Well, good morning from Hell again.
I know you are wondering how I can call this Hell if I can’t even talk about our duly elected president, Congress, and his appointed and confirmed courts. I have dismissed him and his Space-Cadet-in-Chief from our discussion because it would be altogether too easy to assign them all the blame, remove them from office someday, and we would still have — Hell. Even if we rid ourselves of the governing powers in Texas. Yes, still Hell.
Obviously I’m not talking about an eternity in that fiery underground furnace we heard about as children or the one considered credible by many Christians, but the one we live in every day. Even if we include Texas politics, we wouldn’t quite drop to that level. And it does promise to be another hot summer in Texas here south of town.
The hell I’m talking about and the one we live in today and every day is the one:
— Where people’s rights are extinguished by the power of the state. That’s one aspect of the hell of everyday life in this world. If you don’t feel that this applies to you, good for you. But it is still hell for most of the people inhabiting our planet, including many who live in this country. Yes — our citizens, too.
— Where weapons are easily accessible and where teenagers use them to settle arguments and to express their frustrations with the institutions they encounter on a daily basis, or even their parents. Where they use them, not for sport, but to kill. That’s another aspect of Hell. If your child has not been shot at school or shot someone, it’s still Hell that you live in every day even if it comes your way only as fear or maybe the guilt you feel for being a part of a civic culture that has allowed it.
— Where there is starvation on a prosperous and resource-rich planet. Where low-cost, starchy, fat-laden, salty and sugar-loaded fast foods fill the diets of children instead of balanced meals around family tables. Where many children in other parts of our planet simply starve to death. Not even a McDonald’s to fill their stomachs.
— Where people suffer and die needlessly in a nation, indeed a world, of seemingly limitless medical knowledge and ability. It’s what happens in Hell.
— Where we encourage some to profit from our burning fuel that exhausts a suffocating gas into the air — air that is no less than the essence of God’s breath.
— Where religions persist in holding onto conflicting beliefs that are no longer of service to either man or God, then dedicate themselves to wiping out those who disagree with them. People are left searching for the moral and unifying leadership that could help them find a better life for themselves and all the other people on the planet. And while they search, the princes of Hell have their way.
This was a hell that existed long before we allowed any particular political leadership to come to power. All of it was building for all the millennia of our existence. We might even have found a name for it — call it original sin. And no, there are no exceptions. We all own it. We either enjoy its supposed benefits or we enjoy profits from the production and distribution of Hell’s products.
And all political parties and all countries own it. It was not invented by the Republicans or the Democrats. Nor was it invented by our duly elected president. He has just openly enjoyed its perfection for his own benefit more than any other president. A $400,000,000 luxury airliner from a foreign power he does business with through his family? Only a loser would say, “No, thank you” and walk away.
Many of us were taught to think of sin in individual and sexual terms. But that is so limiting. And it leaves us free to benefit from all the pleasures Hell can produce for a few at the expense of the many — the least, the last and the lost.
Think about the House version of the Big Beautiful Budget and tax bill. Huge tax breaks for billionaires and more modest ones for middle class people, paid for in part by cuts to Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps) and other vital services for low income families and individuals. If you are one of the middle class Christian voters whose silence is bought by those minuscule tax cuts, square that with your Holy Communion prayer:
Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This Hell has many aspects that this little essay does not even touch. Privatization of almost anything for profit. Prisons. Schools. Monetary systems. Wanna buy a $trump memecoin? Now, there’s a Ponzi scheme that operates at an international level right out of our Oval Office.
Yes, it dawned here in Hell this morning, already sunny to partly cloudy and hot. And it’s promising to get even even hotter over the years and centuries.
Some in this hell have worked every day to perfect automata that can survive our physically frail humanity with an artificial intelligence unweighted by thoughts of beauty, justice, love and altruism — each one of them a winner designed and encased to thrive in whatever climate and temperature Hell might serve up.
Humanity, as we know it, is but a distant memory in the circuits of whatever it is that may survive us. Maybe the robots of the future will think of the humanity of the past as God. More likely, they will have been programmed to see us as a bunch of losers.
But there was a man in our history who tried to help us understand what people do when motivated solely by self-interest. He taught that there was a better way to live — we could make this into heaven, here and now. We could all learn much from his teaching. Think about that and find a place to attend a service this coming Sunday.
There were leaders who founded other religions and denominations teaching similar concepts. But Jesus is the one I have studied more fully as a United Methodist Christian.
If worship doesn’t appeal to you, think of it as study. See if you can identify that church’s vision of heaven from the songs, sermons, prayers and the welcoming behavior of the people you meet. If the vision you see does not seem consistent with the vision of the gospels, maybe you should find another church, denomination, or even religion. There are other religions whose practices are more consistent with the teachings of Jesus than those of a good many nominally Christian churches and denominations. And, in any case, God’s grace reaches out to all mankind.
And if you can’t quite bring yourself to get up and go to church somewhere, come back here on Monday and I’ll do the preaching.
South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast 