PART II, ARTICLE I: A CRITIQUE OF THE TRAGICALLY HIP, SECTION V

I used to enjoy some songs by The Tragically Hip. That was decades ago. Naturally, I did not understand what I was hearing, which perfectly suited my drunken state. Sometimes, for an instant, a message emerges, as in the following lines from Locked in the Trunk of a Car—: “They don’t know how old I am/They found armor in my belly/From the sixteenth century.” But what has this to do with what follows?—: “Passion out of machine revving tension/Lashing out at machine revving tension/Rushing by the machine revving tension.” Not only are the songs not lucid enough, some of them are defiled by foul words or irreverent references to persons of divinity. Others of them contain lines that overtly encourage dissolute conduct, like these lines from Blow at High Dough—: “But I can get behind anything/Yeah I can get behind anything.” At least this tiny part of the song is comprehensible. But there is little agreement on Song Meanings about what the song is about. I think the lines preceding the part about ‘getting behind anything’ are about a movie being shot at a racetrack. “They shot a movie once, in my hometown/Everybody was in it, from miles around/Out at the speedway, some kind of Elvis thing/Well, I ain’t no movie star.” The rest of the song is, tragically, typically obtuse. ‘Getting behind anything’ is the philosophy that anything goes. That much is obvious. So it is not merely that we should not listen to songs that are unreasonable; we should not listen to songs that induce, through their mood and what little sense they contain, behavior that can ‘get behind anything.’ We should apply these two reasonable lines from his song called Poets, though—: “Don’t tell me what the poets are doing/On the street and the epitome of vague.” The ‘epitome of vague’ is Tragically Hip songwriting; the ‘street’ is the base lifestyle that one may be tempted to engage in by listening to a meaningless pop song; we shouldn’t want anything to do with any of that. Aliena optimum insania frui. (It is best to profit by the madness of others.) We profit by criticizing it and then alienating ourselves from what madmen do. Songs that are unreasonable or immoral are unfortunately popular. “Folly is set in great dignity” (Ecclesiastes 10.6.) Songs that are unreasonable or immoral may be joyful to both songwriter and listener. “Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom” (Proverbs 15.21.) We should ‘go from the presence of a foolish man’ when we perceive that he transmits no knowledge (Proverbs 14.7.) We should do so because ‘a companion of fools shall be destroyed’ (Proverbs 13.20.) It matters how we spend our time. Going to concerts may be fun. But ‘even in laughter the heart is sorrowful’ (Proverbs 14.13.) Why is it like that? Because even while a person is tearing it up, he knows that something is not right. What occasionally nags his conscience is the fact that a thoughtless lifestyle of getting behind anything is a way that leads to both death and hell. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14.12.) Should we not consider this verse in light of the slaughter that took place on October 1st, 2017 at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, two weeks before Downie’s death? Going to this concert seemed right to many. It was ‘a way which seemeth right.’ But the end of that way was death for fifty-eight persons and injuries or terror for the rest. The songs being reveled in when the shots rained down were not much better, maybe no better, than what I am criticizing in this essay. You might not believe that concertgoers were shot because of the sin of going there; and it is true that there are more factors to consider in these deaths than the sin of going to a concert as a beguiled merrymaker among many. It is nevertheless a fact that the victims would not have been shot if they had stayed home to read their Bibles. “Well, they died doing what they loved to do!” That’s the kind of thing people say. “Well, it was their time to go!” This is the other thing that people say. But would their time not have been some other time if they had been somewhere else? Would a thirty-four year old woman who got shot and killed at a concert have died in some other way if she had decided to stay at home that night to read Augustine’s Confessions? That seems unlikely, doesn’t it? How many days we get to live is predestined; but the Bible does not command us to live conscientiously and cautiously for nothing. We can’t square the circle of predestination and responsibility any more than we can drive through a black hole with a Volkswagen Beetle. Some things in both General and Special Revelation lie beyond our abilities.

