about Saddam

The Vatican joined Human Rights Watch today in calling for clemency for Saddam, saying that executing him would simply be responding to crime with more crime. I suspect there's not really much chance this will have any effect, and that come jan 31 2007, saddam hussein will be dead.

As I understand it, average evangelicals believe he will experience "eternal conscious torment" in hell. George Macdonald would argue that he'll eventually repent and get out of hell. I haven't read Brian Mclaren's latest book, but it is my understanding that he would argue against the eternal consious torment position.

I wonder what the average Muslim belief is as to Saddam's experiences after death?

I honestly wonder how *anyone* can ascribe to the eternal consious suffering position and at the same time claim to experience communion and love for and with and from god.

thoughts?

A time for everything

My friend Eva preached one of the most brilliant sermons I've ever heard on the passage from Eccesiastes about there being a time for everything. It was brilliant because she focused on "a time to hate" and talked about the excellence, necessity, and christianity of hatred.
Here's the negative half of the passage

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: ...a time to die, ... a time to uproot, a time to kill, ... a time to tear down, ... a time to weep, ... a time to mourn, ... a time to scatter stones, ... a time to refrain from embracing, ... a time to give up, ... a time to throw away, ... a time to tear, ... a time to be silent, a time to hate, ... a time for war.

My friend Helen Mildenhall asked on her blog "Do you have any traditions you observe at this time of year?" I thought for only a moment and realized that the main tradition I observe at this time of year is to feel and think in even more depressed and negative ways than I normally do. My friend Anuj said to me a couple days ago that it is his perception that I am a fairly negative person. I told him that this is also my perception, and I try not to feel too negative towards myself for being too negative. hehe. Some people just see the dark sides of things. It's easy and comfortable for me to do this--it comes as naturally to me as walking or ... reading and writing. The trick, I think, is to increase my skill in the area of loving people, and loving myself, without having to completely wrest my personality--to somehow grow in my ability to see the good and to embrace hope in order to balance out--not to destroy, but to balance out--my darkishness.

Here's George's entry from Diary of an Old Soul for December 16

The life that hath not willed itself to be,
Must clasp the life that willed, and be at peace;
Or, like a leaf wind-blown, through chaos flee;
A life-husk into which the demons go,
And work their will, and drive it to and fro;
A thing that neither is, nor yet can cease,
Which uncreation can alone release.

Did you ever feel like this...

Diary of an Old Soul Feb 25.

There is a misty twilight of the soul,

A sickly eclipse, low brooding o'er a man,

When the poor brain is as an empty bowl,

And the thought-spirit, weariful and wan,

Turning from that which yet it loves the best,

Sinks moveless, with life-poverty opprest:--

Watch then, O Lord, thy feebly glimmering coal.

George Macdonald is the one who more than any other, over the years, has magically created a space within which I could be a Christian when I could find no other such places. (There are a couple other people on the list of people who have done this space creation over the years, but none are as prolific in my story as George)