A Vision of Judgment

I hope his short story by HG Wells affects you as profoundly as it did me!

1.

Bru-a-a-a.

I listened, not understanding. Wa-ra-ra-ra.

“Good Lord!” said I, still only half awake. “What an infernal shindy!” Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra Ta-ra-rra-ra.

“It’s enough,” said I, “to wake —” and stopped short. Were was I? Ta-rra-rara — louder and louder.

“It’s either some new invention —” Toora-toora-toora! Deafening!

“No,” said I, speaking loud in order to hear myself. “That’s the Last Trump.” Tooo-rraa!

2.

The last note jerked me out of my grave like a hooked minnow.

I saw my monument (rather a mean little affair, and I wished I knew who’d done it), and the old elm tree and the sea view vanished like a puff of steam, and then all about me — a multitude no man could number, nations, tongues, kingdoms, peoples — children of all ages, in an amphitheatral space as vast as the sky. And over against us, seated on a throne of dazzling white cloud, the Lord God and all the host of his angels. I recognised Azreal by his darkness and Michael by his sword, and the great angel who had blown the trumpet stood with the trumpet still half raised.

3.

“Prompt,” said the little man beside me. “Very prompt. Do you see the angel with the book?”

He was ducking and craning his head about to see over and under and between the souls that crowded round us. “Everybody’s here,” he said. “Everybody. And now we shall know —”

“There’s Darwin,” he said, going off at a tangent. “He’ll catch it! And there — you see —? That tall, important-looking man trying to catch the eye of the Lord God, that’s the Duke. But there’s a lot of people one doesn’t know.

“Oh! There’s Priggles, the publisher. I have always wondered about printers’ overs. Priggles was a clever man . . . But we shall know now — even about him.

“I shall hear all that. I shall get most of the fun before . . . My letter’s S.”

He drew the air in between his teeth.

“Historical characters, too. See? That’s Henry the Eighth. There’ll be a good bit of evidence. Oh, damn! He’s Tudor.”

He lowered his voice. “Notice this chap, just in front of us, all covered with hair. Paleolithic, you know. And there again —”

But I did not heed him, because I was looking at the Lord God.

4.

“Is this all?” asked the Lord God.

The angel at the book — it was one of countless volumes, like the British Museum Reading-room Catalogue, glanced at us and seemed to count us in the instant.

“That’s all,” he said, and added: “It was, O God, a very little planet.”

The eyes of God surveyed us.

“Let us begin,” said the Lord God.

5.

The angel opened the book and read a name. It was a name full of A’s, and the echoes of it came back out of the uttermost parts of space. I did not catch it clearly, because the little man beside me said, in a sharp jerk, “What’s that?” It sounded like “Ahab” to me; but it could not have been the Ahab of Scripture.

Instantly a small black figure was lifted up to a puffy cloud at the very feet of God. It was a stiff little figure, dressed in rich outlandish robes and crowned, and it folded its arms and scowled.

“Well?” said God, looking down at him.

We were privileged to hear the reply, and indeed the acoustic properties of the place were marvellous.

“I plead guilty,” said the little figure.

“Tell them what you have done,” said the Lord God.

“I was a king,” said the little figure, “a great king, and I was lustful and proud and cruel. I made wars, I devastated countries, I built palaces, and the mortar was the blood of men. Hear, O God, the witnesses against me, calling to you for vengeance. Hundreds and thousands of witnesses.” He waved his hands towards us. “And worse! I took a prophet — one of your prophets —”

“One of my prophets,” said the Lord God.

“And because he would not bow to me, I tortured him for four days and nights, and in the end he died. I did more, O God, I blasphemed. I robbed you of your honours —”

“Robbed me of my honours,” said the Lord God.

“And caused myself to be worshipped in your stead. No evil was there, but I practised it; no cruelty wherewith I did not stain my soul. And at last you smote me, O God!”

God raised his eyebrows slightly.

“And I was slain in battle. And so I stand before you, meet for your nethermost Hell! Out of your greatness daring no lies, daring no pleas, but telling the truth of my iniquities before all mankind.”

He ceased. His face I saw distinctly, and it seemed to me white and terrible and proud and strangely noble. I thought of Milton’s Satan.

“Most of that is from the Obelisk,” said the recording Angel, finger on page.

“It is,” said the Tyrannous Man, with a faint touch of surprise.

Then suddenly God bent forward and took this man in his hand, and held him up on his palm as if to see him better. He was just a little dark stroke in the middle of God’s palm.

“Did he do all this?” said the Lord God.

The recording angel flattened his book with his hand.

“In a way,” said the recording angel, carelessly.

Now when I looked again at the little man his face had changed in a very curious manner. He was looking at the recording angel with strange apprehension in his eyes, and one hand fluttered to his mouth. Just the movement of a muscle or so, and all that dignity of defiance was gone.

“Read,” said the Lord God.

And the angel read, explaining very carefully and fully all the wickedness of the Wicked Man. It was quite a intellectual treat — A little “daring” in places, I thought, but of course Heaven has its privileges . . .

6.

