Part One

“Made in Cheena” the little girl said, as she read the bottom of her tiny doll. Her mispronunciation of the word brought a smile to her mum’s face, and mine. “China” her mother said, resisting the temptation to laugh. The girl repeated the word perfectly whilst looking directly at me. “Well done” I said, as a responsible adult.

She carried all the typical characteristics of a four-year-old. She was so interested in her surroundings that her eyes followed any movement like a cat in a disco. There was something peaceful about watching a mum read a newspaper next to her daughter who was visibly learning the ropes of life. I never thought I’d feel at peace in council offices to be honest.

It wasn’t long before the little girl grew bored of the space around her. She turned to her mum and watched her read the national paper left generously on the coffee table. And then I felt a strange notion dwell within me. As I clocked the front page of the paper, which projected the word MURDER in huge red writing, I found myself wanting to hide the headline from the child. There’s no doubt in my head that children often carry an unpolluted air, which has seemingly escaped many adults. I guess I didn’t want to see this air of innocence tarnished by the brutality that runs down the spine of this world. I wanted to tear the front page off. I wanted to protect the glimpses of Eden in this girl’s eyes.

Of course, this was impossible, and so I watched the scene unfold. It started with the girl attempting to read the front page that separated her from her mum’s gaze. “What does that say?” she enquired. The mum turned to where the girl was pointing, before quietly whispering the word ‘murder’.

The cogs inside the child’s head were almost audible as she tried to associate the word with an action. She looked at her mum like a lion cub trying to work out how to digest a first solid meal. The mother lowered the paper and explained that murder was something done by bad people. She went on to say that it was when one person hurts another so seriously that they are no longer living.

I was waiting for the inevitable question. The question that is pretty much prohibited in the ‘evolved’ western world. The little girl mumbled the question ‘why?’

I didn’t hear the mum’s response. I was moved almost to tears at the expression on the child’s face though. A morbid revelation dawned on her, as it has done with me these last few months. The revelation that we ruined Eden.

There was a world where murder hadn’t even been conceived, a world where the creator walked amongst his beloved. It was a place designed to last forever, until humanity fell victim to the greatest and most horrible act of deception ever to pass through the horizon of this world. And though early man and woman didn’t set out to destroy Eden, they ended up driving in the final nails personally.

The feeling that brought me to tears in the council offices watching the air of innocence diminish around the life of a child, was not just sadness, it was guilt. No, I haven’t murdered anyone to date, but I am responsible for the destruction, depletion and ruin of Eden. And whether or not you call Jesus ‘Lord’ we have something in common. Both you and I took God’s perfect plan, and smashed it across his alter. And the symptom of Eden’s downfall is still rife within us both. It’s the common denominator in almost every waking thought. It’s the DNA constant. It’s the fact that when all is said and done, we will never love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

Isaiah 64:6

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

Peace.

*The Ruined Eden is the first part of Alex Willmott’s Eden Series.

Next Friday, CVM will publish part two: ‘The Reconstructed Eden’.

Nuts, a basically pornographic magazine has seen its circulation fall by 22.5%.  Zoo has fallen by 32.1% and FHM by 19.2%.

“If you think you’re going to pass out Mr Willmott, try and let me know first” the young lady said, as I wept into the bed. Never has one man been reduced to so little during a back wax session.

As the beauty therapist inflicted what can only be described as prisoner of war torture on skin which previously surrounded my spine, I could only blame myself. (For who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?)

For any women reading this, let me give you license to stop waxing. And if this annoys your fella, please tell him to get in touch with me. In my life I have broken my ribs, feet, fingers and split my head open twice, but I would gladly endure them all at once than step back into that beauty salon. Oh if I could only revisit the moment when the idea was dropped into my mind.

My CVM colleague Jonathan Sherwin AKA Dead Man Walking, had his back waxed prior to a trip to the beach with his girlfriend whom he wanted to impress. Some men scoff at such antics, however, I found it utterly romantic. And alas, this weekend I am going to a spa hotel with my lovely girlfriend who will see me in just a pair of shorts for the first time. Mr Sherwin told me back waxing doesn’t hurt at all. He said: “In fact mate, its quite relaxing when they pour hot wax on you”.

