Out at the prison we have been going through the gospel of Mark and reached Jesus' curious healing of the blind man:

Mark 8.22-25
And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

The healing is curious in that the man's sight is initially only partly restored. Jesus has to do the healing twice.

What's going on with this?

One hint, I think, comes in the story that immediately follows. Jesus asks his disciples who he is and Peter confesses, "You are the Christ." So Peter sees Jesus.

But only partly, fuzzily. Because right after Peter's confession Jesus goes on to speak about his coming passion and death: "And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed."

Scandalized, Peter pulls Jesus aside and tries to correct him. Jesus then wheels on Peter and says, “Get behind me, Satan!"

Peter is having his vision restored like the blind man, in stages. Peter sees Jesus as the Christ, but his vision of what that means is still fuzzy and blurry. When Peter confesses his vision is only partial. Peter's sight requires additional adjustment.

Peter will eventually come to see Jesus clearly, but only in stages.

What is God like?

At the end of the day, that's the only theological question we ever debate. Oh, the issues and topics vary depending upon the day, from atonement theories to sexual ethics. But behind these topical debates there's always two rival visions of God being debated. We only really debate this same question over and over again.

So, what is God like?

Hebrews 1:3 has the answer:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.

Other translations render it as:

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

He reflects the brightness of God's glory and is the exact likeness of God's own being.

The Son shows the glory of God. He is a perfect copy of God’s nature.

What is God like?

God is like Jesus. 

Life has a sad, tragic aspect to it. We can't escape the pain and the suffering that attends loving each other.

It's not quite accurate to say love is risky. To say love is risky is to suggest that you might actually be able to win the bet. You can't.

It's more accurate to say love is costly. If you love, you'll suffer. It's not a risk, it's unavoidable.

So what's our choice? I think Thoreau has it exactly right. Love more. It hurts, and will always hurt, but it is the only answer.

Love.

Then love more. 

I've been spending some time with Ignatian practices. One of the central practices is what St. Ignatius calls "indifference."

There's some similarity between the Ignatian practice of indifference with the Buddhist practice of non-attachment and the stoical practice of apatheia. But there are differences as well.

The basic idea of Ignatian indifference is to let go of anything in the world that interferes with our love and service of God and others. Some, however, might be put off by the word "indifferent," thinking that indifference means lacking concern or care. But that's not the idea. Most of us have an instinctive hungry, greedy, acquisitive stance in relation to the world. We're rushed, restless, addicted, distracted, triggered, greedy, competitive, jealous, and on and on. We live automatically and reactively, our hearts pulled this way that that.

Indifference, as I've come to understand it, isn't about not caring about the world or being apathetic about the world. Indifference is a pause. Indifference isn't about a emotional resignation and detachment. Indifference is about discernment.

Indifference is about creating a pause, a season of discernment, between the world and our response to the world. To be sure, some emotional control is required to create this space. In that sense, indifference can look stoical and ascetical. But the goal isn't to stand stoically before everything in the world. Christians believe the world was created good. The world is full of the gifts of God. And we should receive and delight in these gifts. Indifference is, thus, the pause that allows us to discern if what stands before us, what we are currently craving and hungry for, is drawing us toward or away from God.

All that to say, don't be put off by the word "indifference." Indifference isn't about not caring, detachment, resignation, or apathy. Ignatian indifference is a pause, a season to survey our hearts, creating the time and space to think about how things in the world are drawing us either closer or further away from God.

In Canto 5 Virgil and the Pilgrim move out of Limbo into the first ring of hell.

Perhaps the most famous aspect of Dante's Inferno is the geography and topography of hell. Hell descends toward the center of the earth through nine levels, with the sins and punishment at each level getting progressively worse.

I've always found this idea theologically fascinating, and I think many others do as well. For example, just last week one of my college students asked me, "Dr. Beck, are all sins equal?"

What's the correct answer here?

The answer seems to be yes and no. In one sense, all sins are equal in that they are all acts of disobedience and rebellion. But in another sense, sins are most definitely not equal in the degree of harm they cause to yourself and others. You shouldn't steal office supplies from work or tell white lies, but those pale in comparison to things like child sexual abuse, rape, and genocide.

However, the worry, I think, in ranking sins by severity is that such a ranking might lead to spiritual pride. My sins are not as bad as your sins. While we might agree on paper that some sins are worse than others, I think we'd also agree that comparing our sins to other people's sins, for better or worse, isn't a very spiritually healthy activity.

