Short Sleeves: And Other Ways of Exciting the Adventist Imagination about Modesty

We need to reignite our conversation on dress reform. We might as well toss in other combustible conversations like make-up, wedding rings, and jewelry, because the world is in dire need of the warmth that could be created by stirring those graying embers. The heartless glow that remains is a sad testimony to the bonfire that once roared in the Adventist camp.

But this time the conversation will be different. We need to move from hoop skirts to board shorts; from the “reform dress” Ellen White helped design to the Ellen White T-shirts groups like AdventWear design. But we can’t stay there. To wear tank tops or not can’t be the point. This conversation won’t be kindled on charges of a widespread “worldliness” that needs to be purged from our ranks. It won’t do us any good to lobby for Aeropostale and Gap to re-label their clothes as “Adventist kosher” or “heathen.” Rather, we need to focus on the unique perspectives Adventism brings to the table. For that we need to take a step back.

Playing with Fire

When I went to grade school (not at an Adventist school), there was a dress code. To say that it was religiously enforced would be literal truth. There was a ruler. If a skirt was thought to be too short, a teacher might pull a girl aside and a measure just to be safe. An inch above the knee was modest. Two inches was not.

The fire—this conversation on dress, jewelry, etc.—is supposed to keep us warm, but not to burn us. And when you have to lean in so close to literally measure modesty, then you’re likely to get burned. It’s not comfortable sitting so close to the fire.

Modesty is a principle, not a principal. Modesty isn’t someone with authority dictating hem lines and sleeve lengths to us. For that reason, we’ll always be debating the spiritual efficacy of short sleeves and that’s okay. It’s when the discussion stops and the fire dies that everyone starts to get cold.

We need to keep challenging each other to carve out a place for ourselves in society and to figure out what it means to be fashionable and modest. The two aren’t necessarily exclusive of each other, either. As Keith Lockhart and Malcolm Bull note in their great study of Adventism, Seeking a Sanctuary, “any general comparison of Adventist fashion and ‘worldly’ fashion in the last one hundred years or so will indicate that there is little external difference.” The authors note that despite the crossfire over minute details of dress, Adventist fashion hasn’t been frozen in time like other religious groups. That’s because the discussion is based in a sincere desire to please God.

The same pair of authors, after describing the broad Adventist objections to “worldly” dress, jewelry, fiction, dancing, etc. add this brilliant observation: “The purpose of these bitter denunciations was not so much to reject these art forms altogether, however, but to make room for their Adventist alternatives.”(2) This is a description as much as it is a prescription. In other words, we must be careful not just to tear down but to build also. What does an Adventist Christian vision look like?

A Wilderness Sanctuary

Lockhart and Bull point out that Adventism’s objections to many of these art forms was that they were incompatible with the church’s concept of time and space. The church wanted to keep people focused on “real” time, and not to escape to competing timelines. In the same way, many of Ellen White’s spiritual objections to many forms of dress were due to her belief that Adventists ought to be living holistically and connectedly. There could be no such thing as a private religion. A Christian’s eschatology informed everything from business decisions to wardrobe choices. Adventism wasn’t just church on Sabbath, it was a worldview, a lifestyle, and you had to embrace it completely.

This is the Adventist offering to the larger, historical discussion on questions like dress and jewelry. It’s never been about why theaters are evil or why dancing is “a school of depravity.” Rather it’s an ongoing struggle with Jacob’s angel about how we can live connected to and yet uniquely within our societal context. The discussion begins with the question, “how does my faith impact what I wear?” and moves out from there. It’s more than a theoretical discussion, and so it moves naturally onto the practical plane. We should expect it to interfere and challenge us in the day-to-day decisions we’re forced to make. We shouldn’t be allowed to move on uncritically, never having given much thought on the topic. Adventism forces us to recognize that it’s bigger than a day, and present with us even as we are focused on the future.

Adventism’s unique contribution to a discussion on modesty is in tying with every other facet of faith: eschatology along with ethics; stewardship as well as salvation. We are naturally compelled by statements like one Peter made: “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God.”(3) This falls in line with the fact that Adventism has always been a desert sanctuary rather than a hilltop temple. Adventism is temporary but not temporal. We’re following truth as it is progressively revealed. Peter’s comment is just one example of “truth” that is gaining gravity as we near the end of time. Likewise, Adventism itself acquires urgency as it moves closer to its own Promised Land: the Second Coming. It’s moving, and our theological reflections should embody that as well.

