In Violence We Trust

I have to tell you about my new book and my strong reaction to it.  I had read the synopsis and was intrigued, so I put it on my Kobo wish list for when I finished the latest book I had checked out on my Library app (I couldn’t find a coy on the library app) which I did on Saturday.  On Saturday I bought it, but, after reading the forward, I couldn’t go on reading it because every time I thought about it I would well-up and start sobbing.

 

The book is called, “On Killing:  The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society”.  It wasn’t what I expected.  I expected it to be a study by a psychologist on how armies and other armed forces desensitize their members to killing and the psychological damage it does to those members.  Reading the forward, I realized that the author is not a psychologist doing research, but a Lt. Col. inside the army and this is a fucking “how to” manual.  The forward talks about the long standing “problem” of getting soldiers to actually kill another human being and cites a study in WWII about how when faced with the enemy a large percentage of soldiers on the line either don’t fire or deliberately mis-fire, and that this has been a problem that is cited throughout history.  He then talks about measures in training done to overcome this “resistance” such as changing from bulls-eye targets for shooting practice to human silhouettes or even more lifelike targets.  He also talked about how earlier editions of the book have been required reading at West Point, the CIA and FBI, academies, and other institutions that instruct in “deadly force”.  A how to manual for conditioning people to overcome their basic humanity and empathy in order to kill other human beings in cold blood on command, and how to deal with the mess it makes of the person afterward when you have a monster that can no longer function in society.

 

I read this preface and then went to the grocery store for milk and laundry detergent.  While scanning my groceries at the check out, I started welling up and had to suppress sobbing.  Driving home I was full out sobbing and couldn’t think about the book for the rest of the day without welling up with sobs.  So, I may have to put the book away for a while.

 

I’ve been thinking about why I have had such a strong reaction, why this is so triggering.  I was fine when I expected the book to be a clinical research study from the outside, but this change in perspective has made a big difference.  We all know that agencies such as the army that train their members to kill people. I was going to use the euphemism “use deadly force”, but that makes my point.  That it has always been sanitized by euphemisms and other means and the fact that these agencies train people to overcome their humanity is somewhat of an open secret, understood but not talked about, a bit shameful, but hidden as an unpleasant necessity.  I think that part of what I was reacting to was how this book was normalizing and even lauding the process as a great achievement that one should work to get better at and to do it with less consequences.  Sell their soul to the devil, but in a way that lessens the sentence in hell as much as possible.  And I reacted to that with great sorrow; that dehumanization and the deliberate curtailment of empathy should be a goal and lauded in our society.

 

It just goes against all my core values of what is loving and true and worthy, and the kind of society that hope to live in.  It also brings home to me how insulated I am from violence and how that insulation depends on the cultivation of this kind of violence on others, “outside the wall” of pleasant middle class Canadian society.  I also realize my complicity in this system while benefiting from it.

 

I have been insulated from violence all my life and have idealized a life of non-violence.  Probably the only example of violence (if you can call it that) that I can recall is in Grade 5 when lining up to come in from recess another boy pushed me out of line and struck me.  I was so incensed that I yelled in his face that he should, “strike my other cheek!”. I was so vehement and aggressive in my response that I think I scared the other fellow, which I don’t think was quite what Jesus intended.  Even growing up with my brother we never had physical fights or hit each other.  I remember once when we were quite young, Terry had ratted me out on something to our mother and I had run from her to my brother full of fury to enact vengeance.  Terry cowered beneath me once caught, but once he was under my power I just stood there unable to harm him.

 

In Highschool the movie about Ghandi made a big impression on me and I read a biography of his life after watching the movie.  The movie was produced for Western audiences and tailored the story to show parallels between Ghandi and Jesus’ teachings.

 

Earlier this year I became curious again about Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance.  

 

Matthew 6

39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

 

Luke 6

27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

 

 

These are pretty radical teachings and occurred to me that I could not remember any examples of Christian commentary on this teaching other than a convoluted explanation about striking the other cheek where one cheek would be the one where you would strike someone of lower rank and the other an equal and that Jesus wasn’t really saying what the rest of the passage repeats but was telling people to stand up for themselves.

 

So, I purposely set out to find commentary on Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance and found out that this was the subject of most of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom Of God is Within” and that both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. credited Tolstoy as an inspiration.  So, I’ve been picking away at Tolstoy’s work.  It’s long and dense, as befitting a Russian novelist, and has no large talking cats to add levity.

 

The more I consider and wrestle with Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance the more I am struck by Christianity’s contradictory values as a whole in support of Empire, the most blatant being American evangelical teaching.   If someone threatens to strike you, you shoot them with your open carry gun.  Someone coming on your property to take something from you is also a legitimate target and the opportunity to kill someone and you can do it and spend two hours the next Sunday with your hands in the air praising Jesus without seeing any contradiction.

 

It is also ironic that I, who am unconvinced of Jesus’ godhood (and am unconvinced of God’s “godhood” in a literal sentient superbeing way) take his teaching in what in my mind is much more seriously.  If Jesus is God, then his teaching and example can be filed away as unattainable and only possible by saints at best.  Jesus death as an act of substitutional atonement that provides a ticket to heaven in the afterlife to all those who give their intellectual assent to this as being factual is much easier and asks a lot less of a person than a death that embodies his teaching of non-resistance to evil that calls us to emulate him and follow the same path.  And really, why go through the effort of trying to follow Jesus’ teaching if you have decided that it is all about getting into heaven when you die (at least the important part), and you’ve already got your ticket, and this life is just an inconvenient waiting period where you’re entitled to wait in comfort.  And besides, if you fail to try to follow Jesus teaching, you can always “confess your sin” or go up at the next alter call, and all responsibility and accountability are wiped clean.

