see how close we are to animals. It makes me think better of animals and less of people. To say someone is like a dog isn't an insult when you think dogs - especially when properly taken care of - are actually better than humans in many respects. Though maybe the same is true for us. I'm rather like one myself, for all my cogitation.
I don't know how much pressure to put on these thoughts, but I do think there's something intrinsically evil in the act of this division itself, we setting ourselves up as little mini-gods, one sense of imago dei I suppose. It's one reason I do try to take all the "do not judge" passages rather seriously, thought admittedly current events are truly straining the praxis.
In my experience people are people and nothing like animals. The situations where people behave in a degraded way tend to be those where they are treated in a subhuman way.
When it is said that people are like animals I tend to think that this misrepresents both animals and humans. For one thing there is a huge variety of animals on the planet, what does it even mean to compare individual humans to them?
In my experience people are people and nothing like animals. The situations where people behave in a degraded way tend to be those where they are treated in a subhuman way.
When it is said that people are like animals I tend to think that this misrepresents both animals and humans. For one thing there is a huge variety of animals on the planet, what does it even mean to compare individual humans to them?
We want to stay alive, we have affection for those we deem akin to us. We like food, sleep, and sex at reasonable intervals. We don't like being threatened. We have a deeply ingrained sense of "mine" and get territorial when that gets impinged upon.
I think if you keep pets and interact with them on a regular basis you start to see it, or spend time with humans of lower cognitive function. More "fully functional" humans can build these big cognitive superstructures to try to hide from these realities, but we're not really that different.
I'm not sure it's an insult to compare a human to an animal. Animals don't generally have the abstracted malice to commit acts like genocide against an entire ethnic group, for instance.
I suppose these might be hard things to understand.
I'm not sure it's an insult to compare a human to an animal. Animals don't generally have the abstracted malice to commit acts like genocide against an entire ethnic group, for instance.
I don’t think it’s an insult at all, at least not necessarily, though it can be intended as an insult. Humans are animals; we’re just at the top of the animal pyramid.
I am always struck by the nature of God's judgment, which seems to me to have more in common with the judgment given by a litmus test than that of a judge. You see, Israel is judged by Christ, not because he pronounces a long screed but because they do not accept him. If they had accepted him, history would have been different, and I presume Jerusalem would not have fallen in AD70, for there would not have been a Jewish uprising. If that is how God's nature works, then people are judged by God, in the sense of how they react to his action in their lives, and their response holds them to one side or the other. I sometimes wonder if people choose Hell because to them Heaven feels worse. Who is the judge then? Can we, as good people, accept that some people may choose Hell? Is that not the price of freewill?
I am always struck by the nature of God's judgment, which seems to me to have more in common with the judgment given by a litmus test than that of a judge. You see, Israel is judged by Christ, not because he pronounces a long screed but because they do not accept him. If they had accepted him, history would have been different, and I presume Jerusalem would not have fallen in AD70, for there would not have been a Jewish uprising. If that is how God's nature works, then people are judged by God, in the sense of how they react to his action in their lives, and their response holds them to one side or the other. I sometimes wonder if people choose Hell because to them Heaven feels worse. Who is the judge then? Can we, as good people, accept that some people may choose Hell? Is that not the price of freewill?
"You see, heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Singing. Talking to God. Watering pot plants. While Hell, well, that's for people who like the other sorts of things - murder. Pillage. Those... areas" (Archbishop Edmund the Unwilling, persuading a dying baron to leave his lands to the Crown rather than the church so he'd be damned and go to Hell)
I am always struck by the nature of God's judgment, which seems to me to have more in common with the judgment given by a litmus test than that of a judge. You see, Israel is judged by Christ, not because he pronounces a long screed but because they do not accept him. If they had accepted him, history would have been different, and I presume Jerusalem would not have fallen in AD70, for there would not have been a Jewish uprising. If that is how God's nature works, then people are judged by God, in the sense of how they react to his action in their lives, and their response holds them to one side or the other. I sometimes wonder if people choose Hell because to them Heaven feels worse. Who is the judge then? Can we, as good people, accept that some people may choose Hell? Is that not the price of freewill?
Thanks for that provocative post, I've got some thoughts on it!
This is why a lot of modern anarchists look at Christianity and think that it's imperialist propaganda. I'm sure Rome would've loved to have a bunch of pliant little citizens who pay their taxes and don't stick out so much. Just blend in, go native, make homes in Babylon. After a while, you might not even mind it so much! Who cares if the empire is evil? You're not going to get anywhere fighting it.
Of course, at that juncture, we do see where "violent resistance" landed. Jesus was just one cross out of thousands. And most of them didn't rise up, far as the records go. They just stayed nailed. Bird food.