Within half a second of the first layer of DNA being torn from my virgin skin, I envisaged feeding Jonathan Sherwin to a pack of wild dogs wearing Welsh rugby shirts. The pain wrapped around me like a scene from Reservoir Dogs. How could such a quiet young woman be guilty of crimes against humanity?

As I lay there mourning each layer of skin, hair and pride which was quickly being ripped away, I was reminded of the first rule of journalism: Never Assume. I had taken a mate at his word and had paid the consequence with my own blood. I should have researched. I should have asked around. I should have left town.

I vowed only to take God at his word as I limped out of the Chesterfield house of beauty and torture. And if any word is worth digesting at first sight, its this one.

Matthew 6:19-22

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

Peace.

In ‘Heaven is for Wimps and Posh Women – Part Two’ I mentioned the way Jesus once told people about hell, using an accessible, ‘earthly’ place as an analogy. I think he sometimes talked about heaven using earthly ‘hooks’ in the same way. He said, for instance, there would be wealth in heaven—treasure—but not like earthly wealth. He hinted that valuing that kind of wealth went with a complete change of mindset—‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’[1].

You could say that was a bit like the sermon I heard where the evangelist said you wouldn’t enjoy heaven unless you were a Christian. But Jesus started from where people were. He reminded them how earthly wealth gets stolen and possessions deteriorate and He simply said that heavenly wealth doesn’t[2].

That’s a good investment in anybody’s book, especially after the banking crisis. He said that heaven’s wealth was a complete step up in value. He helped us grasp a bit of what this means—but only by letting a bombshell drop which puts all of economics in a completely different light. He said that the whole business of handling earthly wealth acted as a test for whether a man could be trusted with any of the stuff in heaven, at all[3].  He called that ‘true riches,’ which makes out earth’s wealth is sort of counterfeit by comparison. In the same conversation, he also seemed to hint something else about heaven, to do with wealth, which is mysterious but tantalising. He seemed to be saying that we don’t really know on earth, what it is to truly own something for ourselves[4]. We will be trusted with real ownership, only in heaven. In the light of that—what a con, earthly greed will turn out to have been in the end.

Will a bloke just sit around, just listening, sometimes singing and doing mostly passive things in heaven, like in most church services? I don’t think so. Jesus hinted that we would have responsibilities. He used the picture of us governing cities.[5] I think this means we will be useful.

The last book of The Bible says that we will be servants of God, reigning and bringing glory and honour into the heavenly ‘city’[6]. We’ll be working, doing stuff.  And I don’t think it means things like handing out the heavenly service sheets or checking the heavenly PowerPoint projector either. In fact, because Jesus seems to think that every aspect of heaven is bigger, more real and more significant than any counterpart on earth, then these responsibilities are going to dwarf any previous ones we’ve ever known. We’ll be more use in heaven than we ever were on earth.

But since we know there’ll being nothing bad in heaven, this won’t come with the grinding pressure or the fear of failure we know here. We can’t understand how, yet, but I think these responsibilities will be perfectly fulfilling, challenging and satisfying, without any downsides. And like the way we handle earthly wealth, Jesus made out that how we handled earthly responsibilities was a test for what heavenly responsibilities we would be trusted with.

There’s another mysterious hint about all this in the picture language of the last book of The Bible. It says that on reaching heaven, God will give each of us a new name and we will each be the only person who understands that name[7]. In other words, as far as God’s concerned there is something uniquely special and valuable about you and about how and why He made you.  There is a unique secret between each of us and God. Being finally told what it is, is a reward not a punishment. Some have said that it’s something to do with the work we’ll be doing. Some have said it’s something to do with each of us being made to appreciate a unique aspect of God. Whatever it is, it’s part of what we were each created for and it must be worth more than any other gift we could ever be given.

