When I was ten my parents bought me a rebuix cube for my birthday. Little did they know that this little plastic toy would cause me so much anguish. I worked at it every night for months and it just seemed to get more and more confusing. I could get one side lined up and the other side was scrambled like eggs. Then when I tried to fix the other side it of course scrambled the side I had matched up. I was obsessed. My every waking thought was of the rubix cube. I would watch kids on TV solving them in 10 min. How could this be. What part of the puzzle did they have, or better what was lacking in my brain that I couldn’t figure out this enigma. I finaly asked my dad to buy me a book. Surely this would solve my problem and I could move on with life. But the book was as confusing as the rubix cube. It had something to do with working the corners. Either way the best I ever did was line up one side. I finally gave up and sat it on the dresser. It would stare at me at night and I felt a certain guilt when I walked past it each day. I wondered what was wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to be solving the puzzle. One day I walked past it and I couldn’t stand the condemnation any longer. I picked it up and peeled the stickers off and aranged them as if the puzzle had been done correctly. I thought this would give me some satisfaction and it did for a time. I somehow fooled my mind into thinking I had solved it, but slowly reality crept in and it made me sick to look at it. I cheated and I knew it. But did I throw it out and get rid of the evidence of my dishonesty? No I sat it on a shelf so when people came into my room they would see the solved rubix cube and congratulate me.

Well so goes my life. A endless series of Rubix cubes, and I can safely say I have figured none of them out. I go through the same process as I did as a child. I work at it for awhile. When I can’t figure it out I buy a book. When that utterly fails I take the stickers off and arrange them to show the world a solved puzzle. These cubes start piling up after awhile. And sometimes the veneer of my lie slides to the side and I see all the lies, all the failure and I simply can’t take the pain. Surely there is something wrong with me. Surely there is a flaw in my very being. Or maybe everyone else is taking the stickers off and just not telling me, though I don’t think this is true, It comforts me sometimes to think everyone is lying.

The mountain of puzzles beneath me will probably go unsolved for now. I don’t think it is a question of will power. I have lots of will power. I think the problem is I hide that I hide the fact that I can’t solve them. Maybe if I would of left it on the shelf unsolved, people would still accept me and I would feel better about myself. Maybe if I leave the puzzles of my life on the shelf unsolved, I will still be loved by someone, and I wouldn’t have to feel like a damn bastard. The puzzle of my life has become so impossibly complex that no one could solve it but a God. A higher being that knows how to work the corners as the book said. My sticker trick only made them more complex, because now I don’t know the right place for the right colors any more. This time I’ll set the cube on the shelf and wait for a miracle.

The truth is we all have our own puzzle to solve in this life and no one can solve it but us. We may buy a book or seek wisdom from the wise but all they can tell you is how they solved there puzzle and there puzzle is not your puzzle. You might find some tips that help but in the end we are alone in this journey and we will face God alone, naked, with our rubix cube in hand.

Who has not had a uncle, brother, loved one who in the tradition of Christianity was doomed to eternal hell? Can you think of being eternally joyful, playing with the lion and the lamb while sweet cousin Joe is burning in endless flames. Does not the mere mention of such a detestable circumstance  rub raw against the image of God inside you. I seriously doubt that many Christians still truly believe this evil doctrine of men. The thought of it almost escapes our wildest imaginations of evil. If we still did believe it, we would still be forcing conversions by the sword due to our love for others. And, what kind of God does this fashion? The thinking man will know from consideration and scripture that God is portrayed as all-knowing and all-powerful. If you put these two attributes together you have a God that had the power to create billions of souls and the knowledge that the mass majority would bare unspeakable torcher at his all-benevolent hands.  Do not repay evil for evil, the scripture says. Is God above his own moral law? Or should I say bellow…