And I can't tell if it's the "raised in the church" or some more thoughtful side of me that tends to sympathize with the "Christian pacifist" argument. Or maybe I'm privileged enough that it wasn't my kid who got shot by the IDF/skewered by a legion's sword, so it's easier for me not to become a radicalized zealot. I've been a marginally secure white guy in the USA, raised by a family with a lot of contact with the military. Quietism is awful convenient when you're a "nice guy" on the inside of the empire.
And yes, the irony of that 2000 year gap blows my mind, but I didn't ask to live in this historical moment.
I can hear voices of folks I know saying that it's antisemitic to blame the Jews for revolting against the Roman occupation. "Oh, it would've gone better for you if you'd just taken that abuse." But then, I wasn't there. Then again, neither were modern Jews. We're all appropriators at this point, putting on ancient costumes and airing grievances on behalf of corpses that - barring some kind of resurrection - disintegrated a long time ago.
So, if "the Jews" erred at that time, it was in fighting to defend God as they understood God - per tradition - to the hilt. And they strove mightily and failed. Christianity was a minority Jewish cult that - tactically speaking - chose pacifism and inclusion, carefully appropriating the better virtues of the empire while refusing to participate in its vices. Paul's arguably divine decision to waive the "circumcision" and "no shellfish" clauses was a masterstroke, even if it erased the influence of traditional Jews for the rest of Christian history.
And it grieves me to this day that we don't have better records of that divorce, because it's the kind of stuff that I find endlessly fascinating.
I read the Tao Te Ching back in college, and after that you can't hear "God Acts" and not chuckle because by that thought, the notion of "action" is silly when applied to something like God. God's will isn't action, anymore than gravity is. If I drop a pencil, that's no an act...it just falls. It's like that, I think. It's like "no-action." There really isn't a good English word for it. It just is, like an overwhelming power.
Does this then sanctify the violence of Rome? Does Rome's rape, pillage, and murder of Jerusalem count as an act of God, echoing how the prophets described Babylon and Assyria centuries before? Were the Jews "asking for it" in modern parlance? Is an empire just another entitled man taking what he will and you're twice-damned, once in the act and again for any act of resistance? "Sorry, you shouldn't have fought back, now you get to be punished for eternity for the crime of being a bad victim."
I think I've heard your argument, @Jengie Jon , for my entire life in various ways. Younger me took it completely. At some point I started hearing rumblings that maybe it was antisemitic, or imperialistic "opiate of the masses" quietism, enabling white supremacy because masters like it when their slaves are submissive and peaceful. As noted, I can certainly find way to question it, even from my own privileged perch. And looking at the world as it stands now, we're seeing a lot of the same arguments about the role of violence in a world of corruption, good vs evil. I'm not competent at violence, but do I damn people of conscience for their outrage? It's an interesting question. This is probably why I tend to say I'm not qualified to judge, even if I think in my heart they're a little off the mark.
Because if a person who errs in trying to good is a little off the mark, what of someone who does not err in trying to do evil? If we hate the Jews for resisting, what do we do with the Romans? Because looking around, at least in America, The Romans Are Us.
[...]
Hoo boy, that was a lot of words. Thanks for putting up with them. I hope that's more coherent than I fear it isn't.
I'm not sure it's an insult to compare a human to an animal. Animals don't generally have the abstracted malice to commit acts like genocide against an entire ethnic group, for instance.
I don’t think it’s an insult at all, at least not necessarily, though it can be intended as an insult. Humans are animals; we’re just at the top of the animal pyramid.
Which pyramid would that be? In terms of our contribution to the planet's ecosystems, I would put us well below the ants and bees. Somewhere near the rats, maybe. And I don't think our ability to conceive of a hell for our own species counts in our favour. I'm fairly confident there is no hell-of-bees or hell-of-ants.
I'm not sure it's an insult to compare a human to an animal. Animals don't generally have the abstracted malice to commit acts like genocide against an entire ethnic group, for instance.
I don’t think it’s an insult at all, at least not necessarily, though it can be intended as an insult. Humans are animals; we’re just at the top of the animal pyramid.
Which pyramid would that be? In terms of our contribution to the planet's ecosystems, I would put us well below the ants and bees. Somewhere near the rats, maybe. And I don't think our ability to conceive of a hell for our own species counts in our favour. I'm fairly confident there is no hell-of-bees or hell-of-ants.
Hell is dark, Hell is deep
Hell is full of mice
Fair enough.
At the top of the predator pyramid, as the ones with the power to let waste to the planet?
A species uniquely qualified to understand the concepts both of progress, and of our own self-destruction. A species noted for our adaptability, that can be counted on to do the right thing, after we've exhausted all possible alternatives…
In some ways...I'm not sure that makes us different. It's just our ability to survive doing things so wrongly for so wrong. Most animals don't have the longevity to put up with so many mistakes. And honestly, I'm not sure most of our ancestors could either.
