Stephen King's Revival

I just finished Stephen King's Revival in record time (in three days). I have some observations to make an questions to ask. There are spoilers below.

I had read a review which suggested that the ending of Revival was very disturbing, but the book was very thought-provoking. I actually took a chance and read it. The reviewer did not exaggerate about the ending. But it was so thought provoking the experience was worth the read--especially since this particular King novle dealt with the topic of religion.

           Revival tells the story of Jamie Morton, beginning with his early childhood in the early 1960s. Jamie is six when he meets the new Methodist minister, 25-year-old Charlie Jacobs. Jacobs is joyful, flamboyant young pastor with a beautiful wife Patsy, and adorable four-year-old son Morrie. The latter becomes a sort of mascot for Jamie and the other children when they go on adventures, which earns him the name Tag-Along Morrie. Jacobs also has an obsessive fascination with electricity, and conducts experiements that delve into tis mysteries. He has constructed a mechanical figure Jesus, and runs on electricty. He demonstrates how it works when he shows young Jamie how electrial power makes the Jesus toy walk across water, thus inspiring both faith and an interest in science for the boy.

All seems right with the world until (wouldn't you know, since this is a King story) a terrible tragedy strikes the Jacobs family: Patsy and Morrie are killed in a accident, and the man who caused it (an older gent who's lived most of his life) manages to live until up in his eighties. Little Morrie has his face torn off, and we're "treated" to PastOr Jacobs howling in anguish about what happened to his son's face.

After the funeral, Jacobs seems to recover somewhat, and gives a soon-to-become infamous sermon, in which he begins by thinking his congregation for their support, and build by reciting tragic incidents he's spent the last week looking up in the newspapers (in one of them two boys and their father jump in to save their dog from drowning in a lake; the dog survives but the man his two children drown). Jacobs ends by essentially renouncing God, and saying of the afterlife:"maybe there's something there, but I'm betting it's not God as any church knows". Jacobs walks out the church, quits his ministry and leaves town. There is a following scene in which Jamies hurtles the electirc-powered Jesus across a room, wailing and cursing Jesus for not being real.

That's just the setup.

The next several chapters follow Jamie as he gorws into a teen and young adult in a guitar band. There is a literally electrfying scene in which jamie and his girlfriend visit a hilltop (which jacobs has referred him to), where an iron rod drawa bolts of lightening during an electric storm and turns vivdly blue, crimson and purple as it absorbs its power. It's an incredible experience the King describes it.

Later on, Jamie finds himself addicted to heroin, but he runs into Jacobs, now a carny showman. Jacobs draws crowds with incredible picture shows generated by electricity. Jacobs manages to cure Jamie, which makes the younger man indebted to him. Years later, he runs into Jacobs again, only know the former paster has ditched his carny act, and is now a flamboyant revival preacher. He soon learns that Jacobs has hardly rediscovered his Christian faith--if anything, he's grown even more bitter, and is willfully taking advantage of his gullible patrons, the way some many televangelists are infamous for. But Jacobs is snake-oil salesman: his miricles actually seem to work! The thing is, a relatively small portion of the people he "cures" eventually go insane in a variety of bizarre ways. It all has to do with Jacobs' strange experiments with lightening, which enables him to tap into what he calls "the deep electricity, " a vast power hiterto unknown to science. It is suggested that Jacobs' insane patrons may have gotten a glimpse of something "beyond" during their treatments, which has blasted the reason from their brains.

It all culminates in a grand experiement which Jacobs theorizes will allow him and Jamie to "peak through the keyhole' and catch a glimpse of the afterlife.

SK has written tragic, downbeat endings many times before, and back in the eighties especially. His worldview seems to have brightened just a bit around the time he wrote Desperation, how at the end David Carver reflects that the human condition is maybe "not so bad" as I recall.

But now, its obviously taken a turn backwards.

           As one of the advertisments for Pet Semetary claimed back in the mid-eighties, you might say that SK has "really done it" this time, not just "done it again."

