N.T. "Tom" Wright & Heaven

This interview only proves to me how screwed up religion is. When, and it will never happen, they can all get together and agree on what a "True Christian" really is, don't bother me.

They wonder why people like me reject everything the clergy preaches. They themselves reject each others interpretations.

There has been alot of talk about Heaven and Hell. Billy Graham says there is no hell and now Tom says there is no heaven. I agree with both of them, but I go one step further and think there is no God either. (the biblical god for sure) Can you really blame me?

2,000 or so years later, still nothing makes sense to anyone.

N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.
It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different."
Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.
TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."
Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.
TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.
Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.
TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?
Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.
TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?
Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.
TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?
Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.
TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?
Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.
TIME: Can you give some historical examples?
Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.
TIME: But it's not.
Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.
TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.
Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.
TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.
Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.
TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.
Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.
TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?
Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

Claptrap

It is very sad and horrible to read about the 55 dead due to tornadoes.

Then I get mad and disgusted with the usual claptrap in the news reports

claptrap
n : pompous or pretentious talk or writing [syn: bombast, fustian,
rant, blah]
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) Claptrap \Clap"trap`\, n.
1. A contrivance for clapping in theaters. [Obs.]
2. A trick or device to gain applause; humbug.Claptrap \Clap"trap`\, a.
Contrived for the purpose of making a show, or gaining
applause; deceptive; unreal.

1. "It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground,” said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter.

Is Phil saying God did this? and why?

2. President Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency center in Georgia.“Loss of life, loss of property; prayers can help, and so can the government,” Bush said. “I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them.”

Ok, George! which God? again why? for whom? The dead? the injured? to ask God to stop it!? To ask for forgivness for whatever they the victoms did to deserve this? "prayers can help"? What does that mean? Help who? More claptrap from our pious president.

3. Near St. Vincent, Ark., Shannon Barnes said he, his mother and her husband took shelter in her basement. But the wind pulled the door open and nearly sucked them out.“We prayed to Jesus. We prayed. That’s why we’re here,” Barnes said. “There ain’t much more to say than that.”

This bugs me the most. Is Shannon is implying God did not hear or ignored those who prayed and died anyway?

Westboro Sued

BALTIMORE - A federal judge has reduced by more than half the amount of damages that a fundamentalist Kansas church must pay to the father of a Marine who was killed in Iraq.

The Westboro Baptist Church and three of its members, who picket military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality, must pay Albert Snyder damages of $5 million for emotional distress and invasion of privacy, U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett ruled Monday. The original jury award in October was $10.9 million.

Bennett's ruling cited the need to weigh any harm Snyder suffered against the financial resources of the church.
Snyder sued the Topeka, Kan., church after a 2006 demonstration at the Maryland funeral of his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder. He claimed the demonstration intruded upon what should have been a private ceremony and sullied his memory of the event.

A jury agreed, and in October found the church and three of its leaders — Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis — liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.

The church's appeal of the verdict is still pending.

Mr. Wise is archaic per Mary

Wise’s rants
By Mary 01/31/08
I find it super frustrating that Dr. William Wise continues to “rant” in the Helena IR about sex education when clearly the man hasn’t updated his own knowledge with current facts in what seems to be a long time.

He ends his rant with, “In Uganda, where abstinence ed before marriage and monogamy after marriage has been taught, it is the only sub-Saharan county to achieve a decrease in HIV/AIDs statistics.” WHAT? In Uganda they probably kill women who have sex before they are married and stone them to death for allegedly being unfaithful to their beloved husbands at the age of what, 16, 17? I find this comparison to be as archaic as Mr. Wise’s ideology.

Mr. Wise, I know you really believe that informing and educating our youth on fact based sex education is “encouraging” them to have sex at younger and younger ages, but that simply isn’t true. You are cherry picking a statistic here and a statistic there. If your theories were right and all we had to do is tell our youth to please abstain from sex until you are married don’t you think we would all happily do that? It simply doesn’t work like that, sir.

Children's Prayers and more cute comments

3-year-old Reese :
'Our Father, Who does art in heaven,
Harold is His name
Amen.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little boy was overheard praying:
'Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it.
I'm having a real good time like I am.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After the christening of his baby brother in church,
Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.
His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied,
'That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home,
and I wanted to stay with you guys.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One particular four-year-old prayed,
'And forgive us our trash baskets
as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
'And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?' One bright little girl replied,
'Because people are sleeping.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3.
The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.
Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
'If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,
'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,
' Ryan , you be Jesus !'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A father was at the beach with his children
when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore
where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
'Daddy, what happened to him?' the son asked.
'He died and went to Heaven,' the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said,
'Did God throw him back down?'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A wife invited some people to dinner.
At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said,
'Would you like to say the blessing?'
'I wouldn't know what to say,' the girl replied.
'Just say what you hear Mommy say,' the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said,
'Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?'