A man can sometimes look at a drop-dead gorgeous woman and feel something different from lust. Sometimes just what she looks like can speak of wisdom, grace, openness, strength and peace. Writers have used the phrase, ‘the face of an Angel’. This may be the closest many men come to what the World means by worship. Heaven must be where we find that earthly feeling is just a shadow of the real thing; where  the spell can’t be broken by some earthly ‘angel’ opening her mouth and telling you to … off, or breathe out the smell of stale cigarettes.

A man can turn to drink, drugs and loveless sex to look for satisfaction and fulfilment but fail to find it and become a slave of these things. Heaven must be the place where a man finds complete satisfaction and fulfilment in the only kind of slavery which gives him true freedom, and that is in service to God.

The preacher I mentioned in the first blog was right. Heaven must be full of praise and song and is only heaven because we will meet Jesus. But the praising won’t just be a passive, endless gazing at someone. Worship (praise) even in this life is described in the Bible in terms of how we live our lives[8]. So in heaven surely it will keep us involved in the most meaningful, useful, important, challenging, interesting and rewarding stuff we could imagine and beyond imagining. I don’t think time as we know it will be an issue. Any ‘singing,’ (to use our poor idea of singing), will be something more than we can now understand and it won’t depend on earthly talent or musical appreciation. It will be more welcome to us than water to a man dying of thirst.

Many men come closest to heaven on earth, at home with their family or with a bunch of mates they’ve shared adventures and hardships with. But for many people this ends in conflict, broken relationships, pain and regret. And death finally brings an end to all friendship and family bonds.

One picture of heaven in the Bible is a celebration feast with Jesus and the saints—our elder brother and our brothers and sisters in Christ[9]. But this image of heavenly friends and family isn’t going to inspire me deeply, if I’ve never had a strong bond with my Christian brothers and sisters in this life. And perhaps the secret truth deep inside many of us is that we don’t feel massively inspired, day by day by the prospect of eventually meeting Jesus. Perhaps this is related to why we don’t have a strong bond with our brothers. Perhaps it’s because virtually our only experience of Jesus is from reading His story in the Bible, wonderful as that is.

Only as we move on from that first knowledge and acceptance of Him and take risks in life, doing things for Him and with Him, which put our time, our comfort, our peace, our money, our career and our safety on the line will He begin to make himself known to us more and we know Him more.[10]

Only as we do this with a band of brothers will we feel a bond with them.

Only in this way will we begin to truly look forward to meeting Him and his saints as they shout ‘COME ON!’ to us on the home straight.

Only by doing this will we start to find out what heaven is like in this life, because it’s going to happen in the New Earth anyway.

Only as we do this will we know that heaven isn’t for wimps and posh women, but it’s where men find out what being fully masculine is about. And for that matter it’s where women find out what being fully feminine is about, posh or not.

So sign up to Codelife and just do it.

[2] Matthew 6:1,2

[3] Luke 16:11

[4] Luke 16:12

[5] Luke 19:17

[6] Rev chs 21 and 22

[7] Rev 2:17

[8] Rom 12:1

[9] Matthew 26:29; Rev 19:9

[10] Hebrews 6:1-3; John 14:21

Did you read ‘Heaven Is for Wimps and Posh Women Part One’? Did it annoy you? – I hope so. Preferably because you sympathised with blokes who can’t connect with churchy views on heaven, not because you thought I was being unfair on the preacher. It’s all lies though—I mean the western secular world’s take on heaven and hell. When you think about the effect this has on ordinary blokes, and when you judge this take against the real thing—well, if there really is a personal force of evil—a devil, then he’s a really cool operator; I mean, really shrewd (1). He could twist us around his little finger. It’s frightening.

There’s this thing which is the greatest thing we can ever experience. What we’ve all been made for, born for and we’re waiting for; the thing which trumps all other pleasures, satisfactions and experiences in life. And he’s got us so we hardly ever think about it and then, hardly ever seriously and often we find ourselves using our flawed church services, as a pathetic illustration of it.

Then there’s this thing which really is much worse than your worst nightmare; something which would be the biggest, most heart rending regret you could ever, ever imagine. And he’s got us thinking about it as though it’s an inspiration. He’s insidious, a manipulator, brilliant, and fiendish. And he’s against us.

