Rembrandt – The Mennonite Minister Cornelis Claesz. Anslo in Conversation with his Wife, Aaltje (detail) – WGA19143 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Taking the existence of God for granted, Silent Light (2009) is a truly religious picture—and a superlative one.  In it, the head of a Mennonite family living in northern Mexico has confessedly fallen in love with another woman (“confessedly” because he told his wife about it).  That the wife is as understanding and tolerant as she is just might strain credulity, but so be it.  What’s important is Carlos Reygadas’s poetic filmmaking for the crafting of something spiritually, metaphysically meaningful.

The first half of this long film is partly about the illusion that sin is some kind of summum bonum—evident in the scene of outdoor smooching between the two adulterers.  Assuredly the second half is about sin as well, but the theme of grace also emerges.  The “silent light” of the title—since light never makes a sound, it must be a metaphor—is a divine miracle near the movie’s end.  It may be a miracle hard to accept, but Reygadas is intimating that the concept of the Deity in control should not be hard to accept.

Silent Light is a Mexican film whose dialogue is in the Mennonite low German language.

For a long time now, the United States has had imposed on it the concept of Salvation By Bureaucracy.  Not spiritual but material salvation.  Welcome to our welfare state.  It isn’t the kind of welfare state we should have, since these bureaucracies are inadequate and wasteful and very expensive, and government deficits are still rising.  Every year 70 billion Medicare and Medicaid dollars are lost to fraud and improper payments, which means every year 70 billion is poured down a rathole, thus we often have Salvation By Bureaucracy for people who don’t need to be saved.

I say we ought to do what Charles Murray has proposed:  abolish Medicare and Medicaid and all other transfer-payment programs, and replace them with an annual grant of $13,000 to every adult in the nation, 21 and older.  The grant would be reimbursed through a surtax placed on what are by anyone’s estimation decent salaries.  This way, Salvation By Bureaucracy is attenuated.  This way, low wages are less of a burden.  This way, Social Security and Medicare never become unspeakably insolvent.  This way, bargaining for a particular salary can be a sure thing.

My own view is that at the same time there should be nationwide federal propaganda teaching the American people to use this money for health care, assisted living, car insurance—the important things.  It should stress that this is all the government money they will be getting, unless the states are stupid enough to provide some welfare dough of their own.  Many will not listen, of course, but others will; and why, in any case, should we have a government which babies American adults?  Bureaucrats regularly decide things for low-income people, as though they alone possess the smarts for this.  They won’t be propagandists; they’ll be—and they are—nannies.  But nannies can’t prevent the staggering debt that will spring up when, in the span of two decades, millions and millions of Americans start receiving Social Security and Medicare.  What politicians have recently done is cut taxes by $1.5 trillion, but, well, what’s going on is not exactly economic conservatism.

To redeem us, Jesus Christ did not need to do what condemned sinners are said to do:  suffer forever.  In Hell.  No way.  Jesus suffered temporarily.  If it wasn’t necessary for the Paschal Lamb to suffer forever, why is it necessary for the unsaved?

From Psalm 22:  “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him” (NIV).

The New Jerusalem Bible translates the words for “all the ends of the earth” as “the whole wide world.”  The whole wide world will remember and turn to the Lord.  All humanity?  Seems that way.  From Psalm 65:  “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.”

To redeem us, Jesus Christ did not need to do what condemned sinners are said to do:  suffer forever.  In Hell.  No way.  Jesus suffered temporarily.  If it wasn’t necessary for the Paschal Lamb to suffer forever, why is it necessary for the unsaved?

From Psalm 22:  “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him” (NIV).

The New Jerusalem Bible translates the words for “all the ends of the earth” as “the whole wide world.”  The whole wide world will remember and turn to the Lord.  All humanity?  Seems that way.  From Psalm 65:  “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.”

English: Folio 18 recto, beginning of the Epistle to Thessalonians, decorated headpiece (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So:  the anti-Christian persecutors of Second Thessalonians 1 will receive “everlasting destruction.”  The teaching has long existed that a more proper translation is “destruction of the age,” or maybe “age-during destruction.”  That is, a destruction belonging to an age.  The Koine Greek word for everlasting, aionious, does not mean everlasting.  It refers to a period of time.  “Everlasting punishment” in Matthew 25 is punishment of the age.

Where does this leave Hell?