Ages and Eternity

We then come to the problem verses which speak of eternal fires and punishment. This site has already laid out some good doubts of our interpretation and I would suggest the book called  Hope Beyond Hell for further reading, but I’m not going to go much into these verses because I see them as implicit, and everyone knows you interpret the implicit with the explicit, so we will look at the over all narrative of scripture. But I will bring up how most Christians deal with the agony of eternal torcher and give it a gospel spin. First you must ask, how can there be an infinite punishment for a non-infinante (Finite) crime. This goes against everything we know to be justice. And it also, as we will see, goes against the biblical definition of justice. They way the eternal hell proponents get around this messy situation is by adding a new penalty to God’s attribute of “justice,” But they do this without the help of the bible. It’s not written in the bible anywhere that a sin against a infinite requires infinite punishment. Quiet to the contrary, God’s systems of justice seem to be there for rehabilitation and fairness. If someone takes your goat, you take thier goat…if someone pokes out your eye, you poke out their eye. The hell proponents somehow elevate the sin when it is against God. They say that his attribute of Wrath (anger) must be satisfied against his enemies (uh! Love your enimies). But I ask, what about his attribute of omni benevolence, where is it hanging out when all this is going on, It must be satisfied to, as well as his love of mercy and desire (will) to forgive. Lastly, where does this leave Christ’s perfect sacrifice… was it not perfect? Was God’s wrath not quenched and Christ the victor over death? This leaves Christ trying to get it up on the wedding night and Adam with a raging hard on. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. – 1 Corinthians 15:22. This great battle of the ages to claim “that which was lost” is, in their view, the greatest failure of all time. If hell is eternal death, then death won a place in the King’s court. “Oh death where is thy sting.” Adam and Satan are the victor in this story. I think a better sense of God’s juctice can be found in the book of Lamentations: “For no one is cast off by the Lord forever.” Can I take that as a true statement? Or must I juggle and muggle it up till it makes no sense at all.

God the Father

Is not God the Father of all men? ”Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” Mal. 2:10. God is not only our Father, he is a better father than us bozos on earth. Luke 11: 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” This is a picture of the kind of Father God is. I borrow from Thomas Whittemore - “A kind Father will not punish his children but for their good. God is evidently called the Father of all men in the Scriptures, and this is not an unmeaning name; he has the disposition and principles of a Father. He loves with a Father’s love; he watches with a Father’s care; he reproves with a Father’s tenderness; he punishes with a Father’s design. God is the Father of all men; and, therefore, he cannot make mankind endlessly miserable.”

This is just my pondering, and I think there is plenty of scriptural evidence to ponder so to err on the side of Grace to all. Those that have a disdain for this outlook, should look at themselves. What in them is satisfied to know that their brothers and sisters are going to suffer eternal torment. Even Hitler, does that really satisfy something in you. I must remind you that “ALL will be judged by the deeds done in the flesh…and repaid accordingly”. I think there is hope beyond the grave because God is not Partial. Is God Partial to the western world? It sure seems like it. we’re the only ones up until this age to have the saving knowledge. Is he partial to those that have knowledge? Is he partial to a select few he preordained? Is he partial to those that believe the right things?

Deuteronomy 10:17-19 says, “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partialand takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.”

Acts 10:34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.

I for one think the bible is hopelessly contradictory in it’s content, so depending on your propensity to study and your intellect, you can almost walk away with anything you want from it. I’ll leave those that want “eternal life for all” a few verses to chew on. Notice the “ALLs.”

1 Corinthians 15:22-23:

      “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming.”

Romans 5:18

      “So, as through one offense, there resulted condemnation to all men, so also, through one righteous deed, there resulted justification of life to all men.”

John 12:32: ”But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

1 Timothy 2:4-6: “who desires (wills) all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all…”

2 Pet. 3:9: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

“or it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”

“As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek. 33:11)

“Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created”. (Rev. 4:11)

who wants (desires) all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (If God desires something, does he get it, or is he left wanting. )

(Isaiah 55:11) “I WILL DO ALL MY PLEASURE” (God get’s what he desires)

“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, WHICH HE HATH PURPOSED IN HIMSELF, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him”. (Eph. 1:9-10)

SPOILER. It was a very lazy saturday. A day where my feet barely touch the ground. I had watched four lack luster movies and was in a zombie like state when the last one, Thor, stumbled to a overly done Hollywood ending. I’d been saving the new Liam Neeson movie, The Grey, for last. I’m a big fan of Neeson and couldn’t wait to see this nature thriller.

I’d been, as I usually am, in a funk. Not quiet suicidal, but wishing for a bad report from the doctor funk. Feeling not quiet alive and not quiet dead. Wondering why I have pinkies and can contemplate such questions. Why am I alive? What is life? I used to look to smarter people than I to answer these questions, but as of late I had lost hope that they knew the answer. After all they are as blind as I am in this consciousness of fools. In the early years of my life I had it nailed down. I knew what happened after death. I knew why we were alive and why we died. But suddenly, in the face of real adult life, all the wisdom of my youth blurred and turned into a mushy pond where your feet get stuck with every step, asking such questions as: How do I know this is true? How do I know what I see, hear, feel, and touch is meaningful and has purpose. That was the big word, purpose. By nature we are purposeful people. We do things because we think the do matter, otherwise nothing will get done. And, I live like I have purpose most of the times. But every once in awhile I’ll walk into this wall of enlightenment where I can see the world and myself from a different angle, it’s so quick that I can’t grasp what I see, all I do take away from these moments is fear. Fear that maybe it’s not under control. Maybe we are nothing more than organisms like weeds growing up and flourishing in the sun for a season and consciousness is just a part of biological nature.

