Every Day Is Judgment Day

Let us look for a moment at the "Book of Revelation." What do we discover? Everybody in the widely scattered Christian community is living in high expectation. They are eagerly expecting the immediate return of Jesus, the second coming of the Messiah. They are expecting him to return, put down his enemies, take over the government at Jerusalem and eventually rule the world. Involved in this conception is the day of judgment. One must understand this situation, as faithfully recorded in the new testament, in order to understand the theology and religion of Paul the apostle and subsequently the theology of much of which passes under the name "Christianity."

It was perfectly natural for the Nazarene sect to hold this conception. They were under the impression that Jesus had promised to return. They believed that he was the "promised one," the Messiah, whom the Hebrews had shamefully rejected. Let us go back a little further in history. The Hebrews had been expecting a messiah for centuries. They believed in his coming, and they believed that his coming would result in a day of judgment. The judgment would take place in the valley of Jehoshaphat. All the spirits since Adam would return. The Hebrews had no idea that the people who had died had gone to Heaven, there were only two exceptions, Enoch and Elijah, both of whom had been transported directly to Heaven, the rest of the people were in the underworld, Sheol, waiting the summons.

This idea was not original with the Hebrews. Similar ideas were held by the Babylonians, the Persians and the Egyptians. These ideas were accepted by the early Christians and also by the Moslems. And believe it or not, similar ideas are held by much of organized Christianity today.

Let us now consider the contrast between two conceptions of God and God's government of the world as held in the past, and the rapidly developing conception of intelligent educated people of today. While we are doing this, it should be reasonably easy to see how ideas like these came into being.

Primitive people of yesteryears, and people possessing a primitive outlook today, believe that the universe was created by god who was outside of it and the government of the universe was purely arbitrary. The outside god rules from a great white throne as ancient monarchs rules their subjects.

Now what was this universe? What was it like? It consisted of a flat earth, rising out of nothing, covered by an inverted dome of the heavens, with tiny lights suspended here and there, not too far away. This universe, this earth, would come to an end someday, and involved in the end of the world was the last judgment when evil people, the people who had not always conformed to the status quo, would receive their just punishment.

Our scientific knowledge makes it impossible for us to believe in this sort of scheme today! We know that the universe is not a toy house ruled over by a capricious old man with a long white beard who gives with one hand and commits all manner of brutality with the other. Our universe is infinite and the tiny lights called stars are not "just up there and not too far away." They are mighty suns hundreds of millions of miles away with planet systems of their own. God is not an old man outside, way off there on a white throne beyond the universe. God is the life spirit, the force that sustains this universe. God does not rule by miracle and magic, but by law and order. These laws are timeless, changeless and eternal. So for us there can be no day of judgment, not in the ancient sense, unless every day is judgment day.

Here is the picture that was, and in many places still is, painted by the revivalist. This picture is startling like that which is found in the Sistine chapel in Rome. Jesus occupies a great white throne surrounded by clouds of angels and all the trembling souls that ever lived, clothed again in their bodies, are before the throne. These souls are in the process of being divided into two groups: the good and the bad. The bad are being hustled off by devils who are driving them down into flames of endless fire where the smoke of torment ascends for ever and ever. A very few of the multitudes are being escorted to heavenly bliss.

That figure on the throne was the Jesus, who while on earth had gone about on errands of mercy and compassion for the sinners, the outcasts, those who did not conform or belong. It is the same Jesus who had prayed while dying on the cross, "Father, forgive them." That Jesus of history so compassionate, so fair, so just had been transformed. He no longer pitied; he now hated with an undying hate. My contention is that the presentation of such a grotesque conception has turned more people, and the best people, from organized religion than it has ever frightened into organized religion in any meaningful way.

In the intelligent modern world there is no place for this endless inquisition. It does not make any sense. It is highly immoral, extremely sadistic and blasphemous against the concept of god.

There is no final judgment to come. This brand of theology, used to frighten old men and women and little children, should be on the way out. Unfortunately this and other archaic doctrines threaten to take the religion of Jesus and the institution of the church with it. There is no final day of judgment because every day is judgment day. The universe is governed by law which is changeless and timeless. God could not change the law. There are no rewards, in the arbitrary sense, and no punishment. There are only results, effects and consequences. This is no idle speculation on my part. The whole situation is demonstrable. How frequently people say, "You Unitarian Universalists are too easy. Your religion is a warm milk affair, there is no iron in it." It is true that we do not threaten with future punishment; there is no hell-fire and brimstone. But our faith is not a warm milk affair. We believe in a universe of law, of cause and effect, of conduct and consequences.