SK has killed off many sympathetic, likeable, even heroic characters in sometimes pointless ways, in order to illustrate the sometimes pointless nature of life. But here he takes a leap forward. (spoilers below)

In other stories what lies beyond death is left unrevealed, the great mystery that it actually is. But in Revival, he does not merely kill of Patsy and Morrie in a sickening, pointless manner---he actually sends to hell. And, not merely them, but by implication, countless others as well.

This is not a traditional hell, nor a judgmental hell. But it is effectively hell nonetheless. It is obvious these people are suffering. It seems likely also that they will continue to suffer, at least for a very long while.

This book was obviously written by someone who has great fear of what comes after death. I think a great many of us do, and that is why the book strikes so strong a chord. SK may be imagining as horrifying an afterlife as he can, so that maybe, just maybe, when he arrives there himself, it may not be so bad after all. Jesus might even turn out to be real.

The question I have (one of them anyway) is what this hellish afterlife implies for everyone in the SK multiverse. Castle Rock is referenced in the story, as is Jerusalems' Lot. So this obviously is taking place within the SK universe. Therefore, it seems that anyone who has died in an SK story has wound up there. Lovable tykes like Tadder, Gage, and Pie Carver, heroes like John Coffee, Wolf from the Talisman--they're all being herded by giant ant-things--that's what this story tells me. Is there anything that suggests differently? I don't think so. There is some suggestion that Jamie's vision might have been false, but it's strongly implied otherwise.

Okay, there are exceptions to this. Jake Chambers wound up somehow in Midworld, and the spirits ALL of Roland's Ka-tet somehow merged with their counterparts in some alternate version of New York. But what about the rest?

     Now it has come to my attention that there indeed other King novels that deal with the topic of the afterlife in which it appears to be unlike that described in Revival. Someone on King's site has brought to my attention Bag of Bones. What about the spirits in Overlook Hotel, for example? Or, for that matter, the shade of Jack Torrence visiting Danny on his graduation (this happened in the Shining TV miniseries, BTW, not the book, though I beleive King wrote the screenplay, and that was the version he approved of). I didn't get the idea he'd been to the hell Jamie saw. Perhaps the world of Revival takes places in aseparate but connected alternate realit, like those in the original Bachman Books. But if that's the case, why those place names still there?

     Another thing: Revival is ultimately a nihialistic novle, in which the very concepts of good and evil are rendered meaningless. The theme of the hubris of science is a strong one, but in a universe devoid of meaning or purpose, who's to say that Jacobs' experiements, and his desire to peak bhind the veil, are actually wrong in any moral sense. King even cites Arthur Machen, adn H.P. Lovecraft as inspriational to this novel, and for good reason. The problem is, it classes with his own mutliverse. Consider the Dark Tower novels, which are built aroudn the classic conflict between the forces of good and evil. But in light of Revival, Ka is rendered nil. Is the Crimson King really wrong in seeking to destory themlicnhpin of the multiverse, causing all the realities to unravel? It would not seem so.

    I have not read Bag of Bones so I can't comment on that story directly, but King has, indeed, been notoriously inconsistent over the years in regard to his own worldview. That's not surprising, since his worldview fits the very defintion of agnosticism. Now, I'm sure King would want to describe himself thusly, and the way the term "agnostic" tends to be used these days is very close to the word "atheist," even though that's technically incorrect. In an eithies interview with Douglas E. Winter, then the most famous King expert, King is quoted as saying,

...it has to put into the equation: the possibility that there is no God and nothing works for the best. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that view, but I don’t know what I do subscribe to. Why do I have to have a world view? I mean, when I wrote Cujo, I wasn’t even old enough to be president. Maybe when I’m forty or forty-five, but I don’t now. I’m just trying on all these hats.

  That's pretty much the very essence of agnosticism. I also recall King as saying, and do forgive me if I've got it wrong that "Jesus Christ might have been divine" and that ultimately, "wer'e livng in the center of a great mystery." I think that really echoes Jacobs' observation near the end of his imfamous sermon that "we come from a mystery, and to a mystery we go." You can't get much more agnostic than that.

