Episode 2 - Crossing the Styx: Is the World Going to Hell, or Is It Just You?

Apocalyptic skies ... Global wars ... Human apathy ... Did we miss the rapture, or are the doomsday prophets just head of the game? Join Rev. Joanne, Rev. Bill, and Ricardo De Menezes as they talk about the end of the world, Hell, and if there's any hope for the rest of us!

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Chapters

• 0:07 Exploring Hell
• 3:56 Navigating Through Present Challenges
• 10:31 Exploring Apocalyptic fascination and Community
• 20:21 Climate Crisis and Existential Risk
• 35:44 Seeking Hope and Community Amid Chaos
• 50:41 Questioning the Concept of Hell
• 59:42 Catholicism, Community, and the Concept of Hell
• 1:05:40 Personal Hell and Systemic Evil
• 1:19:32 Reflecting on Material Conditions and Sin
• 1:27:52 Embracing Abundant Life and Community

Transcript

Bill

00:07

We are back at the table, we're hitting record and we're diving straight into conversations about God, faith and the messy, beautiful world we live in. No filters, no edits, just open, honest, searching for a God who's bigger and more loving and never lets us go. And to keep things interesting, we're doing it live, with a few guests joining us along the way. On any given Sunday in church, we might sing You'll Never Walk on Water If You're Not Prepared to Drown. It's a popular hymn in our worship. Well, this podcast is about stepping out, sinking deep and discovering just how vast the divine love that connects us really is. I'm Bill Weaver and this is Prepared to Drown Deep Dives into an Expansive Faith. Let's take the plunge. Our second episode of Deep Dives Prepared to Drown Deep Dives into an Expansive Faith Again on our panel here tonight. We have with us Ricardo Dimenizes. I'm never going to get it right. What is it, dimenizes, dimenizes? There we go to get it right. What is it? Dimenizes, dimenizes, there we go. 

Joanne

01:07

De Menezes. Starts with demon. Demon Like hell. 

Ricardo

01:10

Demon and Jesus in Spanish, right? So it's okay, demon and Jesus. 

Bill

01:15

There we go, fitting for this and then the Reverend Joanne Anquist, and then I am Reverend Bill Weaver, and we are going to be your panelists for tonight. Our topic tonight, our theme for tonight, is all about hell, something I'm told to go to often in my life, and so we've entitled our episode today Crossing the River Styx Is the World Going to Hell or Is it Just you? And we are going to actually break our conversation up into two parts on those two particular questions. So, right off the hop, I'm going to ask you and I'm going to start with you, ricardo- just because I can, is the world going to hell? 

Ricardo

01:55

Well, it depends on if we're already there or not. It seems like the world is quite chaotic right now with everything that's happening, especially in the last week or two south of our border. So we look to that as the prominent news source of what's happening right now. With the election of Donald Trump in the south and now he has control of all three houses of government, it looks to see how that affects us in a time where I think everybody is still struggling to get by and to afford to live with rent and we have our own issues and problems here in Alberta. You know, it's just. I have a lot to say on this topic because it's just like such a wide, open topic. We just think is the world going to hell? Yes, veterinary prices have gone up. You know like a dog. 

02:47

Food prices have increased right, climate change, all those kind of things. 

02:51

But, like you know, you think about the economy and the world of scale and the affordability crisis in Canada where, in Alberta, we have the highest insurance rates and the highest electricity and utility rates and unregulated rent and stuff like that, and so you wonder how it all affects us. When things south of the border, he wants to put America first and we wonder how that will affect us if our prices go up or our wages go up. So it's a lot to consider, and I say all these things in a grand scale, as if anyone in this room can solve that problem. But everyone in this room individually solve that problem. But everyone in this room individually has to deal with that problem and figure out a way to survive. We've become small B businesses of our own now, managing our households and figuring out ways to income in and payments out to survive. All these external factors really weigh on people's minds and you wonder what you have to do just to find positivity and love and life these days, right? 

03:56

I know, every morning I listen to news broadcasts from different areas of the world. It's a cool little snippet thing that Google has. So I get CBC, bbc, cnn, and then I listen to like TR, the Turkish radio broadcast, and like the slant, even on the Israel-Palestine conflict they're like Israelis war, the Israel genocide in Gaza. But you listen to like CNN and they're like oh, it's like the Israel war in Hamas and stuff like that. So the way things are crafted it still messes with your head a bit right and you wonder when will things get better or when will things improve. 

04:29

But there are also snippets of hope and love in the world that really help. That, I think. Offer us some reprieve, as small as it may be. 

Bill

04:39

Well, yeah, I mean certainly like considering the reality that it's worth noting that contextually, yeah, we are what are a week, basically A week, two weeks at most, since a lot of people woke up and said what just happened. 

Joanne

04:53

Ten days, right, but I'm not counting. You've got the clock going, I'm sure, right 1,557 until the next election, apparently something like that. 

Bill

05:05

So yeah, Joanne, over to you. How's the world going to hell? 

Joanne

05:09

Well, I mean it's an interesting thing because if you think of it from a theological perspective, hell is some kind of punishment, right, it's not just we're uncomfortable and life is difficult for us and we don't know where we're going. Hell is actual punishment in that sense, and I think the interesting thing about thinking that is that sometimes people will trot out you know, god is punishing us and that's why our lives are so hard. I remember in the 80s late 70s actually there was a man in the States called Jerry Falwell and he was the head of something called the Moral Majority, and it was the same time as Newt Gingrich was around saying we need to be meaner to each other, more enemy-like, in our politics. But in the 80s the AIDS crisis arose and he said that was God's punishment for, for instance, a gay lifestyle. So people have taken tragedies in the world from time to time and said this is God punishing us. 

06:20

So I completely disagree with that as any kind of answer or reason for the difficult times we have in our lives. God is not punishing us. There are forces at play that are seeking to dominate the landscape, acquiring more resources, and we live in a world of scarcity where I got to make sure I have enough, and if that means someone else doesn't, that's okay, because I'm first, me first. So what I do think is that there are things that are evil, and that's different than hell. Right, evil is a self-absorbed nothing else but me and mine matter, and a refusal to understand the needs of the greater whole. I think so. We're in a difficult and precarious time, but it's not God punishing us. I'll make clear about that. But there are challenges that we need to face with open hearts and love, and if we refuse to do that, then things will only get worse. 

Bill

07:54

You can say that there's no punishment, but I have actually watched Britney Spears' Crossroad and let me tell you. I watched it three times in one weekend actually for a girl who dumped me on the Monday. So I can tell you that there is a hell, and it might just be teenage dating. 

Joanne

08:14

Anyhow. 

Bill

08:19

Interestingly enough, especially in the lead up to I noticed, at least in the lead up to the US election, as the rhetoric really started to ramp up, there was a lot of language that was very apocalyptic, even in kind of like the implications of this election, the implications of you know. This Tuesday, you know event in the US was going to put our world on a trajectory for either good or destruction, and the chasm between was very large. So I did a little bit of research around the end of the world, since the end of the world felt like we were I I, for those who don't know, I might be the only person that I talked with on tuesday night that intentionally opted out of checking social media, watching television, um like no connection to anything going on. I kind of adopted a whole um like if the world is ending tonight. 

09:24

I'll find out about it tomorrow right? And? 

Joanne

09:28

that doesn't make sense. If it ends tonight, find out about it tomorrow. 

Bill

09:31

It actually felt very I want to believe. I don't know if it's true or not, but I've always, I always remember this, this story that I heard about Martin Luther, that he was asked like what would you do if you learned that the world was going to end tomorrow? And apparently his response whether it's true or not, I don't know was I'd plant a tree today. And so every once in a while I remind myself well, yeah, if the world ends tomorrow, then we'll worship on the ashes, We'll build something new and hopefully better, with whatever is left. 