Marshall Dawson in his little book, Nineteenth Century Evolution and After is representative of our outlook and brings out a fact that no one should ever forget. "Twentieth century biology," he says, "has a morality which puts Calvinism in the shade. Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' pictured the unrepentant suspended by a slender thread over a burning pit. Twenty-first century biology paints a more impressive picture. It shows the consequences of wrong doing. It points to the animal depths from which we have climbed up and to which reversion is frightfully easy. In place of the slender thread to which people may cling and upon which they may climb, modern science shows us a strong elastic band, by which a person is still linked to the animal world from which he or she has struggled upward; and if one ceases to struggle back into the abyss of animalism. Science and religion unite in saying that security is only for those who set their affections upon things which are above." In other words, what a person thinks in one's heart has much to do with ones future and also with one's present. The point that wants to be emphasized is that people could get away with more under the old conception, a conception of much of organized religion today, than they can under the conception of rational religion. In fact, even in the old system they could not get away with more, though the church allowed it, because God is not outside of this universe looking in occasionally. God is the eternal laws that govern this moral universe of cause and effect. The day of judgment is not for some far off future. The day of judgment is now, today, not tomorrow.

Let us look into life, back in history first and see how this moral universe is governed. The natural laws function in history just as they do everywhere else.

I have heard, and I am sure you have too, ministers "pull out all the stops" when they discuss the fall of the ancient Roman Empire. It was a divine act of God's judgment on a wicked people. That kind of explanation is too pat. The historians and the students of political science do not need any arbitrary act of an angry god to explain the fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. The scientific student of statesmanship knows that the crumbling of the Roman Empire was as natural as the crumbling of a faulty constructed building. The student is familiar with evolution. The student is familiar with the constitution of the empire, its overexpansion, its fiscal policies, its juggling with monetary tokens, and its lust for power.

The natural law also functions in the intellectual and spiritual areas. Here is a young person, a student at a great university, or perhaps the young person has ambitions in business or the industrial phases of life. Yet this young person wastes time. This person cares more for amusement than for study and research. This person is not quite faithful if in college the books are slighted. Just what is this young person doing? This person is laying up for him- or herself inevitable disappointment and failure. There is nothing arbitrary about that, nothing supernatural, nothing that resembles a day of judgment. When the results of this individual's behavior pattern come to light, the individual may call it one's day of judgment if one chooses; but there has been a judgment working itself out in this person's course of conduct every day, every hour. That is the kind of judgment that faces us all in every area of our lives.

Look a little closer to the moral area, the religious area. We religious liberals have always stood for the sacredness of every human personality, the dignity of the individual, the right of every human being to be heard, and to be heard even if wrong. We believe, or say we do, that every person has the right to be loved and respected as a child of creation, a child of god. But how easy is it for us to forget these principals, these bulwarks of our faith, if a fellow human being happens to speak words that disagree with our opinions. How frequently we act as if we were God's appointed agents of virtue and attempt to silence opposition. Too many people in this land of ours have little or no understanding of what freedom is, what democracy means, what the way of life that we call religious liberalism is all about. Every day is judgment day, and each time we belittle a person who disagrees with us, we die a little. Every time we violently react against another, we kill some of the divine in our hearts. Every time we fail to support the freedoms of democracy, we enslave ourselves a little more. Every time we become disagreeable in a disagreement, we stunt the spirit. Every time we are false to our principles, we make it a little easier to sell our souls when the next occasion arises.

The time of judgment is now, today, at this moment! Every thought, every act is itself a judgment. Every thought and every act is forming our behavior pattern. Every thought and every act is creating our character. Character is not contingent upon theological schemes and dogmas associated with theories of salvation for getting into Heaven. Character is Heaven, and character is hell!!

We are in the process of making our own Heaven, or we are making our own hell. This we are doing both as individuals and as members of society. Without becoming too depressing, let me offer my opinion on the situation as it relates to many of us religious liberals who are concerned with the struggle for civil rights, the rights of gays and lesbians and world peace. By working to correct these evils, we can at last find satisfaction of laboring for the cause of justice and freedom, for working for the building of the beloved community. But as realist in the world of humanity at the present moment, we are saddened as we see the great mass of people unmoved by the suffering afflicted on our fellow humans. We are saddened not only because we see injustice, greed, and corruption but because we believe the inevitable result, if things keep going as they are, is the creation of a hell for all humanity.

The hope we see lies in the phrase, 'if things keep going as they are', for this implies we, as a people, can still choose the right and prove the truth of our religious convictions that say: "What you have been, you have been. What you have done, you have done. But what you are in the process of becoming is what you choose to be. No spirit can take away your power over yourself. The present is greater than the past, and the future greater than the present!!"

Rev. Bertrand Steeves