I think the better question here isn't if some sins are better or worse, but to focus on our shared and universal vulnerability to sin, even to the most horrific acts. Personally, I think murder is worse than, say, failing to declare a minor sum of money on my tax returns. True, we shouldn't do either, but killing someone (to say nothing of torturing someone before we kill them) is worse than failing to give the government the $5.32 you owe them. Still, the issue isn't that my tax cheating is "better" than murder. The issue is that I could be a murderer, that there isn't all that much difference between me and a murderer. I have to recognize and confess my own capacities for hate and evil. That's the recognition that is the great moral equalizer.      

That said, I find Dante's nine levels of hell, with their varying degrees of punishment, more sane than a lot of what I hear about sin and punishment in conservative, evangelical circles.

If you grew up in a conservative, evangelical church you were probably told at some point that "all sins are equal" in that all sins merited, no matter how small, the same judgment and punishment of God: Roasting and burning and screaming in hell for all eternity.

I don't know about you, but something seemed profoundly unhinged about that formulation when I encountered it as a child and teenager. The punishment just didn't seem to fit the crime. It was the worst, most horrific punishment imaginable and it was once-size-fits all, no matter what your sins were. That lack of proportionality just seemed crazy, implausible and, frankly, monstrous.

All that to say, The Divine Comedy's nine levels of hell might seem strange, and we can quibble with how it ranks the sins, but there's something reasonable, sane, and human about Dante's hell 

In my morning prayer and Bible reading time I was praying over this famous text in Ezekiel:

Ezekiel 36.25-28
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

I was struck by the phrase "from all your idols I will cleanse you." I think for many of us raised in Protestant traditions with penal substitutionary atonement what we'd normally expect in this phrase is "from all your sins I will cleanse you." But that's not what we get. What we get is "from all your idols I will cleanse you."

This text in Ezekiel helps highlight how the deep rot in our lives is idolatry. What we need to be cleansed of are false allegiances. We need to purify our hearts from idolatry.

Sin, in this view, is more a symptom than a disease. When the heart is set on false gods sin is sure to follow. Idolatry is the virus, sin is the fever.

Thus the prayer of the prophet, to be given a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft, tender, and responsive to God. It all begins with love, a heart that loves God. And it's that love that gives us the capacity, enabled by the Spirit, to follow the statues of God.

As a psychologist reading the Bible I'm alert to emotions in the text. Recently, I was reading the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:

Luke 18.9-14
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The emotion I noted in the very first sentence: "trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt."

Contempt is featured in both my books, Unclean and Stranger God. Unclean is primarily about interpersonal revulsion, but when I talk about disgust as a social emotion a lot of people don't see themselves in this description. They don't report feeling "revolted" or "disgusted" by people.

I could quibble with them. As I do in Chapter 8 of Stranger God--"Heart Triggers"--I bet I can mention a few different sorts of people and get you to display the classic disgust face, the quick, instinctive, microexpression of tilting your head back slightly, lifting your top lip, and wrinkling your nose. I mention vegans to Texans and they pull that face. I mention gun owners to Californians and they pull that face. Turns out, there are plenty of people we loathe.

Still, I don't want to spend a lot of time with audiences trying to convince them that they do experience interpersonal revulsion. So I take a different tack.

"How many of you, when you scroll through social media," I ask, "feel feelings of contempt or scorn? The feeling that the world is filled with idiots?"

Lots of heads nod at this point. While we might deny feelings of disgust, most of us admit experiencing feelings of contempt. Our feelings tell us that the world is full of awful, stupid people. Contempt may be the Number One feeling triggered by social media.

And as in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, contempt is regularly triggered by a judgment of moral superiority.

The sad thing is that contempt is very much related to the emotion of disgust. (Charles Darwin was one of the first who noted the connection.) And like disgust, contempt is a dehumanizing emotion. When we experience people as morally depraved or stupid we perceive them as less than fully human.

All that to say, while we might deny feeling revulsion toward people that doesn't mean we've escaped dehumanizing emotions.

You might not feel a lot of disgust, but odds are you have a lot of contempt for the world.

Something is happening to how Christians relate to death, especially progressive, liberal Christians.

There's a famous text about death and hope in 1 Thessalonians 4.13:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 

Christians do not grieve in the face of death as others do, Paul says, because Christians have hope in the resurrection. But it seems, more and more, that many Christians are grieving as those who "have no hope," especially progressive, liberal Christians.