PART II, ARTICLE I: A CRITIQUE OF THE TRAGICALLY HIP, SECTION IV

In Egos and Icons, Downie says that it’s not about the lyrics per se, but about the ‘sense of mood’ that takes you somewhere. But should our minds be taken off to who knows where by the mood that a song generates? Is any respect paid to listeners of songs by a songwriter’s caprice and negligence? Shouldn’t a song have an aim? Shouldn’t a musician care about where he is taking the minds of his listeners? I know that it is not in fashion to teach anything through songs anymore; and I know that songs are not sermons; but a songwriter should take an apostle’s advice regarding oral communications. “Now brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?” (1 Corinthians 14.6.) What we say, write, or sing should have something indisputable to be gathered from it; to this end, there must be a discernible message in the communication. Any song comprised of intelligible tidings cannot be ‘different things to different people.’ If a pop song takes the listener to somewhere usefully thoughtful by its mood alone, it would have to do that by accident. Is it considerate to not care where your listeners’ thoughts end up, or why they end up where they end up? Too many songwriters are like our free verse poets. They work really hard to fashion something that means nothing, or something that could mean anything to anybody; then they submit the thing as a work of art. In the documentary, Downie calls himself a ‘rebel without a clue.’ He says it in jest. But that’s the truth. 

I don’t know a lot about Bob Seger. But his Fire Inside is a fine example of lyrics meaning something and giving us something to meditate on. The song can make you take a hard look at the bar scene and its ruinous impact, feel the shame of it, and spur you on to consider a better way to spend your nights. It can do some good. Of course, in order to receive the good, you might have to listen to the song with attention, and then meditate on its message, which few listeners do. The point is that when the song is subjected to analysis, it informs and holds together. It is subtle but not obtuse, mournful but not maudlin, colorful but clean; it has no irksome repetition; and, most importantly, it imparts a helpful, even moral, message. This minor digression is to the purpose of providing an answer to anyone who might object to this criticism of Downie on the ground that the critic must be one of these extreme Christians who has nothing positive to say about any song that is not an ancient hymn. “Well you’ve been to the clubs and the discotheques/Where they deal one another from the bottom of the deck/Of promises.” Now that’s a great lyric. Seger wracked his brain on that song, he says—‘work, work, work.’ He toiled over it because he had a message in mind that he wanted to do justice to.

PART II, ARTICLE I: A CRITIQUE OF THE TRAGICALLY HIP, SECTION III

Tragically Hip songs play mostly in bars for drunken clients. It is easy to mistake hogwash for wisdom when the lights are low and the inebriated blood is causing impressionistic scenes and reveries to course through the mind: like “when one loses all sense of time and worry, and feels in harmony with the scheme of bigger things” (William Washburn Nutting, The Track of the Typhoon.) But take that phrase from Twist my Arm, the one about ‘grill sick crows,’ and subject it to a cold sober analysis, and then see what can be made of it. Let’s say that a grill sick crow is a crow that got sick from a piece of raw chicken that it picked off the top of someone’s unattended barbecue. Granting that, what has this ‘grill sick crow’ to do with the rest of the song? What has a ‘grill sick crow’ to do with ‘Jacques Cousteau’ or ‘memorized stairs’ or ‘springtime hares’ or ‘broken-down mares’? No one knows; and no one will ever know. Furthermore, has anyone ever seen a sick crow? Are crows not as tough as cockroaches? I grew up among crows. I’ve never seen a sick one, not once in my life, not even at the local dump where cancer-causing refuse is the crows’ chief staple. They don’t call a flock of crows a ‘murder’ for nothing. They’re tough. A person could replace ‘grill sick crows’ with ‘lovesick cows,’ and the change would not matter at all. It is because the song is nothing but a senseless tune—polished nonsense. The twang and the vocals are the polish. The words are the nonsense. The words are just filler for the tune. But why am I noticing Tragically Obtuse nonsense enough to criticize it? At first blush, it seems like profitless employment to muse on the imbecilic mutterings of a manic musician. But the profit we take from this critical employment is the knowledge of ourselves. When meaningless utterance is valued because of its connection to a groovy sound, the listener is on the level of a cow listening to a radio in a barn. We hum along unthinkingly; the cow chews her cud smilingly; we are on the same level. The cow cannot interpret what she hears; but she interprets as much as we do when a Tragically Hip song is what’s playing. Let’s suppose that a cow gives a certain amount of milk when Mozart is playing in the background. How much less milk would that cow give if made to listen to The Tragically Hip instead? This question is not an entirely facetious one. But I have no herd right now to use for the experiment. Leaving that intriguing question unanswered, therefore, though it is not unanswerable, I labor the point that we are thinking creatures, not cows; songwriters ought to give us insights to ponder, not crazy speech to puzzle over or to take mental vacations with. We will have to answer to God, each one of us, for how we have used these minds of ours—these minds that are part of God’s own image.