    But the very concept of an agnostic hell seems a contradiction in terms. Hell is almost always associated with religion, most specifally with scaring potential converts into the faith--at least it works that way with Christianity and Islam. This brings something else that I don't really mean to go into in this article, partly due to its deeply disturbing nature. This is the concept of innocent human beings, such as certain of the the unevangelized and (most specifically in relation to King's novel) certain children, in hell. King, in fact, seems to wish fervetly that the whole story of Jesus and heaven were real, but fears it's all just foolish pipe-dream.

   But he seems to have entirely overlooked the fact that conservative Christianity sometimes presents a version of hell even more disturbing, in a sense, than his own. Christians are, in fact, somewhat divided as to the fate of unevangelized. C. S. Lewis argued that it was possible for an unevangelized person to enter heaven. David Platt argues, among many others, argues that it is not. When it comes to children, most, it seems, do not beleive that hell awaits them, and tend to accept some form of the "age of accountability." For the record, I don't think that the age of acountibility is a Biblical doctrine, and in fact no strict age may exist. But God's promise to David and Bathseba appears to rule out the possibilty of infants in eternal torment.I also beleive that the simplistic concept of eternal bliss on one hand and eternal torment on the other is a far, far too simple picture of the fate of spirits on the Other Side. Jesus addressed only adult men and women with normal brain function as to salvation, and when he discussed hell, it was always in regard to behavior, not worldview or factual information. Yes, it's one's spiritual state, not behavior per se that determines that determines one fate to the Christian, but that's a different story.

   But it is nontheless true that there are  Christians do beleive and defend the concept of innocents such as children in hell. I even once had a minster he who beleived this. What makes this more disturbing than King's agnostic version? Well, in the story, Jamie observes that his deceased sister "deserved heaven," but got this instead. It's very very clear that many of these deceased are indeed "innocent." But show me a Christian who defends children or the unconverted in hell, and he or she will insist that even children are not truely "innocent," that all humans, even small children, as so bestial and depreaved that they somehow "deserve" it. The main thing that makes such a concept so dreadfully unjust is the very fact that it purports to represent justice.
   At least SK is suggesting no such thing.
   

Hell Is Real (But I Hate to Admit It) by Brian Jones

Let get this straight up front: it's not easy for me to review books which defend the doctrine of eternal punishment. Any doctrine that suggests an unjust God is disturbing to to me in th extreme.

Not because I consider this concept of God any longer, but the the fact that's there's a lot of people out there who not only do, but who defend it.

Some have suggested that pastor Jones' book, among others may have appeared partly in response to Rob Bell's psuedo-universalist book Love Wins. Whatever the case, this is one disturbing book. I have to admit, that the author is unafraid to mince words when it comes to his beliefs.

Jones makes a number of flawed arguments here, and I'll address the most obvious ones that I came across:

1)Jones seems to accept uncritically that the Bible in fact teaches what is tradition; namely eternal punishment. There is more than enough controversy regarding this, however. I have a very fundementalist friend in fact, who does not beleive that the "Lake of Fire" is eternal, but "eternal destruction" means just that--the destruction is eternal.

2) Jones states at one point that if one is not eager to convert their non-Christian freinds to Christ, then the only possbility is they beleive hell is not exists. He seems to forget here that some of us do not beleive that good people are going to hell. One of his main points, is of course, that they are. He also invites the reader to imagine a seemingly good, moral friend or aquiantance who is not a beleiver, to sit a table with you and Christ. How would Christ regard him? Well, I did picture a college professor I knew back when I was a freshman whom I indeed regard as a very kind and decent human being if there ever was one; and sorry, I can't realistically envision ay wrath or malice on the part of my Lord. Astonishment on my friend's face, certainly, but not what I imagine Jones was shooting for.