The discussion on modesty isn’t about finding ways to intrude in the lives of the everyday Christian. Rather, it is a necessary avenue the global mission of Adventism must take in light of its message. Adventism could not be consistent with itself if it remained contained within itself. So we shouldn’t feel ashamed in participating in a discussion that ended for many faith communities a century ago.(4) In a climate where Christianity is increasingly being pressured into being for private practice only, Adventism’s message of connectedness and wholeness is needed now more than ever. Let’s start this fire again.

So how about those short sleeves…

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[1] Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day -Adventism and the American Dream. Indiana University Press, 2006, p 232.

[2] Ibid, 233.

[3] 2 Peter 3:11, 12, TNIV.

[4] Bacchiocchi notes, among other things, that many churches that had dress requirements in their manuals in the 19^th century dropped them by the 1940’s. See Samuele Bacchiocchi, Christian Dress and Adornment. Biblical Perspectives, 2004.

Faith and Faerie – Fairy Ideals

"What are you crying for?" asked he. "You look so ugly! There's nothing the matter with me. Ah," said he at once, "that rose is cankered! And look, this one is quite crooked! After all, these roses are very ugly! They are just like the box they are planted in!" And then he gave the box a good kick with his foot, and pulled both the roses up.

- Hans Christian Anderson, The Snow Queen

Liz Grauerholz, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida, teamed up with Lori Baker-Sperry, an assistant professor of women's studies at Western Illinois University to “study how beauty is written about in fairy tales and whether stories with beautiful princesses are more likely to be popular.” Dr. Grauerholz says “parents need to be aware that some stories tell children that unattractive people are more likely to be evil and reinforce traditional gender roles that may be confusing for today's young women.”

Grauerholz may have a point, for fairy tales certainly seem to be filled with simplistic imagery that doesn’t mirror reality. Good people are not always beautiful princesses, after all, and if you expect it to be that way you’ll be sorely disappointed. It gives young people an unreal set of experiences from which to base such life-changing decisions as who to love and who to trust. It almost dooms them to failure and rejection from the very beginning.

But I think Grauerholz has it backwards. Her intent is good, but it shows how little she really understands fairy stories. She says, for instance, that “fairy tales…say it pays to be pretty.” This is the complete opposite message of fairy stories. The real message of fairy stories is that being good means you become beautiful. (The reverse is also true, which is why the prince—lovely though he is—became a beast when he became evil.) The girl with no hands becomes queen because of her beauty, the story says, but is still called beautiful as a result of the fact that she is pious and lived three years without sin.

Fairy tales teach people that beauty is a result of their morality and not that beautiful people are innately moral. This is supported by the fact that the beautiful men and women in fairy stories are very seldom described. There is no “ideal” physical beauty in fairy stories. It does not say that women must weigh a certain amount and that men must be tall, dark, and handsome. So that leaves fairy tale critics to impose their definition of beauty (or the culture’s, if it differs) on the fairy tale and then complain that the fairy tale is upholding the stereotype, when it reality it is debunking it.

The idealism in fairy tales is meant to challenge the “realists” among us who argue that we ought to accept life the way it is and not delude ourselves. G.K. Chesterton makes a poignant observation about this when he says that “fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” In other words, the purpose of fairy stories isn’t to tell us how life is—as many critics seem to expect—but to tell us what life could (and should) be. In “reality” princes often marry princesses to forge alliances and unite nations, but in fairy stories princes and princesses very frequently marry commoners who are pure of heart. This is certainly not just a commentary but a critique of our world. It is not meant to shape our expectations about what is, but what should be. For critics to insist that fairy tales accurately portray “reality” (Grauerholz insists they must represent minorities and people of various sexual orientations) in the interest of educating children about “real life” is absolutely absurd. While her intentions are noble, it would certainly mean the end of fairy stories. If fairy tales are edited to remove things considered “incorrect” as compared with “reality,” what should remain? It would be the end of fairies and magic and the very worlds themselves!

Both Grauerholz and fairy stories want to change society’s ideas about things like beauty; both want to abolish “fantasy” and focus on “reality.” The difference between the two approaches is in how they define their terms. For Grauerholz, reality is life as we see it. For fairy stories, reality often exists where we don’t see it, and what we do see is often a fantasy. In The Snow Queen, for instance, a wicked sprite creates a mirror "with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked ugly was shown magnified and increased in ugliness.” All the sprites who went to his school “told each other that a miracle had happened; and that now only, as they thought, it would be possible to see how the world really looked.” At some point the sprites accidently broke the mirror and pieces of it blew around the world, lodging in peoples’ eyes and hearts. This caused them to see ugliness everywhere and to feel it in their hearts.