PART II, ARTICLE I: A CRITIQUE OF THE TRAGICALLY HIP, SECTION II

The most intelligible, graceful lines that I could find out of the dozen or so songs of the Hip that I read, are these, “Twenty years for nothing, well, that’s nothing new, besides/No one’s interested in something you didn’t do.” I have had to conclude that even this song is vague. Even Wheat Kings, which is supposed to be about wrongfully convicted David Milgaard, is not really about that unless someone tells you that it is. This is quite unlike Stompin’ Tom’s Big Joe Mufferaw, which is, without a doubt, about a French-Canadian lumberjack from the 19th century. The day after the lead singer’s death, the host of Ontario Today, a CBC program, invited fans to phone in to voice their thoughts on Downie’s death. The guest for the show was Alan Cross, a music journalist. During this one hour eulogy, whether by host, guest, or callers, Downie was extolled for having been elliptical, evasive, obtuse yet accessible, intentionally obtuse; and for having stated, in his songs, ‘different things to different people.’ The Bible would call him a prater; and his songs, prating. The apostle Paul, in order to see as many souls saved as possible, made himself ‘all things to all men,’ which is similar to being ‘different things to different people,’ but he made sense. In all seriousness, the guest told the radio audience that musicians like Gord feel more deeply than the common man; and that they, unlike the rest of us, can articulate what they feel. Do those lyrics that I quoted exhibit depth and articulacy? In Egos and Icons, Downie says that his lyrics are ‘user-friendly’—for listeners to deal with, not him. Then he complains, “That’s not good enough for certain people.” Obviously the lyrical quality of his songs has been an issue. It is a vulnerable scab. But it’s a scab that deserves to be picked at. He says this about one song in particular, which, I suppose, he would say for all the rest: “Even if you just sort of get a sense of the mood or the landscape or a character in it, or even if it just takes you off somewhere else so that you’re not even listening to the lyrics by the end of the song, then it succeeded; it just functioned as a sound.” A song that is no more than a sound should not be good enough for any thinking person, though—not if we care about the use of our mind. On a site called Song Meanings, fans are invited to opine on what songs like Twist my Arm and Little Bones mean. It’s all just guessing and speculation. No one really knows what songs like those mean. Members of the band have no idea. Even Downie himself didn’t know. No one knows what lyrics like these, from Poets, could possibly mean: “Spring starts when a heartbeat’s pounding/When the birds can be heard above the reckoning carts doing some final accounting/Lava flowing in Superfarmer’s direction/He’s been getting reprieve from the heat in the frozen food section.” On some level and to some degree, even a singer who is part of society’s moral meltdown should communicate something. If the lyrics of Tragically Hip songs are assessed in order to form some idea of the band’s excellence or lack thereof, it has to be said that one of the chief characteristics of their body of work is meaninglessness. Meaninglessness is a good synonym for postmodernism. Substitute the word ‘meaninglessness’ where the word ‘postmodernism’ is used today, and there is a fairly accurate, concise definition of that enigmatic word. Postmodernism is the philosophy that life has no meaning, that meaning should not be looked for, and that meaning itself is meaningless. Meaning, today, especially in the pop music sector, is as outdated as an abandoned outhouse. Coherent disclosure, furthermore, is prized about as much as what the outhouse was once full of.

PART II, ARTICLE I: A CRITIQUE OF THE TRAGICALLY HIP, SECTION I

When I write lyrics for songs, which isn’t often, the ideal that I have in mind is ‘Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell or ‘Yesterday When I Was Young’ by Charles Aznavour. These songs, in my opinion, represent the standard in secular songwriting. When it was announced that Gord Downie, lead singer for The Tragically Hip, had terminal cancer, he was so often the subject of conversation on the news, and he so wearied me with his pretentious presence, that I began to examine his ‘work’ in order to see if he merited even a fraction of the praise that he was receiving. So shocked was I at the sight of his lyrics that this lengthy article was necessary to elucidate the reason for my shock.   