 

I have been doing a lot of thinking and wrestling with Jesus teaching on non-resistance.  Although I am no longer convinced of Jesus’ divinity, his teaching is not only a big part of my heritage and sets the stage for me on how to perceive the world, but I also affirm the truth and hope of his teaching and example because they “sit right” in contrast to the message and values that dominate our society.  It is a difficult teaching to wrestle with because it goes against so many of the assumptions we take for granted in our society.  It makes me think of the quote by  G.K. Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

 

I have in no sense a complete or even consistent view on non-violence and non-resistance.  I support the Palestinian right to resist, including the use of violence, their occupation and genocide.  But, at the same time I question the validity of using violence in any circumstance, no matter the justification.  Each side, every user of violence, has a rationale or justification.  Even if they can’t justify the specific occurrence, they can tie it back to what they see as a greater good and the “defence” of their group, tribe, nation.  To refuse to use violence out of love of the greater good of humanity is cast as treason against one’s tribe for which one is supposed to favour over others.  That’s why Jesus’ call to expand the circle of love and concern beyond family, religion, race, and nation, is so radical.  

 

I also reject the argument that dependence on violence and non-violence are a binary where if you live a life free from violence due to state sanctioned violence, you have no right to criticize militarism in both the army and domestic policing forces and that there is no other way to respond to violence except with more violence or the threat of it.

I have been wrestling with Mark Carny’s announcement of the largest investment in the Canadian military and weapons manufacturing for both domestic use and for export in Canadian history outside of war time.  I struggle with the idea that money is going to militarism when our own people are suffering poverty.  I also question the assumptions around the need for an expanded military.  Who would we fight or deter with the paltry force we could muster even doubling our current force against an expected adversary on the world stage.  The most likely adversary would be the United States who have been openly talking about annexation.  No force that we could stage, even if we used the sum total of our economy, would in any way be a deterrent or would be able to resist an invasion.  The same would be true for Russia and China.  The only use I could see would be to support Eastern European nations like the Ukraine from Russian encroachment and so further develop European alliances and assured trade partners.

 

This makes me think about the “need” for an army at all.  It is argued that if we didn’t have an army we would have ended up being conquered by Nazi Germany and would have lost our freedoms and the continued need for an army is to deter the same type of conquering by Russia or China with the same loss of freedoms.  The evil of having that type of government conquering us is epitomized by the Holocaust.  Yet, the righteous west that won the second world war and is credited for ending the Holocaust had their own concentration camps for Italian and Japanese people and is currently sponsoring a genocide and holocaust in Gaza.  Are the deaths of the second World War justified by the “more moral” governments winning?  A lot of the “elites” in German and Japanese society stayed in power and in some cases little actually changed with the Allied victory.

 

I’ve also heard claims about how the Army “keeps us free”.  One time I heard an ad said that if you enjoyed an afternoon at the beach you should thank a veteran, as if German and Japanese citizens didn’t enjoy afternoons at the beach and if we were under their government we would not be either.  I’m no fan of totalitarian of authoritarian governments, but fighting wars is no guarantee against fascism as the United States is a prime example.  Also, war and violence is not the only way one can resist.  I think of India resisting English colonialism and Ghandi’s non-violent protests.  He didn’t succeed in curtailing all violence in the resistance, and people died, but a lot less people died than if it was all out armed resistance for independence.

 

What if Germany and Japan had won the Second World War?  Would we have fought the new totalitarian government in different ways and, if so, what would the society that resulted be like, particularly if it was a non-violent resistance?

 

I think I’m also greatly dismayed at the lack of imagination with the assumptions built into our culture that there are no alternatives to violence and militarism and their threats to keep us safe.  I think of Ernst Bloch’s quote:

 

“The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it is the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different”

 

And from the book I just finished by Palestinian Canadian Safee Teebi,

 

“I want to never hope, to never be stuck in its expectant static.  I want to always imagine, because there is nothing that compares with the engine of imagining”.

Hierarchical Priority Lists and Order of Love

There is a popular Christian school of thought that one's priorities and duty should reflect the importance of the persons or things involved in a correct order.  For example, a hierarchy of priority would be:

1. God
2. One's children
3. Spouse 
4. Home 
5. Job 
6. Extended family and friends

I would like to explore this idea, its strengths and weaknesses as a helpful model and tool, and what other thinkers have written about this subject. First off, for this process, I’m going to talk about priority and love interchangeably.  One’s priority is where one’s heart is, and is an expression of one’s love/care/responsibility/duty

A hierarchical priority list model makes me think about St. Augustine’s “ordo amoris”, “order of love”, and of the recent public disagreement between J.D. Vance and Pope Francis on how to interpret it.  This made me want to do some research about “order of love” and the debate to see if it would enlighten me on how to view and implement something like a priority list.

Augustine’s key idea was that virtue consisted in loving things in the right order.  This to him was:

• God is loved highest
• Human beings are loved as persons made in God’s image
• Material things are loved as lesser goods

The “order” is not mainly about who gets loved first, but about what is ultimately more important and how intensely or appropriately we love different things. He was not talking so much about “circles of people”, as much as a hierarchy of goods and relationships.

Vance, I read, based his interpretation on a simplified version of St. Augustine’s teaching which consists of a “concentric circle” model of love/care/responsibility/obligation;  (family → neighbor → city → nation → world).  Vance used this model to argue that one’s compassion “belongs first” to one’s own group.  According to him, the United States should therefore love citizens first over immigrants and refugees for which they have a lesser obligation.  He takes this to the point of denying immigrants and refugees completely.  Under Augustinian thought we do have stronger responsibilities to those closer to us.  Augustine wrote that we should give “special regard” to those closer by circumstance. However, Augustine never reduced love to a moral priority system that justifies neglecting distant others.

Pope Francis corrected Vance saying, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests…”.  Pointing to the Good Samaritan, Francis explained that, the true model consists of a form of love that creates a “fraternity open to all, without exception”.  Love, and with it our establishment of priority, according to Francis, is not a widening circle of partiality.

I find Jesus’ teaching on the idea of priorities of love or obligation as different in degree from Augustine.  Where Augustine talks of giving “special regard” to those who by circumstances are closer, Jesus consistently widens the circle of who we should define as close, who should be shown no lesser love than family, tribe, religious group, or due to status, wealth, or nationality.  

Jesus’s teaching points to expanding non-preferential love.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?

Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:43–47)

“even sinners love those who love them.” Luke 6:32–34

I explored some of these ideas a number of years ago in the blog, I Like Rules and Jesus Scares Me.  I wrote about how when I was in High School, the staff advisor for our Interschool Christian Fellowship group taught us the hierarchy of Christian duty he had learned at his Church.  Our first duty and allegiance is to God, then one's spouse and family, then one's job, employer, and nation.  I argued that this would make the difficult choices between competing concerns much easier, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.  

Often our most difficult moral choices involve two legitimate demands from different people or groups that are mutually exclusive.  To show your love and give your assistance to one means withholding them from the other.  Whichever side you pick, someone is going to get hurt or neglected.  A system like the one above allows you to make some of these choices in a way that absolves you from responsibility and guilt for your harm or neglect of the side not chosen and see yourself as "in the right".  One can appeal to the authority of, "family comes first", to justify a decision and still appear righteous.  Again, this does not follow Jesus' teaching.

… Without absolute law and authority to make our decisions for us, how do we decide when to put the interest and needs of ourselves over others and to what extent?  The Gospels tells us that Jesus has sent us his spirit to guide us.  This is the spirit behind the principles of the Law, "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23).  It is also the spirit of love, compassion, and inclusion demonstrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus and his parables.  We are called to make the best and most balanced decisions we can by the prompting of this spirit with grace both for others and ourselves. It is messy and filled with uncertainty and lacks the assurance, self justification and lack of moral responsibility one can find in Law and authoritative directives.  However, it is a path of maturity, of accountability, of truth and integrity, the path of the Way of Jesus.

Leo Tolstoy, in his book, “The Kingdom of God Is within You”, argues that Jesus’s teaching about expanding love of the other is realized through movement towards an ideal, that we will never be fully there, but it is through the ongoing expansion that we become Christ like.  He also stresses that this expanding love comes not through adherence to rules and systems, but through personal growth and the expansion of love in our own hearts.

Life, according to the Christian teaching, is a motion toward divine perfection. No condition, according to this teaching, can be higher or lower than another.

It is natural for any one to love himself, and every person loves himself without any special incitement; to love my tribe, which supports and defends me, to love my wife, the joy and helpmate of my life, my children, the pleasure and hope of my life, and my parents, who have given me life and an education, is natural: and this kind of love, though far from being as strong as the love of self, is met with quite frequently.

...the recognition of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love, satisfies also all those demands for the widening of the sphere of love, to which the man of the social conception of life was brought.

There, with a greater and ever greater widening of the sphere of love for the salvation of the personality, love was a necessity and was applied to certain objects,—self, the family, society, humanity; with the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and is not adapted to anything, but is an essential quality of man's soul. Man does not love because it is advantageous for him to love this man or these men, but because love is the essence of his soul,—because he cannot help loving.

The Christian teaching consists in pointing out to man that the essence of his soul is love, that his good is derived not from the fact that he will love this or that man, but from the fact that he will love the beginning of everything, God, whom he recognizes in himself through love, and so will love everybody and everything.

This brings me to another concern I have with the hierarchical priority/love model, and that’s the definition of what it means to love or prioritize God and how it screws up the order below.  I think of the Shema Jesus quoted saying, 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  

The two commandments are linked and synonymous.  To love and prioritize God is to love and prioritize your neighbour, as defined in the story of the Good Samaritan as including those of different tribes and religions.  Not your family first, your employer, your tribe, your nation.  There are no levels in Jesus story. There is no hierarchy in 'my neighbour'.  I explored this theme in the blog Jesus Was Not "Pro-Family" Or "Pro-Nation".  

The problem that I mentioned earlier about prioritizing loving God over family is that, by the definition above, loving or prioritizing God means loving and prioritizing the rest of humanity and by making a hierarchy of priority where God is above family and others you are then saying that you should make humanity as a whole a higher priority than your family, job, or friends.

Another concern with this specific hierarchical model is that it doesn’t have a place for self.  “love your neighbor as yourself” implies that you can’t love others any more than the love you put into yourself.  And that’s where I think the hierarchical model is only useful if you follow it loosely and allow the priorities to change and ebb and flow with need.  There are times when you have to surrender your obligations to others, even family members, to look after yourself.  Sometimes the good of the few outweigh the good for the many.  Sometimes the interests of someone “lower on the list” needs to take precedent over someone higher” Family may be more important than your job/employer, but neglecting your obligations to your employment over family can lead to you not advancing in your job and affect your ability to meet your families needs.  In extreme cases it could mean losing your job and forcing your family into unpleasant circumstances.  In this way meeting the interests of your job, while maybe not to all the short term immediate interests of family, gives precedence to their greater interests.

Now that I’ve explored these different viewpoints, what do I think about how to apply a hierarchical priority model?  First, I have to say that as I respect Jesus’ teaching as foundational to Western thought and my cultural heritage, I see the deification of him and his teaching as metaphorical, not literal, so that Jesus can be wrong or too extreme in some circumstances and questioning him is valid.  And who knows if his words around family were hyperbole, meant less as a literal guide, but as a shock statement to turn the thinking of the times on its head and make people question.  As well, the figure of Jesus is portrayed as a young single man with no wife or children, and no teaching or example on how those relationships should figure into the lives of those who follow his teachings.  Those who wrote the Gospels were also not in a position to give guidance on family relationships except to encourage those who joined their communities to break with families that did not support them.  There was also a stream of apocalyptic thinking that removed priority from establishing families. 

Although there is a stream of thought in the Gospel that interprets the Jewish contemporary idea of the “age to come” in a metaphorical sense, where “the Kingdom of God is within you” and is where/when God’s will is done, there is also what seems to be a more literal stream where it was expected in the writer’s lifetime that Jesus would return to usher in the new age where creation would be renewed with heaven and earth re-born and the resurrection of the dead.  All three synoptic Gospels have Jesus stating, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”  (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36).  The views on marriage and family relationships and priority/duty of a people who thought these institutions would soon pass away and were a distraction to preparing for that time should be taken with a more than generous helping of salt.
 