This story is the fairy explanation for how the world came to be as it is. This is why we cannot trust “reality” as it is defined by our senses. We do not see things as they truly are, for we cannot perceive spiritual things and thus we cannot see how true beauty emanates from the heart. This is why the Bible speaks of Christ’s revelation as that of light piercing darkness, as a veil being taken away. Unlike the sociologist’s approach which accounts only for that which we can see, the fairy view operates by what is unseen, for it believes the Bible when it says that “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

According to Faerie, we have all been infected by the shards of the sprite’s mirror. It is what caused Kay to rip up the roses and call his sister ugly. The shards of the mirror likewise cause us to do things that, to an outsider, appear contradictory and absurd. Kay called beauty ugliness and while he still clung to the idea of beauty, he cannot find it anywhere. Kay was trapped in this condition until the pursuant love of his sister drove her to him and with her tears she cured him. It is not enough to accept reality as what we can see. There is something more, a depth that lies in what we cannot see. This is what fairy tales teach us: that beauty, like reality, is not just skin deep.

Faith and Faerie: Fairy Magic

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

- Ralph Ellison

What we call magic saturates fairy tales and their worlds. It helps Cinderella find a dress for the ball or an offended fairy turn some mischievous child into a toad. It is the power by which princesses find their amphibian-in-waiting princes and by which princes such a Tristan are led into a tragic sort of love. It always takes different forms, but magic is essential to a fairy story. It is the catalyst for unexpected turns. However, the morality of magic depends on the intent of the user.

Magic elevates the mundane and awards it a robe of splendor to the point where even a lamp post is a marvel in Narnia. The lowly maid, though persecuted for her purity, is by some stroke of fortune turned around instantly by the benevolent spell of some fairy godmother. Fairies and wizards—as wielders of this magic—become tokens of hope to people trapped in similar servitude, giving them to the courage to hope that at any moment someone might observe their plight and liberate them with a spell.

But others see the value of magic as the goal of their lust for power. Magic is, to them, something they covet for its ability to set them apart from their peers and thus make them powerful. They long to import magic into the primary world to achieve some sort of advantage, but in doing so they disrespect the laws of fairy worlds. Fairy magic does not work the same way in the primary world. It was intended for the imagination, and all who seek to wield it here through incantations and the like are necessarily villains and delusional. The sane ones are not those who don’t believe in magic, but who understand where it belongs.

For this reason it is important to distinguish between good magic and bad magic. Most magic is, in and of itself, amoral. Calling fire down from the sky is appropriate when it is in judgment of wickedness (such as Sodom and Gomorrah) but highly inappropriate when it is meant to harm innocents (such as the disciples wanted to burn the Samaritans). After all, if many of the things Jesus did—raising the dead, healing the sick, walking on water—is not magic in a proper sense then what is? Here, too, magic—or miracles, if you prefer—can be a catalyst of unexpected turns. The very essence and appeal of magic is in the idea that it breaks natural law. For this reason, miracles are really magic displayed in the primary world.

The role of magic in fairy stories varies from story to story. It can be wielded freely by fairies but characters like Gandalf and Aslan use it only as absolutely necessary. Jesus, too, used miracles only when necessary, spurning many opportunities when it would have saved him (and others) a lot of pain and frustration. Like Gandalf, it was only used when it fulfilled his mission.

Magic has played a pivotal role in our own salvation story as well. The “deeper magic,” as Lewis calls it, of the cross is something of a mystery to us. How exactly Christ’s death atoned for humanity’s sins is beyond our comprehension. Yet Christians consider it to be the greatest miracle/magic of all.

The magic in the secondary worlds, properly understood, gives us hope or warning towards the magic, or miracles, in the primary world. We may realize through Beauty and the Beast that, while you flaunt your avarice, a person may show up at any moment and turn you into a monster. This is really not an unreasonable expectation, for even Jesus warned in the parable of the rich fool that it could happen that “this night your soul will be required of you.” Ananias and Sapphira certainly had no idea that their fraud meant the end of their lives. At the same time, Snow White teaches us that even death can be overcome by love. The magic speaks to our eagerness for the miracle of the resurrection.

The truth is a healthy belief in the magic of fairy tales means that we take the miracles of the Bible very seriously. Because we don’t see Earth and fairy worlds as “true” and “untrue” but “true” in different ways, the lessons of fairy stories are examples of how God continues to work outside of recorded Scripture. The story of Eustace becoming a dragon in Narnia is very similar to the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar becoming a beast. Throwing fireballs out of a wand isn’t too different from fire coming down out of heaven. Isn’t teleportation the best word we’d use to describe Philip’s disappearance in the book of Acts?