I've noticed that even our domestic cats are very fight-or-flighty, and part of that comes of living very close to the survival line. I know humans like that too, and I don't criticize them for it, understanding where it comes from. That might be part of what I'm thinking about. I could be a bit like that myself if put under enough pressure.
Comments
But it's clearly several things at once, and one of them is a warning. Another has to do with the relationship between Christ and the scriptures, as you point out--and particularly his resurrection.
The Dives and Lazarus story breaks this mold. A communication link opens between worlds, and a discussion takes place between a good place and a bad place. Nobody had seen/heard this sort of thing. It's not based on a familiar, commonplace, ordinary life experience. It's something different, something weird. It's the science fiction of parables.
Should this observation color how we see and discuss this parable?
It reminds me of those rare breakthroughs where Jesus and co. are having an ordinary day and then he says something like “I keep sending you people prophets” or “I saw Satan falling from heaven” or “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad.” I imagine everyone stopping to stare at him while he blinks, says “What?” And then “Carry on…”
I think the dire warning about wealth is in line with the gospel and - in this instance - hades is being used as an intensifier, drawing an irony out from the extreme income inequalities present in Jesus' time and upending them in a cataclysmic reversal. It seems like a literalization of the "Magnificat." He filled the poor with good things and sends the rich away empty, or even worse.
It's an extreme story but it isn't outside the general punches in Luke's gospel. And Hades is a simple consequence to the way one conducts life.
And there is a despair in the ending, perhaps foreshadowing the resurrection, the way he says "even if someone came back from the dead, these guys wouldn't change" per vs 31.
This seems to continue in the vein that hell isn't punishment, per se. These people had Moses, the prophets, all of it. Even after the resurrection, they still don't get it? I guess it comes as no surprise, at least the text seems to say.
Maybe the hope is that there's a heaven at all.
But while it is a warning (to the rich, to those who do not listen to the message), it is also a consolation (to the poor, to those who do listen to the message), that as much as they are tormented in this life, they will find comfort in the next *and* that those who have comfort in this life will find only torment in the next.
Either way, we can't expect the nature of our existence in this life to continue after death. There's only one possible scenario in which things turn out OK for everyone, and that's in world of equality, where no-one suffers because of the inequitable distribution of what we have collectively. If we truly heeded these words, those of us with more would do everything we could to redress the balance in this life, rather than waiting to receive our just deserts in the next.
I like the idea of it being science fiction of its age, but it's a shame the mice don't make it into this version.
I think I read something once about how some language in the OT is like that, God hates this and loves that because there wasn't really language for degrees of preference. It was binary all or nothing.
So if there's a good place, there must necessarily be a bad place to compliment it. Can we even comprehend "good" without a frame of reference?
To come at it a different way, if you were correct and no one could know good without evil, that would mean that before the Fall (angelic or human), God himself couldn't know good, as that's all there would have been at that time. Which is clearly nonsense.
There's something there. If a dog poos on a rug, it's only bad if there's a human to criticize them. If no human, it's organic material that'll decompose on its own. It takes our judgment to render things good and bad, and in a sense that was the original sin, no?
Sense making is what makes us human, what elevates us above "animals" if anything does. And we make a right mess of it. We like this so we over-cultivate it. We deplore that so we try to exterminate it without noticing it was necessary. We're rather clever, but stupid.
Funny, I work with disabled adults and sometimes I see how close we are to animals. It makes me think better of animals and less of people. To say someone is like a dog isn't an insult when you think dogs - especially when properly taken care of - are actually better than humans in many respects. Though maybe the same is true for us. I'm rather like one myself, for all my cogitation.
I don't know how much pressure to put on these thoughts, but I do think there's something intrinsically evil in the act of this division itself, we setting ourselves up as little mini-gods, one sense of imago dei I suppose. It's one reason I do try to take all the "do not judge" passages rather seriously, thought admittedly current events are truly straining the praxis.
If only we could just stop ourselves.
I seem to be on a song-posting kick lately.
If evil exists, it's a pair of train tracks, and the devil is a railroad car...
How the heck do I screw these things up? I think I got it right.
When it is said that people are like animals I tend to think that this misrepresents both animals and humans. For one thing there is a huge variety of animals on the planet, what does it even mean to compare individual humans to them?
We want to stay alive, we have affection for those we deem akin to us. We like food, sleep, and sex at reasonable intervals. We don't like being threatened. We have a deeply ingrained sense of "mine" and get territorial when that gets impinged upon.
I think if you keep pets and interact with them on a regular basis you start to see it, or spend time with humans of lower cognitive function. More "fully functional" humans can build these big cognitive superstructures to try to hide from these realities, but we're not really that different.
