Hell Within Heaven

This makes what Jesus does in his story about [the prodigal son] particularly compelling.  Jesus puts the older brother right there at the party, but refusing to trust the father's version of his story.  Refusing to join in the celebration.

Hell is being at the party.  That's what makes it so hellish.  It's not an image of separation, but one of integration.

In this story, heaven and hell are within each other, intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other.

If the older brother were off, alone in a distant field, sulking and whining about how he's been a slave all these years and never even had a goat to party with his friends with, he would be alone in his hell.  But in the story Jesus tells, he's at the party, with the music in the background and the celebration going on right there in front of him.

-Rob Bell, Love Wins

I've wondered more than once what it would be like for an individual like James Dobson to reach Heaven, only to discover himself surrounded by the people he had spent a lifetime denouncing and condemning to hell.  Would he learn to accept that God's love is more radical than he believed, and eventually reconcile with those he wanted to spend eternity apart from?  Or would heaven be an eternal hell for him?

I suppose it's not really fair of me to single out Dobson; history is rife with individuals (pious and otherwise) whose hatreds run even deeper.  And even the best of us have our own sets of prejudices and grudges that we must either battle or feed on a daily basis.

If reconciliation is indeed our future, as Bell proposes, what kind of eternity are we preparing for ourselves?

Links

And now for another installment of people saying things I wish I'd said...

-Donald Miller would rather be hated than loved with conditions.  I'm inclined to agree.

-Fred Clark points out how conservative Christians make the power of Gay more powerful than anything else in Creation.

-Australia's Prime Minister makes a principled case for supporting marriage equality.

Grace

Grace is not about showing others what you do.  It's not even about showing God what you do.  It's about seeing God for who He is (a loving Father), and being changed by that encounter.

It's when we manage to forget about ourselves that we can truly focus on Christ and let go of our selfish interests.  The path of believing that our salvation depends on works, even good works, destroys our love of God.  This means-to-an-end relationship with God is a dead end.  The path of faith and fruit, by contrast, makes all good works possible.  It is the difference between obedience and gratitude.

Works says: Be good, or else...
Grace says: Be grateful, and then...

Getting back to [the book of] James's original example, we don't "demonstrate" our righteousness by feeding the homeless and hungry person; we celebrate our freedom by doing so.  We do it because we care - genuinely and deeply - for the welfare of others.

-Jay Bakker, Fall to Grace

In theory, many if not most evangelical churches would agree with the above statement.  In practice, most members of those churches (including the pastors) are still more motivated by fear of hell - if not for themselves than for those they believe are headed toward eternal condemnation.

While I'm not convinced one has to become a universalist to get to a place where fear is completely overcome by grace, I am convinced that actions motivated by fear of hell (however well concealed by slogans of grace) are a sign that there is error in one's theology.  It's not an error that would jeopardize one's salvation, certainly, but it nonetheless has negative consequences in the here and now.

Afterlife V

For those who may have missed the previous post's comment section, John shared this link to a very helpful overview of the different views on hell that Christians have advocated over the centuries. It's a timely reminder that what we often consider the "traditional" view - of endless, conscious torment for all nonbelievers - wasn't widely held prior to medieval times, and even since then has been disputed by many theologians.

What little the biblical authors do have to say about hell is vague enough that N.T. Wright's caution against dogmatism ought to be our strongest statement on the topic. For my own part I find myself leaning increasingly toward a stance of "hopeful universalism" - we have no guarantee that everyone will spend eternity with God, and the existence of free will demands that we be given the choice to reject God, but it's still possible that even the most stubborn rebel will eventually seek (and be granted) reconciliation. I cannot know that for sure, however. All I can be certain of is that God is merciful and loving and just, and that I don't have to live my life in fear.

To those who still hold that infinite punishment is a biblical doctrine due to Jesus' references to hell, I encourage them not to forget who is depicted as being sentenced to hell in each of those cases. It's never those the church typically brands as "sinners," or those who fail to pay lip service to the correct doctrinal statement. Instead, it's always the inhospitable: those who fail to care for the poor, the widow and the orphan; those who lord their self-proclaimed righteousness over others; those who shun the outcast and offer no welcome to the traveler. Somehow that part of the story always gets glossed over - and yet how can we understand the point without it?