Some astute reader might point out that the difference that in the primary world God works the miracles while in the secondary world it seems that any person can use magic. Again, this observation betrays our modern assumption that miracles belong in the past. Wasn’t it Moses who struck the rock twice—a direct violation of God’s command—and yet water still flowed? Wasn’t it Elijah who appeared in front of Ahab one day and said that there should be no rain in the land “except at my word”? I am not suggesting that these men had the inherent ability to do these things, but only that God surely offers the possibilities of miracles to those who will wholly submit themselves to him—which is altogether like the discipline of learning spells. He may not allow everyone to cast miracles—and not all can become wizards and witches either—but he does permit it. Perhaps we do not realize how magical Christianity really is. It is not, as many pretend, based on “reality” as we know it. In the end, it might be said that our bias against all magic has led us to doubt the existence of true magic—and so we do not have power that God offers us because we do not ask. But, then again, anything is possible.

Faith and Faerie: Fairy Ethics

“And I have my doubts whether this feeling of the free, wild spirits on the crest of hill or wave is really the central and simple spirit of folk-lore. I think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of the fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they have fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied because it is more moral.”

- G. K. Chesterton.

Fairy lands are the sandbox, as it were, where we can finger in our drawings of how our world ought to be. But you also must respect the laws of fairy land as well. Tolkien captures this contradiction by claiming that these worlds are both something we create as well as something we discover. This is why a woman can sit in front of a canvas she spent hours laboring over and stare for hours more at the end product. She knew what she was painting, but in the end she discovers her own work and is captivated by it. Likewise, we can become enchanted by our own enchantments. We are amazed at our own creativity, and the more of ourselves we pour into it the more we recognize it’s not really ourselves at work. There is something otherworldly, something divine about it. This is because we are sub-creators.

But we do not create simply to create; ars gratia artis is folly to fairies. Fairy worlds have rules just like ours. It is not a place of chaos, but has in place natural laws that are as tough to break as they are in the primary world. This is hard to imagine for some people, as these rules are often disguised by the fact we are so unfamiliar with the other worlds. Most people see fairies fluttering or hear tell of dragons and witches and assume that fairy land is a place of inverted reality—we make of it what we will. But it is, as G. K. Chesterton notes, not the case: “It is all very well to talk of the freedom of fairyland, but there was precious little freedom in fairyland by the best official accounts.” He is not saying that fairy land is a prison, only that it is governed by laws just as our world is. Chesterton goes on to elaborate: “If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other - the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.”

Cinderella is turned into a princess for the ball, but she must be home by midnight or else it all unravels; The prince can remain a person so long as he loves people; Bluebeard’s wife can open all the doors in the castle except one; a girl is given a jar she is told not to open, and when she does all the evils of the world rush out; a couple is put in a garden and told they can eat of every tree but one. The theme is consistent in so many fairy tales: you imperil all your happiness if you do the one forbidden thing. It is a replay of Eden, but instead of a tree our happiness is hinged upon the opening of a door or the observance of a curfew. It is a continual reminder that evil comes into the world when we choose to disobey.

For this reason, fairy tales are wonderful for teaching morality. The stories have an amazing ability to stick because they are not, historically, events from our world. They are fantastic and otherworldly, and their inherent morality roots itself not just in our mind but our imagination. We could say, “you reap what you sow” to a person, and while this is true on some level, it is more poignant to say, “remember what happened to the boy who tricked everyone, he was eventually tricked by the highwaymen”. It’s the same lesson, except now it’s encased in a narrative, with a setting and characters and faces and dialogue. Even though the tale comes from a place outside of history, it seems more real than a random fortune-cookie principle, true as it may be. This is, perhaps, why Jesus told so many stories. This is why he walked on water, healed the sick, and raised the dead. Jesus created the greatest story, and never missed an opportunity to help write the next chapter in someone else’s story as well.

People, I am convinced, were meant to learn by stories. We remember things best when we attach them to a story. We might preface a life principle we cherish by saying something like, “I remember when my dad passed this on to me, he grew very serious and looked me square in the eye….” Fairy tales manage to connect to the human story; we can actually relate to them. Jesus told us that he is the truth, meaning that it is not a fact or a statement, but a person. In other words, we can only relate to the truth. The truth came as he entered our story and made it irrevocably his.

And so it does not seem unreasonable to look for ethics outside of history, for we can see that good things—God Himself—entered from outside of history. These stories, like ripples in a pond, give us an indication that something stirs far off. Even these fairy worlds, which we have both discovered and made, operate by the same rules we do. The fact that they have the same rules means that the populace of these worlds can relate to us. A common ethic—despite disparity in nearly everything else—can unite our worlds. Chesterton weaves them together masterfully when he argued that “a burglar just about to open someone else's safe should be playfully reminded that he is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora: he is about to lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eating some one's apples in some one's apple tree should be a reminded that he has come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all others. This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from being lawless, go to the root of all law. Instead of finding (like common books of ethics) a rationalistic basis for each Commandment, they find the great mystical basis for all Commandments.”

