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

I Am a Universalist

I am a universalist, and became so some years ago after trying to figure it all out, and I finally decided that no one can know fully the mind of God, but we can all know fully the love of God for creation, and that includes all creatures, great and small, and the not-so-bright (which I think encompasses the whole of the human race).

Having said, “I’m a universalist,” and having confessed my ignorance about ultimate things, but not ultimate means (Israel’s Messiah), I will also affirm that any firm speculation about “eternity” can only lead to deep flaws of thought and ethics.

Traditions that speak with ultimate assurance about ultimate destinies have all, to a one, crashed on the rocks of pride and judgment. And some within the universalist tradition have likewise lost their fervor for any kind of faith, and have played carelessly with what folks believe and live.

We do have a blessed assurance, and it’s Jesus, who is ours, by grace, and his destiny, wrought in the contours of his life, is ours. I agree with Barth, that in Christ, God resolved all the issues, and in Christ, we see the final Yes to all God’s creation, because whatever No any of us might say is never greater than God’s Yes.

Having become a universalist,  everything remains the same for me: Jesus and his cross, Jesus and his life, Jesus and his resurrection and ascension, but rather than focused on “getting folks to heaven and not hell,” everything becomes focused on the LORD's Prayer, and it’s central theme, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” For this we need Christ. For this, we need the Holy Spirit. For this, we need the Bible, the church, prayer and evangelism.

One still has to be saved – from ignorance and fear and pride and selfishness, to take this one singular life that God created with such passion and kindness and make it worthwhile, if not simply for the self (which it can never be) but for others, too. The children who suffer and die all around the world for want of political commitment to work for peace, for all the suffering occasioned by the greed and malice of the powerful, for all of this, we need to be saved from fear and cowardice that we might live with the boldness of Christ, and, with him, enter the temple when necessary to cleanse it, calm the crowd that is so eager to stone the woman, and challenge the blindness of the religious cognoscenti.

Give to everyone (letting God clear up all the details) the gift of eternal life with the one who made them, the one who came here to show them the way, the truth and the life, and the Spirit who opens minds and hearts and doors!

Then, we’re free to love, and free to join together in caring for God’s world. We’re free to share Jesus Christ with all, not at the point of a threat, but at the point of a celebration, that, yes, we’re all in this together, both now and forever.

For me, becoming a universalist has removed some of the worst aspects of Christian history and theology and opened up doors of joy and hope for here and now, and most surely, for eternity.

I still share Christ with anyone and everyone I can. Why not?

But heaven is no longer a goal in question. Christ took care of that.

Earth is the goal, as it should be, and that remains the biggest question of all.

And as it is for God – from the beginning, and as Paul the Apostle celebrates in his letter to the Romans – that one day, all will be made new, with a new heaven and a new earth, and every knee will bow to the wisdom and glory of God.