10:04

We'll build something new and hopefully better, with whatever is left. So, intriguingly enough, the things that we would mark in our collective human lifetime as being the end of the world moments, or certainly the larger catastrophic moments two world wars, for instance, the black death, all the hurricanes, the earthquakes, the natural disasters, all that kind of stuff actually all registered as negligible on the overall scale of things. When you look at 4.5 billion years of history, there have been five distinct waves of mass extinction events and scientists would say that 99.9% of the species that have lived on the earth are now extinct. In that time frame 

Joanne

10:49

It's very hopeful, Bill.

Bill

10:51

Thank you. Well, you know, that's what I'm here for right, so so on the one, I literally see the star shining above my head now. 

10:56

The more you know, Even just this past week, right, even just this past week, our sky was lit up at 630 in the morning, I think, with with a meteorite right here over southern Alberta, and we have no concept of, you know, if there were an asteroid hurtling to Earth that was going to create another extinction-level event. There's nothing we can do about it, right, really so, interestingly enough, on the one hand and there is hope in this right, we've always lived, we've always lived, um, under the threat of, like some kind of a mass extinction event. Um, that is totally beyond our control and, funnily enough, I love how obsessed we get about it sometimes, right, as a human species. The movies alone, the cinemas, I mean. 

11:49

I remember the era of, oh, it was Armageddon and Deep Impact. Both came out in like the same month and we were all just kind of riveted with this idea that, you know, we better start building our shelters now to get ready for when the meteor impacts the earth. And we got to, you know, rep, start building our shelters now to get ready for when the meteor impacts the earth. And we gotta, you know, repopulate afterwards and um, and all of this, like we moved through these phases of, um, of almost morbid curiosity in our cinema and in our um, and even just sort of our social frenzies. I remember the y2k pandemic, or not pandemic, the Y2K um concern, even when it was happening right, that we were all just suddenly gonna be shuttled back to the dark ages, um, you know, at the stroke of midnight on the year 2000, and even then, funnily enough, um, I went. I went and saw Miss Saigon in. 

12:40

Spokane and figured like, hey, if, if I'm'm going to be in the Dark Ages, I've got to get one more musical in before it happens, right. But we have a strange theory of fascination with the idea of our world ending right. And I wonder why it is that we actually are so fascinated, like we mythologize and we build fantastic stories and worldviews and systems and everything around it, when, at the end of the day, anything in our collective human generational history doesn't even register for what has actually happened on this planet generational history doesn't even register for what has actually happened on this planet. 

Joanne

13:31

Um, yeah, but there have been cataclysms and communities. Right, you know there have been communities that have been destroyed and they figure pretty prominently in that group's psyche, right, you know, you can think of, obviously, first one, the holocaust for jewish folk, the um stalin and the people in ukraine and in russia, uh, the armenian um genocide as well. I mean, in these figure in in scripture. There are times, cataclysms, apocalypses, all through it, right, and the question is always how do we who are left continue, right? So this idea of the remnant is very prominent. And actually that was me. 

14:20

The next day, my sister, one of my sisters texts me and goes can you believe what happened in in the us and um? And I? I said to her there is always a remnant, right, there are always people in this sort of apocalypse, in this dystopian future that we concentrate on. And I always say I am a Star Trek fan, not a Star Wars fan, because Star Trek has this utopian future where we actually do get along. There's a few skirmishes, but we're bringing more and more people into the Federation and into life together, and Star Wars is this kind of gritty battle and there's a lot of dystopian, especially in times like this where it is the end of the world. But we always believe that, even if there is a huge event, that there will always be a remnant and maybe that's not true, but there will always be a remnant. And how does that remnant build again? How do we live together? 

15:26

Um, so, when you were talking about that, I was reminded of a canadian film. Actually that was really good and sandra oh was in it and, um, it was called the last night don mckellar's film and that was a mass extinction event. There was a, you know, some kind of rock hurtling towards the world and all life was going to end. And they knew for three months that this was going to happen. And so the movie was about. How did people respond to the last three months of their lives? And the Sandra Oh character got pregnant, even though she know that child would never be born. 

16:00

And um, don mckellar, on this last night, he decides he just wants to be alone, not with family, not with anyone, and they're like wait, you got to come over. We're having dinner together, um, and another one of his friends just decided it was time for anarchy. Like, just let it all go. There was all kinds of this was filmed in toronto, you know. So there was all kinds of destruction of of, uh, public transit things and people were stealing stuff and and so what I think about apocalyptic events, if you want to talk about the end of the world, which is different, you know, than than hell, except that in scripture, after an apocalyptic event, there is judgment. 

16:37

Right, there's always judgment after the apocalypse. So in some ways, people are looking for that time, like the world is crazy and it's evil and sinful, but God will come and judge us, like something will happen, the world will end and there will be judgment. And I think that this obsession with can we live? How do we live? How then shall we live, if you want to put it in Martin Luther's words, when we live in this cataclysmic time? Not is this the end of the world, but if it were, how would we continue? What kind of people do we want to be? If this is the end? How do we want to be together? 

17:22

I'm reminded of the Road. You know the McCormick book, the Road. I saw the movie. Actually I don't know if I read the Road, the book, but there was a father and their son and people were engaging in cannibalism and attacking each other and any time they could find some real legitimate food. There was horrible arguments over it and he said to his son and they kept saying to each other, we always let the light in or something like that we never gave in to that and that was really important to them that even though everyone else is engaging in the me. 

17:59

First, take care of yourself. Limited resources, I gotta make sure me and mine are safe, that the light was never extinguished. And that, to me, is the real question about this end of the world. How are we gonna be in this and can we find a community that will be in that space with us, that will not despair and let go of the future and love at the center? So that, to me, is how we respond to those obsessions with. Will I live or will I die? Are we here for good or are we just like the dinosaurs? One day it's over. 

Ricardo

18:43

It's interesting when you play Mario Brothers and you die, you automatically get to start again with three more lives. And I think there's an obsession that people have with a great reset. But for some reason in our brains we think that if the world around us just resets and gives us another chance to do well, we'll survive that reset as the same person and everything else will change around me. Right, the problem with the world is that time marches on relentlessly and you have to go along with it. So it's interesting you say like this obsession of this fascination with the end of the world, and people don't understand what the end of the world means, but accept the end of their own individual suffering right now and the opportunity to make different choices in the past and make different choices. And I think we face our own. Like I'm already, how old now? How can I ever get enough money to retire or or change my relationship with my siblings, or or, or any of those things, or, or, or help in the political discourse that we exist in today in the world? These are these existential questions that people often face and they want something, they want an external factor to help them change that. Now, that's sort of where we're kind of at because we just we live in what we have. It's interesting when you know when we I was in Kansas actually on election night and our local in Wichita put on an election watch party which ended up being more of a wake than anything else where they ended up. 

20:21

But the hotel front, like in Kansas, is red. It's Republican supermajority everywhere you go. So Trump did quite well in Kansas and the hotel front desk clerk was pro-Trump and I sat down and I asked him. I was like what makes you know? Let me just back up, actually, the reason I was in Kansas. We had JLMs with a major meatpacking company in North America and JLMs are Joint. 