Fairy tales are a slice of Eden. They help us recover a certain innocence and a simple perspective about morality: either I obey or I disobey and lose my happiness (or more). All choices, however we choose to make them complicated as we grow older, are ultimately shadows of the original choice. Fairy tales help us realize this. There are no convenient shades of sin, nothing venial or mortal, no white or gray lies. You either open the forbidden door or you don’t. And just when fairy tales have sundered your “adult” armor, they have the capacity to raise you into a different sort of adulthood: the child of faith.

I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them so that others may keep them.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Faith and Faerie: Fairy Worlds

I doubt whether Mr. Yeats really knows the real philosophy of the fairies. He is not simple enough; he is not stupid enough. Though I say it who should not, in good sound human stupidity I would knock Mr. Yeats out any day. The fairies like me better than Mr. Yeats.

-G.K. Chesterton

“I don’t know what to think about fairy tales,” Richard Dawkins confessed to the UK’s Times Online. “They’re anti-scientific.” The article moves on to describe the skeptic’s desire to “investigate” the matter further. Dawkins is, another source described, writing a book for children to explain how scientific rationality contrasts with fairy tales. Undoubtedly, it is (with all respect) men like Dawkins who so inspire Chesterton’s rage.

The idea that the fairy world can be approached by rational thought must make the fairies laugh, because you must, I’m afraid, enter their world before you can determine whether it is good or bad, real or not. And while there are many ways into Elfland, no one has ever discovered one of those mythical doors because they chose to. So for those of us who believe in the sacredness of Faerie, Modernity (roughly 17-20^th C.) in all its pretensions is pure make-believe.

The Need for Escape

But Modernity is also hostile to the inherent romanticism of fairy tales. The idea that people could imaginatively travel to new worlds and converse with trees and stones is unhealthy. When people who read fairy tales escape to those worlds they are, many think, unable to interact with the “real” world around them. When addressing the issue of escapism, Tolkien muttered to Lewis that “those who are hostile to escape tend to be jailers.” Chesterton wrote that “modern life is about as black a slavery as ever oppressed mankind.” (Tolkien makes a careful note, however, in making sure people understand that the escape of the prisoner is not to be confused with the flight of a deserter. Escaping to fairy land does not mean shirking responsibilities in the “primary world.”) But the fact that the majority of fairy tales have been written during the resurgence of rationalism in Modernity indicates that fairy tales are a form of moral protest—a protest against cultural slavery.

Take, for instance, the father desiring to raise his daughter with Judeo-Islamo-Christian values. No matter how much he may tell her that she is beautiful in and of herself, his definition is constantly and ruthlessly contradicted by the billboard which shows a woman of a certain type happily surrounded by attractive men. The implication is no accident: You must look like this in order to achieve this (usually through some product). This counter-message is amplified by television, movies, magazines, and more. It is the advertiser who often succeeds at raising our children, not the father. In this sense him—and his ideals—are captive to a hostile culture. What alternative is there but escape?

Modernity also denies the sacredness of the human being. Company’s see human beings as markets, researchers see them as a demographic, and marketing firms tend to see people as objects that need to be flaunted. And yet man is praised above all things for being rational and scientific. Modernity deifies man for his reason while debasing him because he is human. Fairy tales stand in sharp contrast to this. Chesterton demonstrates this contrast through his intractable lunatic, Adam Wayne, when Wayne says to the King: “If I touch, with this fairy wand, the railways and the roads of Notting Hill, men will love them, and be afraid of them forever." The king asks what this wand is and Adam Wayne presents his sword. A sword can, in a sense, make things sacred. It has the power to make ordinary men into knights. To a modern skeptic, this is ridiculous. “Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?” asked the Bishop of Jerusalem in the movie, Kingdom of Heaven. “Yes,” was Balian’s reply. Knighting a man, as Aslan does for Peter, may not make them jump higher or raise his I.Q. in any measurable way, but it does something more: it instills value, dignity, and self-worth. This intrinsic value cannot be stolen from him or accidently lost. It defines him, which is why “Sir” was subsequently prefixed to his name. It serves to change who he was.

But if society is unable to see the significance of such an act and—worse still—scoffs at the idea, fairy worlds become the only place where these ideals and virtues are celebrated. Chesterton’s assertion that modern society was “as black a slavery as ever” is then well-taken. To the romantic, a tame lion is not really a lion at all. So fairy tales become a form of rebellion and the fairy worlds themselves are the rebel’s sanctuary.

