Alright folks, PART 4: The Truth About HELL (If you havent read the other articles in the series and want to bring yourself up to speed, direct links are provided at the end of this) Many blasphemous things have been said over the ages about the Abba of Jesus and what he will do to people who don’t love him. Church history is full of quotes, mainly through the Dark Ages, of descriptive details of the terrors and tortures of hell, how God will enjoy torturing the damned, penetrating every part of their beings with exquisite devices of torture, devising new schemes and methods by which he will torture them throughout eternity, and how the saints will delight in it and it will increase the ecstasy of heaven to watch the damned writhing in eternal agony. It was said that in heaven our natures will be perfected and therefore the torments of the damned will delight us because it will exhibit the glorious justice of God. Consider most-compassionate Alban Butler, a Catholic priest of the 1700’s: “Do we think that God can find torments in nature sufficient to satisfy His provoked vengeance? No, no; He creates new instruments more violent, pains utterly inconceivable to us. A soul for one venial sin shall suffer more than all the pains of distemper, the most violent colic’s, gout, and stone joined in complication,--more than all the most cruel torments undergone by malefactors, or invented by the most barbarous tyrants,--more than all the tortures of the martyrs summed up together. Or how about the tender-hearted St. Fray Luis De Granada in the 1500’s: “There will the condemned in cruel rage and despair turn their fury against God and themselves, gnawing their flesh with their mouth, breaking their teeth with gnashing, furiously tearing themselves with their nails, and everlastingly blaspheming against the judge…Oh wretched tongues that will speak no word save blasphemy! Oh miserable ears that will hear no sound but groans! Oh unhappy eyes that will see nothing but agonies! Oh tortured bodies that will have no refreshment but flames. We are terrified when we hear of executioners—scourging men, disjointing them, dismembering, tearing them in pieces, burning them with plates of red-hot metal. But these things are but a jest, a shadow compared with the torments of the next life.” This little ditty by hymn writer Isaac Watts got Christians feet tapping during Americas first Great Awakening”: What bliss will fill the ransomed souls, When they in glory dwell, To see the sinner as he rolls, In quenchless flames of hell. As I have explained in the previous articles, these quotes have absolutely nothing to do with a true exegesis of the Valley of Hinnom/gehenna in the Bible, and they are not worthy of the Father of creation revealed in Jesus. There is no reason to believe any of this never-ending torture business at all from scripture and the early fathers knew this, as I will show in Part 5 of this series. This is the kind of worldview that has caused many to reject Christianity and its whole premise as ridiculous. Our honest questioning and rethinking of hell in modern times is a very, very good thing. After the Holocaust, an awareness swept over the consciousness of the world of the despicable immorality of torture and of inhumane treatment and an empathy for human suffering. It is not surprising then that an eternal Holocaust for most of humanity has become repugnant, and the Westboro Baptist Churchs rhetoric unacceptable (which many of these Dark Age quotes on hell sound like). I think such an idea of God is inconceivable and would agree with Henry Ward Beecher when he said of Michaelangelo’s “Last Judgment” painting: I do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors—I honor them for it. The Reformation was the beginning of leaving behind the Dark Ages and questioning the gross perversion that came to be known as the empire of Christianity, a worldly regime where humans were terrorized and threatened with the sword and eternal torment. The Reformers (Luther, Calvin, etc.), though they saw part of the problems, were still offspring of a thousand year corruption of Christianity, and therefore held strongly to eternal torture (Calvin believed God would torture non-elect babies) because it was the paradigm they were given. But evolving out of the Dark Ages made this doctrine of hell begin to morph into something more humane. Whereas it wasnt uncommon for theologians to say God exalts in and enjoys damning and torturing sinners in hell in his perfect justice, pretty soon C.S. Lewis was saying that God doesn’t send anyone to hell, but people send themselves, and that it was a state of mind, or of being at enmity with God and hardened to love. We began to see hell as not literal fire, but as separation from Gods presence. Yes, as people came out of the fear and control of the Dark Ages and as society progressed into more humane ideals, these prevalent views became more archaic and abhorrent and incompatible with our idea of God. We have begun trying to make hell more humane. Now in the 21st century, we still for the most part dont really know how to see the justice of God concerning ultimate human destiny, and we see Gods justice as something opposite of his love, like yin and yang. I think many Christians would adhere to the “gospel message” of “turn or burn”, because they dont know how else to see the gospel, although they wouldnt want to admit it, and would rather push it to the back of their heads and leave it there. The idea of the wages of sin being eternal conscious torment in some literal place called hell has been so engrained in the Christian worldview that it is not surprising that people think all of Christianity comes crashing down if you don’t believe in it. Suddenly people begin to say that Jesus died for nothing and his sacrifice was pointless if he was not saving us from eternal conscious torment in a place called hell. This is because Christians have come to believe that eternal conscious torment is the wages of sin that Jesus came to save us from. So get rid of eternal conscious torment, and suddenly Jesus doesn’t need to save us from anything anymore. Nevermind sin and death and the chaos and suffering it has plunged the world into, it’s all about saving us from some afterlife torture place. Since our salvation is seen in terms of being saved from eternal torment in hell, then sin and death is not seen as much of an enemy anymore. All we have to do is mentally adhere to the right belief system and upon death we will go to heaven instead of being tortured forever in hell. This makes death the solution and not the problem. Death becomes the Savior from this bad world as it rescues us into heaven. So if death isn’t even a problem and is just the