On Hell: Part One - I Shudder

I remember my father, in all his vast and unsurpassed knowledge and wisdom once asked me what I thought Hell was. Not what I thought Hell was like, but what Hell was. It is of course, an interesting thing to think about.

Now I am not unlike many other good little products of faitful bible school patronage in that I have always known that there is a Hell and it is bad. More than likely, it is also red, and hot, and there is probably no football there [certainly no Big 12 Football anyway.] But perhaps there is so much more to it.

I have been reading Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis. It is a glorious book, and I reccomend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet. Now, having read the entire book, I went back and re-read the first chapter. There is a section of it that really struck me:


Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being "noticed" by God. But this is almost the languge of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him. (I Cor. 8:3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully reechoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, "I never knew you. Depart from Me." In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside - repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in teh universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but he truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.


This passage struck me. A substantial part of this chapter, is about what it means to seek the Glory of God - or the glory we are promised. And as intially offensive as it may seem, part of his argument, is that the glory we seek is comparable to fame or fortune in the eyes of God. And now, now I realize what Hell is.

One of my biggest peeves is when uneducated indivuduals speak at funerals. It really offends me to hear people say about young children hit by cars, or teenagers shot at school, or mothers who die from cancer "God called them home...He wanted them close by Him." That is just ridiculously wrong. God is not responsible for the evil of the world, we are. So we mess up, partake of the fruit, and to quote Bill Cosby, there's God, 5 seconds later, whistle in mouth: "Everybody, out of the pool!" Laws of nature govern our planet...people who jump off of buildings die. People who are terminally ill die. People who are hit by drunk drivers die. People want to jump off of buildings and drive drunk because of sin. People get sick because we're human in a fallen world: we get sick and die. And while of course if God felt not only the need and want, but found it necessary to alter the chain of natural events to avoid a logical conclusion at any point, that would be His perrogative. But it would be my first contention that He does not because He is restrained by His own love for us and our sanity. If we walked out of our homes everyday uncertain of the natural operations of our world, we'd go nuts. If objects could fall at any speed, or not fall at all; if we could make use of gravity every thrity days, and if people got sick and got better randomly our limited minds couldn't compute that information. We need the control. But secondly I would contend that I do not try to fathom the behavior of God...

But perhaps even more interesting and irritating to me, is when people say to me while crying over the loss of a loved one: "they are in a better place." This too, is simply NOT true. At death, we die. This whole concept of a HUGE difference between body and soul is borrowed from Greek and Roman cultures - it is not Christian theology. This body dies and decays...and when the age has ended and Christ returns, he will CALL UP those who are to be with Him and His father. Everyone else, not so much.

Hell is that seperation that Lewis refers to. Can you imagine hearing the One who knows all and sees all say: "Be gone from me, I never knew you"? Think of those old fairtales, when an offendor to the throne would be told "You are banished from my presence." Remember those? The King's "presence" extended to the far reaches of the Kingdom. But what are the far reaches of God's kingdom - nothing. God exercises dominion over all. So to be banished from the presence of He who is everywhere, rulling everything; to be told "I don't know you" by He who knows all, is Hell. It is being erased from existence.

Douglas Adams in his book 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" says that every living creature emits a vibe when under stress that lets others around them know just how far that being is from home. While on Earth, we do not notice that because no one is ever more than a few thousand miles away from the place of their birth. When Ford Prefect is around humans and under stress, we reel at the impact of the distance he is from home. God exiles Hell to outside His kingdom. He still exercises dominion over it because existence is now and always will be on His terms - He created existence. But those who are diseased cannot be allowed to continue to exist in the community of those who are well. Hell is the darkness of non-existence. I shudder at the pure distance.

Texas

"A born Texan has instilled in his system a mind-set of no retreat or no surrender. I wish everyone the world over had the dominating spirit that motivates Texans." - Former Texas Speaker of the House Billy Clayton.


Ok, now that THAT is out of my system, check out this article from the Austin Chronicle:


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The Legendary Snow Monkeys of Texas

BY ED BAKER

A young Japanese macaque in his adopted home in 1989
photo by Karen Dickey


It was Jan. 21, 1996, the last day of the winter buck season. Missy, Lilly, and Meggy, two of them nursing mothers, had been shot dead – "blowed apart," according to the game warden called to the scene. A fourth survivor, Jason, was left with only a stump for an arm. All had been shot a few feet outside their home fence line, while snacking on deer corn that had been spread as bait.
At the time, many locals could have predicted this would happen. But the actual chain of events, the true story behind one of Texas' most persistent rural legends – the 1996 open season on monkeys – is a story that has steadily faded. How had monkeys come to be standing in the Texas hunters' firing line?