We’ve got to break the cultural lie that hell is a tough, blokey, jokey even inspiring idea, not a reality. It’s not said directly—he’s far too shrewd for that. It’s all slowly drip-fed by vague associations.

We don’t have to look far to break the lie. We’ve started to produce the beginnings of hell, right here. In this world, people can be innocent victims of a hell caused by other people or guilty inhabitants of a hell caused by themselves.

Think of how it must have felt, being a child on the wrong side in the Rwandan genocide. You’re hearing the men with the machetes getting nearer and the screams getting louder. Your mum and dad are already dead and there’s nowhere left to run. You’re sinking into a pit of fear and despair with no way out. That’s the tentacles of hell, on Earth in the recent past.

Think of a young East European woman, an illegal, alone, today in a room somewhere in central London, held captive as a sex slave. She’s kept from making contact with the outside world so near at hand and forced to have sex with ten strangers a night. She’s beginning to lose her mind and wonders whether she’s still a person or whether she’s become just a living piece of meat. Suicide is looking like the only way out. That’s hell’s grip on our country, now.

Hell must be something like being a father who was in a road accident while driving under the influence of alcohol, and it killed his child. He lives for the rest of his life in an agony of regret. That degree of frustration might be something like Jesus’ meaning when he said hell was a place of ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (2).

If we can make hells like this in this world where there is still some holding us back by God, through his common graces of law and order and basic civilisation, just think what sort of hell we can make if He finally accepts our repeated rejection of Him and He just leaves us to it, finally and forever outside His help.

If you found yourself in the real final hell and were conscious of its meaning, surely you would see that you had been completely conned about the whole of life, sold out, had been made the butt of a stinking joke, ratted on, been made a fool of because you were one, used and spat out by the person you realised you had been following—no less than the devil– and who you now saw was the Great Con Artist of all time (3), who hated you and who was still laughing at you.

You hardly need to add any sort of Divine retribution to that. But surely there has to be that as well, however unwanted or revolting the idea might seem to us. Otherwise the unknown, unheard victims of hells caused by other people would never have any comeback. They would not, in the end, matter. People would not, in the end, matter. Without real, final justice you do not matter—but you believe you do.

We know Jesus once described hell in terms of a local valley (4) known to his hearers which had a history of being the ancient site of child sacrifices and which at one time had been the place to burn the entire city’s filth. In their minds it must have been linked with everything which made you feel sick; everything which would disgust you.

I was once driving off-road in the mountains of southern Spain, and I suddenly found myself driving through the rubbish site of some village or other. Dark smoke filled the air. I was lost and alone and the only things I could see clearly were the glowing red centres of fires looking out at me like angry eyes, from inside smouldering rubbish piles. Until I finally found my way out, I felt something of the effect of Jesus’ illustration, even though for me the place didn’t have the horrific links which that valley had in the minds of his original hearers.

We should start to describe hell in some accessible earthly terms from today’s world, so men start to take it seriously for what it is.

1. Genesis 3:1

2. Matthew 25:30

3. John 8:44

4.‘Gehenna’(Greek), from ‘Ge Hinnom’(Hebrew) or The Valley of  Hinnom  south of Jerusalem.

What does the word ‘heaven’ say to ordinary blokes? There’s ‘chocolate heaven’ which sounds a bit girly and after all, is just a pudding which women especially drool over. Then a lot of stuff about heaven seems to get mixed up with all the romantic hoo-hah around Valentine’s Day, with cute little fat, baby cherubs in adverts floating about with tiny non-threatening, dangling willies (or willies safely covered by some random bit of scarfy looking stuff). But the only reason why blokes get onto the Valentine bandwagon is because the retail industry has got them on a guilt trip unless they buy a Valentine’s Day present for their partner.