I'm not sure it's an insult to compare a human to an animal. Animals don't generally have the abstracted malice to commit acts like genocide against an entire ethnic group, for instance.
I suppose these might be hard things to understand.
Then again, this might be another thread...
"You see, heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Singing. Talking to God. Watering pot plants. While Hell, well, that's for people who like the other sorts of things - murder. Pillage. Those... areas" (Archbishop Edmund the Unwilling, persuading a dying baron to leave his lands to the Crown rather than the church so he'd be damned and go to Hell)
Thanks for that provocative post, I've got some thoughts on it!
This is why a lot of modern anarchists look at Christianity and think that it's imperialist propaganda. I'm sure Rome would've loved to have a bunch of pliant little citizens who pay their taxes and don't stick out so much. Just blend in, go native, make homes in Babylon. After a while, you might not even mind it so much! Who cares if the empire is evil? You're not going to get anywhere fighting it.
Of course, at that juncture, we do see where "violent resistance" landed. Jesus was just one cross out of thousands. And most of them didn't rise up, far as the records go. They just stayed nailed. Bird food.
And I can't tell if it's the "raised in the church" or some more thoughtful side of me that tends to sympathize with the "Christian pacifist" argument. Or maybe I'm privileged enough that it wasn't my kid who got shot by the IDF/skewered by a legion's sword, so it's easier for me not to become a radicalized zealot. I've been a marginally secure white guy in the USA, raised by a family with a lot of contact with the military. Quietism is awful convenient when you're a "nice guy" on the inside of the empire.
And yes, the irony of that 2000 year gap blows my mind, but I didn't ask to live in this historical moment.
I can hear voices of folks I know saying that it's antisemitic to blame the Jews for revolting against the Roman occupation. "Oh, it would've gone better for you if you'd just taken that abuse." But then, I wasn't there. Then again, neither were modern Jews. We're all appropriators at this point, putting on ancient costumes and airing grievances on behalf of corpses that - barring some kind of resurrection - disintegrated a long time ago.
So, if "the Jews" erred at that time, it was in fighting to defend God as they understood God - per tradition - to the hilt. And they strove mightily and failed. Christianity was a minority Jewish cult that - tactically speaking - chose pacifism and inclusion, carefully appropriating the better virtues of the empire while refusing to participate in its vices. Paul's arguably divine decision to waive the "circumcision" and "no shellfish" clauses was a masterstroke, even if it erased the influence of traditional Jews for the rest of Christian history.
And it grieves me to this day that we don't have better records of that divorce, because it's the kind of stuff that I find endlessly fascinating.
I read the Tao Te Ching back in college, and after that you can't hear "God Acts" and not chuckle because by that thought, the notion of "action" is silly when applied to something like God. God's will isn't action, anymore than gravity is. If I drop a pencil, that's no an act...it just falls. It's like that, I think. It's like "no-action." There really isn't a good English word for it. It just is, like an overwhelming power.
Does this then sanctify the violence of Rome? Does Rome's rape, pillage, and murder of Jerusalem count as an act of God, echoing how the prophets described Babylon and Assyria centuries before? Were the Jews "asking for it" in modern parlance? Is an empire just another entitled man taking what he will and you're twice-damned, once in the act and again for any act of resistance? "Sorry, you shouldn't have fought back, now you get to be punished for eternity for the crime of being a bad victim."
I think I've heard your argument, @Jengie Jon , for my entire life in various ways. Younger me took it completely. At some point I started hearing rumblings that maybe it was antisemitic, or imperialistic "opiate of the masses" quietism, enabling white supremacy because masters like it when their slaves are submissive and peaceful. As noted, I can certainly find way to question it, even from my own privileged perch. And looking at the world as it stands now, we're seeing a lot of the same arguments about the role of violence in a world of corruption, good vs evil. I'm not competent at violence, but do I damn people of conscience for their outrage? It's an interesting question. This is probably why I tend to say I'm not qualified to judge, even if I think in my heart they're a little off the mark.
Because if a person who errs in trying to good is a little off the mark, what of someone who does not err in trying to do evil? If we hate the Jews for resisting, what do we do with the Romans? Because looking around, at least in America, The Romans Are Us.
[...]
Hoo boy, that was a lot of words. Thanks for putting up with them. I hope that's more coherent than I fear it isn't.
Hell is dark, Hell is deep
Hell is full of mice
At the top of the predator pyramid, as the ones with the power to let waste to the planet?
I've noticed that even our domestic cats are very fight-or-flighty, and part of that comes of living very close to the survival line. I know humans like that too, and I don't criticize them for it, understanding where it comes from. That might be part of what I'm thinking about. I could be a bit like that myself if put under enough pressure.