"Double Resurrection"

April 2, 2014

The reflection booklet suggests that the infamous goats in the story of Judgment Day (or at least, the goats of this day and age) have the following problem: they mind too much the concerns of the present, but not the future.

I think this is missing the real problem.  How much better is it, really, if you only do good deeds for future reward?  In an absolute sense, of course, it's better for the world, but does it really make your soul shine the brighter?  If you're building a mansion in heaven in your mind right now, not a Habitat for Humanity?

I think religion doesn't work if it's Carrot and Stick.  Perhaps just not on the sheep/goats of my generation.  Perhaps this stuff worked.  Classic books suggest that it worked once.  It's persistence with older generations suggests that at least it's familiar and considered solid.  But -- I don't think that the problem is our attention to the present.  After all, that's the only place in which ANYTHING can actually HAPPEN.

I've written before about the problem with religion being becoming obsessed with the Past -- tradition followed blindly and a quick hop to golden age thinking -- or the Future -- longing for the end times and the rapture when you will watch smugly as everyone else is Judged Unworthy in revenge for your current wrongs.  True religion exists not just in but FOR the Present.  For now.

Put another way -- I listen to a science podcast Radiolab which once did a show on time that discussed the theory that our passage through time is not a shifting progression but simply us moving from one eternal instant to the next.  Every second, individually, has always been and will always be.  In that second, we remember the second that came "before" and so act accordingly.  The hosts agonized that this meant our future was already written so nothing mattered.  Nothing mattered because we couldn't change it.

All I could think was how MUCH it mattered.  Because everything you are doing right now, you will be doing it FOREVER.  Every choice you make, you will be making FOREVER.  Every pain and suffering that we let happen in the eternal now will be happening FOREVER.  Not just forever after but forever before.  As infinite as the universe itself.  Probably, anyway.

I think about that theory a lot when I want to convince myself to take the plunge on something.

What I call out for is not a promise of a better world in heaven or fear of a worse world in hell.  That's not what gets me out trying to change the world.  It's the thought that right now people are suffering -- that right now is when the world is becoming better or worse.  Closer to the New Jerusalem, closer to Hell on Earth.  All I am waiting for is for you to tell me how I can make a difference right now.  What can I do right now to solve right now problems?

The problem with goats is not that they don't see the future clearly.  It's that they don't see the present widely.  They don't see the trees or the forest for their own stuff going on inside their heads.  Me too, of course, or I wouldn't know that.  It's not a problem of not wanting the Carrot or not fearing the Stick.  It's about not seeing the eternal now and all that they could be doing with it.