(This writing is dedicated to my nephew, Robert)
I have seen enough of my own sinful tendencies, apart from the all embracing Presence of God become Flesh, to believe in the absolute reality of hell. Hell is wherever God isn’t. This life, and I presume any future life that allows freedom of choice is a battle, clearly, between love and power.
Power, even when wielded for good is ever on the edge of becoming the greatest evil. It matters not if it be an agnostic or committed believer, once we see our cause sufficiently worthy of compelling another, unless held in check, human arrogance and power tend toward ever greater power—always in the name of good. Mao, Stalin, the Crusaders, Several Popes, Rome’s Emporers, Tribal leaders of Africa, the Americas and the islands of the Pacific, US Presidents, European Monarchs, RevolutionarIes, Dissidents, Actuvists have jailed people unjustly, annihilated whole communities of people, terrorized, destroyed property, killed millions—simply to bring about the kind of governance they believed in as the highest good. Power unchecked is hell.
What I do not understand is why anyone would think God, acting in love and for love could ever by power imprison or worse torture or allow torture unchecked and walk away into an eternal party of the chosen knowing that just beyond the gates of heaven—hell in its violence, degradation and evil goes on unchecked for the many? That is a vision far removed from the Sacred text especially as focused in Jesus. Yet it remains, tragically the descriptive of many believers of good heart.
CS Lewis describes hell as God’s last act of mercy to limit the ever deepening and addictive patterns of human choices. He rightly picks up on the very central Biblical theme that God always acts in restorative love. Judgment and hell itself are part of God’s allowing sin and it’s deadly outcomes to secure each/all of our attentions and seek our heightened resolve to live into love and away from evil.
It is often sighted by those who see themselves as among the righteous, on the inside of God’s Story—“Outside are the dogs, the drug users and spell-casters, those who commit sexual immorality, the murderers, the idolaters, and all who love and practice deception“ (Revelation 22:15 CEB). Has no one considered that no matter your address adjacent the golden streets, to be captured in any of the above remains a hellish environ? Ofcourse such behavioral patterns and those among us who practice them actively are in the midst of hell whatever our address in the universe. Heaven (God’s immanent Presence) itself is hell if we are living incongruent to God’s reign of love.
Put differently, holiness or God-likeness in our interior affections is essential to our ability to celebrate heaven which loosely is defined “wherever God is”. As Jesus put it, “Happy are people who have pure hearts, because they will see God” (Matthew 5:8 CEB).
In the reality that is the material universe and the mysteries that surround there is both space as provided in Creation and our interior experience of that space. The Scriptures are mostly surrounded in mystery as to the nature of heaven or God’s home, especially given that as Spirit The Trinity of God fills the entire cosmos and beyond. The early Church writers when remembering Jesus use of the heavens thought of it as a unseen dimension surrounding our material real lives and so God’s kingdom breaking in was as easy as Jesus, in his resurrection body, suddenly appearing. In all, the Christian imagination was Shalom filling the earth as the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back.
The primary reference used by Jesus for hell was not a lake of fire, though he is remembered to have twice gone there when referencing the depth of dehumanizing pain as in the gnashing of teeth or what we call today physic incongruence. Jesus preferred metaphor was Gehenna or the Jerusalem garbage dump where a smoldering and purifying fire was constant. Jesus very much connected hell not to a place of God’s creation, but it’s opposite; the complete utter waste of God’s Creative purpose when we loose our humanity.
I‘m constantly amazed at how Satan gets all the good press, as though this beautiful and magnificent Angel now diminished to a goulash presence unrecognizable is accorded God-like stature and power.
We are the people of the cross wherein God the Father—Eternal Son—Spirit take into their communal experience in Jesus of Nazareth all our human wounds, sins, hellish affections and incongruence and gives to us the very Love that is the eternal home of their Union. “God caused the one who didn’t know sin to be sin for our sake so that through him we could become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 CEB). In this primal event that per John’s revelation was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8b NIV), we and everyone born of Adam’s line are forever reconciled with God. “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Ephesians 3:12 NIV). In that same passage Paul declares that God’s “intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 3:10 NIV).
Stated in modern language we, the Church have been given the privilege of the Cruciform life wherein not only those living on earth but those in the heavenly realms, unseen, surrounding are reconciled to God. Wow!
I no longer preach to outsiders for in Jesus all are inside God’s Story. Nor do I assume human death is somehow a metaphysical line that forever closes the book, each human somehow stuck in a universe beyond God’s reach. Nor do I take human sin, mine or yours, as unimportant. For the Shalom of God to fill the earth requires response, not power, love, not judgement.
There is an appointed judgment at the very end of all ages. We each are appointed to die. What happens between those two events only God knows. But of one thing I am certain: God’s redemptive purpose and commitment to the salvation of every person has not and will not change. Nor, by God’s grace will mine.
Blessings! Terry :)
A Devotional Reffection on some of these themes: https://youtu.be/TSnfm4dzW7U
For more, get ”Cross Purposes— at Amazin.
https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Purposes-Incarnational-Atonement-Salvation/dp/1521793360/ref=sr_1_6?key
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