Hell? Some thoughts about this hot topic

A friend asked me about hell ... for a study group.

Here's what I wrote in reply ...

1. In the end, only God … some will stand in that presence and be utterly
joyful … others will stand there, and it will feel like hell … for some, God-in-the-end will be the culmination; for others, it will be the last thing they want.

2. In the end, it’s the culmination of our life’s trajectory … not just of our own doing, but a strange mix of our dirt and divinity, if you will … the primordial will of God to seek and to save the whole of God’s creation, and the day-to-day interaction of God with willful creatures who genuinely have a mind of their own, even when they’re not in their right mind.

3. Like John Steinbeck says, in “East of Eden,” "there are monsters" - you allude to that.

4. Question for me - will God be satisfied if any single creature will be forever barred from peace - as some have suggested: forever burning? Is God’s final will determined by sin, or is sin overcome by God’s final will?

5. Shout what we know: God is love, of a kind more overwhelming than we can ever compute … more pure, more good, more expansive, and creative, than we can imagine or describe.

6. What we don’t know is the fulness of God’s mind - after all, the “knowledge of good and evil” belongs only to God - when we try for it, we die … and then we start killing one another, in fact, or by words.

7. Some forms of Christianity have used hell as a cudgel … a very effective cudgel, to get the sheep in line … but I don’t think it did much good, because it appeals to the basest instinct in human DNA - self-preservation … no matter the cost … in order to “preserve” the self, it feels good to damn others to some everlasting hell, or literally, to take their undeserving life and destroy it.

8. Love is by far the gospel, but it takes a beating … something most American Christians want no part in - hence, the prosperity gospel, the comfort-stuff, and all the other nonsense that focuses relentlessly on the self.

9. There’s a huge difference between covenant-centered Christianity (which generates confidence, peace, and hope) and conversion-centered Christianity (which generates anxiety, pride, judgement of others, and ever-greater self-centered efforts) … conversion-centered Christianity has always relied a great deal on the threat hell, the trump card, if you will. Covenant-centered Christianity relies a great deal on the trustworthy character of God’s love, God’s purpose to save, and the work of Christ to “take away the sin” - not just of the few, but the whole wide world, forever and ever … and that’s why Jesus declared in his final moments, “It is finished.”

10. Sin is not an easy business - it takes an enormous amount of work on God’s part to undo its damages and set a new course - to straighten the road, smooth out the rough places, lower some of the mountains of pride and raise up some of the valleys of despair. Using traditional language, “the harrowing of hell” is God’s ultimate achievement.

11. I’m a universalist … I believe that every last inch of God’s creation will be recreated and made new …

12. Purgatory isn’t entirely a bad idea … for me, it represents a time-lag, if you will, in how it all gets worked out, some sooner, some later, maybe even much later.


13. The Devil’s in the details is evident in how Christianity has dealt with hell … parsing the human race … who’s in, who’s out; who’s saved, who’s damed … and so on … it all ends in a lot of mean-spiritedness …

14. Our task is to love one another … and that means justice and peace …

15. As God has made our eternal future secure (not something to fuss about or worry about), our energies are refocused on the here and now, caring for the Garden, and the needs of the neighbor, and the need, a huge need, to tell historical truth - about all the ills of the world - that’s why CRT is so important to me, and freedom of the press, and well-funded schools.

16. I love the Heidelberg Q/A 1 - that I belong … in Calvin’s Book Three of the Institutes, there are some marvelous passages about “I am not my own, but belong to Christ” …

17. Karl Barth corrected Calvin’s error with “double predestination” - some eternally damned for hell, others for glory, and that’s just the way it is. Rather, says Barth, all the saving and all the damning took place within Jesus the Christ … he was damned, and he was saved … for all the world. It’s our task, our joy, to approach the world with the good news (no fine print here) … some receive it, others reject it, many are somewhere in between.

18. In the end, God! And all will be good … so, as the angels said to the disciples, “Don’t stand there looking up into heaven. Go to Jerusalem … power will come upon you, and then you can get to work.”

I hope these musings make some sense.

Let me know how it goes.

Tom

Conservatives Love Categories

Conservatives love categories ... racial, nation-of-origin, color, religion, class, gender, orientation, age, size, intelligence, shape of the head, or whatever else can used to divide and conquer, leading to social discord and war.

All of these categories, for the Conservative, define who's in and who's out, who counts and who doesn't, who has rights and who shouldn't have any. And if of a christian bent, who's going to heaven, and who's going to hell.

These Covid-19 Days have seen added to the mix of categories: the elderly, the health-compromised, and the incarcerated.

It's ok for the elderly to get sick and die ... and the health-compromised, too ... and surely the incarcerated. What are they doing in prison in the first place? Shame on them.

The Conservative Mind is rigid with its distinctions and more than willing to cast off those deigned inferior, dangerous, or undeserving.

If you're a Conservative and don't like what I've written, ask yourself Why?

Do you rely on these kinds of categories to distinguish yourself from others? Believe yourself (humbly, of course) to be morally superior, spiritually higher in rank, closer to God, more deserving of life, privilege, and comfort?

In the realm of God, which is important to me, and sets the standard, or so I believe, these sorts of distinctions are a script from hell, and not of Christ, nor of the Hebrew Prophets.

To Christ, and to the Prophets, I look for guidance ... as best I can. I may be mistaken, but I think a life lived with with open arms is a whole lot more peace-inducing and rewarding than a life lived with arms folded in a defiant rejection of others.

Exodus 33.2 - Hideous Ideas

I used to read a passage like this serenely:

I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites (Exodus 33.2)

But, alas and alack, no more serenity.

