“Ronald Jorgensen! He must be the Bassett Rd machine-gun murderer”, said my father as he reviewed my order book for the day. As part of a school fundraising activity, I had just returned from selling nameplates door-to-door, and, as usual, my father would collect my orders, and the students’ orders, and have Formica engraved nameplates made accordingly. I doubt that Dad had time to review each name, but Jorgensen’s name jumped out at him. “What did he look like?”, Dad asked. I described a quiet, serious man, dressed well in a mid-length dress leather jacket. He was polite to me, and he bought a nameplate without any further questions or discussion.
Dad then went on to tell me the story of how Jorgensen and John Gillies had used a Reising sub-machine gun to kill two men who were also part of New Zealand’s relatively unsophisticated underworld. That happened in the early ‘60s, just before I was born, and caused something of a sensation, apparently, due in part to Jorgensen and Gillies’ admission that they had smoked a joint before ‘doing the deed’, and perhaps in greater part because the crime deeply shocked sleepy 1960’s New Zealand and challenged its self-image.
I remember going back to drop off the nameplate, hoping to get a better look at the Bassett Rd machine-gun murderer. Sadly, I never did meet Mr. Jorgensen again. But I am sure I would have seen him in a different light. I followed with interest his subsequent life – his painting, and his mysterious disappearance in 1983. I like to think he is still alive, although if he is alive he would be several years older than Elvis.
Professor Bart Ehrman recently had a similar experience – with God. As a lifelong, active Christian, a clergyman, a Princeton PhD in New Testament studies, and a distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina, he saw God as good. Then Ehrman began to see God as the celestial equivalent of a machine-gun murderer. Or worse. Machine guns kill quickly and efficiently, but God inflicts prolonged torture … very prolonged torture … like, forever. At least, that is what Ehrman had been taught to believe. As he states,
"I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the state of things. For many people who inhabit this planet, life is a cesspool of misery and suffering. I came to a point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge of it."
He saw God in an entirely different light, and it changed him. As a moral man, Ehrman saw God’s “rap sheet” and concluded that if God is like that, then he cannot be the deity that He purports to be. Thus, He either does not exist or does exist and He is not the Judeo/Christian God who is worthy of our worship. His brief NPR interview earlier this week is well worth listening to:
Like Ehrman, the disciples, Peter, James and John, also saw Jesus in an entirely different light. You have no doubt read the Transfiguration story in Matthew 17. I wonder what would happen to us if we saw Jesus as He truly is? Would we be repulsed as we realized that this Universe is presided over by a majestic machine-gun murderer, or would we have a Revelation 14 experience of worshiping Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of waters?
© Alister L Hunt PhD
1 comment:
Very interesting Al.
of course God himself also suffered terribly, and so directly we can see that He himself cannot be "in charge" of suffering, but rather subject to the same rules as we find. Clearly this challenges the All Powerful aspect we all have been taught about Him and I guess we explain this by some understanding of the "rules" of the game (see GC themes), and some elements of the working out of sin thing. Personally, I think the Bible gives a perfectly credible explanation for sin (except, perhaps its origin). What is less clear is why it is allowed to go on SO LONG.....unchecked.
It's a complicated subject and rubs shoulders with a lot of other subjects. But look at the Jews.....how would they have felt experiencing judgements they suffered at various times?
Forrest Gump
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