20:50

Labor Management Committee meetings, where the unions of all the different locals across America and this company get together to discuss global issues. And after Trump won, everything on our agenda got bumped down, and the number one thing was his mass deportation promise that he made Because I didn't know this, actually being a Canadian ICE the immigration they, once a year at least fully K-47s walk into these plants to check everyone's paperwork to make sure that they're documented and legal workers in these repacking plants, which poses a different problem as to why repacking companies are hiring. They had their own issues in that sense and they were worried that those rates would increase more frequently, and the company that we work with says this is a legitimate concern for us. What's next on the agenda? 

21:39

So I was telling the front desk person this and he says well, you know, I agree that those raids should happen and undocumented workers should not be there, and these companies should pay more to attract American workers. If Americans don't want to do those jobs, they should be paying more money. And so I thought to myself the logic makes sense, but why aren't we going after the company? And why are we going after the company? And why are we going after the worker that is just coming here to make a better life for themselves? Right, and you can see the spiraling impact of that mass deportation promise. 

22:11

I think it was two days after the election that Justin Trudeau announced a steep cut to immigration levels in Canada, which a lot of people agree with. We have housing crisis and stuff like that. But then you think of those individual workers that are just coming here to escape, whatever country they're from, and all they want is an external factor to help them get by. Help me earn more money, help me stay in this country, help me do something. And there was something about media, and not necessarily media as in like news that we think about. It's like just the messaging we hear out there in the world about. 

Bill

22:48

I'll make your life more affordable. 

Ricardo

22:50

You know, I'll get you a family doctor and I'll find you a job and we'll get more full-time jobs, but there's never a plan or never a promise delivered right, but people still latch onto that, and so that's what's driving people's mentality now. 

23:05

Voting and engagement in our communities is a completely emotional act now rather than a logical one, or it's an emotional act now. 

23:20

So there was a study that I had read where the average American family has anywhere between $1,000 to $1,500 more per month in expenses and it's completely being associated to the Biden administration, and I guess the same could be said here, too, that it's being targeted towards the current government in Canada, not towards anything to do with inflation or greed or profit, profit mongering or policy. 

23:52

It's just it's always set towards the government. So, like in the states, when you see, like the democrat party saying we'll protect women's right to choose and we'll help protect the environment, these are all issues that matter to a lot of people. But when the Republicans say, oh, we'll just make your life more affordable, without saying a thing as to how they'll do that, people vote for them. Right, and it's interesting to see this emotional and this mind shift that just happens in people's brains, where they want this external factor to change their lives and help them. So that topic we're talking about today steers us away from going to hell or the world from ending right Well and interestingly enough as well, it's not even just corporate greed and politics. 

Bill

24:38

We're in the midst of a climate crisis as well, which is driving up costs and creating mass scarcity of all kinds of resources. I would say we're at the point now where I even kind of watch news of mass deportations, but also even our current government trying to say we may need to claw back on our immigration targets and all those kinds of things. And what's never actually talked about in the middle of it is people are leaving because they're not able to stay where they are anymore. We've basically reached a point now where it's not habitable in the way that it would need to be for any kind of real legitimate human flourishing. 

25:24

And that is probably the biggest thing that I remember. I remember learning in school that I had a really great social studies teacher in high school who I wish I could remember his name right now. But he said one day, the day everything changed as far as he was concerned in the world was when they successfully tested the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945. And that really what shifted at that point in time was not that he had been a part of this conversation or anything, was that suddenly we had the ability to end it all right On like a nuclear you know level. We could destroy this world without any outside help, without any. And it feels like even today we've kind of said, well, like there's a way to hold my beer, there's a hundred other ways we can do it besides bombs. Right, we can drive up the temperature right. 

26:28

There's tons we can do, and in the midst of it all, the places that are doing the most damage by and large and I'm painting with a large brush are not the places that are experiencing the most impact or consequences for the decision. Right, it is what we would call the third world that experiences the consequences of, you know, first world waste and consumption and destruction. Right? So there's no need to even consider the consequences yet, but we'll be damn sure that we stop as many people from coming and benefiting from what we've got because we know it's scarce. We just aren't really prepared to say yet we're the reason why it's scarce, right? 

27:18

So I know that Stephen Hawking's last I wrote this one down because it's funny Stephen Hawking's very last published comments was that he believes in the next thousand years, either by a nuclear catastrophe or an environmental catastrophe, we are going to cripple this earth in the next thousand years, right? So I also learned that there is actually now an academic field of study on existential risk. You can actually major in existential risk studies, and it's a Canadian field that was created. Go Canada. 

27:53

I want that degree plaque on my wall the Bachelor of Existential Risk, master of Divinity, master of divinity. But John Leslie is one of the Canadians that actually was responsible for getting this field up and running and he said in 96 that he believed 30% chance that the human race would be extinct in the next five generations. In 1996, right even before, even before I was done high school, we were at a 30 percent chance that the human race would be gone in five generations. And I know that my kids are still young, but they, they talk about it, they ask questions, they ask questions a lot that kind of indicate, like them and their friends, they actually worry now. 

28:46

I never worried about are the ice caps going to melt and climate change going to completely and totally eradicate my very existence in my lifetime, when I was their age. So we're talking one generation and, like the generations coming up now, these are very tangible, real issues for them, right? These are things that a lot of people do try to distract very heavily with the promise of you will be comfortable, I'll make your life easier. I have no plan for how that's gonna happen, because the other option is this person over here is actually talking about, like climate rehabilitation and, and and all these things that would actually do this in the long term. They're actually addressing the thing that is undergirding all of the fear right now. Will my life be impacted so badly for the negative because of all of this stuff that was going on, as this world spirals into chaos and whatever, that it will become irredeemable, irreparable, in my lifetime? This is the generation that fears they may not actually live to an old age, right? 

Joanne

29:57

right and, and so this is an interesting thing that in response to that, not not so much the kids, but the idea, like stephen hawking who said you know, the human race is going to be gone the push behind all the space exploration, everything right now by billionaires, is we got to get humans off earth right? Not we got to make earth better. Is we got to figure out how to save humanity by getting them off the earth? And it's just such a. It is just such a sort of short-sighted look at all these, these conditions that we're in. And I agree that young people feel so much anxiety about what is going to be in the, in the earth. And yet I know that, um, you know my parents, who were children during the second world war. They also thought the world was ending, right, you can imagine this huge war and my, my dad and mom were raised in the Depression for 10 years and then five years of war. Like, can you imagine those young people? 15 years he turned 15 at the end of the war. So for 15 years of his life everything was falling apart and yet it continued. And this is my coming back to this the idea of the remnant, all these things could happen. It all could happen, but we need to concentrate on what is the light that we need to hold in order that we can continue to live as community and not be at each other's throats in this and I think you know, ricardo, when you were talking about the election and people are very emotional, like we're doing as a series, carol Loss Book, loss of Words, and what she says and this is the whole move towards fascism over democracy is that all the language becomes emotional instead of intellectual. It all becomes emotional and it hits you here and in your brain. You might think this doesn't make sense, but this is how I feel, and people who can make you feel something are the ones who you want to leave you. 

32:20

What has concerned me and I think that the apocalypse now is people are afraid that democracy will fail right, that we will have authoritarian governments. Authoritarian governments are not always bad for the people with power and money. They're bad for the fringe, they're bad for the people who are marginalized. So this is the idea that we have to be vigilant about keeping democracy, if we truly believe that democracy is the way that we can be the people together, as opposed to under the thumb of an authoritarian, and that's the fear that people have, not that they won't be able to, there won't be enough food or they're gonna be kicked out of their homes, it's that we're gonna have no say anymore. And the problem with the sort of post-election analysis is they tried to make it some kind of. The reason that Trump won, for instance, is because people felt economically vulnerable, and I think that that's true because the whole world, as a result of the COVID pandemic, had incredible inflation. Canada and the US came out way better than a lot of other countries. We manage those things way better. 