Fairy Worlds

Fairy worlds are created, according to Tolkien, through “sub-creation.” He writes: “When we take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power…and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes….But in such ‘fantasy’ as it is called, a new form is made; Faërie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.” A sub-creator is, by definition, dependent upon a greater creator. The creations of the sub-creator are derived from his master.

The role of man as an imaginative sub-creator means that when he creates he really is fulfilling his calling. In light of modernist influences, Helms remarks that this “mythic imagination will not, for Tolkien, replace religion so much as make it possible, putting imaginatively starved modern man back once again into the awed and reverent contact with the living universe.” In essence, exploring the fairy side of man is a process of restoration. For Tolkien, imagination was essential for humanity because it is one of the things that define us both as humans and as children of God. To deny or downplay this naturally leads to the desecration of man and his redefinition as an animal.

The fairy worlds provide the setting by which man can engage in his role as sub-creator. We, too, can divide light from darkness, plant mountain ranges, and carve creatures in our own image. Through the creation of fairy worlds, we participate in God’s own creative power. The divinity that rests in creation of fairy worlds is poignantly described in Tolkien’s apologetic poem, Mythopoeia:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

But fairy worlds contain more joy than the act of creating them. They contain a lasting benefit as well. For while fairy worlds are not necessarily physical worlds (though something like that could exist, as Lewis postulated in The Last Battle), the intention is that we take the pieces of the fairy worlds into our primary reality. These worlds are, as Lewis stated, a place where we go on holiday in order that we might be refreshed and reequipped to handle the challenges of this world. When we take these values into the primary world, it is like smuggling bread into prison. Fairy worlds give us the Lebenschraum to further develop ourselves—and our world—in God’s image.

After all, the function of fairy stories is, Tolkien says, to “satisfy certain primordial human desires.” Among these, he goes on, are the exploration of new lands and the desire for communion with other living things. Everyone has, at one point in time, certainly been tempted to compliment a bird on her song or to tell a squirrel that he doesn’t need to run from you. This is why boys climb forbidden fences and why little girls dream about their distant knights in far-off lands. Since we cannot find the fulfillment of these many of these desires in the primary world, we create fairy worlds. In this sense, fairy worlds also serve as a refuge of sin, where some of the purer ideals can be pursued without hindrance. Most of us exhibit these Edenic characteristics of exploration and natural communion when we are young, but they are somehow weeded out once innocence is lost. (Growing up unfortunately seems to be a reenactment of the Fall.) The forbidden fruit of knowledge still tempts all of us to abandon our desire for innocence. But Faerie is the realm where innocence can still be both learned and lived. Its anagogical nature makes it both a brutal critique of modern society as well as a wonderful refuge tucked away in the hills of our imaginations. It is a place where we can safely be like the little children Jesus urged us to be.

Be Good For Godness Sake: A Response to the AHA

The American Humanist Association (AHA) has launched a campaign this holiday season arguing for people to try a religion-free morality.

“We can have ethics and values that aren't set in stone,” The AHA says. “Our ideals and principles can evolve over time to reflect our ever-changing and increasingly complex world. Yet, we can be confident of the decisions that we make, not because someone told us what to do but because we relied on our own careful reasoning and emotional reflection.”

There is an inherent bitterness in this statement which leads one to wonder whether they are promoting the benefits of humanism or simply reacting to religion. They seem to categorize people who adopt religious systems of value as people who don’t think for themselves, instead choosing to follow a god to do the thinking for us. What does “thinking for yourself” really mean? They seem to discount the possibility that people choose (for instance) the Christian God because they chose (rationally) to accept His claims and (relationally) trust him. Can’t someone “think for himself” and choose God?

But what are humanist ethics based on? Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the AHA, comments on their website (americanhumanist.org) that “morality doesn’t come from religion. It’s a set of values embraced by individuals and society based on empathy, fairness, and experience” (Nov. 11, 2008). Ethics, therefore, are based on whatever the group (be that a group of friends or a culture, etc.) decides is right. Speckhardt mentions individual ethics, but these clearly cannot be imposed on a group.

It’s simply difficult, however, to see ethics functioning this way. During the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, many German officers being accused of war crimes simply replied that they were just following orders and should therefore be acquitted. The culture condoned what they did. So what basis did the Allies have for passing judgment on Nazi’s who were just doing what they all considered to be morally correct? Isn’t it up to the group to define their own morality? What right does one group have to impose their definition of morality upon another?