Afterlife IV

Here's another interesting take on heaven and hell, one that makes more sense than the "traditional" Christian view. Of course, none of us really knows with absolute certainty what lies beyond this life, and the Bible is vague enough on that point to leave open any number of interpretations. But it does seem like it's past time to retire the originally pre-Christian (and decidedly non-Jewish) notion that a just and loving God would inflict infinite torture as punishment for a finite number of sins.

Maturity

[I]f we were studying the Bible together over a period of time, we could trace the maturation process among biblical writers regarding God's character. In some passages, God appears violent, retaliatory, given to favoritism, and careless of human life. But over time, the image of God that predominates is gentle rather than cruel, compassionate rather than violent, fair to all rather than biased toward some, forgiving rather than retaliatory. In this more mature view, God is not capricious, bloodthirsty, hateful, or prone to fits of vengeful rage. Rather, God loves justice, kindness, reconciliation, and pace; God's grace gets the final word.

People who are part of what is often called fundamentalism today, whether Christians, Muslims, or Jews, often find it difficult to acknowledge this kind of progression in understanding across the centuries. If anything, they feel obliged to defend and give priority to the early, raw, more primal, less-tested and -developed views of God, minimizing or marginalizing what I am calling the more mature and nuanced understandings.

So the God of the fundamentalists is a competitive warrior - always jealous of rivals and determined to drive them into defeat and disgrace. And the God of the fundamentalists is superficially exacting - demanding technical perfection in regard to ceremonial and legal matters while minimizing deeper concerns about social justice - especially where outsiders and outcasts are concerned. Similarly, the fundamentalist God is exclusive, faithfully loving one in-group and rejecting - perhaps even hating - all others.

The fundamentalist God is also deterministic - controlling rather than interacting, a mover of events but never moved by them. And finally, though the fundamentalist God may be patient for a while, he (fundamentalist versions of God tend to be very male) is ultimately violent, eventually destined to explode with unquenchable rage, condemnation, punishment, torture, and vengeance if you push him too far.

-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pages 101-102

The fundamentalist God is also a being that can ultimately only be feared, not loved. Under such a deity every activity of the Christian life - worship, evangelism, charity, etc. - is an act of appeasement, driven by the need to escape unspeakable punishment (or to rescue others from that doom). Even the most conservative Christian would never verbalize it in that way, but when Hell is defined as an eternal state and salvation is viewed as the "fire insurance" that must be obtained to avoid it, declaring one's love for God becomes first and foremost an act of survival and only secondarily one of devotion.

In most evangelical churches the reality lies somewhere in between; the New Testament is given enough weight that God's love can sometimes be understood. But the Old Testament's God of wrath still lurks just beneath the surface, unwilling (or unable) to show any mercy to anyone who doesn't offer verbal assent to the correct creed. The perceived need for an inerrant Bible precludes the possibility that its early books might be the product of a more primitive understanding of God, rather than a timeless portrait to be placed on an equal plane with the example set by Christ.

If perfect love casts out fear, then perhaps any doctrines that lead to fear need to be reconsidered. Such growth in our theology need not suggest that God has changed, merely that our understanding of God has matured.

Afterlife III

Real Live Preacher has finished posting the results of his survey on what the Bible has to say about hell, in the form of a four-part video series. No doubt his conclusions will displease a lot of conservative Christians, but his commitment to sticking to what the biblical record actually says places the burden of proof back on them.

I highly recommend taking the time to listen to all four parts, especially for those who have been steeped in any Christian tradition that uses fear of hell as a bludgeon to motivate proper belief and/or behavior.

Part 1 - Introductory thoughts

Part 2 - A survey of relevant New Testament verses

Part 3 - RLP's beliefs about hell

Part 4 - What really matters

In (very brief) summary:

-The Bible gives few details about what happens after the end of this life.

-Whenever Jesus talks about hell, it is always religious believers who lack compassion who get sent there, not unbelievers.