33:46

But what happens is the people who appeal to emotions they don't make arguments about okay, we're really off. They point to immigrants and they they point to other people, people who are marginalized, trans folks, the. The use of trans people as an election issue was un. It's a moral thing to me, like it's just unforgivable. And these poor immigrants who, yes, maybe they entered the country illegally, but some of them have been there for like 40 years, 50 years, you know, their whole life is there. 

34:23

And that, to me, is what we have to guard against. Is that the emotion that we're actually bringing up in people is divisive and hateful. And, um, if you talk to, if you, you hear some of the commentary, that's the thing that one, like people, might say it's because the eggs are too expensive. But it's really you hate who I hate and so I'm going to vote for you, and that is that's going to destroy our world before climate change. You hate who I hate and all the picks for the cabinet now are. You know, the commentary now is. It makes it very clear. This retribution idea we're going to go after the people that you hate is in the midst of all this, and that's what will destroy us. That will destroy us before climate change if we continue down a path where we're all picking who we hate instead of how we can love or easily bullying down the most vulnerable. 

35:22

Or taking the most vulnerable and making them election issues. That is so destructive to the fiber of our culture If we start making scapegoats out of people again, which historically humanity has always done. The common enemy, the one we can all hate together, yeah. 

Ricardo

35:44

Interestingly how you speak about cabinets and Donald Trump made Elon Musk the Secretary of Government Deficiencies and then went around and is threatening to cancel all the tax credits for electric vehicles. 

Joanne

35:55

Yeah, I'm wondering how. 

Ricardo

35:57

Elon Musk is feeling about that right now. 

Joanne

35:58

He's like wait a minute. 

Ricardo

36:03

I'm going to get less car sales now for my business, but you bring up a good point about how we look for a scapegoat. And there are also things that we look. We go after these things because we are tired and fatigued over the things we can't change. 

Joanne

36:21

Right. 

Ricardo

36:23

And maybe taking away the very little percentage of the total cost of health care that transgender people require is the easiest way to deal with the fact that I can't get a family doctor, or that the policies put in place in 2019 affected us through probably the most heightened healthcare expenditure during the pandemic possible. Right? It's funny. You mention policies that affect the most vulnerable. If you think of artificial intelligence or even automation, which is probably a podcast episode in and of itself how automation and robotics and artificial intelligence. They're benefiting the rich, but they're attacking the most vulnerable jobs, cashiers, self-checkouts right Now, robots that clean the floors, artificial intelligence that creates music and it's a scary thing that you know. 

37:19

I saw this post for the conductor of the Calgary Civic Symphony. He put in his Facebook. He says AI was supposed to do the music so that the artist could be creative, not the other way around. Right, yeah, right. 

37:34

And so, to add more context to the point I'm trying to make, in the 80s and 90s mostly the 80s it took, on average, five to seven years to save for a house, depending what kind of house you wanted. Right now, in 2024, it takes an average of 17 years to save for a house in Calgary, 22 to 24 years in Toronto and Vancouver. Imagine deciding at 18 years old that you want to buy a house and you don't get that house until you are 18 years old, that you want to buy a house and you don't get that house until you are 40 years old. And then you have a 30 year mortgage, you retire with a mortgage right, and there's just no escape. So what do you do? How do you change that system that's already in play? You don't say, well, lower all the cost of houses. Well, that affects the people that actually had the mortgages right now. 

Joanne

38:23

Right, that's the thing that they're trying to balance is all those houses. It's going to lower the value of these people who are relying on their houses for their retirement too. Exactly, yeah, you know, like these are all, but that's why the idea of rising above self-interest is essential to the survival of humanity. We have always lived in community. We need community, and this idea that the individual is preeminent, that is the most important thing me, my stuff, my family. That, instead of the tribe, instead of the collective, instead of the people together, is what, like that's what destroys us, and if we can't get to a sense of the common good as being the most important thing in any society, then we, then we're gonna, we're, we're doomed for failure. We're doomed. 

Bill

39:22

And I'm the one that's got no hope in this. 

Joanne

39:25

But, yeah. 

Bill

39:28

So we're kind of at the time before we need to stop on this topic, but before we do that, because I am aware of the fact that, yeah, I mean we're talking about the end of the world here. So I'll start with Ricardo, we'll end with Joanne before we go to intermission. 

Ricardo

39:46

What's the word of hope then in this? Oh, that's a good call. I think there are mechanisms and there are things in society that we have to start relying upon or utilizing in order to bring about the positive hope that we need, for example, a community like mcdougall right um, it's surrounding, surrounded by houses and homes of people that probably need a community and an easy community to to join, um, much like I did when I first joined six or seven years ago. This is going to sound very biased in what I say, but if your work life is not helping for you, then unions are out there for a reason. Try and help regulate that balance towards the employer-employee relationship and little things too, like if you have good volunteers, if you don't have, then try and seek support or help each other in the smallest possible ways. But also like it's free education. 

40:53

The best thing that I like about some of the social justice movements is they're like, when people ask questions, well, it's not my job to educate you, but I think it is. I think it's everybody's job to educate everybody on something, and if somebody has a question, then that's your spark to make the world a better place. So that's where hope comes, I think and Nelson Mandela said this that education is the real tool to make the world a better place and change the world. So I think that's where we need to start. 

41:21

That's where they were talked to that's where we need to change education systems, right? So yeah, where's? 

Joanne

41:26

the hope for you, joanne well, I mean, it is in that phrase I started with. There is always a remnant. There are always people who come together to create community. There are always people who seek the better, the greater good. You know, and those people are inspirational. You know. You can think of people who work like I, you know just because my son works with unhoused people. 

41:59

I can think of all the people who spend so much of their lives making sure that people get fed and have a place to live. You know, and they give of themselves that way, and there's lots of people in church communities how we strive so much to be affirming of all people, so much to be affirming of all people, so that poor trans kid who feels like they're hated by the government has a place where they can be safe, you know, and it's those kinds of things to me that are very hopeful. First of all, and the second is that I believe a pendulum swings. When I was in the Churchill war rooms in London they had one of the speeches and once again it was this famous phrase the Americans do the right thing after they've exhausted all other options, and I think we do that as humanity. You know, eventually it kicks in and eventually we understand wait a second, we can't live this way. And the pendulum has swung one way in my mind, towards authoritarianism, because people are afraid and they're responding to emotional outcries. 

43:18

But I remember the story of, actually, one of my son's, his girlfriend's parents, and they were from Argentina, right, and the society was kind of unraveling. And someone came along and said the trains are going to run on time and we're going to fix things. And so they voted, you know, and sure enough enough, there was this government that was very strong and he said but then people started disappearing, you know, and at first we thought losing our democracy or losing our say is going to be worth it, because at least you know things, that this fabric of society won't feel like it's unraveling. And he said it didn't seem like too much of a price to pay. But when the people started disappearing and we didn't know who they were, and in the middle of the night people would come, he said, well, of course it was too high a price to pay. 

44:13

And I believe um, first of all, we need to be optimistic that there are people of goodwill always somewhere and if it does continue to unravel, that eventually we look and go. Wait a second, it's gone too far. That's what we do as humanity, and I am hopeful that we can arrest this movement towards the end, whether it's democracy or climate change or whatever, because there are people who will eventually go, and I think it's happening with climate change. Wait a second, it's november and it's 15 and 17 degrees here. Great for us. 