Everybody was laughing. Even the prophet of the Lord whom the Wicked Man had tortured had a smile on his face. The Wicked Man was really such a preposterous little fellow.

“And then,” reading the recording angel, with a smile that set us all agog, “one day, when he was a little irascible from over-eating, he —”

“Oh, not that,” cried the Wicked Man, “nobody knew of that.”

“It didn’t happen,” screamed the Wicked Man. “I was bad — I was really bad. Frequently bad, but there was nothing so silly — so absolutely silly —”

The angel went on reading.

“O God!” cried the Wicked Man. “Don’t let them know that! I’ll repent! I’ll apologise . . . ”

The Wicked Man on God’s hand began to dance and weep. Suddenly shame overcame him. He made a wild rush to jump off the ball of God’s little finger, but God stopped him by a dexterous turn of the wrist. Then he made a rush for a gap between hand and thumb, but thumb closed. And all the while the angel went on reading — reading. The Wicked Man rushed to and fro across God’s palm, and then suddenly turned about and fled up the sleeve of God.

I expected God would turn him out, but the mercy of God is infinite.

The recording angel paused.

“Eh?” said the recording angel.

“Next,” said God, and before the recording angel could call upon the name, a hairy creature in filthy rags stood upon God’s palm.

7.

“Has God got Hell up his sleeve then?” said the little man beside me.

“Is there a Hell?” I asked.

“If you notice,” he said — he peered between the feet of the great angels —“there’s no particular indication of the Celestial City.”

“Ssh!” said a little woman near us, scowling. “Hear this blessed Saint!”

8.

“He was Lord of the Earth, but I was the prophet of the God of Heaven,” cried the Saint, “and all the people marvelled at the sign. For I, O God, knew of the glories of thy Paradise. No pain, no hardship, gashing with knives, splinters thrust under my nails, strips of flesh flayed off, all for the glory and honour of God.”

God smiled.

“And at last I went, I in my rags and sores, smelling of my holy discomforts —”

Gabriel laughed abruptly.

“And lay outside his gates, as a sign, as a wonder —”

“As a perfect nuisance,” said the recording angel, and began to read, heedless of the fact that the Saint was still speaking of gloriously unpleasant things he had done that Paradise might be his.

And behold, in that book the record of the Saint also was a revelation, a marvel.

It seemed not ten seconds before the Saint, also, was rushing to and fro over the great palm of God. Not ten seconds! And at last he also shrieked beneath that pitiless and cynical exposition, and fled also, even as the Wicked Man had fled, into the shadow of the sleeve. And it was permitted us to see into the shadow of the sleeve. And the two sat side by side, stark of all delusions, in the shadow of the robe of God’s charity, like brothers.

And thither also I fled in my turn.

9.

“And now,” said God, as he shook us out of his sleeve upon the planet he had given us to live upon, the planet that whirled about green Sirius for a sun, “now that you understand me and each other a little better . . . try again.”

Then he and his great angels turned themselves about and suddenly had vanished.

The Throne had vanished.

All about me was a beautiful land, more beautiful than any I had ever seen before — waste, austere, and wonderful; and all about me were the enlightened souls of men in new clean bodies . . .

Men despise religion

Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true.

To remedy this, we must begin by showing

that religion is not contrary to reason;

that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it;

then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true;

finally, we must prove it is true.

– Blaise Pascal, Pensées

The Six Mistakes of Man

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. – 43 B.C) wrote this two millennia ago; I believe it is just as true today. The six mistakes of man are:

I. The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others.
II. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
III. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
IV. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
V. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.
VI. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Where is Your happy place?

I lead a pretty stressful life. I take on too many commitments, I have a very full career, I have a big family and an older house. But worst of all, I carry all that stress around with me like a sackful of rocks on my back. I can't put it down, even if it slows me down, makes me tired, and I know it will eventually break me.

So, how do I cope? I actually have a bunch of strategies, that in total, help me get through my weeks and months without an ulcer (so far).

First is balance. I love doing things and staying busy, but I have learned that if I overcommit, if I spend all day 'gittin' 'er done,' I become miserable. So I schedule breaks. I sit quietly with a coffee early in the morning. I go for a run. I attend a worship service. I go on a date with my wife. And this destroys the sense of being in a rut.

Second, I admit my fragility. A few years back I started getting significant stress-related symptoms: insomnia, grinding teeth, stomach pains and anxiety attacks. So, I got over my masculine pride, saw the doctor, and got a prescription for anti-anxiety meds. I paid more attention to sleep, exercise and diet. And haven't seen those symptoms since.

Finally, I have a happy place. Even looking at the photo above gives me a sense of calm. My worries are swept away and I can think about important things in my life: where I'm going, who I love, how I should make a difference. I can feel God's peace flowing through me.

Even if I'm still carrying that heavy backpack!

The Taboo Question

A couple months ago a private member's bill was introduced in Parliament, proposing that Parliament debate and decide the point at which a foetus becomes a human being. There was considerable outrage and accusations that Conservatives were revealing their hidden agenda. The usual rhetoric came out: "it's my body" and "it's my choice," and the proposal was quickly quashed. No debate.