That said, I would have to find most honest and useful a modified model based on Pope Francis’ interpretation of St. Augustus.  That model would give precedence to the interests of those “who by circumstances are closer” including spouse and family.  However, this is not a rigid hierarchy and ebbs and flows with the need of those close to us including our own needs.  Making those judgement calls relies on our understanding and gut feel for “"justice, mercy and faithfulness".  It also means there is no easy or “right” answer and that accepting that is part of maturity and a measure of grace for our inevitable mistakes or the hurt feelings of those who do not feel rightly prioritized.
 
In figuring out how to balance the love given to those close to those remote I also need to acknowledge that love involves change and effort and that the extreme of preferring those furthest away over those closest risks a more superficial kind of love.  It is easier to love the child of Ethiopia or Gaza who’s need is obvious and great where what is asked for is limited and remote.  Loving the child near at hand is messier, calls for more intimate contact and getting one’s hands dirty.  It means loving not only those you find deserving whether close at hand or further away.
 
I also have a hard time with a hierarchical model of love/priority in that it would seem to imply that these are a limited resource that must be carefully metered out following strict rules, a scarcity mindset rather than one of abundance.  The hierarchical model also would suggest that love/priority is a zero sum game, where one person’s gain is exactly balanced by another person’s loss.  Instead I see it not as a competition but as more synergistic and a positive sum experience where the total increases so that everyone benefits.

The Best Of All Possible Worlds

In my town outside a sign maker's shop there is a sign with a picture of Jesus with sacred heart rays signifying His boundless mercies and the words, "Jesus I Trust in You!".  I strongly affirm this statement, but doubt that the meaning I ascribe to those words are the same as that of the business owner.  Taken that the owner has also posted anti-abortion religious sentiment signs, I would imagine that their understanding of this phrase would follow a more conservative Christian narrative.  That understanding would have Jesus as a literal deity that takes personal interest in that person's life and directs and intervenes in their life events through supernatural means.  In this narrative, Jesus has a plan for the "perfection" and growth of each Christian and life events have been carefully orchestrated by Him to that end.  What seems like hardship or tragedy has a purpose in our development or the development of others as part of a plan that may be opaque to us but will lead to the best of all possible ends if only we will, "trust in Him".

I was also reminded of this philosophy by a humorous animation entitled "God sending you a toxic person for character development"  In the clip, God tells his angels to "send him another toxic one" and argues that "I know what I'm doing..this is for character development..send the toxic bitch".  Many who take this view literally see all the tragedy and misfortune in the world as "part of God's plan", and part of the best of all possible worlds that God created and maintains.

The phrase, "the best of all possible worlds" comes from the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.  Leibniz argued that, since God is perfectly good and all powerful, then God must have chosen to create the best possible world and what appears to be evil or suffering must ultimately serve a greater good.  This belief was popular among Enlightenment-era rationalists.  However, the philosopher Voltaire found the position both morally offensive and intellectually dishonest.  He felt that in light of real-world suffering such as war, disease, and natural disasters, such an excuse was cruel comfort.  He wrote a scathing satire to parody this philosophy with his novel, "Candide".

On the surface "Candide" looks like a simple adventure story, but it is really a systematic parody of philosophical optimism, especially the idea that we live in “the best of all possible worlds.”.  This philosophy is the often repeated instruction of Candide's tutor, Dr. Panglos with the humour being that he repeats this phrase, insisting that everything is the best, in the worst of circumstances; being hanged and later surviving with syphilis, witnessing wars, massacres, rapes, and executions, along with standing amid earthquakes and public burnings.  He never changes his beliefs, no matter how much evidence contradicts them.  By this Voltaire parodies how philosophy and theology, when they become abstract systems and certainties divorced from experience, can become cruel in the face of human suffering. The protagonist, Candide who is eager to believe in Pangloss's teachings is also exposed in the novel to a series of disasters; brutal military violence, religious hypocrisy and persecution, slavery, natural catastrophe, betrayal, loss, poverty and exploitation, with each episode comically presented in it's extremity, emphasizing the absurdity and indefensibleness of this ideology.

Voltaire concludes his novel with his counter to this doctrine, the phrase, "We must cultivate our garden".  This is his rejection of the urge to explain away injustice as "necessary", of the comfort that things are fine and going according to a divine plan, rather than acting to make them better.  It is a call for engaged and modest human responsibility grounded in reality rather than abstract doctrine.

I should also note that the "best of all possible worlds" reasoning goes hand in glove with the "divine right of kings".  According to that doctrine, If all that happens is only what is directed or allowed by God, then whoever has political power must have been installed by God and therefore represents His authority.  The actions by this king must have been foretold and desirable by God and should then be legitimate.  By this thinking, to resist or rebel against the king is to rebel against God.  Many American evangelicals extend this doctrine to Donald Trump, stating that he has been put into power by God and that his actions are God's will.

When I was younger, I was a follower of this philosophy, in the form that, if God was both good and in control of all things, then everything he allows to occur must serve a greater good.  I had read a book about praising God in all circumstances which was based on this thinking.  It was not long after reading this book that I saw an opportunity to put it into practice.  As the president of my Highschool ISCF (Interschool Christian Fellowship) I had convinced our staff advisor and the Vice Principle that a reformed "born again" convict and former bank robber should come share his testimony to the students of the school and, to the reinforcement of my belief that this idea had been from God, they agreed and a date for a senior assembly for this man's presentation was arranged.  However, on the day of the assembly, as the chair filled gymnasium also filled with students, the speaker had yet to arrive.  Our ICSF staff advisor called our club members together and asked sarcastically if anyone could tap dance, stating that the Principal had told him that he would not hold the students in the gym waiting on the speaker much longer.  I failed to recognize the stress this put our staff advisor, how he had struck out his neck for this, and how this might effect his career if the assembly had to be cancelled.  Instead, taking a page out of my book on praising God in all circumstances, I led the group in a prayer where I praised God for what was going on and insisting that God had control of the situation and that we should thank him even if we didn't understand what He was doing.  Instead of acknowledging the staff advisors very real concern and fears, I had shamed him for his "lack of faith".  At the very last possible moment, the speaker did arrive before the assembly was excused and the testimony went ahead.  This circumstance justified in my eyes my "faith" in this understanding of God  and in my conviction to adhere to this theology in the future despite reality and any evidence to the contrary.