44:54

What about those poor people who are baking in other parts of the world, eventually, with people of goodwill continuing to put before us the idea that we don't have to be at war with each other, that we can actually come together as a community, the ones who continue to insist we're stronger together? That's my hope, like we just keep proclaiming into the darkness, the void void, if you want to say screaming into the void. We are stronger together. Come believe that there is hope and light and love even in the midst of all this. That's my naive optimism. 

Bill

45:37

I remember at the very start of the pandemic, right at the beginning, like right at the beginning of March in 2020, even before the, the government actually kind of like enforced the, the lockdown right we were probably the week before and people were very scared like there was this thing that was happening. They've been caring about it for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, depending on how plugged in they were to things that were happening around the world. 

46:03

There was a sense it might be coming. I remember the day that the first case had been found in Canada and there was sort of this beginning sort of surge of oh, we're ready, we've had time, you're ready for this, it'll be OK. Two weeks, I remember. We've had time to. You're ready for this, like it'll be okay, right, and two weeks. 

46:22

I remember we're just gonna break the cycle for two weeks, yeah, so we're gonna go, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna shelter in place, um, and in two weeks we'll be back to life as it's supposed to be. And then two weeks became a month, and then became two months, and then on and on and on it went. But I remember that through all of it, the only thing that I was really able to do to break the monotony of my house and my children, who I love, was to take the dog out for a walk Brand new pandemic dog, you know, really never should have done it, but did it anyway. And so taking her out to the dog park, where you can make sure you were far enough away from anybody else and you just walk the dog. But to get from my house to the dog park, where you could make sure you were far enough away from anybody else and you just walked the dog, but to get from my house to the dog park, you had to, you know, drive through Bridgeland and up a hill, and at the corner, at the base of the hill, there was a little elderly woman who stood on the corner every single day for hours, and everybody who drove by, everybody who walked by, got an air hug from her and there was always some kind of sign or flowers or something just, and and like there were days when you would drive by and you'd be like, yeah, like here come the waterworks, right, like it's just that kind of a kind of a day, right. 

47:31

And there would be other days where, um, you know, like my kids would just be glued to the window as we were driving by, looking for or for whatever reason, if she wasn't there, we would have to make sure that she hadn't contracted COVID, because nobody could, you know, function for the rest of the day until they were sure that the hugging lady on the corner was okay, right. And I remember, for that first kind of two weeks, just the sentiment, the collective, kind of just community, like people. We had this moment, right. We had this moment where people realized like, yeah, you know what we need to actually drop some of our nonsense, let go of some of the stuff and be better together, right. But I also me being me remember the day that the first complaint went into 311 about how that woman should not be there because she's a distraction for the driver. The capacity we ran out of capacity for that. 

48:30

Right, right and we had to get back into the self-assertion and the nonsense and the litigious. 

Joanne

48:39

Well, because the eggs went up in price, don't you know? 

Bill

48:44

yeah, so, um, so, yeah, I mean we are going to break for a moment and then, when we get back, we're going to talk about the other half. If, if the world, maybe, if we can educate people and if there's always a remnant, then maybe the world will not go to hell. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about whether or not we are Welcome back to our second half of our conversation. Let's assume for the time being that the world is not going to end. The world is not going to hell either by a mass extinction event because the universe wants to kill us, nor because of our own error or intent as a human species with the capacity now to do it In our Christian tradition. There does exist yet another end of the world idea that, funnily enough, I think most of us, probably at this table, resist in one way or another, but I wanted to tell you a bit of a story. So Family Radio California is a radio station, but also has a number of options for worship and music and podcasting and, as they say, everything that helps you keep your mind firmly on Jesus. Everything that helps you keep your mind firmly on Jesus. 

50:41

And in 2011, on May the 21st, the president of California's Family Radio his name was Harold Camping predicted that three million people were going to be saved and the rest were going to perish, and that this was God's intent and God's design. Now, strangely enough or maybe not so strangely enough on May the 21st 2011, absolutely nothing happened. The end of the world did not happen. God did not come and rapture 3 million people and kill off everybody else, and so Harold Camping stood up and said I calculated the date wrong. It's actually October 21st 2011. Now again, obviously nothing happened. He then tried to backpedal and say that a different kind of spiritual salvation had actually occurred on that first May date. 

51:42

But, more importantly, while all of that was happening, another website sprung up as a partner website to Family Radio California. That was called JudgmentDay2011.com and it offered, among other things, on its main menu, the top 10 reasons why you will not be saved in the rapture and will go to hell. I don't have the entire list because that list no longer exists online, but one of them was stealing candy from the store as a child. 

Joanne

52:14

Uh-oh, I'm in trouble. 

Bill

52:16

Right, so you could also select a drop-down menu on how to be rapture ready, an actual tab for how to be rapture ready, and if you clicked on it, it wasn't just sparse, it said it's already too late. 

Joanne

52:34

Oh. 

Bill

52:38

God needs your full commitment in order to be rapture ready. So yeah, so if the world is not going to hell, apparently, maybe just we are, certainly. I can remember the spiritual torment of stealing the two-cent bubble gum from the corner store and confessing to my parents and them making me go back with my two pennies at the time when we still had pennies and lay them on the counter and confess the shopkeeper that I had stolen the gum and and he put on a really good show of disappointment and and consternation and you know, should I call the police, should I not call the police kind of thing, before finally letting me off the hook and I learned my lesson, but clearly still not rapture ready in the atonement. So we'll start with you, joanne. Are we going to hell? 

Joanne

53:46

Yeah, I'm not a believer in hell at all and I was raised in a tradition where it was figured pretty prominently and I spent a lot of years afraid I was going to hell. Well, yeah, you said in our last podcast actually that when you left the evangelical church. 

54:01

Yep, seven years, Wake up in the middle of the night, Am I going to hell? But worse than that, worse than that was when I was a young child, like seven years old, and we had junior church. It was called during the service there would be Like first we came to Sunday school and then we had junior church and she said if you haven't accepted Jesus as your savior, you're going to hell. When I'm seven years old and you can bet that every single night of my life I accepted Jesus into my heart. Until she said at a later time, you only have to do it once. And then I was like incredibly relieved. 

54:40

But it was this idea of, you know, eternal damnation was so such a big fixture of that tradition that it haunted me really in a lot of ways. And then I came to the point where I'm like I just don't believe in hell anymore. Okay, and I remember being at my Christian college and they're like how do you do that? I'm just like I don't believe in hell anymore, so I don't need to go there. But it still haunted me, Right? That's the thing. Because that's that part, Like when you wake up in the middle of the night and think am I going to hell? That's not your brain talking, that's your reaction to life. 

55:26

So here's the thing that I believe you can never escape the grace of God. There is no place in the universe, in this life or what is to come, where you can escape the grace of God. That does not mean there isn't accountability, because grace sometimes makes accountability important, and it doesn't mean that we don't create our own hells here of our own making, but a hell that is part of God's way of bringing balance to the world is just not in the cards for me at all. Zero and why we make this arbitrary day that the day you die and you didn't make the right decision or you were a bad person on that day, so too bad. Now you go to hell. You know, like there, if there's always a chance for redemption, there is a chance for redemption after we die too, Somehow. I don't know how it works, but we can never escape the grace of God full stop. 

Bill

56:28

What do you think, Ricardo? Oh, that's a tough follow-up. 

Ricardo

56:37

I think that there's always that quote for people that do really horrible things, that say there's a special place in hell for you, for X, y and Z. But I do believe that there are varying degrees of evil that can exist. There's the people that commit genocides, or the people that profit off of the sweat and labor of others, and there are people that steal two-cent candies from stores right, but there's good in every person, and I think if we can find a reason to really truly hate someone that we don't know, we can also try to find a reason to love them or find a reason to tap into their good side. Do I think that I can sit down and have McDonald's with Donald Trump anytime soon? I don't think so. Mcdonald's with Donald Trump anytime soon? I don't think so. 

