{"id":1970,"date":"2013-02-09T22:47:12","date_gmt":"2013-02-09T16:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2025-08-19T14:31:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T19:31:22","slug":"you-must-be-gentle-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"You Must Be Gentle, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched an interview with Ingmar Bergman on the DVD version of \u201cPersona<\/a>\u201d called \u201cA Poem in Images<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 He spoke in English, not his native language, but I left the quote below verbatim because I liked the ideas expressed as they were.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was ill and they had to make some sort of operation.\u00a0 And I got in my arm an injection\u2026I had been unconscious six hours.\u00a0 You know I had no feeling about time, of hour.\u00a0 From existing, I have being in the situation of nonexisting.\u00a0 And that makes me very happy\u2026.I am conscious about myself and everything and then suddenly, or slowly, my consciousness fades out, switches off.\u00a0 And it is a not existing.\u00a0 That is a marvelous feeling.\u00a0 From existing I am not existing.\u00a0 And at that moment nothing can happen to me.\u00a0 I think it would be terrible if somebody came after this marvelous not existing and wake me up, and said, \u2018You are a returned soul Mr. Bergman,\u2019 or something like that, \u2018and you have to go here or there; you are guilty for that, not guilty for that.\u2019\u00a0 I think it\u2019s just crazy.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>I was about five years old when I accepted what I thought was the gospel<\/a>: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or burn in hell for all eternity.\u00a0 It seemed like a no brainer.\u00a0 I was surprised that everyone in children\u2019s church didn\u2019t choose Jesus right there and then.\u00a0 (I can\u2019t say for certain that I was taught this until an evangelism course I took as an adult, but the first time I seriously questioned whether this ultimatum was the Gospel was during that course.)\u00a0 I was saved, saved from hell, because I confessed that I was a sinner and believed in Jesus.\u00a0 And it worked in the sense that I grew up among fundamentalist Christians and can\u2019t recall ever having any fear that I would go to hell, not as a child, anyway.<\/p>\n

Hell<\/i> was never taught as something I should fear.\u00a0 It was taught as motivation to invite my friends to Sunday school, friends who would go to hell if they didn\u2019t confess that they were sinners and ask Jesus into their hearts.\u00a0 I tried to invite my next door neighbor once.\u00a0 In fact, I probably tried to save him myself right there and then.\u00a0 But my Catholic friend knew as much (or more) about trusting Jesus as I did.\u00a0 So I decided that my Sunday school teachers didn\u2019t know much about my friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this feeling of not existence made me very happy,\u201d Bergman continued,<\/em> \u201cbecause it was a feeling of relief, because this feeling of a god, this idea about a god, was very unhealthy.\u00a0 It was a feeling of something that was perfect, extremely perfect, the most extreme perfect that exists.\u00a0 In comparison to that I always must feel like a snake, like a dirty snake.\u00a0 For a human being to feel like a dirty snake is not good.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>In Junior High I pretended to be ill one morning so I could stay home and finish reading \u201cPhaedo<\/a>\u201d by Plato, the death of Socrates.\u00a0 Socrates concluded, \u201cif while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow\u2014either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 This has had a lifelong impact on me.\u00a0 Perhaps the main reason I have believed that each of us will give an account<\/a> of himself to God<\/a><\/i>2<\/sup><\/a> (when I believed little else) is the hope that some clarity will come in his response to my account.\u00a0 The primary torment of Sartre\u2019s<\/a> hell in his play \u201cNo Exit<\/a>\u201d is not knowing for certain why, or if, one is there.\u00a0 Knowledge was the hardest thing to give up when I flirted with atheism.\u00a0 To accept that knowledge is either unattainable, or that the verdict of a jury of my peers (or even a cadre of knowledge elites) is the highest form of truth and justice, is a camel I can\u2019t swallow.<\/p>\n

So though I have experienced anesthesia and even wondered if that was what death was like, it was never comforting to me.\u00a0 Still, I could relate because I had been enamored with the fantasy of having never been bothered with existence in the first place.<\/p>\n

<\/a>As a child I prayed for two things: that my parents would get along and that I could hit a fast pitch baseball.\u00a0 Sure, I probably prayed for other things, too, but these are the prayers I remember.\u00a0 I certainly prayed them the most.\u00a0 My parents never did get along any better.\u00a0 They separated in my early twenties.\u00a0 And I hit the ball once, until my neighbor friend shared a record with me, a recording of Stan Musial talking about hitting.<\/p>\n

I was hit by a pitch at practice early in my first season.\u00a0 It broke my finger and I had to sit the season out.\u00a0 Stan Musial seemed to understand my fear.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even remember now what he said.\u00a0 I only remember that I began to stand in without shying away, watch the ball all the way to the bat and make contact.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure coaches had yelled things like that at me many times before.\u00a0 But I had stood at Sportsmen\u2019s Park banging my wooden seat on its hinges when Stan the Man came up to bat.\u00a0 Sometimes he struck out.\u00a0 But the next time we stood and banged our seats again, and more often than not, often enough to satisfy us all, Stan the Man hit it out of the park.\u00a0 When Stan Musial said it, I listened.\u00a0 And I decided that he was a much better hitter than God.<\/p>\n