In countless talks with Christians who have lost their faith, or who are on the edge of losing their faith, I've observed that death is increasingly triggering massive faith crises among believers. Especially the death of children, teenagers, young adults, and even those in middle age. When death comes to anyone who has not lived into old age trust and faith in God is increasingly shaken.

Something about our relationship to death has changed, and this seems to be a modern phenomenon. To be sure, death has always been a challenge to faith. But for most of Christian history, the faithful have turned toward God and the hope of the resurrection for solace in the face of grief. Today, many believers don't turn toward God for comfort, we turn away from God with angry accusations.

In fact, the reigning pastoral advice in our churches is to avoid all mention of heaven in comforting the bereaved. To mention heaven to the grieving is increasingly taboo, and often described as hurtful and harmful. To be clear, I've seen the consolations of heaven deployed clumsily, too hastily, and too tritely, in ways that, yes, have been hurtful and harmful. Still, it's getting to the point where any mention of heaven is considered problematic and unhelpful. Again, in the face of death it seems Christians are increasingly grieving as if they had no hope.

Why?

First, as I have written about before, the modern world has has drastically changed our relationship with death. Two examples illustrate this. First, our relationship to our food has changed. Rarely to we see or participate in the killing and the blood that brings protein to our tables. Second, modern medicine has made the prospect of living to a ripe old age a real possibility for most of us. For generations in the West life expectancies have been steadily rising. Consequently, any death that comes before our sixties or seventies appears to us as accidental, as if some cosmic agreement between us and God has been broken. In short, modern medicine has caused us to feel entitled in regards to our life span. To die "early" or "prematurely" is now an existential shock, a cosmic effrontery, God reneging on an agreement we felt we had. And this existential shock triggers faith crises, accusations directed toward God about why a person died, especially if they died young.

In short, one reason death is increasingly triggering faith problems--causing us to walk away from God in anger rather than toward God for comfort--is how death is no longer experienced as a regular feature of daily life. Death is now experienced as an intrusive, unexpected shock. Consequently, we've lost a degree of stoic equanimity that our forbears once possessed in the face of death.

But beyond our altered relationship with death, there is a second reason why it seems many Christians are grieving without hope.

Above I said that I think progressive, liberal Christians seem particularly vulnerable to faith crises in the face of death. The reason for this is that many progressive, liberal Christians struggle with disenchantment. Many liberal, progressive Christians report doubts and skepticism about the supernatural, the miraculous, the spiritual, and the metaphysical aspects of the faith. Experiencing and expressing these doubts is almost a definition of what it means to be a liberal, progressive Christian. As Peter Rollins puts it, for these disenchanted Christians "to believe is human to doubt, divine."

Unfortunately, however, belief in the resurrection and heaven are a part of the supernatural, "enchanted" worldview that many liberal, progressive Christians have doubts about. Consequently, many liberal, progressive Christians are grieving without hope because they don't actually have hope, or at least they entertain serious doubts about the reality of the hope.

In short, pervasive disenchantment among Christians has altered our relationship with death. Doubts about the afterlife have undermined Christian hope. No wonder mentions of heaven are increasingly ineffective, and even insulting.

In the disenchanted Christian experience the only comfort we are allowed to offer each other is therapeutic. We can listen to each other. Sit in silence with each other. Carry each other. Be there for each other.

But we cannot offer hope.

Last week I wrote about sharing insights about the book of Romans out at the prison. The perspective I shared came from the new perspectives on Paul, and the big takeaway was that the issue in Romans isn't how we get to heaven but how we, Gentiles especially, get access to the promise and covenant God made to Abraham.

As I pointed out last week, the reason this is important is because the covenant of Abraham is how God is working to save the world. To be included into the covenantal family, then, is to be recruited into this ongoing labor. God is saving the world through the covenantal family where Jesus is proclaimed as Messiah and Lord.

In short, God's plan is to save the world through the church, God's covenantal, Messianic family.

What strikes me about this is how many Christians don't share this imagination. For many Christians, the church is optional, it's just not necessary or important. Our imaginations are political, we are students of the science of power. We will change the world by controlling Washington DC. We will save the world through Babylon and not the church.

This is a problematic and alarming situation, to say the least, choosing Babylon over the church. Stated plainly, in turning to Babylon many Christians have rejected and turned their backs on the covenant God made to Abraham. For many Christians, the covenant God made to Abraham is entirely disposable.

Our plan is to save the world a different way.

We're going to save the world through Babylon.

