The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War

by Joshua Ryan Butler

Modern Religion Where I live, being considered “good” has little to nothing to do with institutional religion. The social benchmarks for moral applause have more to do with whether one eats organic, rides his or her bike to work, and supports a humanitarian initiative in Africa. Things like these—even if good things that contribute to the flourishing of our world, in a manner similar to many traditional religious works—comprise our contemporary bars of righteousness by which one’s social capital is improved. In corporate culture, these bars may have more to do with how much money we’ve made or the size of our portfolio. In political culture, how much power we’ve attained or the heights up the ladder we’ve climbed. In popular culture, how much sex we’ve had or the number of Twitter followers who are interested in what we have to say. The cultural decline of institutional religion has simply meant the relocation, not the destruction, of social norms through which we pursue personal justification and social acceptance for our existence. As Bob Dylan prophetically observed, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody,”15 and in the modern global culture of our world, the traditional gods of sex, money, and power still reign. They may have been stripped of the various gods and goddesses they were traditionally associated with (I don’t know many today who would say they worship Aphrodite, Mammon, or Baal), but the idols are perhaps all the more seductive given their illusion of neutral...