This is a good answer to a thorny issue! The Government has no mandate to impose laws on what are essentially moral questions. In Canada its mandate is to preserve peace, order and good Government (administration). People decide moral questions, and laws preserve the society.

However, an interesting question has been raised: sometime between ovulation and birth, a mystical transformation happens, where a blob of the mother's flesh becomes an independent human being, with his or her own rights. We find the killing of a baby after live birth to be revolting; we call it infanticide and it is illegal. At the other end, few people find any fault with using birth control to suppress ovulation. What is happening here?

The answer must lie in the privileges, powers, rights and responsibilities of women. A woman certainly has the power to become pregnant, to create a new person; and by law she has the right to decide when and how she will do so. But she also has the responsibility to make a coherent moral decision about when she will transfer some of her rights to her child. The law insists that she do so at birth; and I believe most pregnant women make the transfer well before that.

The privilege and duty to make this decision lays with the mother, a consequence of her biological inheritance. It  is too important, too contentious and too private a decision to trust to the Government. But it should be taken seriously by every woman!

You don't understand!

I admire what medical researchers and biochemists do. They are dealing with a terribly complex system, the human body, and they are applying the most unexpected chemical, physical and radiological treatments to it, and they get it right a lot! But once in a while they come up with a treatment that is a big oops: say thalidomide for morning sickness or arsenic for syphilis. And the reason is that underneath it all, they don't really understand what the heck they're doing. Ask the most brilliant researcher how much they understand the thousands of intricately balanced chemical cycles they have mapped out, and the answer is quite frightening. So in fact what they do, is move carefully and experiment a lot. They know what has worked in the past, but not really why.

The general formulation for this sort of science is: if you have a complex system that you don't understand, play around with it lots but don't do anything radical, observe everything, and use statistics to make predictions. Works pretty well too.

Now here is the problem: people are incredibly vain. We never want to admit that we aren't smart enough to understand something, so we often pretend or boast that we do.

Example #1: the environment. We've done some pretty radical things to the Earth, thinking that we understand it well and can predict the effects. Oops! And we end up with depleted resources (such as cod) and destroyed habitats (such as zebra mussels in the great lakes) and toxic towns (such as Chernobyl, Bhopal or Three Mile Island). But here's what's worse: we are even vain enough to believe that we understand our error and can repair the damage! Using DDT on insect vectors actually increased the spread of Dutch Elm disease. Do we really understand what's behind global warming? Are we arrogant enough to think that reducing our carbon footprint will solve anything?

Example #2: our society. This morning in a magazine, I read an interview with a young activist. She was energized to change the world, which is great. The world has a lot of ugly warts and needs to be changed. And many of the wonderful things about Canada are the result of this sort of energy. But here's the crunch: how do we change our civilization to get rid of its flaws, without destroying the very aspects that we love? If you tax the rich will it allow you to help the poor, or will the rich take their wealth elsewhere, making the poor worse off? I don't have any idea, but some people are quite certain they do, and they're performing big, radical experiments on the fibre of Canada. Do we really understand how the economy works? Or the law? Or social justice? Are we arrogant enough to think that tougher laws or kinder schools or better welfare will solve anything?

Hmmm. Moving slowly and observing a lot is starting to sound pretty wise.

Anti-smoking Evangelism

   I’ve never understood smokers, and I’ve never liked being near lit cigarettes. Smoking is expensive, stings your eyes, tastes horrid, makes clothing stink and eventually kills you. But how can you get people to quit?

   You can’t. If you tell them they need to quit, you will likely get a rude reply. Simply put, they have to want to quit. If they are patient enough you can share arguments as to why they should quit, and you can nag them to stop being complacent and to really think about it. But you can’t force them to quit, because it’s not your choice, it’s theirs.

   Some people aptly call anti-smoking crusaders ‘evangelists’ (and a few names I can’t print here). My close friends who smoke know that I think they should quit, and I relish providing the latest gruesome details of how unhealthy it is. I don’t nag them, because that would destroy the relationship, but I don’t just ignore their smoking because I care about them. I feel I would be a bad friend if I didn't.

   I’ve never liked door-to-door evangelists. I wish they’d just walk past my home. They show up without warning; when I’m busy or relaxing or when I don’t want to talk about the profound questions they pose. I seldom agree with their answers, though I usually can’t make the case as clearly or eloquently as they can. (They’ve rehearsed – which is cheating!) But most of all, why would I share those kinds of intimate beliefs while standing at the front door, with someone I just met, who doesn’t care about my opinions?

   I discuss the meaning of life with close friends late Saturday evening, over a bottle of wine, slouching in comfy chairs. That's the right setting for exploring deep questions. I want to know what my friends believe. I love challenging and adding to my own beliefs by exploring their views. Spiritual growth is an important part of my life, and my friends help me in this endeavour.

   On the other hand, I think it is unhealthy and sad to live a shallow life, never contemplating its meaning. So for friends who aren’t walking forward on a spiritual path, I don’t just ignore their complacency because I care about them. I feel I would be a bad friend if I didn't.