-Nowhere in the Gospels or Acts do we find Jesus or the Apostles worrying about the eternal destiny of the people they ministered to.

In other words, whether the evidence leads one to a universalistic position or some strain of inclusivism, it's clear that our primary mission as followers of Christ is to spread God's love by building relationships with others and giving sacrificially, not to obsess over who's going to end up where in the next life.

Afterlife II

Contrary to appearances, I've been meaning to get back to wrapping up my series on Jacques' Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity. Although I still haven't gotten myself into gear to do so, I did just come across this interesting essay, taken from another of his books (What I Believe).

Ellul is a universalist (a fact that he touches on in Subversion), and in the linked post he makes a well-reasoned case for his position. I'm not quite there myself; I see salvation for all as an outcome to be hoped for, but I'm not fully convinced of it. The bits and pieces that we find in the Bible regarding what happens after this life just don't give us a complete picture of what to expect.

The thrust of Ellul's logic goes like this:

If God is, he is all in all. There is no more place for nothingness. The word is an empty one. For Christians it is just as empty as what it is supposed to denote. Philosophers speak in vain about something that they can only imagine or use as a building block, but which has no reality of any kind.

The second and equally essential factor is that after Jesus Christ we know that God is love. This is the central revelation. How can we conceive of him who is love ceasing to love one of his creatures? How can we think that God can cease to love the creation that he has made in his own image? This would be a contradiction in terms. God cannot cease to be love.

If we combine the two theses we see at once that nothing can exist outside God’s love, for God is all in all. It is unthinkable that there should exist a place of suffering, of torment, of the domination of evil, of beings that merely hate since their only function is to torture. It is astounding that Christian theology should not have seen at a glance how impossible this idea is. Being love, God cannot send to hell the creation which he so loved that he gave his only Son for it. He cannot reject it because it is his creation. This would be to cut off himself.

Of course, Ellul's appeal here to human reasoning runs contrary to his arguments in other cases that human reasoning is insufficient to the task of understanding God, but in my experience virtually every theological position (including my own) runs aground on that contradiction at some point. Those that don't either reduce God to an overpowered human or spiral off into irrationality. To his credit, Ellul is careful in this essay to clarify that he does not assert his belief as dogma.

Ellul also argues against the idea that an individual's free will extends to the ability to reject salvation. I find his arguments on this point less convincing - which may be a sign of my own biases, since I still lean strongly toward the idea that love and free will are deeply intertwined.

Along the way he does, however, reinforce the point that rejection of the church is not necessarily rejection of God:

Without question we all know of innumerable cases in which people reject revelation. Swarms are doing so today. But have they any real knowledge of revelation? If I look at countless presentations of the Word of God by the churches, I can say that the churches have presented many ideas and commandments that have nothing whatever to do with God’s revelation. Rejecting these things, human commandments, is not the same as rejecting the truth.

I don't have the time or energy right now to examine the essay point by point; it's there for anyone interested in digging into it themselves. Regardless of whether eternal separation from God is a possible outcome for some, there is one thing I'm convinced of, and I suspect that Ellul would agree with me on this:

God did not intend for us to live our lives in a state of fear. Any church that uses fear of damnation to motivate its congregation - ever - has missed the point of the gospel.

Afterlife

Real Live Preacher has posted a challenge on his blog to those who believe in a literal Hell: prove its existence, using only biblical (especially New Testament) passages. It's a tougher request than one might think, given how saturated most Christian traditions are in imagery of the afterlife, and how adamant most are about the necessity of some sort of outward confession of faith if one wants to avoid eternal torment.

In reality, the Bible offers only limited support for any theory one cares to put forward about what happens after the end of this life. Those who believe that an elect few will live in bliss with God while the vast majority burn forever may actually have a weaker case than those who believe that everyone will be saved in the end, but ultimately neither side seems to have a decisive biblical mandate.

My own belief that some alternative to heaven must exist for free will to properly function is based as much on reason (and the writings of CS Lewis) as it is on any specific biblical passage, but I have yet to see a counter argument that doesn't rely just as heavily on human reasoning and extrabiblical sources once the proof texts have all been trotted out. If anything, it seems that God isn't deeply concerned with our knowing specifics about what happens after death. He wants us to draw closer to him in this lifetime, but the "carrot and stick" approach seems to be primarily an invention of human religion.