57:35

We probably have a fundamentally different view of the world that we'll never be able to reconcile. But do I think that we're all going to hell? I don't. I think that in many ways, sometimes in many parts of this world right now, hell is existing right in our faces and on the TV screens that we watch every day, and I think that there are paths and ways that God and history, and even our own humanity has given us to be able to create a positive, peaceful and loving solution to any problem that we have, so that we avoid whatever fiery pits may or may not exist when we pass on. So I think that we could be destined to hell, but we have it in the power to ourselves as individuals and as a community to prevent that. 

58:22

And I think it was Tommy Douglas who said it the best the mark of a good society is how we treat the most vulnerable among us right, and that marker will show and that marker will guide us on everything that we do. If the policies we create and the way we act is to uplift ourselves and the most vulnerable doesn't necessarily have to be the unhoused in the street. It could be your next door neighbor or even someone in your family who's struggling, even mentally or emotionally Doing what we can to help each other and uplift one another will most definitely either prevent us all from the roller coaster down to the pits of hell or at least, as Joanne says, have our protection from the grace of God. 

Bill

59:11

So purely out of curiosity how prominently was hell kind of featured in your time in the Catholic Church, oh my God. 

Ricardo

59:21

My mother's favorite quote for us was the idle mind is the devil's workshop. So we were always meant to keep busy and do things and there was never just a moment in my house in which we could just sit around and stare at the ceiling right, get up and clean your room, whatever it is right. So, like you know, there was always that if you do this, you're gonna go to hell. If you do that, you're gonna go to hell. If you, if you say, you're gonna go to hell. And I think that there's two different types of catholics and, um, those two different types are very, very easily portrayed in my parents. My father is, you know, he did RCIA. He reads a lot of articles and newspapers regarding you know, and he analyzes every single sort of I don't know what those edicts are called from the popes Encyclicals, encyclicals, that's the one and he thinks about it. And he very much was an interesting Catholic because for someone that facilitated and led the RCIA program, he was very open about the fact. 

Joanne

01:00:19

What's RCIA? Oh? 

Ricardo

01:00:20

sorry. The Roman Catholic Initiation Program For people when they want to become Catholics they've got to go Like confirmation programs. 

01:00:26

Yeah, yeah, they've got to go through the school program if they want to become Catholic. And he would lead that and teach them about Catholicism and about the religion. And he did that, also saying openly that he had a gay son, right, and that he didn't openly accept the stance that the Catholic church had when it came to same-sex marriage, because he would say, look at my son, he's perfectly happy with at the time, a loving partner and there's just no reason. And so it was cool. And then there was my mother who, like you know, you have to be on your knees at this point in time in mass right away. You know the very traditional and I don't want to say brainwashed but habitual Catholic, you know. You know, like, when you have to do this at church, devout, devout, exactly right, she's making rosaries for prisoners, all those kind of things, right? 

Joanne

01:01:09

Rosaries for prisoners. It's a thing, wow. 

Ricardo

01:01:15

Can I tell that story on the podcast. 

Ricardo

01:01:18

So there's a group and you know it's called the Catholic Women's League, the CWL, the Catholic Women's League. It's basically the women's group in the Catholic Church. They get these beads and these strings and they make rosaries and they send them to developing countries and especially to prisons, so that the ministers and priests, when they're doing their ministry in the prisons, can give them a rosary. And a funny story about that is that me and my sister at my mom's house was watching TLC and the documentary the show was the World's Most Dangerous Prisons and they're showing the people in their bunks and hanging from the bunks with these little beaded rosaries and I was like, oh my god, you got into the most notorious prison in the world. 

01:02:06

So that's the kind of difference that I see in Kep, and so it was very much ingrained that you don't question the church, but you can read about it and understand that, and so that's why hell was like it was always a factor in everything you did that you know, if you stole the two-cent candy, it wasn't good enough, you're going to hell anyway, sorry. 

Joanne

01:02:27

Right. 

Ricardo

01:02:29

And what I liked about when I came to MacDougall was this the premise of of the United Church of Canada. I assume and I believe that um, our, our faith, is built upon community and the work we do with each other and in the community that we, that we exist in Um with the Catholic church that exists in some way, but all of it must go through the church and from the church, by the church and with the blessing of the priest in some way, but all of it must go through the church and from the church and by the church and with the blessing of the priest right. Whereas, you know, we have groups that exist here and Joanne and Bill, you may or may not be a part of them, but it still adds and contributes to the life of the church and that's, I think, the difference between how we, that's how I felt in the Catholic Church. If I didn't go through the church for these things, then I was going to hell right. 

01:03:17

So yeah, so no, we're not going, We'll be okay. 

Joanne

01:03:24

I do think that. So when I say I don't believe in hell, that doesn't mean I don't believe in sin. Okay, because those are two different things right. 

Bill

01:03:30

Save it for another podcast though. 

Joanne

01:03:34

No, it's relevant Because I think that, by when, what sin is to me is like not just missing the mark, but there's some kind of intention right in your life that you know there's a better way and you're choosing not to live that way. Right, you know we'll be better off if we love each other, but you're choosing this moment to care more about yourself than the other people. And I think what happens when we veer off the path you know, like I'm fond of saying now the blueprint that God made for our lives when we veer off that path, we can call that sin, but we also create our own hells. Because because you, uh, when you indulge in that kind of primal part of your life and I'm not talking sexually or anything like that, I'm pretty liberal with all that stuff but the primal part of your life that says I gotta take care of me and mine, um, and I don't care who I hurt you inevitably, inevitably, will create a life that is, um, destructive to yourself and others, and that is a its own kind of hell Like, that's what I like, god. 

01:04:45

Now I'm saying this when the, as they say, the luckiest son of bitch bitch in the world, donald Trump, just got elected again and avoided all accountability for everything he's done, right, all accountability. All the lawsuits are gone. You know all the women who have accused him of horrible things, and I got to believe that in some way I mean you never see the guy smile, he never laughs except derisively that he's living in his own kind of hell. I mean I got to believe that in some ways and I think we create that in in our lives we alienate ourselves from people that we love and from community and um it it devolves into a living kind of hell. That's. I believe that you know. 

Bill

01:05:39

I mean for me hell. I think the United Church had already killed off hell by the time I started. Yeah, so like I never encountered hell language at all, really in my like in my teenage years at all, really in my teenage years, there was no need to accept Jesus into my heart in order to be saved or any of that kind of stuff. Certainly, I came into the United Church as a young person, the child of two lapsed Baptists, who walked to church purely because he wanted to meet girls right and to get there and find a lot of talk about God's love. No talk of any kind of devil or hell, or even evil was really diluted, right. 

Ricardo

01:06:31

This idea never heard sin language. 

Bill

01:06:34

It was very positive, almost kind of social, humanist kind of stuff. And so at the time when I really first started wrestling with this concept of hell, it was really more around the question of if there is such great evil in the world, then what really is the consequence for it? Right, because the idea of we create our own hell, I think, the idea of we create our own hell, I think implies that we are emotionally invested in the relationships that we devolve Right. Otherwise, that is not, that's just functional cost of doing business. Right, and it's a price worth paying. The cost-benefit analysis works out I get the stuff, I get to be a complete and total hedonistic jerk, and at the bargain price of this relationship that actually doesn't impact me in any way right? 