Today, I affirm the statement "Jesus I Trust in You" quite differently, but no less emphatically. First century Rabbis like Jesus were synonymous with their teachings.  I similarly see Jesus the person as inseparable from his teachings and recognize that in the Gospels the story given of his life epitomizes his 'Way'.  So, for me, saying that I trust in Jesus means that I trust in the Way, the teachings of Jesus.  This is what I put my trust in; a perspective of the world where what is paramount or "divinely sanctioned" is love of one's enemies, radical inclusion, non-violence, and a compassion that leads to active service such as the feeding of the hungry, visiting those sick and in prison, and welcoming the stranger.  This perspective, instead of passively accepting injustice and suffering as part of God's will, calls us to do what we can to correct injustice and alleviate suffering.  Like Candide's conclusion, it calls us to, "cultivate our garden", to take responsibility and engage with the world in light of an alignment and allegiance to what Jesus demonstrated was important and had the highest legitimacy; love, compassion, inclusion, and truth, among other things.  In a world that seems to be dominated and led by greed, self interest, and lack of compassion and concern for the other, raising this standard may seem like raising a flag in a hurricane. Yet, even if the rest of the world rejects it and I convince not a soul to it's merits, or end up benefiting none of those I hoped to help, I believe this faith to have merit on it's own and to be worth any and all cost.

I Could Be Wrong

Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?  Snoopy raises an important point here.  As it is for all beliefs and assumptions about the world, doubt is an important part of an honest assessment of our concept of God.  It is also essential for any growth in our personal knowledge and relationship with God.

I listened to a podcast a number of years ago of a Christian speaker on the importance of doubt in developing true Christian faith.  Doubt, he contended, is the very pinnacle of faith and trust in God as Truth.  The man was from Scotland and had a thick Scottish accent.  He recounted how after giving this same speech in America a person approached him who told him that he had spoken beautifully, but he had one question, "What's Dooot?".

I started thinking about this subject recently after reading an article on rational thinking and logic fallacies, ways we are less than honest with ourselves in our arguments for a particular viewpoint or belief.  The article looks at strategies for cutting through flawed assumptions and false beliefs including one's own.

http://discovermagazine.com/2015/july-aug/16-user-guide-rational-thinking

One of the logical fallacies discussed is confirmation bias, the tendency to focus on evidence that supports our preconceptions and ignore those that do not.  We all do this to some degree, but to be intellectually honest and open to truth we need to be aware of the fact and make an effort to seriously examine information that contradicts the way we would like things to be.  In other words, in order to be faithful to the truth we need to be skeptical and doubt what we already believe to be true.  


Another good articles with references to research  on cofirmation bias can be found at the following link:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13718636/donald-trump-psychology-confirmation-bias-truth-backfire

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

John 4:24 

Doubt as an act of faith seems to be a paradox.  However, what should be noted is that what is being considered and weighed is not God, but our concepts and understanding of God.  Scrutinizing our beliefs about God recognizes that God is greater and more than just our limited understanding and concepts.  It is also an act of trust that states that if God is Truth, truth is no threat to a real understanding of God.  As well, it states that we place gaining a more accurate concept of God over maintaining our current entrenched views.

In a previous post, A God With No Name; The Problem With Personification, I discussed how the Ancient Hebrews rejected the hubris of trying to put God into too small a box by imagining that God can be totally defined by human understanding.  Surrounded by cultures with multiple gods and idols, they were aware of this danger.  This may have inspired their concept of God, the God with no name. In the Exodus story, the writer has Moses ask God who it is that has sent him and God replies, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”. It is from this phrase that YHVH, or Yahweh, became the personal name of God in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Later, in the Priestly Era, even this was replaced with the title, Jehovah, meaning, "The Lord", with the personal name seen as too holy for anything but very special use

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"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."

-Paul Tillich

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In most cases our beliefs about God, like most of our ideas and views of the world, are not "ours" at all, but are a reflection of the social or cultural group that we identify with.  Most people do not work out a personal stance or viewpoint on very many things and instead trust in the wisdom of authorities and leaders in their own social or cultural group.  This is further complicated by the fact that most people do not choose their social and cultural groups or faith community but adopt the ones they were born into without question.

Much of our thinking on contentious issues is influenced by our pre-established social or cultural groups.

Dan Kahan, law professor and science communication researcher at Yale Law School.

When our beliefs and views are tied into our associations and support networks, questioning those dogmas becomes problematic, even threatening.  Holding a certain view of the world and a shared understanding of what's true can become a matter of faithfulness to the cultural, social and religious groups that form the basis of our self identity.  To question these shared perspectives can be viewed as withdrawing one's allegiance, being ungrateful, or even traitorous.

Once a certain idea or stance becomes associated with a group we belong to (part of what Kahan calls a cultural identity), we become more inclined to adopt that position; it’s a way to show that we belong.

Our understanding or assumptions about the world and about God are further conditioned and set beyond our specific social, cultural and religious groups by our wider culture.  The view of reality and what is true and real that is set by our wider culture (the nation/society) is all the more insidious because it is what we take for granted is true because it is, "what everyone knows" and therefore, "the way things are".  If we all share the same view and understanding, we take it for granted that it must be "right" and an accurate accounting of reality.  However, even a cursory look at the history of thought will tell us that what society believes as "what is" changes.  We no longer take for granted that the earth is flat and the sun and planets revolve around us.  Most of us no longer assume that certain racial groups or castes of people are inherently inferior to others and require moral guidance. It is difficult to seriously question ideas that you do not even realize are just a perception when our shared acceptance casts it as reality.