That brings me back to The Grey. I loved the movie and I have specifically watched the ending at least 20-30 times. Just rewinding and rewinding. I watch the ending at work sometimes too, but that’s dangerous for me because it can throw me into a depression. I see something in that ending, when he is going through the wallets of all the dead guys, that I can’t explain. It is like a spiritual experience when I watch it. Each time I get goosebumps and feel light but my heart heavy. There is something about our journey in this ending, that we watch people dying all around us, we see like the pictures of “meaningful” lives, loved ones, precious moments in time, gone in an instant. And what was it all for. They died by the wolves, like we die by the wolves of death that hunt us through canyons of life until they are finally at our throats. Then he comes to his own wallet. He sees that his pictures of life are no different than the others stacked in the snow. We see him thinking back to his wife, and what you had once thought it was a beautiful moment in bed, was actually her dying. That is our state of being, death all around us and ours looming ahead. He recites a poem that his father had written. “Once more into the fray. The last fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day.” The poem captures for me the fight to have control. Just some semblance of control in our lives. Just like a kid will pump out his cheeks every once and awhile and say “no’” this is my ground, this tiny spot right here is mine. The question is are you going to tape the liquor bottles in your hand and fight this thing called death or are you gonna give up and let it take you. My question is does it matter either way. The man who fights is dead and the man who runs is dead.

When I get thinking like this I have to go back to my roots, Christianity, or I will go crazy and drive off a bridge. Some call religion a crutch, and I do use it like that sometimes, but it’s more than a crutch, it’s our only hope. I think you have to be crazy, un-human to walk out into that darkness of a purposeless existence. Those that claim to do it I admire for their bravery though most of them still cling to some higher purpose be it science or family or the human story. I taste purposeless life on occasion and it’s too dark a hole for me to even contemplate. But these dim thoughts surround me daily-these wolves. I wish I could say I’m a fighter, but I’m not, I more like the wounded guy that got carried during dinner.

I drink a bitter coffee
black, the way I wish
two days old, I drink it cold
to shame the loneliness

I eat a pickled sausage
not even on a dish
in a robe, no one to scold
to shame the loneliness

I watch the television
blank, and pictureless
I sit and stare, who would care
to shame the loneliness

I sleep like in a coffin
dreaming of a kiss
in my clothes, shoes and soles
to shame the loneliness

My hope for old
when floors are cold
we lay with no regret

like blowing trees
arms and knees 
tangled tide of sweat

when all would think
the sun has drank
all passion from the breast

our secret soul
still sexual
put weary bones to test

grandchildren laugh
we take a bath
and tell them not to listen

they’ll roll their eyes
and act surprised
when wrinkled folks are kiss’n

you’ll tease my lips
with naughty nips
and tell me to be slow

my heart would blast
could be the last
what better way to go

to meet the end
two old friends
that know each hidden part

who’ve loved a life
man and wife
with tangled little hearts

The softest part of a woman

Is not where you may think

Behind the ears

in the mouth

or lips of petal pink

inside the knee

inner thigh

you still have not to find

the tender place…it’s not her face

or curve against the spine

her finger tips bloom of hips

the nipple, or the eyes

beneath the breast

just a test

to know you really tried

I just put down a podcast that used the word “relevant,” about a hundred times… this mixed with “radical” seems to get the justices flowing in your average Christian. Me? I’m ready for some new catch phrases, these are about 5 years old now.

I have’nt done any comics lately mostly because I just don’t feel funny. My wife would say I never was, but funny or not, here is the latest Merl Tob Comic. Enjoy!

This is not an attempt at a technical review of Melancholia, but more of a personal reflection on what this movie and Lars von Trier other movie Anti Christ have done to my soul. Of course there are no souls in Trier films, but I find that the impact that they have on me is a testament, at least to me, that I have a soul.