“Yeah coward phones, big soup stones, prideless loans/Grill sick crows, motel moans and big fat Jones, woo woo.” What a way to begin an article! What could these eloquent words mean? What masterpiece have I quoted from? Whose words of genius are these? These words are from Twist my Arm by The Tragically Hip, whose lead singer died of brain cancer on October 17th, 2017. Yes, these words form part of an actual pop song. This couplet is so shockingly absurd that I had to listen to the lyrics several times in order to make sure that I had the lines correctly rendered. “Yeah coward phones, big soup stones, prideless loans/Grill sick crows, motel moans and big fat Jones, woo woo.” Yeah, this is what Gord Downie wrote; this is what he sang; this is what he is praised for; this is what sells albums; this is what helps a singer win awards in Canada. Should such a series of words be accorded the status of a lyric? This present generation, for the most part, would answer ‘yes’ to that question. Alarmingly, we are several generations deep into compositional absurdity. In the words of Bob Dylan, though with some license: If our times have been a-changin,’ then they’ve been a-changin’ for the worse. We like to hope; in fact, thoughtful persons do hope, that bêtises like ‘grill sick crows’ will not pass for lyrics much longer. Possibly, however, it might be that the only event that will annihilate this nihilism—this absence of objective meaning—is the literal return of Jesus Christ. As pointed out in a documentary called Egos and Icons, each member of the band made some contribution to what The Tragically Hip produced. Gord Downie, though, was the chief, and maybe only, architect of the lyric anarchy that the band created. Tragically Hip songs are commonly obtuse; in other words, they are indistinct and obscure. It would not be too much to say, perhaps, that the songs are nonsensical. From a song called Little Bones—: “So regal and decadent here/Coffin-cheaters dance on their graves’ music/All it’s delicate fear/Is the only thing that don’t change/Two-fifty for an eyeball/And a buck and a half for an ear, happy hour/Happy hour, happy hour is here.” It is doubtful that anyone knows what lyrics like these are about. When Downie’s admirers refer to his lyrics as ‘obtuse,’ they somehow mean it as a compliment. A songwriter who produces lyrics that are less than perceptible should never be praised for it, however. He should never be listened to unless for the purpose of gathering material for criticism; and he should never be critically bothered with unless his music is exerting some influence, which his still is.   

Is it not tragically consistent that the man out of whose mind such lyrics issued ended up dying of brain cancer? It is as if these mentally disordered lyrics formed an immaterial tumor in his mind, which eventually materialized and metastasized, resulting in a terminal case of the now infamous disease that no one is able to outwit. This is not a nice thing to say; but not all things that are less than nice should be left unsaid. To suggest a correlation is natural, if not irresistible. Creatures endowed with understanding have souls, and they are responsible to the Maker of Souls for how they use their minds. When we make a poor use of our mind, and our brain is suddenly stricken so that our mental function begins to swiftly deteriorate, we ought to, with what little reason we have left, turn our attention to the Creator of our mind, and wonder at what might be going on from the divine perspective, and begin to search the word of God for an answer. “You can’t actually predict what your afterworld will be, if in fact there is one,” Downie says in Egos and Icons. He was a young man when he said this. But there is no indication that he ever came to a belief in God, much less to faith in Jesus Christ, through which principle alone; that is to say, through faith or trust in Jesus’ name, a certain hope of heaven may be obtained. Indeed, there is every indication that the man died in unbelief. In 2001 Downie began a solo career. While going solo, he produced an album, receiving help from musicians who go by the name of the words ‘damn’ and ‘God’ together. This collaboration was, by Downie, then, the reception of a violation of the third commandment, which is the command to not take the LORD’s name in vain. In the estimation of most of us, it is a petty sin, if it is a sin at all, to take the name of the LORD in vain. How excessively petty of me to pick on someone for doing it! But, says the word of God: “The wise in heart will receive commandments: but a prating fool shall fall” (Proverbs 10.8.) To prate is to exceed the bounds of useful speech: to chat idly and vainly. It might seem impolite to ask the following rhetorical question. But what are those lyrics that I quoted but something even more stupid than foolish prating or idle chatting? I say ‘worse’ because some idea, though it must be an unimportant one, can be discerned from prating or chatting. For the sake of calling the lyrics something, however, I will be gracious; I will grant them the status of prating. Then I must ask another rhetorical question. What happened on October 17th, 2017 but that a man without regard for a sacred commandment, and who prated foolishly till the end of his life, perished? True, Christians fall by cancer as well. But they don’t go down without receiving and respecting God’s commandments; neither do they leave the world as prating fools.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION VI

Jesus Christ. “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are chronicled in the form of letters. With respect to the communication of facts, the letter is the most reliable genre in literature. God has made it easy to find salvation, for it just so happens that the way of salvation is written down in detail in the most popular, most easily obtained, Book in all of history. On one side of the Book it is prophesied that a Saviour will come. On the other side of the Book, the Saviour has come. His circumstances, character, and conduct are the same in prophecy as they have fallen out in reality. He was born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem; he was descended from the tribe of Judah; he was called a Nazarene; he fled into Egypt; he died in Jerusalem; he fed the hungry; he healed the sick; he raised the dead; he was despised and rejected; he was acquainted with grief; and he was numbered with the transgressors. All of this and more was prophesied of the Son of God hundreds of years before he came into the world as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man. It would be remarkable for even one specific prophecy to come to pass in the life of any man. But the prophecies concerning Jesus are not only specific, but sundry. One writer counted thirty-three prophecies coming to pass in the life of Jesus in one single day. God has made it easy to notice who it is that he sent into the world to save sinners from their just deserts. Elijah and Elisha raised the dead through the power of God; Jesus was the power of God who raised the dead. Unlike any man born in history, he had power over his own life. “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10.18.) He was subject to the Father, but had the prerogative of God, for he was and is, God the Son. Now he is the authority in heaven who will judge the quick and the dead on earth.

Jesus was more than a teacher. He was more than a prophet. He was more, and is more, than man has ever been and that man can ever be. He did not miss the mark; he came to earth to obey the law of God, and fully and flawlessly did so. For the sins of man he died on the cross. The way of eternal life is through trust in what he did for sinful man. What did he do over and above the miracles that authenticated his ministry? He obeyed God’s law to the letter; and he died the death that man deserved for breaking that same law. This was satisfying to God; but that satisfaction does nothing for a sinner unless he puts his trust in Jesus. To benefit, through faith, from what Jesus has done, is the only way to heaven. To want another way to heaven is an insult to the holiness, mercy, and wisdom of the Triune God. Refusing to be saved in God’s way leaves the sinner open to God’s justice and wrath. Justification is necessary, and can only be obtained through faith in Jesus’ name; no man who rejects the gift of God through Jesus Christ can be justified.

But either sinners want to work up to heaven instead of get pulled up by free grace through faith, or they want to get eternal life through someone other than Jesus Christ the Lord, the Mediator of grace. When sinners pray to Mary, they rely on their own prayers as much as they do on Mary, do they not? Neither prayers nor Mary can save. Only Jesus can. Some sinners are offended that God the Father would accept the sacrifice of his Son as the deed to satisfy his wrath. But while the Bible says that Jesus suffered the wrath of God, it also says that he laid his own life down in order to do it. What sinners are put off by is not the treatment of Jesus by the Father, though; that is their excuse. They are put off by the repentance that the Bible requires. If going to heaven through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for sin comes at the cost of repenting first, that is too uncomfortable for them to contemplate. It is due to the corrupted nature of a sinner that he refuses eternal life so he can go on sinning. But how long can he sin for? These are not the days of Methuselah—therefore, how long? Can a sinner sin for seventy or eighty years? He can’t do it for much longer than that. What is eighty years compared with eternity? Why enjoy sinning for less than a century if it means being punished for an eternity of centuries because of it? The average sinner would rather receive the wages of sin than repent; that is, he would rather keep his sentence of death leading to hell than receive eternal life if the reception of this life means that he must repent first. Since the offer of eternal life is extended, and since this present life leads directly to damnation, there is nothing more urgent than to receive the gift of eternal life. This present life is uncertain; the offer of life eternal is temporary, and is withdrawn at the moment of death. The reception of eternal life comes with one condition. It must be received through Jesus Christ, which means: by faith in his name, which faith implies: the repenting that Jesus preached. 