In addressing the previous situation we must ask: What is really meant by a group-defined morality? In America there are many different ideas as to what is “good” and what is “bad.” Do we follow only those which are universally agreed upon? How do we know when an ethic is universally agreed upon? Does one group ever have the right to challenge another group? Who would decide such a question? How do you handle people who, like The Dark Knight’s Joker character, believe their understanding of morality is more evolved than the rest of the group? Are they to be disciplined? How does the group consciousness evolve? Really, the AHA’s push for a societal-regulated morality brings more questions than answers.

Why believe in a god? Because I can’t believe in human goodness. Human “goodness” tells me that, when push comes to shove, we’re looking out for ourselves because there is nothing higher than ourselves. Just recently, a group of Black Friday shoppers trampled to death a security guard at Wal-Mart. The group exists only to ensure the survival of the individual. As such, the individual is actually in a rather precarious position. He must obey the group to ensure his chances of survival. Yet Christianity believes that life is sacred and to be protected at all costs. If any worldview espouses the security of the individual, it’s Christianity.

It’s important to keep in mind that the AHA’s campaign isn’t arguing against God’s existence. It’s arguing that man is a better moral legislator. It’s the fulfillment of Nietzche’s prophecy that God is dead, murdered by humans. “Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” Nietzsche asks. The AHA position is really one of proclaiming man to be God; to take the place of moral legislator. And yet with morality defined by the group man is strangely ineffective as God. It would be impossible to convict Nazi war criminals under this situation, as noted above.

Lastly, it is important to note that Christians and atheists do not use the same definition of “goodness.” Christians understand “good” to be more than just good actions, but a spiritual orientation. This is why Christians can never accept the secular notion to just “be good for goodness sake.” It’s impossible, because while people can do some good things, good things alone never lead to a person being good at the core of who they are. The American Humanist Society’s approach only treats the surface issue—the actions—while Christianity aims at changing the heart. It’s just not possible, from this perspective, to make yourself “good.” My human experience tells me that I’m anything but.

The Fatal Skin and the Justice of Hell

For the last forty years, Sigmund Freud had lived in constant expectation of death, yet with growing apprehension. He wrote to a friend when he was in his thirties that he suffers from “attacks of fears of dying [Todesangst].”[1] At 43 he received a new telephone number: 14362. Freud saw this as confirmation that he would die at 62 or 61 years old. Soon he began recognizing those numbers everywhere. When he reached 83, the prediction had passed by the fears had not faded. He desired to leave the world with dignity, and so in a London hospital he picked up a book, knowing that as soon as he turned the last page, the doctor would come in and Freud would die by euthanasia.

The book, curiously enough, was called The Fatal Skin. It was about an unappreciated medical genius named Raphael who can no longer deal with life and so he makes a pact with the devil where his every wish is fulfilled. But each time he gets what he wants, the donkey skin he wears tightens and so he slowly dies by his own wishes. Freud, too, died by his last wish.

This is the same plot Christians claim exists in the divine story as well: people end up in heaven or hell because it’s the place they chose to be—either eternal bliss or eternal destruction. Just like Freud and Raphael, we all get what we wish for in the end. Yet many people—Christians included—have issues with the idea of hell and how it seems to contradict God’s self-definition of infinite love and justice. In other words: How is hell just?

Death Row Ethics

But before we address the question of whether hell is just we need to understand what God intends in sending people there. We might try and understand the problem of hell by comparison with our own penal system. There are five purposes we have for punishing someone:

· Retribution : “eye for an eye.”

· Restoration : punishment by making them repay (restitution)

· Deterrence : to prevent people from doing something by threat of punishment

· Incapacitation : physically (castrate sex offenders) or geographically (exile) prevent people from committing crimes.

· Rehabilitation : (probation, comm. service, etc.) with the goal being to rehabilitate them as productive members of society.

Which of these is God’s intent in sending people to hell? It’s not restoration or rehabilitation, as the Bible gives no indication that those who go to hell ever leave (though we can hope). Hell is a certainly a deterrent but is also real. So then hell is either retribution (so that we can be harmed for the harm we have done) or it’s incapacitation (where God exiles us to a corner of the universe so we no longer harm his creation) or both. (If it were merely a deterrent then it couldn’t be equitably retributive or incapacitory.)

Judging from what the Bible says about hell, we might say it is both. Hell, either as a location or state of being, prevents us from polluting the holy atmosphere of what Lewis calls “deep heaven.” In that sense we are incarcerated (incapacitated)—whether for temporal or eternal punishment—and unable to “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

At the same time, however, we understand that hell is God’s answer to our calls for justice (Rev. 6:8). God casts “anyone not found written in the Book of Life” into the lake of fire as the supreme act of God’s justice (Rev. 20:15). Sin and sinners are cast into the lake of fire along with Death and Hades in what is called “the second death” (v. 14). Whether one believes hell involves the annihilation (conditionalist view) or eternal incarceration (traditionalist view) of sinners the fact is that both see God’s justice as successful in containing sin.