Joanne

01:07:41

Sorry, Timu Timu For those who don't know, timu is a website originating out of China where you can buy lots of stuff for really, really cheap and it's filled with chemicals that are bad for you and there is a sense there might be some child labor involved in it. But man, nice clothes for really cheap, anyway, t-mu. 

Bill

01:08:01

I'm not sure if that was a cautionary note or a sales pitch. Well, that's the problem, isn't it? That is the struggle, isn't it? That is the humanity. 

Joanne

01:08:11

Wow. One of my very best shirts came from T-MU for $20. And then I'm like, oh, but I can smell it still because of all the chemicals. Anyways, I digress, Please continue. 

Bill

01:08:23

Bill so. 

Ricardo

01:08:25

I just tried to capture what you said into one simple word. 

Bill

01:08:29

Well, it's apt right, like, to a certain degree it's apt. And even when we talk about like, the idea of sin and like intentional, like, I know there's a better way and I'm choosing in this moment, you know, the way that you know leads to the negative outcome, the broken relationship, the poor position, whatever the case may be poor position, whatever the case may be, like, I always, and I still constantly wrestle with even the idea of like. Not all lives are created equal, not all choices are actually available, right, so and so, when I really first started to encounter sin, language, hell language, salvation, redemption, condemnation, all that kind of stuff ended up doing mission trips to Mexico, in the upper Baja, working at an orphanage where you would be there with a Canadian group of young people doing Canadian work projects for the United Church of Canada, and I was a a leader. But you would always encounter these summer mission trips from the Bible Belt, you know, like the um, the, the staunch, like diehard, conservative, evangelical, um, uh, youth groups that would come, and they would come in on day trips or they would come in on like overnighters and and it like a 20-minute drive across the border to get there, and I can distinctly remember it was a surreal experience for me, because their youth minister had taken exception to the fact that we had an openly gay kid on our work team. 

01:10:08

And so there was their group of 20 youth and our group of 20 youth and this leader and me, as the one of the other leaders, were grocery, shopping or doing whatever they were doing, and I remember feeling like grade six schoolyard because they circled up and he started slinging bible verses at me Been there, right, done that and it was like part dance-off where I had to respond in kind or somehow one-up and going like I have never encountered this level of literalism and judgment and all of it. 

01:10:50

I had been so immersed in what was really everything is. You cannot escape the love of God. Everything is good. We are, all you know, like very nurturing, like, don't get me wrong, it was a community I needed as a teenager, constantly feeling inadequate, to know that like there was a place where people thought I was good enough, right, and no matter how much gum you stole from the store, and but at the same time like to just like hit that degree of just venom and like anger and hatred, and then it all came down to this final. You know well, clearly you know he says to his, his youth group, clearly you can see, this is the pathway to hell and I went like what, what are we talking about? 

01:11:41

like I actually I was, I was floored and did not like that. I felt really ill-equipped for this conversation, right? So and and so, in my own kind of you know, trying to figure it out and research it and like do I believe this? And and and and again, like I would say, we create our own personal hells all the time. I'd also say that we do a really great job of creating hells for other people, whether we think we can or not right um and uh. 

01:12:06

And I find, even more and more the older I get which seems weird to say, um, being as young as I am that I even start to resist now the idea that I am the only one responsible for my own heaven right, or my own happiness, even if we wanted to humanize it, right. I find more and more man, hell is a place that is communally created as much as anything else, right? So, again, like the idea of finding meaningful community that builds you up, that carries you on the way, that lets you stumble and fall and will like not just tell you get up and keep going, but will pick you up and walk with you, like all of this is the stuff where we actually kind of, I think, redeem the human experience in a lot of ways and really give kind of the glimpse of heaven here on earth. But I will say that I also feel like in my lifetime I have encountered what I think is actually behind all of the heaven and hell rhetoric, which is really the good and evil right, which is what we're really. 

01:13:13

I think heaven and hell is our failed attempt at trying to explain that constant struggle for everybody, whether you're a preacher or not. 

01:13:24

Good and evil. 

01:13:25

Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people. 

01:13:29

Great cruelty, great compassion all of this exists in the world and I think I would say that I would believe that there is still an element of a spiritual war that happens beyond the tangible stuff of this world. There is still a battle that happens between whether we call it good and evil, or heaven and hell, or we have capacity for both, and it is a battle that we fight and our world fights, and that we marshal our forces. You know, to fight with or against other people in the same way, right Every single day, and that it's in this struggle that I experience hell, not in some future punishment, but in the visceral fight that is clearly not purely of this world For the hearts and minds and, dare I say, souls of good people trying their best, with a whole lot of worldly distractions attempting to drag people away. It's very easy to get distracted away from the good in this world. It does not take a lot of work and the world works really hard at showing you the selfish, individualistic path as the only saving path there is. 

Joanne

01:14:56

I mean, I think that that's really true. What I, in my understanding and in my ministry, try to balance is this idea, like we talked about in seminary, lots about this idea of systemic sin, you know, like the sin of the world is created in the political structures that are unfair, or the way we discriminate against people, you know, and leave the people who are marginalized in their place, and I think all that's true, and I think the United Church was really good at pointing that out At least that was my experience when I first came here but we can't lose sight also of the individual struggle, like this whole idea about you create your own hell. There is also forgiveness and redemption, right, but if everything gets escalated to the system or the big world, we lose that opportunity to provide a path to forgiveness for ourselves and others who are struggling with decisions they've made that have ripped apart their families, you know, like um, or they're struggling with uh, uh, something they did at work that wasn't ethical right, and so I think we need to continue to speak to our own personal health that we've created with decisions and choices we've made as human beings that have not been for our good or the greater good and certainly have ripped apart relationships that we have with those we love, as well as recognizing that, yes, systems that we're part of and we benefit from have created hellish experiences for those who have no voice or who don't have the resources to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, for instance. I don't ever want to move beyond the personal. Even as I look at, I'm the one who believes in community and pulling together and all that. 

01:17:02

I just think there's also this space in our faith that has to believe that we as individuals are also in this space with you know, like the good and evil right, we have the capacity all of us to give into hatred, because we are all emotionally driven as well, and we all have the capacity, like, what we have the capacity to do is something sometimes we as human beings have to fight, like to create our heaven. We really need to. That's an intention as well, and we need to call on our better angels in our own selves, not just in our society. Do you know what I mean? I think that's we can't lose sight of that, and sometimes I think in our tradition we have completely lost sight of that, you know. So everyone's good if we just, you know, if we just create the right systems where everyone can thrive, then no one will sin anymore. Wrong, wrong. There's always a way to game the system, and if we can find that way lots of times, we'll give in to that. 

Ricardo

01:18:18

It's interesting you had mentioned that not all people are born equal or with the same privileges as others, and I think we all acknowledge that fact, just even here in Canada. The Marxist in me says that, you know, until someone's material conditions are met, nothing really else matters to them, right? And so when you say, joanne, that we have to confront the choices that we've made, some people make these choices out of an aspect of survival, whether or not they consider the fact that they're going to hell or whether or not the act is evil. So I mean, the anti-racist in me is saying you know, when we keep quiet about the conditions and the material conditions on First Nations Indigenous reserves, then we're contributing to whatever evil may exist towards that group of people. But you also think about, like, if a white person and a black person are born in the same apartment building and their material conditions are exactly the same, statistically and even historically, the white person would have a more advantage on meeting those material conditions before the black person. And so I mean this is, of course, another topic that I'm talking about, which could create another podcast topic in and of itself, but the decisions we make are just based on survival. 