When does a bloke say to his mate, ‘fancy going for a beer?’ and his mate says, ‘oh, that would be heaven!’– like never, unless they’re both heavily into amateur dramatics. On the telly or in films, the only people who say something is heavenly are upper class women or some bloke in the caricature role of the harmless, effeminate, bumbling twit of a country vicar. Heaven is where parents tell their little kids, Grandma’s gone when she’s just died, even when the old bird never mentioned the place or never appeared to give a tinker’s cuss about the place when she was alive.  Heaven is soft, fluffy, nice, boring, pale and filled with middle aged, middle class women in white dresses who spend their time getting a buzz from Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Heaven is for wimps and posh women. And who gives a passing cloud for whether it really exists or not?

‘Hell’. Now there’s a word worth thinking about. ‘Give ‘em hell’ is a battle cry to strengthen your brothers in arms. Hell’s Angels are respected nowadays and ‘hell raisers’ are sort of rogues you admire. Hell Boy is a cool super hero. The primary American carrier-based fighter plane in the second half of World War II, the Grumman F6F, was called the Hellcat. The Scottish infantry regiments in the British Army still wore kilts into battle during the First World War. This and their fighting ferocity caused the German Army to honour them with the nickname, ‘The Ladies from Hell’.

‘We rode like bats out of hell’, is a proud achievement. ‘We’re in this till hell freezes over,’ is a determined vow of endurance and ‘we’re with you come hell or high water,’ is one of loyalty. Hell only starts to get nasty in those horror films with a touch of the occult in them, but—hey, they’re only films and you can come back to Earth with a beer and a curry afterwards. Hell only really gets a bit nastier with ‘restaurants from hell’—like the clip where the bloke complains and the CCTV shows the waiter in the kitchen peeing into his coffee. Or slightly worse, ‘neighbours from hell,’ but—hey, any bloke worth his salt would soon sort them out (if he wasn’t one himself—chortle, chortle).

‘Hell’ may not be nice but it’s not soft, fluffy, pale or boring either. Once you’ve chucked the worn-out joke version where little devils with tails run around pricking sinners with their forks, like unhappy barbecue sausages, what we’re left with  is challenging, exciting, dark red and crunchy. It’s definitely not for wimps or posh women.

My thoughts on all this weren’t helped a while ago when I sat through a sermon on heaven, meant for non-believers. As I write this I see that the phrase ‘sat through’ gives the game away. The preacher got very enthusiastic about heaven. He made out that heaven would be heavy on singing and a thing called praising, which was closely connected with singing. Everyone there would be full of joy because Jesus would be there. You wouldn’t be allowed in unless your sins were forgiven and got rid of. Perhaps the force of that might have been lost a bit by him saying that if you weren’t a Christian you wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. The logic that followed was—well, you’d better become a Christian so you could enjoy heaven.

The longstanding church goer in me who has been on the receiving end of ‘sound’ Bible teaching for years and years acknowledged that everything he was saying was true. The ordinary bloke in me, who steadfastly refuses to keep his thoughts to himself, thought the preacher had succeeded in making heaven out to be like an endless church service, which is another view of heaven which turns ordinary blokes off. It even turns some believing blokes off who have a boring or embarrassing experience Sunday by Sunday sitting passively in rows, listening to long monologues or singing songs they cringe to. But of course, it’s less likely to seem boring to the one bloke who gets a huge buzz standing up in front of them being 100% engaged in giving everybody else his message. That’s ironic—init.

It seemed to be one of the best examples I’ve heard, of preaching the Gospel mostly from inside your own mindset and not trying to put yourself much into the non-believer’s mindset. A likely result of this is a doctrinally accurate message, with no communication with the people you are trying to reach. Or worse, communication of a message you didn’t want to communicate. After all, if you won’t like heaven because you’re not a Christian, the obvious alternative to becoming one so you can enjoy it, is to say—well, because I can’t connect with this ‘heaven’ you’re talking about, I’ll do without both the heaven and the ‘becoming a Christian’ bit, thanks.  But perhaps I’m missing the point. Perhaps, on the subject of heaven, preachers in the UK today are only meant to be communicating with wimps and posh women. That can’t be right though, can it?

Heaven Is For Wimps And Posh Women is a 3-part blog. Part 2 will be published on Wednesday 17th November.