Whatever that ultimately means for our theology, I look forward to reading the results of RLP's challenge.

A few more links of interest:

-Anita at Sisterfriends Together has posted an interesting piece on the Song of Solomon and its ramifications for Christian arguments about premarital sex. (This is a follow-up to a previous post).

-Peterson has another good piece up on the Shame and Blame game that many ex-gay programs play.

-Finally, Pomoprophet is back in the blogosphere, and he could use your thoughts and prayers.

Forsaken

Last night I was rewatching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which I just acquired a used copy of on DVD), and I was struck by something that had always bothered me, but that I'd never known quite what to do with.

Namely, Chinese civilization dates back thousands of years, yet up until relatively recently none of the ancient cultures of the Far East had any recorded contact with Christianity (or Judaism, for that matter). According to most strains of Christian theology all of those countless millions of people are now in hell, all because God never revealed his true name to them. All of the beauty they created - art, music, literature, philosophy, technology, martial arts - was apparently pointless because of geographical barriers that they had no control over.

For the diehard fundamentalist there's nothing to question; if the Bible seems to suggest that all of those people deserve to go to hell, then that's simply all there is to it. Less dogmatic Christians would reason that we simply don't know the whole story, and that a just God will certainly take what they don't know into account when passing judgment. Like CS Lewis, they might posit that those who wholeheartedly seek after God will find him even if they don't call him by his proper name.

As we move away from the more conservative traditions, we'll find Christians willing to acknowledge the glimpses of truth found in Eastern philosophies, and even the notable similarities between Christian and Buddhist thought, and with such acknowledgments one can conclude that perhaps those thousands of years of Far Eastern history aren't as worthless as some unquestioningly assume.

As a Christian I still believe that the Bible presents the best picture we have of who God is and how he wants to relate to us, and that while different religions contain their own glimpses of eternity they aren't necessarily equally reliable paths for those seeking God. At the same time, though, I find myself increasingly convinced that the Holy Spirit can work and is at work outside of the context of 'orthodox' Christianity.

To acknowledge that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life is to recognize that our salvation is entirely dependent on him, and not necessarily on the labels we place on the boxes we construct in our constant attempts to define the infinitely powerful Creator of the universe we inhabit. There will always be those who reject him, but ultimately it's not our place to speculate on the eternal destiny of others.

At the same time, many who appear to have rejected God have, in reality, merely rejected a false impression of God that they were given by the bad example of some Christians. And the god that many 'believers' present to the world is small, petty, fickle and utterly undeserving of anyone's worship. That many who reject Christianity conflate those gods (lower-case g) with God (upper-case G) does not necessarily mean that they have truly rejected God, even if they carry that mistaken impression with them for the rest of their lives. As evidence of that we see many 'nonbelievers' who live godlier lives than the 'believers' who drove them away from the church.

But I digress. At the end of the day, all of our debates about God are rather like a group of two-year-olds arguing about the nature of the grown-up world, when any attempt their parents might make to explain to them what it's really like would go almost completely over their heads.

That isn't to say that God is completely unknowable, only that there's so much in this vast universe that we can just barely begin to comprehend that the best God can do in reaching out to us is to give us just enough knowledge of him to provide a starting point for managing our own lives. Fear and pride continually drive us toward the notion that we can bring others closer to God by micromanaging their lives for them (and even many who preach against such legalism with their words say something very different with their actions), but in the end we are no more qualified to do so than a toddler is capable of running a household.

There is tremendous beauty to be found in Far Eastern cultures. The fundamentalist has no choice but to dismiss that beauty as meaningless, but I'm convinced that the God who authored beauty is honored whenever human beings strive to emulate their Creator's creativity. Without devaluing my own beliefs I can affirm the good that I see in those who may not share my theology, and through those relationships build on my own understanding of the God I strive to know.

And no, that doesn't really have much to do with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's a beautiful movie, though.