01:19:32

I think the point that I'm trying to make is that we live in a world where, right now, people are struggling to make those material conditions, to meet those material conditions. We also live in a world where we have so much in the country that we're in that we actually don't even know what the material condition minimum is. Is it pots and pans, or is it stainless steel appliances right? Is it a radio and a TV, or is it the bigger flat-screen TV, right? And so that's where the confusion happens, and that's also why I think a lot of people voted the way they did south of the border. Um, they believe that um donald trump could help them with a more affordable life and to meet those material conditions. But what were those material conditions they were looking to meet? Right? Were they looking to get the bigger tv or just to get keep a roof over their head? Because, because he wasn't promising the latter, no, he wasn't promising more housing, he wasn't promising increasing the. 

01:20:39

And I said this last time at the last podcast where we did here, where I said that the minimum wage in the USA is still $7.25 an hour, $2.35 an hour if you're serving alcohol or working in a restaurant, $2.35. And there was no campaign, democrat or Republican, that said we will increase the minimum wage in order to make your material. There was none of that. They just said we'll make life more affordable. What does that mean? 

01:21:00

Right, and so that's the confusing part, and what I'm trying to say at the end of the day is that to go full circle is that we're trying to meet conditions or meet a standard in our society, and what we're doing to accomplish that may be construed or viewed as evil, and what companies or even individuals who own large companies are forcing us to do, or how they're treating us by saying you need the best and the latest and the greatest, is contributing to a world where we'll never be happy and we do things to try and find happiness and we dig ourselves into debt, or we treat our neighbor with contempt, or we don't act in community, which can all be viewed and seen as evil or the path to hell. At least, in my childhood and upbringing, the things we do now were considered faux pas, foolish things to say, like we would never push the kid in the sandbox to grab his lollipop because he wanted it. But that's kind of like I want it now. 

01:22:06

Why can't I have that lollipop? And so things that I find what troubles me the most right now is things that we would normally never, ever, um see as um appropriate or um um right is becoming norm, and that's that's causing me to wonder where is the tipping point, like if we're going to go to hell. What are we going to hell for now? Like, what do we have to do to gain that card down south instead of how much? And you're right, there's accountability when we die. 

Joanne

01:22:46

Always accountability. 

Ricardo

01:22:48

What is God going to hold us accountable for and what is God going to actually forgive us for? 

Joanne

01:22:51

Right. So you know, we are very fond of saying this is my angel, right? You know this person was my angel, or? 

01:22:58

an angel met me or whatever. But I think there's devils in the world too. Right, this person is my devil because they have enticed me to make choices or they have given a permission structure where I can give into the my most based desires, right, and I I do think that played a part in the election. You know, it was appealing to a very primal part of our, um, our brains, and of our, our needs, and it was a permission structure. You know, very famously after the election, you know a right-wing commentator like, there was a book in the 60s called Our Bodies, ourself, or something like that. But the idea that a woman has a choice and control over her body, and so he posted your body, my choice, right, like that's appalling. And this idea that young men have decided to rebel against the idea that women have a choice over their bodies is really kind of disturbing. So what I would say about this and I agree with you that different people come from different circumstances, there is not a list of sins that if you transgress this you have sinned and it's the same for all people Because it is contextual, right Stealing a loaf of bread for someone who is starving and their family doesn't have enough is not a sin. It's what you need to do. Stealing a loaf of bread or ditching your bill at dinner because it's kind of fun and edgy that's sin, you know. So. So context is everything in terms of that. 

01:24:49

The second thing is that we used to have this thing we called sin identities. Is everything in terms of that? The second thing is that we used to have this thing we called sin identities, right? So if someone does one particular thing, they are labeled as that. So, for instance, if you had young women who got pregnant out of childbirth, they're constantly that like sort of the whore, if you want to use that word. I mean, I don't want to, but that's how they were labeled that's your sin and you live with that for the rest of your life. If you're an alcoholic, your alcoholism defines everything about you and that is wrong. That is wrong too. So there is no list of sins. There is no sin identity. Those things are against the idea of grace and love and all that. 

01:25:29

But there is a contextual like where are you at in your life? What are your experiences? What do you have? A lot of money, if you have a lot of money and you won't help someone who is struggling to make ends meet in some way. That's a sin, right? It's not stealing the bread, that's the sin, it's. 

01:25:51

It's, uh, the person who can't see. Uh, you know, it's like the lazarus at the gate. There's a a very famous story where the rich man went down into hades right and he was in this torment this is a story in the hebrew scriptures and he, he saw, there was like lazus was at the gate and Lazarus had been at his gate and he had gone past this poor beggar every single day and never paid any attention to him. And so he saw Lazarus was enjoying the grace of God while he was suffering and he says go back to the world and tell my friends, this is the way we should live. And essentially the story is they're not going to listen anyway. They're not even if someone came back from the dead. They're not going to listen anyway. 

01:26:37

Well, those are the kinds of when I say our personal sin. It's like what, what do we have in our lives that allows us to be generous and are we holding back? What relationships do we have that are loving and affirming and yet we still can't. We still, you know, hold our love so tightly to ourselves. You know what people in our lives are encouraging us to be our best selves, and yet we resist that. 

01:27:04

Those are sins, way more than the, you know, the two cents of bubble gum that you stole, and that's how we have to start thinking about these hells we create. Personally is yeah, it's very contextual what are the privileges that I have, and how do I break myself open from believing that it's all about me really, ultimately? 

Bill

01:27:33

Yeah, fair enough, we are at time, that's how quickly it went the last word. There you go so we're down to the last word, and I'm going to give it to Ricardo this time, because he had to go first last time. So, joanne, you've got your final word. What's sin, hell, the end of the world, all of it. What's the message you want people to know about? 

Joanne

01:27:59

What do you want them to take. There is abundant life that is waiting for us as individuals and as a community, and it means being honest with ourselves about the choices we make. And it means being honest with ourselves about the choices we make. And it means being seeking out the people who carry the light and working together for the common good. That is how we avoid hell in our personal lives and hell on earth, and there is always a remnant. 

Bill

01:28:35

And Ricardo. 

Ricardo

01:28:39

I think we have to remember what happiness is not going to come from a screen in your hand, or even a new or even, nowadays, perhaps not even the newspaper. We have to remember happiness. As children, we would feel dirt between our toes and feel the friendship we would have, regardless of the color of their skin or whatever choices they've made. And we have to keep making choices that allow us to experience love and happiness rather than experience anger and frustration. And when we avoid those feelings and those emotions, even if the external factors are keeping us in that dark place, there's a hope for us to be pulled out and we make less evil or sinful choices or decisions and we treat each other with harmony and respect. And I think that it's an organic process of internalizing good and then being so full that you have no choice but to give good and you create community and you create a lexicon and even a message out there that people can, that there is good in the world still, and that's how we avoid whatever might come after this life. 

Bill

01:30:04

May it be so. May it be so. And with that we have come to the end. My final words, as always, will be thank you to our audience that is sitting here in front of us live, thank you to the musicians who entertained us in our opening and closing and intermission and, as always, thank you to the United Church Foundation for their generous support of this podcast and the work that we are trying to do in exploring a more expansive and invitational and loving, gracious, compassionate theology for a world that sorely needs it. 

01:30:38

And I'd be lying to say that we aren't all gathering today in the shadow of the weirdest US election ever and we're all still probably reeling. A little bit from it. But we will be back in one month's time with Episode 3. Our guest will be Ward 9 City Councillor Giancarlo Carra, who has been City Councillor since 2010. And our episode entitled Baptized by Eggnog, will be a journey for us to find the true reason for the season in December.