In the light of what White Europeans did to the inhabitants of North and South America, and to the peoples of Africa, and with the continuing plague of racism in the United States, a plague rooted in the American South and American evangelicalism, to read of peoples displaced by none other than God, for the sake of the few, disturbs me deeply.

We're talking here of people, children, families, hopes and dreams, and all the rest ... and without batting an eye, the Text speaks of an angel driving all of them out, lock, stock and barrel ... and where did they go? What happened to them?

Sure, I know the story - much of this never happened, and the Promised Land remained populated by its original inhabitants. But at best, an uneasy relationship, punctuated by conflict and war, not unlike modern-day Israel and the Palestinians.

Whatever happened is one thing, but the thought is another. And the thought is this: here are a people whose lives do NOT matter, people of no account, people who have something we want, and we'll not buy it from them, we'll take it from them, and god is on our side.

In just a few words, all the horror and sadness of history is encapsulated.

Ultimately, as the story plays out, God abandoned the land business, closed out and locked up, with a sign: "No More!" It was too costly, and it compromised God and God's people as well.

And if God apologized, God did so through the Prophets and through the Christ, with a vision of love and hope and peace for all the world, all its peoples, all its creatures, great and small - every rock, river, and tree.

Perhaps, now, the Spirit of God speaks through the tragedy: "Is this what you think? Is this what you want? Is this how you conceive of me and yourself?"

The Fatal Flaw of Creationism

Creationists have committed themselves to a fatal flaw that will end badly for those who sign on to it. And what's the flaw? Contrasting "revelation" with "reason," "faith" with "science." By positing the contrast, Creationists, unwittingly, perhaps, or worse, purposefully, suggest that God is a house divided - that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is opposed to, or different than, the revelation of God in God's creation. And worse: that the devil created fossils, or God did, by some means of deception, in order to "test" our faith.

As Jesus rightly noted: A house divided cannot stand for long. And the house-divided crafted by Creationists cannot stand either.

For those who have signed on to the house-divided, it will result in one of two options: 1) some form of cynicism wherein folks simply pack up their bags and leave the faith behind, either because they cannot believe in its dogmas or because they can no longer trust their teachers; or, 2), some form of absolutism, wherein the dogmas are taught with an increasingly blind force and the teachers are "trusted" with an absolute devotion.

Either way, the goodness of God's creation is lost ... it simply becomes "existence" for those who cannot abide the false god of the Creationists, or it becomes irrelevant for those who can abide only with the false god of Creationism.

If I have to choose, I'll choose some form of cynicism, because it, at least, keeps the doors and windows open. But for me, there is another choice, and it's simply the affirmation that what God has given, and continues to give, in Christ AND in creation is consistent and honest and open to our senses, our minds, our examination - all of this subject to the ambiguities of our existence.

With another affirmation - that what we cannot fully grasp grasps us in grace. Whether it be the glories of creation or the wonders of the cross, we can see these things and welcome, consider and examine them, but more than anything, they welcome us, consider us and examine us ... and in that moment, there is no contrast, no contradiction, no pitting of one against the other. No more a house divided!

Assurance of Pardon - Where in the Liturgy?

Where should the Assurance of Pardon be liturgically placed?

In most of my experience, limited as it is, the Assurance appears after the Confession of Sin, and I guess that's okay, but I'm wondering if the placement could be more appropriate if placed before the Confession.

Part of my thinking is a chicken and egg question, though I think the question in my mind is easier to solve, and has been solved for us by Jesus and in 1 John, wherein it is written, God first loved us!


As it now stands, one might assume that our confession of sin triggers God's forgiveness, or, as some might say it, and have said it, without such confession, no forgiveness is possible, driving some, as it did Martin Luther, to endless confession and maniacal self-examination.


With that in mind, perhaps the Assurance should appear first in the liturgy - in other words, we start with the love of God and the grace therein - a primordial love for creation, and through the lambs of the centuries and now the Lamb of God of Calvary, there is forgiveness, profound and pervasive, complete and without condition - though ignorance of it condemns the ignorant to life lived fearfully or despairingly, and for some, ignorance can even promote a self-willed morality that grants approval aside from the love and mercy of God (the heart and soul of various legalisms which are always suffused with arrogance - the vain belief in one's inherent ability to truly be good, often requiring a woeful avoidance of the whole story, as we leave out or whitewash the darker chapters).

So, perhaps we should begin with the love of God - the Assurance of forgiveness - that the great work of God throughout history, ever since God made sturdy clothing for Adam and Eve, has always been forgiveness, and now has reached its culminating moment in Jesus who embodies God's purpose and love in such depth and purity as to finish the work of forgiveness, and, by the Spirit, empowering his disciples to tell "the good news" to all the world and to make disciples, those who know the truth, in full humility, and can share that good news further with others, in full compassion.

We are thus invited to confession, not as some potential trigger of God's mercy, which would always remain in doubt if tied to the "quality" of the confession, always leaving room for anxiety - that, perhaps, the confession wasn't complete enough, or sins of omission were overlooked, and sins of commission forgotten, and, thus, the forgiveness of God is withheld.

If, on the other hand, we know in Christ the unrestrained love of God that has wrought forgiveness, once and for all, confession is relieved of anxiety and empowered to be honest, for we are now, in Christ, without fear of judgment, but, in fact, invite judgment, the work of the Holy Spirit, to further our growth in Christ - sometimes requiring a harsh hand upon the soul, but harsh or not, always the hand of love.

One of these Sundays, I'll locate the Assurance prior to the Confession and then make it a teaching moment.

We'll see ...