The troop under fire consisted of wild but rapidly acculturating "Snow Monkeys" (more precisely known as Japanese macaques, or Macaca fuscata). This particular troop began as about 150 in number, previously evicted from the encroaching suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. They had been brought to the South Texas Primate Observatory in 1972, in the first attempt at the relocation of an entire primate population. The observatory's ranch near Dilley, in Frio County, was much hotter than the macaques' Japanese home, and at first many perished. But South Texas eventually provided the conditions the monkeys needed to thrive: a wild setting, water tanks, plenty of mesquite beans, cactus fruits, and lots of tall brush to climb around in. Things went very well – at least for the first couple of decades.

The troop grew and evolved, retaining some wild traits while expanding their human-adapted behavior. They took advantage of man-made perches, row crops, and food provided to them, as well as feed pilfered from local farms and ranches. They learned to defeat fences, locks, and gates. Much like farm animals, they became semidependent on the proximity of humans. They multiplied, to an estimated 600 by 1995.

Twenty years of success opened the door to one legendary failure.

First, a bobcat or cougar killed the troop's leader among his companions. The frightened survivors began, understandably, to hang more closely around the roofs, fences, and compounds of both their own home and the neighboring ranches. Someone called authorities to complain. Surely it wasn't acceptable to set loose a bunch of foreign primates on a quiet rural county? Not that they were as bad as fire ants or salt cedar, but still, there had to be rules about these things, right?

Well, there had been. Until 1994, the monkeys had been protected officially as a "threatened species" under the Endangered Species Act, and unofficially by observatory neighbors who felt protective of them, and would call the observatory if one escaped. But as the troop grew, so did the nuisance, and with the observatory short of maintenance funds, nearby ranchers increasingly complained of escaped monkeys stealing food, damaging trees, or just being where they didn't belong. In June of 1994, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ruled that this particular troop of macaques was not a protected species.

At least initially, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department agreed, saying there was nothing in state or federal law forbidding the shooting of feral macaques, because they were classified as an "exotic unprotected species" – as in, you can make a game of shooting them any time you want. It wasn't true – as research animals belonging to the observatory, they were protected in the same way privately owned cattle are protected, even if they escape their ranches. But the TPWD was slow in clarifying the situation, and the damage was done in terms of perceiving the monkeys as fair game – just before the opening of the 1995 hunting season.

Almost simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began pressuring the volunteer observatory managers to improve the Dilley facility, citing violations ranging from inadequate monkey housing to failure to construct a secure perimeter fence. The refuge providers moved to acquire a newer, larger facility, but they needed time to raise money, fence the new site, and transfer the animals. While they waited, the monkeys continued to wander – as hunting season opened. With all the media coverage, the monkeys' protectors and the neighbors feared that someone would attempt to hunt the monkeys.

A 1997 National Geographic documentary, Snow Monkeys of Texas, directed by UT professor and filmmaker Richard Lewis, would later confirm that all through the fall 1995 hunting season, would-be big-game hunters were coming into the nearby towns of Dilley and Millet, searching for guided monkey hunts, monkey tags, a monkey lease, monkey ranches, or just anybody willing to let them bag a monkey.

But as the winter months slowly passed, the animals remained safe, and the primate protectors began to breathe easier. It was the last week, and then the last day, of hunting season. And then …

On the final day of the 1995-96 hunting season, the four snow monkeys were shot. They had survived into a second generation as refugees from a sprawling suburb on the other side of the world, but they made the mistake of crossing a fence line in Texas. Five San Antonio hunters, described as guests of guests of people with a hunting lease, were the suspected villains, but for lack of evidence, no charges were ever filed. Too late to help Missy and her mates, TPWD spokespeople finally clarified the legal status of refuge primates. You can't shoot someone else's animals. You can't shoot a trespassing monkey. There is no monkey hunting in Texas.

The martyred monkeys didn't die entirely in vain. The shooting led entertainer Wayne Newton to San Antonio for a fundraiser. Other people gave cash and their time. From its small beginnings in Texas, the primate refuge movement has grown nationwide. Shortly after the shootings, the snow monkeys were able to move to a larger and more secure facility – now known as the Animal Protection Institute Primate Sanctuary – where they live to this day.