Over the last two weeks we talked about how, in Dante, Limbo holds unbaptized righteous persons. This includes the Old Testament saints. But when Virgil and the Pilgrim visit Limbo only virtuous pagans are there. Where have the others gone?

The answer involves the harrowing of hell.

The harrowing of hell refers to the events between Jesus' death and resurrection. Specifically, the early church believed that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall. Jesus breaks down the doors of hell and leads the souls of the lost into heaven. The harrowing of hell continues to be an important doctrine to the Eastern Orthodox church and features predominately in their Easter observances and iconography. And as I write about in The Slavery of Death, the harrowing of hell is also a key notion in Christus Victory atonement theology, which places more emphasis on Jesus' resurrection than his death on the cross.

Is the harrowing of hell in the Bible? It's hinted at in a few passages:

1 Peter 3.18-20a
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago...

1 Peter 4.6
For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

Ephesians 4.8-10
This is why it says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."
(What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

The belief that Christ descended into hell is also captured in Peter's Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 (v. 27, 31).

The harrowing of hell is also mentioned in the Apostles Creed:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
born of the Virgin Mary.
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand
of God the Father Almighty.
From thence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead...

The harrowing of hell shows up in many places in The Divine Comedy, various shades remembering the time when Christ came down, shaking the place, causing damage, and rescuing captives. I'm sure it was an exciting moment in the history of hell! We first encounter the harrowing of hell in Canto 4. Vigil was a new arrival in Limbo when it happened, and he gives first hand testimony about what he witnessed when Christ came to hell to set free the Old Testament saints:

...."I was a novice in this place
when I saw a mighty lord descend to us
who wore the sign of victory as his crown.

He took from us the shade of our first parent,
of Abel, his good son, of Noah, too,
and of obedient Moses, who made the laws;

Abram, the Patriarch, David the King,
Israel with his father and his children,
with Rachel, who he worked so hard to win;

and many more he chose for blessedness;
and you should know. before these souls were taken,
no human soul had ever reached salvation."

Out at the prison we spent an evening talking about the book of Romans and I shared some of the ideas from the new perspectives on Paul.

One of the insights we spent a lot of time on is how a covenantal imagination helps connect holiness to mission.

In the popular Christian imagination the issue Paul is dealing with in Romans is how to get to heaven. And we get to heaven by grace through faith.

However, according to the new perspectives the issue pressing upon Paul isn't how we can get to heaven, the issue is how the Gentiles get access to the covenantal promises made to Abraham. And the Gentiles get access to Abraham, according to Paul, not through "works of the law" but through faith in Jesus.

So far, so good. But the issue I raised with the men in the prison study was this: We, as Gentiles, get access to the promise made to Abraham, but so what? What was that promise and why is it good news?

After the flood, the promise God made to Abraham was God's plan to deal with sin, death, and evil in the world. Through the children of Abraham God would bless all the nations. The children of Abraham would demonstrate what the kingdom of God would look like in the world. Israel would be a moral demonstration. A kingdom of priests. And seeing this, the prophets declared, the nations would stream to Zion to worship God.

In short, the promise made to Abraham is how God is fighting evil in the world.

To be sure, eschatological promises have been made to the covenantal family of God. There is a hope for a heavenly reward. But the covenant is primarily a mission, God's work in restoring and saving the world. God fights evil through the covenantal fidelity of his family. This is how holiness--living as a kingdom of priests in the midst of the world--is connected to mission.

If salvation just means "going to heaven" then we miss this connection. Once we are "saved by faith" and get a ticket to heaven we don't really know what holiness is for. Traditional readings of Romans lose the telos of holiness. However, once we come to understand that faith gets us access to the covenant, and that the covenant exists to combat evil in the world, then suddenly we see the purpose of holiness, the goal of living in the world as a priest.

Holiness is, quite simply, the salvation of the world.

The Anima Christi ("Soul of Christ") is a famous medieval Ignatian prayer:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds hide me.
Permit me not to be separated from you.
From the wicked foe, defend me.
At the hour of my death, call me
and bid me come to you
That with your saints I may praise you
For ever and ever.
Amen.

Here's a translation of the Anima Christi by John Henry Newman:

Soul of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ's side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesus, listen to me;
In Thy wounds I fain would hide;
Ne'er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end.
Amen.

The only cure for the angst of modern man is mysticism.

--Thomas Merton

I was talking with my boys at the dinner table and we were discussing what various people think about God, and how so often people get God all wrong.

"So here is my rule," I said to my sons, "for how to think about God."

