Hell? Nah!

I'm going to repeat a blog here from March 29th of last year, put the same bumper sticker on my car and probably get the same limited response from new visitors, for the title of the blog is Hell?  Nah!. What kind of enlightened person actually believes in hell? Are you busy tonight...too busy to consider some thoughts on a topic that, undesirable as the concept is, you had better be right on?

March 29, 2011

An author, described as an Evangelical, writes a book that implies that there is no hell, and a Methodist pastor is fired after he endorses the book on his Facebook page and we have ignition, a news story, or as William Randolph Hearst might say puff the religious guy who doesn't believe in Hell! Hell is the easiest of concepts to accept if one has come to know that they themselves deserved it but were rescued from it, and the hardest concept to even consider if told that they themselves may go there. Great compassion and fairness is drawn out of people as they argue against the existence of Hell, or so they believe it to be compassion and fairness, but it is much deeper than this. If the message of the Gospel was one of simply being a pretty good person, some day to be welcomed by God into Heaven, there would be little if any problem with the concept of Hell, or with Christianity for that matter, for most everyone would consider it highly unlikely that they would ever be sent there, but that isn't the message coming from the Bible. It wouldn't matter if nine out of ten community churches proclaimed salvation through "living a good life," for there would always be that one in ten speaking directly to them with God-breathed Scripture that truly is a two-edged sword. It is often said that a stopped clock is right two times a day but this is not correct, for time never stops, never in this life that is, but time, as we know it now, will stop in eternity. So the grand argument of thousands upon thousands, and millions upon millions of years punishment for 20 years as a rebel are baseless, but on them we have convicted God of unfairness. He hasn't met our strict standards of goodness even though we have no idea of what eternity is like without the creation that we live in called time. So we have installed another god who has been thoroughly vetted and found acceptable. There is no Hell with him and we are comforted, but alas, there is nothing of substance, or value, or joy with him either. Hell is not the only problematic concept of eternity for the concept of Heaven is also problematic. One still has to consider millions upon millions of years. So although Hell is described in Scripture as one of horror, and Heaven is also described, as one of bliss and ecstasy, if we automatically hold them up to the grid of time, both descriptions become overshadowed by that which we have no ability to even conceive of. We wind up either rejecting Hell as unfair or we relegate Heaven to something that may be good but definitely not Hawaii. Although we cannot conceive of, let alone describe eternal damnation, we can conceive of the concept of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a very clear Biblical description of one's reaction to banishment there. There's another problematic area today in the discussion of Hell, that being that the one warning of it implies that he is not going there. Add to that that those saved seem to be very much like those not saved, at least the better ones of those not saved. The audacity of such a warning coming from those who are far from perfect! A few things need to be considered here. Every person born into this world comes in at enmity with God from that first breath and there is no place for them with God in eternity in such a state. No one can change this by their actions. One of the first objections that comes up is why God would create someone that He knew beforehand was going to Hell. Well, there are trillions upon trillions that God potentially could have created but did not create, that escaped this condition and possibility. You are not one of them. you are one of the minuscule, in comparison, number who were created. Have you gone to God and pleaded with Him for mercy? If not, does your original objection not lose its validity for you are no longer innocent, not even by your own standards? Consider this also, if you should come to trust in what was done on Calvary, for you, you will then find that you are still in the same body as the ones who warned you of Hell are, with the same temptations. The difference will be that you will then see yourself as even more vile than you may see us right now for you will be a new creation, one that sees not only the necessity of a Hell, but a place, that by rights, you should go. How do I know this? I know this because  I see that in myself, and because it is the truth. You will want to go to your own friends and warn them and advise them, not of the unfairness of God, but of the amazing grace offered to even the blasphemer. One cannot understand the extreme fairness of being banished until one gets a glimpse of the extreme holiness of the One offended. Once cannot see Hell before one begins to see God. One cannot see a place reserved for the rebel until one sees the rebel in himself. The clearer one sees God the less the issue of Hell dominates and the more the issue of His mercy does. The idea of a Hell will continue to draw our great opposition to the Bible. We...will continue to fall short of what the mercy extended to us should be evidenced in us, but no weak Christian kept me from trusting in Christ prior to 1982 and no strong Christian caused me to believe. Rather, the Word of God, through God's Holy Spirit, became a mirror to me. Objections to a Hell were overwhelmed by objections to my deserving anything good. The topic of Hell needs to be preached and discussed, for even in a perceived enlightened age as today, good is meaningless without bad, law is worthless without punishment, and there cannot be mercy without judgement.