doorway to a spiritual mode of existence, then Jesus couldn’t have come to save us from death, but rather must have come to save us from going to the bad place upon death instead of the good place. (This is all wrong by the way). In other words, to these folks, the wages of sin is not death, but eternal torment, even though Jesus DIED for our sin, and was not eternally tormented for our sin. And in this view, Jesus did not physically rise from the dead in order to defeat death and be the firstfruits of the future resurrection and the restoration of the cosmos, but instead he rose from the dead so that we could stay physically dead forever and our souls could fly off to some other spiritual mode of existence in a different reality called heaven. What if this is all wrong? What if Jesus physically died because death is the wages of sin, not eternal torment? And what if he rose physically from the dead in this creation to become the firstfruits of a future physical resurrection in this creation in the age to come? Let me easily clear this up. Nowhere does it say that the wages of sin is being tortured forever. Nowhere in the Scriptures does it say that Jesus came to save us from a hell of eternal torment. The Scriptures say that Jesus came to save us from sin and death. Sin and death; these are realities we can relate to. All of the Scriptures from mans fall in Eden to the eschaton in Revelation declare that the consequence of sin is death, but that resurrection and immortality has been brought to light in Jesus. Look around at the world and you know what we need saved from. Not eternal torment, but sin and death. God made a beautiful world and it has been corrupted, it was sent into a broken disharmony with God. God is the ultimate harmony and music and light and love of true being, and we have been thrown out of whack with God, at enmity with him in our minds. This effected all of creation. The result is emptiness, meaninglessness, despair, suffering, and death. Sin is anti-human, anti-being, and it is compared to a fire that destroys. Sin is sowing and reaping destruction. Look around and you see the fires of gehenna, the destructive wages of sin eating people up, recycling violence and oppression the world over. Is this gehehnna also a reality in the future age? I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. It is possible that those who reject God and his truth revealed in Christ will continue in their way of being that is in disharmony with God all the way into a non-redemptive and final second death, which is symbolized by fire. We will let God decide that. Again fire is a good representative of sin. Fire never preserves things, but fire does do one thing: it eats up and consumes until a thing is no more. In the process the thing is skewed from its original image, melted, morphed into something ugly as the fire eats its way into its core, its elements are broken down, and eventually it turns to ashes. While some of us like to say that we hold fast to the traditional view of hell, it is more likely you hold to the modern C.S. Lewisian version of hell where at least God is not a monster, which I appreciate. And while it is a more humane version, its not at all traditional. However, as I have pointed out in the previous parts to this series, there is no reason to believe any of this eternal torment business at all from scripture or from the paradigm Jesus was in when he talked about “gehenna”. And the early fathers knew this, as I will show in the Part 5 of this series. Do you ever wonder why the good news seemingly becomes such bad news when someone you love dies without believing it? I know of someone who was so depressed that he took his own life. He was in his 20s. He wasnt a believer. He didnt take life well. He went through extremely hard things and despaired. The world broke him and he didnt have it in him to do it anymore. Such sadness. Are we to believe that because his eyes were not opened to the hope of Jesus, he will now be cast by God into eternal fire to suffer eternally? Why? Why must the existence be like that? Why must God be like that? God is just? Can your heart honestly for one moment believe that this has any resemblance to justice whatsoever? Why cant the good news not become the worst news you could possibly ever imagine in such scenarios? Someone might say Well whats the point of good news if theres not bad news first? But why cant the real bad news be that this guy was overtaken by depression and darkness to the point that living became a despair to him? Why cant the bad news be that he didnt have hope to live anymore? Thats the bad news. The bad news is not that God will now abandon him to eternal misery, the bad news is that he experienced the fall and all the darkness, despair, depression, and death that came with it. I believe the good news is that nothing will separate him from the love of God, not even death, and there is no reason to believe that he or anyone is beyond the reach of God. This is not an argument for any kind of dogmatic belief that everyone will be restored to God, for I do believe that scripture allows the possibility that many have it in them to reject God all the way to ultimate death. But I am arguing for hope. And that we can trust that God is more just and loving than the limitations we put on him. Even Luther admitted he would not limit God’s mercy to this current life: God forbid that I should limit the time of acquiring faith to the present life. In the depth of the Divine mercy there may be opportunity to win it in the future. - Martin Luther By now it should be clear that it is absurd to ask, “If eternal torment is not real, then what did Christ come to save us from?” Without Jesus, we all already know the bad news. We live in a state of dying, emptiness, heartbreak, disease, injustice, suffering, and eventual death. Even with moments of joy and pleasure in life, our lives are still characterized by an endless search for happiness concluding in death. All of us know and live the bad news, the curse of the fall. Thats why Jesus is good news. What he revealed about God through the cross, the triumph over death, and the hope of the kingdom coming to earth! God has not left us in a hopeless situation, Hes with us! The Gospel = good news. If its not first and foremost showing people the hope and life that has burst forth in this broken, dying world then its not the good news. Part 1: https://facebook/jacobmawright/posts/10152606036169387 Part 2: https://facebook/jacobmawright/posts/10152607595454387 Part 3: https://facebook/jacobmawright/posts/10152611199939387?pnref=story
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 01:49:21 +0000
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