Some sinners claim to reject the offer of salvation because Christians do bad things. So often this is nothing more than an excuse as well. Even if sinners are sincere in this concern, and even if bad things are done by Christians, or have been done, in the name of Christ, that does not mean that the salvation that God provides through Christ is a lie. Many cruel deeds have been done in the name of Jesus Christ. But is it right to hate the way of salvation because counterfeit faiths exist? Numerous churches and masses of professing Christians have made a mockery of the name that is above every name. But this fact does not nullify who Jesus is, the good that he did on earth, the merit of his death, his power to save, or the certainty of his promises. Jesus is not responsible for the misconduct of persons who pretend to follow him. He is not guilty of the misdeeds that are committed in his name; in fact, he died for the misdeeds of others. He must be evaluated according to his own person and record, which are equally blameless. Can it be wise for a sinner to let all the infamy that has been done in Jesus’ name keep him from obtaining the gift of eternal life from God? God the Father has chosen Jesus Christ alone for sinners to be saved by, regardless of Roman Catholic Inquisitions, Salem Witch Trials, cultic churches, and ministers getting caught with prostitutes in cheap motels.  It is right to criticize false Christianity. But it is dumb to reject salvation through Christ because of all the wicked deeds that have been done in his name. Do we throw our money out because counterfeit bills exist? How much less ought we to throw away the pearl of great price (the way of salvation through Jesus Christ the Lord) because some false professors wear fake gems? 

Obdurate sinners will be denied heaven no matter what their excuse is for rejecting the offers of grace. There is no way to heaven by going around Jesus. He cannot be gotten around. He is all-powerful and omnipresent; he stands in the way because he is the Way. There are no other futures for a man to come to than eternal life and everlasting death. His destiny must be one or the other. Jesus himself endorses both of these ends, and only these, in his closing Revelation to John the apostle, right near where he declares himself as the beginning and end: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22.13.) One end will terminate thus: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (verse 11.) This is one future. The other end will be: “he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” This is the other future. Who are the righteous that are spoken of in this last verse? These are the “blessed…that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (verse 14.) The ‘blessed’ are not saved by doing what is right; they do what is right because they are saved. Their lives have been cleaned up; this is why they live clean lives; this is why some of them have been called Puritans.     

What do sinners do after they sin? They clean up; or they at least prefer to be clean than dirty. What would it be like to be left filthy forever? Is a dirty destiny to be desired more than a holy one? Holiness is indeed unapproachable. It makes us uncomfortable. It made saints like the prophet Isaiah and the apostle John exclaim and tremble. But once the saints are fully redeemed at the general resurrection of the dead, holiness will attract them more, even by an infinite measure, than the grossest lusts allure the most debauched persons right now. It may be that sinners will long for their sins even from hell. But whether they will long for them or else loathe them, it is certain that they will not be able to enjoy them. They will see, from their place in the abode of the damned, how happy the saints are in the city of God. “The wicked in hell will be sensible how the righteous in heaven enjoy the favor of God” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 215.) Better to be slowly starved to death while having to look at people feasting than to be conscious that others are delighted forever while we are eternally miserable. The Lord Jesus says that ‘everlasting fire’ was ‘prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matthew 25.41.) Yet he says that this is where unsaved sinners must go. To have to go where even Satan and his fellow demons must go must be a worse outcome and destiny than the best writers of horror have been able to imagine. The only way to a better future is through Jesus Christ, who went through hell on the cross to save all sinners who are willing to repent.       

That person is rare today whose impression of sin, death, Jesus, faith, and the afterlife even marginally agrees with the Bible’s revelation of the same. There are many things that we can afford to be wrong about. But subjects that the future of our soul swivels on are not things that we can afford to misapprehend. The wages, or payment, for sin is death; there is no righteousness, outside of Christ, to cancel that payment; this is why death outside of faith in Christ must be everlasting. We have sin; we are sinful; God will not dwell with sinners. Sins must be turned from, and they must be seen by God as either covered or cleansed by Christ (depending on which figure of speech one prefers to use.) Sinners who won’t repent will be shut out of heaven because nothing unholy is permitted entry there. Life on earth is our probation. If our probation fails, we are undone forever; there is no purgatory to make up for a botched probation. The future of man is an ever-dying existence in unquenchable fire. We have seen people in the process of dying; imagine this process going on without end. Hell and the lake of fire are worse than that. Through faith in Christ the future can be better, even by infinity, than what heaven can be imagined to be. Happiness in heaven is proportionate to the misery of hell. One future is as high and heavenly as the other is bottomless and hellish. The whole creation groans and travails right now (Romans 8.22), that is, until it gives birth to something new. The entire cosmos will be renovated on the basis of Christ’s redemption. The saints of God will enjoy the full scope of God’s creation, from the Milky Way to the Pleiades and beyond.   