Questioning and examining these assumptions and beliefs is not only not a betrayal of Christianity, it is exactly what Jesus taught and encouraged his listeners to do. In another post in this blog, "Is Following Jesus About Turning Off Your Brain?", I argued that Jesus could be considered the poster boy for free thinking and critical reasoning.  He used open ended teaching devices like parables to encourage people to look beyond the assumptions of their culture. Jesus was no fan of accepting the authority of past knowledge as truth over reason and inquiry.  He opposed allowing authority and literal interpretations of laws and rules prevail over the understanding of broader principles.

Given all this, let me now apply the subject of this piece to myself.  Am I wrong?  Am I wrong in my current views and concepts of God?  To begin with, Yes, Yes I am.  This question assumes that there is a "right" view that holds a level of truth above all others and is perfect in itself wherein no further development and growth is needed. However, all concepts of God miss the mark.  All words are metaphors and all metaphors are imperfect as they are not the things they seek to describe.

To ask the question differently, "Are my current views further from the truth than my former?"  In my youth I would have described myself as an "Evangelical" and a "Biblical Literalist."  There are many people in the "conservative" Christian organizations that I belonged to at that time who would say that I have strayed away from the truth.  

In High School I was a member of an Evangelical organization called the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship and was president of my school's chapter of the Interschool Christian Fellowship.  I convinced the school administration to have a reformed career criminal named Ernie Holland give his testimony of conversion to a school assembly.  I was also struck by the message of David Wilkerson's book, "The Cross and the Switchblade", and organized a public showing of the film based on the book through a joint venture with the ISCF group at our town's other High School.

I became an intended candidate for ministry with my home church and felt that God was calling me to help bring a wave of Evangelical revival to what I felt was an apathetic main line denomination.  At University while working on the Bachelors of Arts that was a prerequisite to a Masters of Divinity, I took the advice of my conservative friends and stayed away from the theological students and took part in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.  Despite this, I found my preconceptions challenged in University and sought to find a more personal communication with God and way to discern his will that would counter these influences.  To this end I joined a fledgling sect led by a man ordained by the United Pentecostal Church that many in leadership with Queens Christian Fellowship were attending.  During that time I had the first major occurrence of an ongoing struggle with cyclic depression.  A number of the members also had problems with depression and it was interpreted as an act of God, tearing down the old in order to establish the new.  After having to drop out from my studies and a number of years "pursuing God" in this fashion, I finally realized that this was not brining me closer to life or to God and actually left town to reframe my direction.  To give myself credit, I did not view this as giving up on faith and told myself that I didn't want to, "throw out the baby with the bathwater".  However, I knew that I needed to look at my faith in a very different light.

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer a number of years ago my family and I moved to my home town to be closer to her and started attending the Evangelical church she belonged to.  My wife and I knew that this church held a very different view of God and Christianity than our own.  We soon learned that this community did not respect dissenting views and that if we wanted to remain and not create a disturbance we needed to keep our mouths shut about ideas we disagreed with or held different perspectives on.  I made no mention of the fact that when we were directed from the pulpit to write "Pro Family" letters to our Member of Parliament encouraging him to oppose same sex marriage legislation that I wrote to both my MP and the Prime Minister to express my support for it.
http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/advocacy/letters_pm.htm

A couple of years after my mother died we left that church to find a faith community that tolerated a wider range of thought and faith.  Feeling freer to express my opinions, those friends from that church who I had social media connections with were dismayed to learn some of my actual faith views.

The direction of my current faith views and some of my current opinions were formed or came together during my time at that church.  In many cases they were a reaction to theology and dogma that did not sit well with my heart and didn't match the spirit of the words and actions of Jesus I read in the Gospels.  They were also a reaction to the spirit of intolerance, pettiness, and self-righteousness I witnessed this theology foster in this community.  I felt that some of the ways that the Scriptures were viewed and approached were less than intellectually honest and that there must be a more truthful perspective for gaining what they have to offer.

My current faith journey has led me to a place where I have a less literalistic interpretation of images of God as a sentient being.  I have a more metaphorical view of God and see these images as an anthropomorphism of what is truly legitimate and greater than our individual selves.  I also view, "the kingdom of god", and the use of images of an afterlife in the New Testament in a different light.  Instead of taking the concepts of an afterlife, Heaven and Hades, literally, I have come to interpret them as referring to the way our influence extends beyond our lifespan in our contribution to cycles of violence and hate, or love and compassion.  I have written about this in the blog posts, The Gospel Is Not About What Happens When You Die, and, What Does Jesus' Death Mean To A Non-Literalist?

So, what if I am wrong in the direction of my theology?  What if I am straying further from a more accurate understanding of reality and truth?  What if God truly is a sentient being who determines the fate of your existence in an alternate reality where your consciousness and awareness of self continue after death?  

I can only express my faith that if this is the case that an honest and open search for truth will lead me to that outcome.  I also have faith that setting one's sights on exploring and emulating the nature of God as portrayed in the Gospels is at least as important as what doctrines have my intellectual assent.  I believe that what I am persuaded to to take as factual or agree with intellectually is not nearly as important as allowing my heart and attitudes be transformed by the message I find in the Gospels.  One of the ways I strive to do this is through my study of the Gospels in my other blog, A Literary Look at the Gospels.

I will continue to doubt, reconsider, and readjust, both the views and opinions presented to me and especially my own because I trust in God as Truth.  None of our concepts or theology is perfect and I will continue to hold that doubt is truly the pinnacle of faith.

Who's Going to Hell?

We have all heard pronouncements of condemnation by conservative and Religious Right Christians announcing God's judgement of an eternity in Hell on persons and minority groups whose "lifestyle" they don't agree with.  This is usually based on a cherry-picking of Old Testament Law that corresponds with their own cultural biases and used in the service of prejudice and bigotry to villify, exclude, and persecute those who don't fit the cultural and social norms of their religious denomination, sect, or movement.  I would like to take some time to explore why this is a gross misrepresentation of the "Way of Christ" given in the teachings and stories of Jesus in the Gospels.  Once I have covered this, I would then like to look at what the Gospels would tell us if we did take the metaphor of Hell literally.  What if Jesus is actually going to send some people to Hell?  If it were true that Jesus is indeed literally going to pass judgement on each of us in the next life, then, given what and who he condemns in the Gospels, who would he send to eternal punishment and suffering?