Melancholia succeeds where another epic movie this year, Tree of life, fails. It’s so hard through these two eyes and this little selfish brain, to step out side of myself and really try to comprehend the big picture. To think of our infinite smallness in such a vast universe. To somehow reconcile a wedding and it’s importance to us, and the farthest lonely planet of a seemingly endless emptiness of space. Melancholia does about as good of job as can be done in tossing our little circle of life into the great boiling pot of the void of millions of miles of darkness around us.

Trier’s movies are bad for me. I’m like an alcoholic knowing one drop can send me over the edge, but my drug is meaninglessness. His movies, like Ecclesiastics send me into a bad place. Melancholia, like Anti Christ, are as dark as it gets. And they plunge me into the secret fears that I try hard to hide. That constant refrain in ecclesiastics, “Meaningless, It’s all meaningless.. or vanity, or useless, which ever translation you use, rings in my ears day and night.

Melancholia is a Ecclesiastical view of life. That it is all meaningless. That what we do on this earth and in our little circle of life is laughable compared to the grander of emptiness around us. During the Part one of the film, I turned to my wife and said, I know this man, I know what he feels. He feels evil, and he thinks everyone else is evil, they just don’t know it. He’s saying the crazy one is actually the sane one, and the sane are crazy, because they live as if the world around them makes sense. And, the world is crazy.

I too feel that evil in me, like at Kirsten Dunst‘s wedding, I too am running around in this “sane” dramatic play humping on the golf course, fighting with the void inside me to act normal, because Kiefer Sutherland has invested so much in me. Kiefer makes a deal with Kirsten for him paying for the wedding, “be happy.” “Please just be happy,” I hear all around me chanting. “Don’t be so dark,” they say. Just run around and drink wine on the teras as the world ends. Think of your 18 hole golf course and blind yourself to the infinite darkness around you. Sedate your mind with the riches this world has to offer and turn away from the reality that thousands of Melancholias are crashing into the earth every day (death.)

“this world is evil,” Dunsts says, “life on earth is evil, no one will miss us.” It seems that this is not something that can be derived from just nature, this idea that not only am I evil, but everyone is evil. This smacks of the bible. I can say that I am evil because I know myself very well, but to come up with the idea that the very nice and benevolent Sutherland is evil, takes some kind of philosophy. I learn that not only I am evil, but all are evil from the pages of the bible. That puts me in the predicament Dunst is in. I know I’m evil, because I can’t contain it. But what about these people that do contain it? The answer is they do just that, contain it, with various devices.

In Melancholia, I feel there is several different ways of dealing with the same meaninglessness of life. There is the seemingly blissfully un-aware like Sutherland, then the sentimental dependent like Charlotte Gainsbourg, but the hero (which isn’t revealed until the end) is Dunst’s character. The one who looks at life’s vanity straight on and doesn’t flinch. She is the truly sane one because she doesn’t live in the delusion and she also knows what is more important at the end when Melancholia is about to end all existence. The answer is alleviation of pain.. at least in my eyes. Gainsbourg tries to hold on to the threads of sentimentality in the face of inhalation, which shows that her relationship with her son is really a facade, her love, it’s only a projection of her sentimentality which further proves her evil intent.

Like I said, this movie really fucked me up for a few days. This atheistic worldview is attractive to me for some reason. I think it started from a desire that there would be no God. Because I know, if there is a God, I’m in trouble. Because I’m the evil puzzle that all around me are trying to solve like Gainsbourg in Anti Christ. But in my times of sanity, or insanity, I don’t know which, I know that Trier is wrong. I know that there is a part three after the earth explodes. I think my wife said it best, “that’s it?” When the final scene comes, the earth destroyed, it fades to black, and thats the end. My wife was waiting for one more scene..I honestly don’t know what, but I think we all long for that next scene, and I think, if we’re honest with ourself, know that that is not it. Your soul will never fade to black and the credits role. It’s in this place, in the anticipation of a sequel that I need to live. Melancholia offers only one thing, the same thing Anti Christ offered, a great chasm of emptiness that as nietzsche said, no true atheist can avoid.

have you ever written a poem, a song, painted a picture, or anything else artistic and said to yourself, I just to talked to God. Have you then realized that no one will see or know this piece of art. Do you ask yourself why even do it. My counselor tells me the art is more for me than anyone else. I can’t swollow that. Today, I decided to write a song live on facebook. The song is simple, but it says everything I have wanted to say for years… and there it will sit. All alone, with no ears to hear. I know that God visited me when I wrote it. Maybe I should be satisfied with that. Well whatever. here it is:

God created eve with a sin in her heart.. the garden was good, but she wanted art