“To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth on him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10.43.) When the apostle Peter uttered this, “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (verse 44.) The truth of verse 43 has, therefore, been certified from heaven. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners from their sins, just as the angel sent to Joseph said (Matthew 1.21.) Look at all the witnesses in these few verses: ‘all the prophets,’ Luke (the author of the book of Acts), Peter, the angel, Joseph, Matthew, and the Holy Spirit. Even more witnesses could be called forth to testify that Jesus is the Saviour that sinners need. Who but stiff-necked sinners determined to go their own way would demand more? It will be—it must be—no future but conflagrations for sinners who ‘pull away the shoulder’ (Zechariah 7.11.) Warnings in Scripture can be shrugged off here and now; not so there and then.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION V

Gift. “But the gift of God is eternal life.” No fault more perilous can be made than the assumption that persons who have no interest in God while on earth go automatically to heaven when they die. This seems to be the default religion of irreligious people. Go to practically any funeral, and you will hear a eulogy that will prove this point. The deceased usually has no history of loving God, no marked up Bible, no evidence of a point in life of turning from sin—nothing that should convince a pastor that his departed soul has been welcomed by angels and is now at rest in ‘a better place.’ There is no ‘Better Place’ for these exaggeratedly eulogized folks; there is no ‘Nirvana’ for Buddhists and Hindus; there is no ‘Happy Hunting Ground’ for American Indians; there is no ‘Paradise’ for Muslims; there is no ‘Valhalla’ for warriors and soldiers; there are no ‘Elysian Fields’ for heroes. There is only ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’ for sinners who become Christians. The kingdom of heaven is holy. It does not cavort with sin. We have no reason to believe that a person who went on in sin all his life has gone to a place that is the very antithesis of sin. It is true that even the Christian sins, for sanctification is a gradual process that stems from the regenerate soul. But any Christian in more than a name has his confession and testimony substantiated by an upstanding life, notwithstanding his occasional faults. To assume, and even declare, that a deceased person, regardless of lifestyle and belief, has been ushered into the care of heaven, is what pastors unjustifiably do and what families and loved ones routinely expect. The gift of God is eternal life. This gift comes by an act of grace. Grace is holy, and therefore consecration must exude from any sinner who has received the gift. To be holy is to be set apart. If a person is not known for standing apart from sinners and what sinners do and must be judged for, that person has not received the holy gift of eternal life, and there is no heaven for him.  Grace makes a person hate sin more than like it. If a person has not been tiresome in his denunciation of sin, it is wrong to assume that he has had grace worked into him. A soul saved by grace and in possession of eternal life is daily outraged at sin. “Horror has taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law” (Psalm 119.53.) Can this honestly be said of the last person we knew who was eulogized? Was that person habitually horrified upon hearing of wickedness like extramarital liaisons, abortion, idolatry, euthanasia, oppression, pornography, homosexuality, and perversities by any other name? 

Death happens because of sin; life happens by the gift of God. Both are eternal futures. The exchange of one for the other is characterized by the power of sin being broken, which is what an operation of grace will do. It is true that every man has lied, and this reality is stated in the Bible more than once. It is a hard thing to lie no more; probably no one can live up to that. But we must reckon with the fact that even lying must be overcome, for liars, not just murderers, “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21.8.) It seems out of sync for lying to be put next to murder, idolatry, and whoredom (debauchery) as a sin that a person will be consigned to the lake of fire for committing. The question is not: Have we lied? We all have. The question is not: Can we stop lying from now on until we die? The questions that help us to know if we are the kind of liar condemned in the verse are these: Is our profession of faith a lie? Do we feel guiltier before God than before man when we lie? “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51.4.) Have we ever struggled with the ethical issue of Rahab lying to save the Hebrew spies? Have we ever struggled with the ethical issue of lying to save Jews during the Holocaust? Christians are wont to grapple with questions like these.