In general, people are too quick to distill the Christian faith into a dichotomy of going to heaven or going to hell, and the point of believing in Jesus is to avoid burning for all eternity. That summary builds a religion motivated by fear and misses the central concept of falling in love and pursuing a personal relationship with a mysterious and wonderful God. There's a lot of imagery around heaven and hell that derives more from Dante and Jonathan Edwards than from any biblical text.
But as undesirable as that dichotomy feels, our notions of heaven and hell are very difficult to dismiss, especially in light of the scattered, but dramatic biblical passages about what happens after physical death. In Matthew 13, Jesus describes what He calls "the end of the age": "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
There's so much scattered and arcane Scripture that makes reference to "the end times" that Christian eschatologists fill books compiling interpretations of the clues: what the 1299 days from the removal of "the daily sacrifice" to the establishment of "the abomination of desolation" might really mean, or what the number 666 really entails. And what comes of that is a fragmented, piecemeal, and usually terrifying perspective on the afterlife: the sort that spawns novels like the Left Behind series or sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
In the book Searching For a God to Love, Chris Blake makes a compelling case that the whole "burning in hell" concept espoused by popular Christianity is "the worst lie ever told." He makes the point that a lot of our conception of hell comes from the ancient Jewish mythology of Sheol, the dark underworld, and that a Christian paradigm built on fear is irrational, since the most frequently given biblical command given by God to people is "do not fear" or "be not afraid." Also included is an illustrative story about a man who meets an angel walking down the road. The angel carries a bucket of water in one hand and a torch in the other and when asked, explains that the water is to put out the flames of hell and the torch is to burn down the castles of heaven -- "Then we'll see who really loves God."
There's an artificial contrast here set up between wanting to believe in a desirable God and wanting to believe in a real God, where real is defined by Scriptural inferences. The former mindset says, of course God is good and loving and merciful -- what kind of God would be cruel enough to send your parents or grandparents or best friend to eternal damnation? What kind of God would be impotent or uncaring to save them from a horrible fate? What kind of God do you believe in? And the latter mindset says, well, the Bible objectively mentions heaven and hell, so what kind of idealized, indulgent contrivance of a God are you hoping for, when the Scriptural evidence of judgment is before you? The artifice comes from the fact that our conceptions of heaven and hell are scattered notions at best; we know some things, but not all things, and we know what many Scriptures say, but not what they mean. I had a youth pastor who said he was once convinced that the Apocalypse was coming in the 80's because the winged demons that scoured the earth were clearly the UH-1 Huey helicopters in Vietnam. So to say that our popular paradigm of heaven and hell is objectively Scriptural is a narrowly focused perspective at best: it's like reading the parts of an automobile tech manual about the warning indicators and concluding that the car is inherently a death trap. And the truth that has to come to bear is that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us: surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
I think about these things because my grandparents are not believers in Jesus Christ and because they're aging all-too rapidly. I wonder why this circumstance doesn't seem like a pressing issue for people, especially my parents. Why nobody worries about the prospect of old people, our loved ones, perishing eternally. Is it that we think that there are other ways to the Father besides Jesus? Because (with allowances for Romans 1) most of us think there aren't. Is it that we really don't believe in the reality of heaven and hell? Because most of us say that we do. Is it that we don't think we have an integral role to play in the advance of the gospel? Because most of us say we have. Is it that we don't care about our grandparents, our relatives, our friends who have not found salvation in the One we claim to be the only source of salvation?
I know it's bad salesmanship, and worse relationship for that matter, to be pushy about things, but you'd think more people would be showing more concern about their grandparents getting older or even their friends approaching death day by day. You'd think we would be like Paul, who so desired the salvation of the Jewish people that he claimed he would give up his own salvation if it would guarantee theirs. I don't see that most of us are like that. We have a lot of thinking to do to reconcile what we believe about heaven and hell and whether that adds up with any Scriptural basis and how we want to think God would treat our loved ones who are at once sinners in the hands of an angry God and beloved children of a kind Creator and people who mean the world to us. I know in my head that we are all sinners who deserve what we get and that the redemption of Jesus Christ and our promised eternal bliss is an unwarranted mercy, so it's missing the point to blame God; but I think in my heart that my grandparents are good people who shouldn't go to hell and that if they die unsaved, I'll probably be asking God why He didn't make a more foolproof system. Does hell, as we think of it, even exist? If Satan is to be eternally punished, would God really give him his own eternal sovereignty? Either we haven't given it enough thought, we've found resolution for our questions on the matter, or we're desperate and dying on the inside from the encroaching crisis.