3)Jones relates the story of a pastor freind who did not beleive in hell. Jones asked him what, then, was the purpose of Christ's sacrifice? The pastor was not able to provide an answer. There are two ways I can counter this. Firstly, one might ask why Christ's sacrifice did not remove any need for hell-or of any afterlife punishment whatsoever. Why are some souls still going to end up there? Perhaps, however, there is still punishment for those who are without Christ, but it is not eternal, as annhilationists beleive. Christ's sacrifice itself was not eternal; but Jones beleives that those outside of Christ will suffer infinitely greater punishment than He ever did. This leads to what is, in fact, a far deeper question: that of just what it means to be "in Christ." Does it merely mean beleiving the right things? Can someone find the supernatural incidents of the Bible unbeleivable simply due to lack of credulity, and still be accepted by Christ? I beleive Jones would answer no. But this question hits closer to the differences I have with Jones, because I (and even Rob Bell) would tend to disagree not so much on hell's existence, but on who goes there. Another way to answer the question of Christ's sacrifice, however, is this: imagine if His sacrifice had never been made? What would the world look like today? They would be no Christian martyrs, no Christian charity, no spiritual rebirth of billions. None would recieve Christ's message and His teaching. Europe would remain steeped within the darkness of paganism--and I'm just getting started.

4)Jones states at one point that Christ's teaching was secondary to His sacrifice becuase we already had the whole of His teaching in the OT. Not quite; Christ radically transformed the law. His teacing and His sacrifice are inexorably linked.

5) Jones includes a very distrubing section in which he elaborates on the wrath of God, and here he focusses not so much on eternal punishment here as on OT atrocities. He starts by quoting atheist Richard Dawkins' infamous slander on the God of the OT. Clearly Dawkins is attempting to slander a God he does not beleive in, but Jones takes the slander further, claimng that he is appalled at the slaugher of the OT, and that Dawkins doesn't know the half o it. He claims that he is angered by Dawkins' "downplaying" ofthe Lord's wrath, then recounts a long list of horrific Ot incident carried out or commanded by God, even going so far as to call God "lothsome and inhumane." He then asks the reader rehtorically 'why am I painting such an unflattering picture..of God?" The answer, the tells us, is so that we will be urged to save our non-Christan friend from God.

It might be instructive at this point to ask the question: Does Jones love God, or does he loathe Him?

How similar all this is to Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which put off beleivers even in his own time. Edwards was so determined to emphasize God's wrath that he even took one quote--in which God is said to "laugh and mock"-entirely out of Biblial context. But at least Edwards was addressing sinner. Jones is not so much talking about sinful behavior, but beleiving the "right things."

Why does Jones present his readers wit such an appalling picture of God? the answer is really simple: fear.

How do we save souls from God? Scare them.

What Jones does not seem to realize is that every time someone attempts to win converts in this way, more often than not, the reaction among the unconverted is not fear for one's own eternal soul, but revulsion--not just at the picture of a God who behaves in blatantly unjust fashion, but at the religion itself. People long to love and to trust God--how can they if they accept Jone's concept of Him? People long for justce. SO why present a God who is unjust in the extreme. If the concept of such a God is accepted as real, then perhaps they will, in a sense convert. But is conversion out of fear alone, absent a true love of God, a conversion at all? Jones my beleive it is good enough, if converts attend church, obey the proper rituals, have every outward appearance of being Christian. This might be fine, so far as Christian culture is concerned. But what about what really counts, the transformation of someone's heart.

One interesting point the book raises occurs when Jones relates the story of how he successfully converted a non-Christian friend of his on his (the friend's) deathbed. When no other method of persuasion worked, Jones (apparently very heartfelt and sincere that something dreadful would befall his friend) literally pleaded for the man to accept Jesus into his heart. And you know what? It actually worked!

My point here is that Jone's pleading allowed the Holy Spirit to enter the man, whereas scare tactics did not. That's a point well taken.

Love Wins by Rob Bell

Popular Grand Rapids, Michigan pastor Rob Bell's bestseller Love Wins has reportedly stirred up loads of controversy among conservative evangelicals, even before its release last year. And it's not hard to see why, given the book's premise.

And his opening chapter (and in the video released on Youtube beofore the release of said book),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODUvw2McL8g

Bell presents to his audience the following scenario. During a church art show, one of the participants had including a quote for Mahatma Gandhi. And someone else had tacked on a note reading: Reality check: he's in hell.

"Gandhi's in hell?" Bell asks his audience, "Are we sure? Do we know this?" (page 1) He follows this up with a number of other thought-provoking and difficult questions, such as that of the self-professed atheist who dies as a teenager. To the response that "There's no hope then," Bell responds pointedly "No hope? Is that the Christian message?" (Page 3). And then there's that matter of the missionary getting a flat tire on the way to the local village. If someone dies there, is he/she forever lost?