"Imagine the most loving thing you could do for a person. Then know that God is going to be way better than that. That's my rule if you want to know how God is going to treat you or anyone else. Today, tomorrow, or on Judgment Day.

"Imagine the most loving thing you can imagine, and know that God is going to be way better than that."

Last week Virgil and the Pilgrim entered Limbo and we discussed who, in various church traditions, might have ended up in Limbo.

Here's a related question: Is Limbo in the Bible?

Perhaps.

As many of you know, the Bible isn't consistent in how it describes the afterlife. In the Old Testament the place of the dead is called Sheol. Sheol isn't hell, but it looks a lot like Limbo. Not really a place of punishment, but a place of stasis.

In the New Testament, Jesus doesn't really speak about "hell." Jesus mostly speaks of Gehenna, a location outside the walls of Jerusalem, and Hades, the place of the dead. Many scholars think Hades is the equivalent of Sheol.

To make things even more complicated, 2 Peter 2.4 mentions Tartarus as a place of punishment for disobedient angels. Jesus tells the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." And where, exactly, in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, is "the bosom of Abraham"?

Are all these references--Sheol, Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, Paradise, the bosom of Abraham--referring to the same place or different places? And which refer, if any, to hell, that place of everlasting punishment?

Some of this puzzle has to do with timing, specifically the timing of your death and the Final Judgment in the future. Most traditions believe that Final Judgment, where humanity is sent to either heaven of hell, is at some point in the future. If so, where do the dead go to await the Judgment?

Answers vary. Some traditions believe that the dead are "asleep." Some call this "soul sleep." But "sleep" is just a metaphor. The dead are actually dead. There is no continuing consciousness. In this view, the dead are dead until the General Resurrection when they are brought back to life again. Metaphorically, the sleepers awake.

Other traditions, however, believe that the soul is immortal. In this view the soul can't really die but is, instead, translated into another realm after death. This "other realm" can't be heaven or hell, not in any final sense, since that sorting still lies in the future at the Final Judgment. So what is this "other realm" that functions as sort of "holding tank" for souls awaiting the Final Judgment?

Well, that's where Limbo comes in. Some traditions think Sheol and Hades is Limbo, a place where the dead reside before Judgment.

But that doesn't solve all the problems. Is Limbo the Paradise Jesus describes on the cross? Also, in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man immediately upon their deaths the rich man is in torment in Hades and Lazarus is in comfort in the bosom of Abraham. That doesn't seem like Sheol or Limbo, a neutral space holding the dead. In Jesus' parable it seems like some sort of moral sorting occurred at the point of death (or just after), well before the Final Judgment. So is there some sort of pre-sorting that happens in anticipation of the Final Judgment? And if so, why would there be any need for a Final Judgment if everyone had already been sorted?

It's all very, very confusing. Next week we'll get to how Dante fits this puzzle together.

God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

May you be a clown and a fool
in all that you give to the world.
May you love unreasonably,
wastefully and unjustifably.
Let there be whimsy and improvisation in the grace of your gifts--
spontaneous, joyful, laughable and unpredictable.
Love weirdly in ways that surprise and subvert.
Stand before the calculus of this world and be accounted a shock and an embarrassment,
the circus of your life a scandal among those with proper, tamer tastes.
May your love be wrong in all the ways that are right.

Progressive morality, as it plays out in public spaces and discourse, seems to be guided by two, seemingly irreconcilable, impulses.

On the one hand is a radical tolerance and inclusion rooted in a non-judgmental stance toward people. "All are welcome" is a motto of progressive morality.

The second moral impulse among progressives is social justice, standing in solidarity with the oppressed against oppressors. Among both secular and Christian progressives, this aspect of progressive morality has a prophetic, judgmental aspect.

As you can see, these two impulses sit in tension with each other, and can often clash and conflict. Progressives view themselves as icons of tolerance and inclusion, they are the flower children among us, but in their pursuit of social justice they can also be harsh, judgmental and exclusionary.

To use an example from the Sixties, the "all you need is love" hippie was also a "cops are pigs" revolutionary.

To be clear, I'm not making any judgments about this paradox and tension in progressive morality. Conservatives have their own tensions and paradoxes. This is, I believe, simply a feature any moral system, how values and goods come into conflict.

So there's no judgment in pointing to the conflict. Those always exist in moral systems. The issue is if the moral system has resources to navigate the conflict in healthy, productive ways.