And if we're wrapped up about the issue, I think that brings us back to what kind of God we believe in. And the reminder that God is loving and that God is incomprehensible helps me think nothing so specific as, maybe unrepentant sinners won't go to hell, but something more broad and true: that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us. Surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
First, a note - there really are a lot of Christians whose self-described beliefs do seem to amount to a religion motivated by fear. Certainly that's the flavor of evangelism that I've encountered most. I mention this because it's not clear to me whether you're imputing this "summary" to real believers or whether you're thinking of it as purely a misinterpretation of the beliefs of real people.
Anyway, a fair few of the people I knew in high school actually were the types to worry about their friends going to hell. The sense I got was that many learned pretty early on that expressing such a concern was an easy way to drive people away. One girl in particular was very troubled by her belief that pretty much all of her group of friends was going to hell, but she was quite aware that evangelizing in any active way was just going to annoy others and make her an object of ridicule. I don't really have a feel for how widespread this sort of worry is - perhaps it's really quite pervasive but everyone's learned to pretend that it's there.
I've seen very little of this in my family. On the Catholic side, my grandparents have really never talked to their grandchildren about religion, but then I could easily see propriety being so important to them that they wouldn't want to interfere with their children's raising of their grandchildren no matter what they believed. When my brother converted, he spent almost a year trying to convert the rest of us, and he almost certainly believes that we're hell-bound (big fan of Left Behind), but he slowed up on all but the most passive means of evangelism (Facebook announcements and the like) after it became very clear that he wasn't getting through to anyone.
But most Christians that I've been particularly close to are universalists, I believe. Granted, for my purposes I don't find it very useful to think of many of their belief systems as distinctively Christian as opposed to a vague religiosity with a few cultural trappings that don't seem to be doing much work - they seem to have exactly the same outlook as particularly liberal members of a variety of other religions except that they believe some slightly different historical claims.
Another note - you hear quite a bit in general, and I've heard some from friends of mine, about parents or grandparents that do take religious disagreement very seriously. One reaction to the belief that someone close to you is going to hell is to worry a lot, but another is to reject the person, and to make clear at every opportunity that you would not only like them to share your beliefs but that you actively disapprove of what you see as their failing. I think it's very difficult to believe that someone is going to hell without also believing that they deserve it. Worry, as opposed to rejection, may be more likely to lead to a rejection of one's earlier beliefs than to anything else. I'd imagine that many worriers get to a place something like what you describe - the almost-belief that God simply wouldn't send what you see as good people to hell. That or they simply become irreligious - this kind of thing often features pretty heavily in deconversion stories.
As an initial matter, Matt, it's Chris Blake, not Blake Edwards.
Many common Christian views on hell seem to be manifestly unbiblical, and seem to have emerged from one mythology or another. The idea that Satan has sovereignty over hell seems particularly ridiculous to me (Rev. 20:10).
Also, a "God I want to follow" seems like a poor standard to me; I've always disdained it. Until the point that I become infinitely good and omniscient, it doesn't seem to me that it's possible I would always agree with a God that has those characteristics.
I think Billy is right in the reasons why Christians aren't more aggressive in evangelism in view of hell; they are just pushed away if they are. On the other hand, some atheists understand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM
Nonetheless, Billy, your latter comment seems to stem from the perspective of viewing a Christian who doesn't have a good grasp of the Gospel. The first truth of the Gospel is that we're all so very sinful that we all deserve hell. This means that (1) it would be counter-intuitive to reject someone because you think they're going to hell (since you deserve it as well) and (2) you would have to acknowledge that, no matter how good they seem, they've all fallen short in a very big way. Placing sole importance in the merit of Jesus Christ, His suffering, and His resurrection is simultaneously both the hardest and most beautiful part of the Gospel; both the most manifestly unjust (to God) and yet amazingly merciful thing in the universe.