Too many Christians would answer "yes," to that last question, I'm afraid. Why? As I've argued elsewhere the core reason for this is not really scriptural, but rather concerned with the survival of Christanity as a faith. But the reason Bell uses this example is becuase he knows that, according to our core morality (which most beleivers, evangelicals included, I'd guess, would agree is given to us by God), it would be nonsensical for God to judge someone according to standards of which s/he is simply ignorant, of no fault of his or her own. We understand this. It flies in the sense of our understanding of morality that God would not.

The example of Gandhi in hell raises an even more provocotive question. Why would a person believe that this is so? Didn't Gandhi live an exemplary life compared to most of us, including the majority of professing beleivers? The almost inevitable answer to that will run something like this: good works are not what counts. You could live the best possible life, and still not make it into heaven if you lacked the required faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, whoever wrote that is necessarily divorcing faith from works. But the book of James teaches that faith without works is dead (not a saving faith), and many places in the New Testement teaches that we will judged according to our works. The question that follows from this should be, therefore: If one is NOT a professing Christian, and one nonetheless leads a morally exemplary life, is one, therefore, one of His followers after all? I am assuming here, of course, that one is genuine, and not self-serving, in his dedication to works, as Gandhi certainly appeared to have been. One might ask if something is even possible without a conscious decison to follow Christ; I would respond that such is certainly possible if one happens at least to be seeking truth.

If one accepts the general postion regarding salvation held by evangelicals, however, did, in fact, Gandhi have enough faith to avoid the inferno? He certainly was aware of Christ and Christianity, so one must not count him among the ignorant pagans, whatever one's opinion regarding their eternal destiny might be. Gandhi is quoted as saying,"...I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew." So was this enough?

Indeed, merely inquiring if it was "enough" suggests, as does the "tire" scenario, that God allows people into heaven on the basis of technicalities, which, of course, have nothing to do with the condition of one's heart, which should be the only real criteria. But most evangelicals would disagree about Gandhi, becuase the above statement by him suggests Pluralism. And for ther Christian faith to be the Truth, none other can be on par with it. This is the real evangelical gripe against Gandhi.



And it's the same with Rob Bell. I actually found his book to be confusing in places. At times he sounds like a universalist, yet never stakes a firm position. His argument that salvation is NOT primarily about getting "how to get to heaven" (in spite of what we're commonly taught) is, I think, a point well taken. Most of us have heard that the salvation promised by Jesus Christ is all about how to get to heaven when we die. But Bell makes it clear, from his discussion of Jesus and the young rich man, that Jesus meant much more than this. In other words, our admission into the Kingdom of Heaven does NOT begin after we take our final breath in this world, but right here, right now, in accepting Him into our hearts, and through our obdedience to His teachings.

Is Bell a universalist, as his critics charge? The answer might be both "yes" and "no." He does appear to accept hell as a reality, but his general beleif seems to be that hell is remedial and corrective rather than eternal. He might, therefore, be best described as a beleiver in univeral reconciliation. Hell in the world beyond this is a reality, but we are not forever lost. If God truly wants everyone to come to Him, and he is truely all powerful, then eventually he will save everyone in the end.

Much to the chagrin of evangelicals, I might add.

There have been a number of books written, mostly by Bell's evangelical critics, in attempt to counter him. One of such book, which I've read, is God Wins by Mark Galli. Gallie argues that that hell is eternal, but the fate of certain individuals, such as ignorant pagans, is simply a mystery, but we should jut trust God that everything He does will be just. One thing I've noticed ironic about the title of this particular book is that if God des win, doesn't love win also? For is not God also love?

The following quotes form Bell's book show the God often falsely represented by evangelicals:

"A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better,” Bell writes.

“It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus.

“This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear."

Bell is right on target with these astute abservations. It is telling that many of Bell's critics (not Galli) have responded with anger. Most infamous was a tweet by John Piper, Baptist Pastor, and author of the recent book Jesus: the Only Way to God, who wrote "Rob Bell is history."

I strongly suspect, however, that Rob Bell represents the future of Christianity.