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I TRAPPED A MOUSE
A mouse showed up in my basement. I chased it but…
I got some traps, set them down. No luck. I was moving stuff out from under the sink and found a trap I didn’t know was there. It was set by a vermin man many months earlier. It was one of those black sticky ones. And there lay the poor wee thing, dead on it. A slow traumatic death. Maybe they can’t reason but they can suffer and I attribute to the little creature the panic and wondering that maybe it didn’t feel and it’ll be a while before I can like what I see in the mirror.
I don’t live where such creatures are a threat to me and I have no criticism for those who must deal with them as disease carriers. It’s the world we live in and we must deal with threats of this kind for many good reasons. Finish this off for me so I can move on without further discussion of it.
The sight of the mouse with its limbs outstretched, striving for freedom, and now the memory of it, haunts me. If you write and criticize me for having the trap I won’t complain. Currently I feel I deserve all I’d get. Later I’m sure I’ll calm down and reason my way to my “freedom”.
But the incident has led me to think about the doctrine of everlasting, conscious and ceaseless torment (a doctrine I cannot hold).
There are kind, generous and deeply religious people who fervently believe that God is going to everlastingly and ceaselessly torture human beings. These are not insensitive people; they hurt, and weep over people in far-off lands who go on hurting day after day without hope of change. They sometimes sob over people that live much nearer; people born in stinking tenement buildings, vermin infested, oppressed, unemployed and often unemployable. Many of these sincere believers are kind even to their enemies and they do them good. And yet they believe that God will everlastingly and ceaselessly torment humans and they believe it because others teach them that this is what God has said He will do; that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the kind of God that would do such a thing and that Jesus is such a one in whose presence this endless torment will go on (Revelation 14:10-11 is used).
These sensitive and kind people see the brutal and impenitent torturers of fellow-humans and are horrified that they would do such things and then believe that God will ceaselessly inflict torture, unendingly, on His enemies.
This their teachers say He will do even to multiplied millions who’ve never heard and will never hear anything about God and His glorious Son, Jesus Christ. They will only come to know this loving Father and His loving Son on that day when He consigns and subjects them to endless and unceasing conscious torment. Sigh.
Don’t be afraid to doubt such teaching!
Is it not interesting how a little confused and hungry mouse, tormented on a sticky trap makes one think of God and life and the oppressed human family?
I don’t live where such creatures are a threat to me and I have no criticism for those who must deal with them as disease carriers. It’s the world we live in and we must deal with threats of this kind for many good reasons. Finish this off for me so I can move on without further discussion of it.
The sight of the mouse with its limbs outstretched, striving for freedom, and now the memory of it, haunts me. If you write and criticize me for having the trap I won’t complain. Currently I feel I deserve all I’d get. Later I’m sure I’ll calm down and reason my way to my “freedom”.
But the incident has led me to think about the doctrine of everlasting, conscious and ceaseless torment (a doctrine I cannot hold).
There are kind, generous and deeply religious people who fervently believe that God is going to everlastingly and ceaselessly torture human beings. These are not insensitive people; they hurt, and weep over people in far-off lands who go on hurting day after day without hope of change. They sometimes sob over people that live much nearer; people born in stinking tenement buildings, vermin infested, oppressed, unemployed and often unemployable. Many of these sincere believers are kind even to their enemies and they do them good. And yet they believe that God will everlastingly and ceaselessly torment humans and they believe it because others teach them that this is what God has said He will do; that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the kind of God that would do such a thing and that Jesus is such a one in whose presence this endless torment will go on (Revelation 14:10-11 is used).
These sensitive and kind people see the brutal and impenitent torturers of fellow-humans and are horrified that they would do such things and then believe that God will ceaselessly inflict torture, unendingly, on His enemies.
This their teachers say He will do even to multiplied millions who’ve never heard and will never hear anything about God and His glorious Son, Jesus Christ. They will only come to know this loving Father and His loving Son on that day when He consigns and subjects them to endless and unceasing conscious torment. Sigh.
Don’t be afraid to doubt such teaching!
Is it not interesting how a little confused and hungry mouse, tormented on a sticky trap makes one think of God and life and the oppressed human family?