Unfortunately, the history of Christianity beginning with the Holy Roman Empire founded by Constantine is rife with the use of the literalization of Hell by those in power to control and in many cases oppress.  Both Church Authority and Christian States have used the threat of damnation to enforce compliance to their rule.  

Christian Monarchs of Europe and Britain followed the precedent of the Holy Roman Empire and reinterpreted Christianity as an ideology to reinforce their legitimacy and political control.  This is best seen in the doctrine of, "the Divine Right of Kings".  This creed held that those in power have Divine sanction and to question or oppose them is to question or oppose God Himself.  The reasoning was that if God controls and directs the activity of man, then anyone who comes to power must have been put there at the will of God and have His authority.  So, anyone who defied or questioned those in political authority were defying God and could be threatened with punishment not only in this life, but also with eternal punishment in the next.  Christianity became in many cases a gospel of control and oppression rather than transformation and life

However, the literal Hell narrative is not the point of the writings of the New Testament. I would argue that this narrative takes the scriptural texts out of context and is not faithful to the intent of the authors.  A literal interpretation points to an actual afterlife where one's identity and memories live on without a body, where one is sent to either one of two regions, one of bliss, or one of torture, depending on one's moral behaviour. This is figurative language used to discuss what is legitimate and laudable and brings "life" as opposed to what is destructive and brings a kind of "death".  Actions stemming from love, compassion, and inclusion create a circle of life where further actions in the same vein are encouraged to grow, a wholeness that continues on even after the individual is gone.  The same is true of the vicious cycle that can be produced by actions of selfishness, hatred, and exclusion.  It is these cycles of "good"or "evil" that create patterns of behavior that continue on after the individuals are gone that are a kind of afterlife, one that can be a heaven, or a hell.

So, what about all those references in the Gospels to an afterlife, you might ask.  To begin with, you have to remember that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi and wisdom teacher who belonged to post-exilic Rabbinical Judaism.  He and his early followers saw themselves as thoroughly part of that religion and tradition.  Wisdom teachers in that tradition frequently used the telling of popular stories, parables, and myths with their own twist in order to make a point, or bring a different perspective to light.

Epic of Gilgamesh

One of the best examples of this from the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, is the story of Noah, which is a retelling of the story of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, fragments of which have been found on tablets dated around 2,000 B.C., and which was also retold by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.  This story was never meant to portray a factual account of some literal historic event.  Its importance is in the way it was retold and interpreted by the Hebrew people.  
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/flood-myths-who-believes-in-noahs-ark-and-why/
Secondly, one needs to be aware that an afterlife was not a theme in the Rabbinical Jewish tradition that Jesus and his followers belonged to.  After death was only sheol, the grave.  The Hebrew tradition and the Tanakh is all about the people's Covenant and relationship with God in life.  I can only imagine that they steered clear of any suggestion of an afterlife in reaction to the prominent place the idea held in the religion of their oppressors in Egypt.  As a result, the closest thing to an afterlife in the Tanakh is where Elijah is taken up to heaven in a whirlwind.  However, he didn't experience a life beyond death, he just didn't die.

There are only two references in the Old Testament that could be said to refer to an afterlife and these are Persian influenced references to a resurrection in some future time rather than an immediate transition to another conscious reality at the point of death. The first is: “Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise, awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of light, and the earth shall bring to life the shades” (Isaiah 26:19); and the second: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence” (Daniel 12:2).

Outside of the Rabbinic Literature, there is a doctrine in Jewish eschatology of Resurrection, where in a future age the dead will rise from their graves to live again.  This idea was closely associated with the doctrine of the Messiah and would be a ready store of allusions for the Gospel writers who cast Jesus in the Messiah role.

Stories and myths about an afterlife in Jesus time, mainly came from other religions and traditions; the Egyptian stories of the Field of Reeds where the soul went to enjoy a continued existence without sickness or disappointment for eternity, or the Greek myths of Hades where there were different planes of existence the dead could inhabit depending on how they had lived their life on earth.  The Roman city of Sepphoris, the capital of the Galilee province, was a hotbed of Hellenistic culture.  This city was only five kilometers away from Nazareth.  Jesus and his audience would have been quite familiar with the Greek stories about an afterlife.

Like the good Jewish wisdom teacher he was, Jesus used the popular stories, myths and ideas his audience was familiar with, giving them his own twist to illustrate his ideas and perception of reality. The writers of the Gospels did the same thing using allusions to these stories in their metaphorized accounts of Jesus' life and actions.  Marcus Borg in his writing uses the example of the parable of the prodigal son to demonstrate how a story in Scripture does not have to be literal in order to illustrate truths.  No one would say that because the family in the parable were not literal historical figures and that the narrative told is not a recording of actual historical events that the point it was meant to illuminate is not "true".  Many Christians, however, do not seem able to accept metaphor and allegory in the Scriptures where the text is not clearly identified as being a parable.

So what references to these stories from other cultures and religions about an afterlife were made in the Gospels?  There is the example of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke.  In this parable, the rich man and Lazarus both die and experience an afterlife where they are judged and sent to different planes of existence dependent on how they had lived their life on earth like in the Greek myths of Hades.  This is obviously a parable and shows up in Luke among a collection of parables.  It doesn't make sense to interpret it as Jesus giving a science lesson on the actual workings of what happens when people die.  The point being illustrated is that wealth and luxury are not rewards from God to the righteous and that failure to look after the poor and suffering is worthy of punishment (or, at least, that's how I interpret it).

Part of the narrative of a non-figurative Hell includes the characterization of Jesus as having come as judge, to mete out punishment to the many, and provide salvation to the few.  In this theology, after a person has died and their personality and memories have passed into an alternate reality not observable by our own, Jesus is portrayed as sitting in judgment over the person on which level of Hades they will reside, or to decide if that person merits the Field of Reeds, Heaven.  