P.S. The link at the beginning was hilarious..and sad
I was meaning 'desert' in a more emotional sense. Sure, you can affirm intellectually that your dear old Jewish grandmother who volunteers at the homeless shelter 10 hours a day "deserves" hell just as much as the next innately sinful person, but at the same time, as Matt points out, you almost feel that God will have screwed up if she doesn't make it to heaven. It'd bother you in a way that a serial killer dying unconverted wouldn't.
It's not really about one's reading of the gospels. Deeper than that is our emotional understanding of desert and punishment. If God's sending one person to hell and another to heaven, it's because the person going to hell is a worse person. The thinking is something like "if God's going to send this person to hell, he doesn't deserve me being nice to him either". God can only be acting justly if the unbeliever is someone who ought to be punished, and so you have parents rejecting their children. You can get something different out of the Bible, but it's not a natural understanding (as I think the history of Christian interaction with people of other faiths makes clear). I'm perfectly willing to say that it's an "un-Christian" reaction, but it's a very human one.
I agree that, from a human emotional perspective, that's the perspective one naturally takes, which is why I said that this doctrine of grace is probably one of the hardest parts of the Gospel to truly accept. It is not a natural understanding — our nature, culture, and society tends to reinforce a personal merit-based salvation — but such a view renders the ministry of Jesus' death meaningless. I think that a large part of Christian growth is learning to accept the truths of Grace beyond mere intellectual assent, but accepting it down to deep, core, belief. outlook and, yes, emotion.
Hey Matt...I got your message a while back and have been reading your blog since then.
Anyhoo, to comment on what you wrote, there is definitely a sense in which a religion motivated by love is much more desirable than one which is motivated by fear of eternal torment/damnation/hell...
I would suggest, however, that to eviscerate the doctrine of hell is to denude heaven of value and demean the person and work of Christ in his incarnation, sinless life, vicarious death, and victorious resurrection.
After such a bold claim, however, I will re-define what hell and sin are within parameters which I believe are Scripturally applicable.
First up here is sin. Far from merely being a "transgression of the law of God", a more complete understanding of sin sees the main issue as not failing to do something or of doing the wrong thing...but of loving something which is intrinsically flawed and not ultimately satisfying.
In short, we put our identity in something else besides God, and love that idea/person/community to the Nth degree, assuming unconsciously that we are being made full or reaching our highest potential in that thing. (e.g., if my identity is knowledge, I will do all I can to demean your knowledge and to demonstrate my superiority...if my identity is helping others, then I will help others in order to stave off guilt, drive away fear, or to build pride in my identity...)
All of this amounts to the exact same thing as a religion, though of course we don't use the term. (Perhaps ironically, Jonathan Edwards' work "Religious Affections" helps to shine a lot of light on this...I would highly recommend reading that and the biography by Marsden on him, since I get the sense that you view Edwards as someone who focused very strongly on a certain view of heaven/hell as the motivating force; in his writings I've seen a much wider spectrum of grace and beauty...)
Therefore, as Romans 6 points out, we are essentially slaves to sin...and this slavery finds its highest pitch in hell. As Lewis writes (in paraphrase from The Great Divorce), "One of two things will happen: either you will say to God 'thy will be done', or God will say to you '*thy* will be done'. All that are in hell choose it."
Yet our nature violently rebels against this...because we look at the external 'obedience' given and forget that the people who killed Christ were our kind upstanding neighbors who smile and wave and say "Hey!".
Or we have people very close to us whom we love and respect and admire and do not desire to die...indeed, if I believed that salvation was dependent upon myself, then I would despair of saving anyone close to me...I will merely say that the doctrines of grace provide among other things comfort in this issue.
Anyhoo, hope this edifies!
-JMS
Post a Comment