<\/a>In my late twenties I spent several years studying the Bible, history and philosophy<\/a>.\u00a0 I prayed for answers to the questions my studies posed, then I trusted that those answers would be forthcoming, and kept on studying.\u00a0 By contrast I hated the Bible as a child.\u00a0 When I was forced to read it I didn\u2019t hear anything because I thought I already knew what it said from Sunday school classes.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t particularly like Sunday school classes either.\u00a0 The few times I did pick it up on my own I found some things that didn\u2019t sound like my Sunday school and I assumed I didn\u2019t understand the Bible, or that my understanding couldn\u2019t possibly be right because so many people before me had understood it like my Sunday school classes.\u00a0 In my late twenties I probably still thought I already knew what the Bible said, but I was driven to read it, insatiably driven.\u00a0 Answers came, sometimes amazingly.<\/p>\n

One was in a book from the British Museum.\u00a0 A friend gave it to me after a trip to London.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know the question I was asking and he didn\u2019t know the answer was in the book he purchased for me.\u00a0 He simply thought I would like the book.\u00a0 And he was wrong!\u00a0 Apart from the question I was asking, I would have had no interest in this book at all.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Nietzsche<\/a>: Friedrich Nietzsche was much smarter than I am.\u00a0 He would have convinced me of atheism apart from the Lord\u2019s answers to his questions, or the questions he fostered in me.\u00a0 I will be forever grateful to Nietzsche for those questions.\u00a0 The Lord\u2019s answers changed the way I read and understand the Bible.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Yet after that amazing time I was still disgruntled.\u00a0 Writing this has forced me to ask myself why.\u00a0 The answer that comes to me is that I was not actually as open-minded as I like to remember the story.\u00a0 I was trying to find a rational alternative<\/a> to faith (i.e., that arrived at the same conclusions but required no faith).\u00a0 My best effort was indistinguishable from faith.\u00a0 In other words, I had failed.\u00a0 So as the Lord and I did our postmortem on those years, I said the time was better than I had expected (recalling my parents and hitting a baseball), but that I was still inclined to wish for never having been born.<\/p>\n

He was angry.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t respond in what I consider a typical male response to anger, matching anger for anger, blow for blow.\u00a0 To repeat what He said wouldn\u2019t mean much.\u00a0 It was completely in tune with the years we had spent analyzing statements and their negations.\u00a0 The thrust of it was, \u201cI don\u2019t care what you want, I called you into existence to love you.\u201d\u00a0 My uncharacteristic response\u2014one I have noticed in women responding to men\u2019s anger, especially their jealousy\u2014was, \u201cHe loves me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while\u00a0Bergman’s musings about anesthesia and death form a bond of recognition in me, and his taking comfort in nonexistence is endearing, I can\u2019t follow Ingmar Bergman.\u00a0 Clearly I am inferior to God. \u00a0But He has gone so out of his way to demonstrate his love and mercy to me that I can\u2019t help but feel like a beloved child rather than a dirty snake.\u00a0 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear<\/i>, Paul wrote the Romans, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, \u201cAbba<\/a>, Father.\u201d<\/i>3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n
You Must Be Gentle, Part 4<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to A Monotonous Cycle, Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Son of God – John, Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Son of God – John, Part 4<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Romans, Part 44<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to My Reasons and My Reason, Part 1<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to My Reasons and My Reason, Part 6<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Fear – Deuteronomy, Part 1<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Fear – Deuteronomy, Part 4<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Romans, Part 89<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Who Am I? Part 8<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Atonement, Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Father, Forgive Them – Part 6<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to A Shadow of the Good Things, Part 5<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Patterns of Evidence: Exodus<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Who Am I? Part 13<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to The Book of Life, Part 1<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to The Day of the Lord, Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to The Day of the Lord, Part 6<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Christianity, Part 13<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Keep Yourselves From Idols, Part 2<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Christ-Centered Preaching, Chapter 4, Part 3<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Exploration, Part 8<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n

1<\/sup><\/a> Phaedo<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

2<\/sup><\/a> Romans 14:12 (NET)<\/a> Table<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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3<\/sup><\/a> Romans 8:15 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched an interview with Ingmar Bergman on the DVD version of \u201cPersona\u201d called \u201cA Poem in Images.\u201d\u00a0 He spoke in English, not his native language, but I left the quote below verbatim because I liked the ideas expressed as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1064,6],"tags":[360,1179],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gentle","category-section-two","tag-romans-1412","tag-romans-815"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27498,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions\/27498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}