In modern conservative Evangelical Christianity, the deciding factor is what you have allowed yourself to be convinced is factual.  The first condition is that you be convinced intellectually that there is a literal God, an all powerful sentient being that can read your mind and presides over the alternate dimension experienced at death.  Secondly, you must be convinced that the legal system of this narrative is also true and just, and that you have transgressed against it and are deserving of punishment.  And thirdly, you must be remorseful about this transgression and wish to be pardoned.  One can then gain forgiveness by asking that Jesus' death be accepted as payment on your behalf.  However, one must refrain from a, "lifestyle", that is out of compliance with those Old Testament laws that whichever Christian denomination or sect you have joined have determined God still endorses as opposed to the others.  This is a somewhat convoluted theology which may be a helpful model for some people.  However, it is not reflective of the themes of judgment and salvation in the Gospels.

Judaism of the second Temple period thought of Salvation in more of a corporate than personal fashion.  The concept of Salvation was tied to the restoration of the state of Israel and rescue from national enemies.  This was especially relevant in Jesus' time with the conquest and occupation by Roman forces. The Jews of the first century expected to be rescued from foreign dominion. Looking to texts such Deuteronomy 4:32, Isaiah 40:1-2, and Jeremiah 31:27-40,  many believed that this would only occur after they suffered a purification process for past breaches of their covenant with God.  As such, they looked for an immediate earthly wrath and judgment by God on the people of Israel where, as John the Baptist put it, "every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire" (Luke 3:9).  This was an earthly process for the living and had nothing to do with one's existence after death.  In the Gospels, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the awaited Messiah that would carry out this process on God's behalf.

"But one who is more powerful than I will come...His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:15-18)

The people asked John what they should do (to be saved from this immediate earthly purification).  His answer did not involve any of the Evangelical narrative above.  He told them that, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same".  To the tax collectors he instructed that they not, "collect any more than you are required to".  To the soldiers he advised, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely". 

So, the, "Good News of Salvation", in this section of the Gospels, is that there is a way for the people of Israel to escape the coming earthly judgment and purification necessary before their salvation from foreign domination.  The key to this salvation is through practicing generosity, social equality, honesty and justice.

Now, let us turn to the subject of the title of this blog.  Given the teachings of Jesus and the stories about him in the Gospels, who would he, "send to Hell", or, more accurately, what behaviours did he view as meriting punishment?  To begin with, this would include those actions that are the opposite of those John the Baptist cited to the people as the path to save themselves from the Messiah's earthly purge: greed, such as not sharing ones wealth with those in need to the level of equality, corruption, such as using position to extort or take advantage of others, and dishonesty, such as giving false testimony.  

Jesus is given in the Gospels as affirming John's route to escaping the Messiah's judgment and as confirming his displeasure with those who do not follow this direction. One of my favorite sections from the Gospels comes from the 21st chapter of Matthew where, in response to the Chief Priests and Elders questioning of his authority, he tells them a parable about two sons. At the request of their father to work in the vineyard, one son says he will not go, but changes his mind and later does, while the other initially says he will go, but in the end does not. When the Chief Priests and Elders identify the first as doing what his father wanted, Jesus responds with one of my favorite verses, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did.“ 

Next, let us look at the parable that is given in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke about the Rich Man and Lazarus.  As mentioned earlier, this is one of texts that literalists draw their narrative on Hell from.  However, it is obviously a parable using the Greek myth of Hades as a vehicle and is placed in the chapter between other stories told by Jesus that no one questions as being parable. 

In the parable, both a rich man, who lived in luxury every day, and the beggar Lazarus, who lived at his gate, die, are judged, and sent to different planes of existence dependent on how they had lived their life on earth like in the Greek myths of Hades.  The place where the rich man ends up is actually called Hades, ᾍδης, ου, ὁ, in the original Greek texts of the Gospel, the same word used in the original Greek myths.  Jesus does however give a Hebrew twist to the story by having Father Abraham the one in charge in the next realm.

Now, in the story, the rich man isn't so much presented as being punished for his greed and lack of humanity in not sharing his wealth with Lazarus, as much as being subject to a kind of cosmic Karma.  When the rich man asks Father Abraham for pity and relief from his torment he is told:

But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." (Luke 16:25)

So it appears that Jesus is proposing that if you live in inequality where you reserve the good things in life for yourself, not sharing them equally with others, you will at some point experience bad things in proportion so that there is a balance.  Not quite the message we are used to in the popular representation of Jesus and his teaching.  However, the theme is quite a common one in Greek Myth and Tragedy.  In these stories, rising too high risks gaining the notice of the gods and being knocked off one's perch like Oedipus.  In this case, Jesus would seem to be condemning inequality and hoarding resources to live in luxury while others live in deprivation.

Aside from social inequality, the thing Jesus is least tolerant of in the Gospels is self righteous legalism.  He condems those who consider themselves to be better or set apart from others due to strict observance of moral and Religious laws and who believe by their adherence to the letter of these laws that they have reached the limits of what God, compassion and empathy, requires of them and can demand blessing and reward in return.  This way of thinking was exemplified in Jesus time by the Jewish sect of the Pharisees.  Jesus was in no way shy in his insults towards this group for this mindset and the actions it produces.

43 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.44 “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”45 One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” (Luke 11:43-45 NIV)

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:27-28 NIV)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. (Matthew 23:13 NIV)

All this condemnation aside, who might be worthy of punishment is not the point of the Gospels.  The principle aspect of Jesus' teaching is his portrayal of God, what is legitimate, as primarily compassionate, generous, merciful, and inclusive, and that we are called to emulate this nature.  The main issue Jesus has with the Religious Leaders and Authorities is that they claim to represent God while not demonstrating these qualities and for excluding others in God's name.

So, given all this, who would Jesus, "send to Hell", or see as first in line in deserving of punishment?  Ironically, it would be those of us who censure and exclude others and pronounce them as condemned to Hell for not following Religious Law, or not following it to the same degree as ourselves.  The, "kingdom of heaven", is manifest whenever we live under the authority of God, the authority of love, compassion, and mercy, and no one is excluded, not even legalists and pharisees.