It's my opinion that secular progressive morality lacks the moral resources necessary to navigate this conflict. Situation by situation, secular progressive discourse reduces to making two contradictory moral assertions--non-judgmental inclusion and social justice--in ways that seems arbitrary, confused, and incoherent.

All are included and welcome until they are not. Come as you are, there is no judgment here, until there is a call out.

I'm sure you've experienced or witnessed this moral whiplash in progressive spaces and discourse.

The moral resources needed to navigate the conflict between non-judgmental inclusion and social justice are things like community, confession, humility, truth-telling, forgiveness, reconciliation, patience, and peace-making. To name a few things. These are resources that help us pursue both non-judgmental inclusion and social justice at the same time. These are the moral resources that help hold the paradox together.

Christian progressives have access to these resources in a way secular progressives do not. For the most part, in my estimation, secular progressive morality, at least how it plays out on social media, lacks the moral imagination and resources required to navigate the contradiction at the heart of their vision of a moral world.

Secular progressives can be moral, no doubt about it. They just can't be moral in a way that makes any sense.

Over the last year or so on this blog, I've been talking more and more about our need to encounter God, experientially. We need to "bump into God from time to time" is often how I've put it.

The argument I've made is that in our age of disenchantment, it's this experiential aspect of faith that is increasingly our biggest struggle. Without direct encounters and experiences of God, faith dries up, and reduces to moralism or politics.

In short, as I've said before, we need our faith to become more mystical.

One of the famous mystical experiences I've written about before is Thomas Merton's epiphany on 4th and Walnut. Another famous mystical experience is Blaise Pascal's Night of Fire.

Pascal, you'll recall, was a famous mathematician, scientist, and inventor. He converted to Christianity and became one of the great apologists for the faith.

Pascal's vision of God occurred on November 23, 1654. It lasted two hours, beginning at 10:30 pm and ending at 12:30 am. We know this because when Pascal died, it was discovered that he had sewn his account of that vision inside his jacket, so as to always have it with him. This is what Pascal experienced that night, in his words:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

In Canto IV of the Inferno Virgil and Pilgrim ride the boat across the river Acheron to reach the first level of hell--Limbo.

Limbo is an interesting place. Pain is not inflicted upon the souls in Limbo. Life is pretty normal, sort of what life is like on earth. The "punishment" of Limbo is that life simply carries on and on, without any hope of final consummation. More on this "punishment" in a later post.

In the Comedy Dante places virtuous pagans who died before Christ in Limbo. Virgil himself is a resident of Limbo, as are Homer and Plato and other pagan luminaries.

Limbo has an interesting place in Catholic theology. As generally understood, Limbo is that place that held virtuous or innocent persons who died without baptism. This would include, for instance, good people who died before Christ. The Old Testament saints would be an example. Virtuous pagans who died before Christ are another example, and that's who we find in Limbo in The Divine Comedy. Why we don't find Moses and Elijah in Limbo we'll talk about next week.

Another group believed by Catholics to be in Limbo were unbaptized infants, thought this isn't in the Comedy. While never an official part of church doctrine, for centuries Catholics were taught and believed that unbaptized infants went to Limbo.

The Latin roots of the word "limbo" means "border" and "edge." It's a good word to describe what's going on theologically with Limbo. Yes, as regards the geography of hell, Limbo is on the "border" and "edge." Limbo is in hell, but no one is being tormented there. But my point is more theological, Limbo exists to handle theological situations that seem to fall on "edge" and "border" of our soteriological schemes.

You might think it strange that Catholics believed that unbaptized babies went to Limbo. But these unbaptized babies were falling through a soteriological gap in the Catholic system. The babies were "in sin" and had not been baptized. And yet, they are babies. Innocents. In short, unbaptized babies were a border case that required a soteriological patch on the system. Limbo was that patch. The babies weren't saved, but neither were they damned. They were in Limbo.

You might think that a very forced and contorted solution. But my Church of Christ soteriology had its own Limbo situations. For example, we believed you had to get baptized to be saved. And as teenagers we often wondered, "What if a person got hit by a bus on the way to the church to get baptized? What would happen to them?" That situation fell through the gaps of our soteriological scheme.

And there are other Limbo cases. What about an undiscovered tribe who had never heard the Good News? What about our own versions of virtuous pagans? For example, in Rob Bell's famous video rolling out his book Love Wins, he raised the question of Gandhi. "Is Gandhi in hell?" Rob asks.

My point here is that we all have our Limbo situations, border cases that seem to fall through the cracks of our soteriological systems.

And like Dante, we all have our patches.