-
Why Jesus Went to Hell: An Inner Healing Perspective
The fact that Jesus entered hell is not much preached about. This is understandable since the major emphasis is and should be on the resurrection. But His invasion of hell can be incredibly meaningful for many of us who have suffered trauma. And honestly, a good many of us who haven’t. One of the main reasons many sufferers of trauma do not seek help is that they fear to have to re-enter their own personal hell. I get it. No one wants to go to hell. But too many also don’t necessarily want to leave it either. Jesus asked a man if he wanted to get well. This question is…
-
The Axis Mundi: Why Christians are Revolutionaries
The term, axis mundi, isn’t used much in common parlance. Just so we are on the same page, I include the Wikipedia definition which is accurate enough for my purposes: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, the center of the world, world tree), in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth. Nearly every major religion has such an intersection. The Old Testament has Mount Zion where Moses saw God. Jacob’s ladder is also such an intersection. Mount Kailash is sacred to the Hindu, the Innuit create totem poles, and even Feng Shui attempts to orient the home towards the sky in a practice called geomancy. Christianity…
-
The Danger of a Mask: The Judas Flaw
The reason nearly every horror villain wears a mask is that a mask can turn anyone into a monster. Not every mask is monstrous, of course, but the moment we begin to hide our true face, the moral slide has begun. In an American literature course I once taught, I asked the students to choose the one poem that really hit them during the class and write on it. Most of them chose We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar: We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes… They each wrote about the same thing; how every day they had…
Healing Through Art & Words