Yet it is this idea of hell as retributive justice that Dostoyevsky found so reprehensible in redressing the horrors perpetrated by sin. While his preference for present justice over eschatological judgment has been dealt with last week, the fact still remains that condemning someone to the torture of hell seems extreme. After all, the wages of sin are death. If death is the price of sin then pay it—why force people to suffer for any length of time? This is why Dostoyevsky argued that the existence of an eternal hell breaks apart the divine harmony of the universe.

The Justice of God’s Torture

Raphael, certainly echoing Freud, said: “I would not believe that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing of a harmless creature.” While God proclaims that he has no pleasure in the fires of hell (Ez. 18:32), he still views the torture of hell as necessary. If death is the reward than why is the torture necessary—God can snap his fingers and the wicked all disappear. Any pain that a human being incurs before annihilation is indicative of the fact that God wants us to receive more than we deserve—or at least to receive what we deserve in a more agonizing way than need be.

God’s insistence on torture is ominous in light of Carl Jung’s famous observation: “The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” Has God, his perfection so long assaulted by the presence of sin in his universe, become what he hates? Even if people suffer only according to what they “deserve”, as Adventists believe, it is difficult to imagine why people need to suffer at all. What does it accomplish? According to the Adventist view of Rev. 20, the reprobate have already acknowledged God’s justice in deciding their case. So the suffering isn’t meant as a means of making people acknowledge God (which would be sadistic). What does God hope to gain? He is just in destroying sin and those who cling to it for the sake of preserving the “divine harmony” of heaven, but why the burning and crying and pain? Is hell such a place, as the Qu’ran describes, where once your skin burns off new layers grow to replace it (Sura 4:5)?

The Punishment of Shame

What is most curious is how we came to understand hell in this way. Frequently the reaction of the wicked in hell is described as “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” While the imagery of physical pain is present in the Bible, this speaks more to the agony of dishonor in an honor/shame society. In Daniel 12:2, the wicked are those who awake “to shame and everlasting disgrace” (NLT). The pain suffered in hell is by far more emotional/spiritual than physical.

C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful work The Great Divorce, says that "there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" In other words, hell is a state or “lostness” chosen by people. And the majority of pain people experience there is derived from that condition. “These persons,” writes J. P. Holding, “have denied God His ascribed honor; they are denied in turn the honor that is given to human beings, who are created with the intent that they live forever.”[2]

Hell, then, is the triumph of the human will. It is the reward of those who have “made a covenant with death” (Is. 28:15). What pain they feel is not due to God’s caprice but to man’s decision to be lost (and the realization that they were wrong). And God always allows human beings to ultimately suffer the consequences for their decisions. Therefore, God allows people to suffer in hell before annihilation simply because after recognizing Jesus as Lord they must also recognize their opposition to Him. This inevitably leads to “weeping and gnashing of teeth”—a description more of mental agony than physical.

We are mistaken to believe that ours is the choice between God and Satan, as if they are two politicians running for the same office. It is really a choice between God and no-God, with hell being the logical conclusion of those who adopt the latter choice. For those who seek to live in a universe without God, annihilation is the only place where they will be satisfied. We have, perhaps, described hell in physical terms because physical pain is what we can identify with the easiest. Few of us can even imagine a state of complete spiritual rejection and so hell loses its value as a deterrent.

The Fatal Skin

Hell is really then the fatal skin for those who have chosen to make the deal with the devil. It is both their last wish and the sum of all their wishes. Undoubtedly this was on Freud’s mind as he lay down to read The Fatal Skin for the last time. For Freud’s worldview was full of despair and Kierkegaard summed it up aptly in Fear and Trembling:

“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

This is, really, what hell is all about: despair. And for God to prevent people from feeling the ultimate despair which is the result their choices would be the most unjust thing he could do. To interject at that last moment, before the fatal skin claims its victim would be the abrogation of that person’s free choice. People suffer in hell—whether long or short—according to the depth of their despair. Jesus taught this principle in positive terms when he told Simon that the one who is forgive much loves much (Luke 7:42, 43). Likewise, the one who has traveled the farthest from God will be the one who suffers the most—not due to the avarice of God, but because of his love in allowing them to suffer the justice of their own free will.

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[1] Armand M. Nicholi, The Question of God, Free Press: New York, 2002: p. 221

[2] http://www.tektonics.org/uz/2muchshame.html (accessed 11-29-08)