Revolution (Grace Vineyard Youth Group)

I am in the middle of an extended conversation with a friend of mine regarding matters of faith.  With his permission I am posting my side of our conversation (sans names) here.  I have included footnotes, which myspace doesn't want to format correctly, so they look annoying and strange...but I don't want to take the time to "fix" them all.  I hope it is valuable to you in some way.  Remember, this will come in pieces as it happens:

Dear X

             I've spent a whole lot of time lately thinking and praying about our running conversation.  If I understand you correctly, there are two main areas of faith in Jesus that you are having difficulty with, one leading to the other, in a way.  The first is a question of process in theology: those age-old questions of why a good God would consign people to hell, why would we be called to the radical forgiveness that Jesus called us to, and why would God set up the entire system he set up in order to change it all with Jesus.  Maybe there are more, but I've tried to mention those we've talked about.  The second follows that if those questions persist, then maybe Jesus wasn't the promised one of the Jews.  Maybe we are still waiting for the Messiah.  I will do my best to answer these in an orderly fashion.  Please bear in mind that I don't have all the answers.  There are many questions I just don't know the answer to, not a lot, but there are some.  I will try to be intellectually honest about that.

            I think a conversation like this is best answered in letter form.  It seems that more progress can actually be made this way in the conversation as opposed to the rambling, stream of consciousness that talking face to face often creates.  Please keep in mind that my theological credentials are enough to give me credence, but would never get me in a university debate team alongside Lewis, Augustine, and Osteen (OK, that was a joke).  Consider this more arm-chair.  I will try to address the main points in "chapters" because to do so all at once would be overwhelming both to me and you, to foster better dialogue on the issues, and to increase the likelihood that this will actually be read in the first place.

            In looking at questions of "why would God..." it is important to realize an important balance that is often razor thin.  It goes like this:  Obviously, there is no way that we can get in the mind of God.  If we could, then we would be essentially equal to Him.  Because of this, there is no way that we could really understand Him[1].  On the other side, what kind of God would say, "I want you to trust me, but I am going to make myself so utterly incomprehensible that you won't be able be able to really have any logical way to trust me."  God is a God of reason and order.  He delights in bringing order out of chaos[2] and has gone quite out of His way to make Himself as understandable as He can to inspire a logical faith[3].  Having laid that out, there are parts to this discussion that can not be solved with mere logic.  Understanding God, His means, and methods all require the same leap of faith that simply believing in Him initially takes.  I will do my best to reveal the logical and spiritual answers to this, but it all requires faith.

 

Hell

            Your question of hell is an age old one that people of greater prowess than me have tackled.  C.S. Lewis, Augustine, Origen, McLaren, Bell, Willard, et al. have all covered the topic, and you have probably read much of their work.  I will let them stand on their own.  Perhaps I can stand on their shoulders as I am sure they don't need mine.  First, we need to understand that man was not made for hell-fire.  You are aware of the object lesson Jesus used of Gehenna[4]in reference to the valley of Hinnon, which was originally a place where idolaters would sacrifice their children to Molech in the fire.  In Jesus day it was used as a trash heap with a burning fire that never went out. 

Unfortunately, our understanding of Hell has been colored horribly by works of fiction and countless Halloween Hell-houses.  An important point to start with is that Gehenna was a place of destruction that was brought about by people's total depravity and negative self-sacrifice, and later by the waste of their lives.  I firmly believe Jesus point was less about the place God would excitedly send them too, and more about natural and spiritual consequences. 

            Therein lies an important concept that needs to be understood.  YHWH (God's proper name[5] does not stoke the fires of Hell for the ones He desires to punish (sorry to tell the Calvinists, whom I occasionally go on a rant against when I can't help myself).  His clear desire is for no one to end up there[6].  This stands completely different than other gods, Allah for instance, who says that Hell is prepared specifically for those who earn his wrath[7]. 

            God created all to come to repentance and enter into eternity 8] and eternal destruction apart from Him was reserved only for the Devil himself, and his angels.  The problem really starts there, and I will try to illustrate it with an imperfect, but hopefully useful illustration:

Suppose I decide to get really drunk and then go out racing my car in the middle of the night.  While this is unadvisable of course, people have done it.  In my drunken, speedy state, what if I happen to drive over a bridge and crash headlong into a lake, sinking my car, and drowning in the process?  I would be dead.  It is unfortunate for me, but I have no one to blame but myself.

In my illustration, I end up in the lake, and in a state (dead) that I was not intended to be in.  The alcohol was not meant for drinking in excess, though I did it anyway.  The car was not made for racing down the streets drunk, yet I also did that.  The bridge was not made for jumping, also a mistake I made.  The car was not meant to be in the lake, and my body was not meant to stay submerged.  While you might say that it is not fair that I was dead (I would agree) it was brought about by my own actions and if someone stood up at my funeral and screamed at God for taking my life, you would wrinkle your brow at the absurdity of the statement.

            But in the case of hell, a place that is not intended for us, we shake our fists at God when we think that someone might end up in a place He never wanted us to end up in at all.  If this logic causes difficulty, then it certainly couldn't be confined to the New Testament.  There are many places in the Old Testament where people end up being punished by God (in these cases in more mortal ways) for sins that were committed by their tribe, family, etc[9].  One can try to explain these away on a case by case basis, but it ends up in enormous logical gerrymandering that makes one feel foolish just listening to.  The only logical conclusion one can really come to is that God's hand was forced in a way, and consequences had to be followed through on.  Any other reading just ends up showing a god who actually delights in evil.  And since one of the characteristics of God is that He cannot, by nature, contradict Himself, one must conclude that the first understanding mentioned is the correct one.

            This leads to another point which is probably the most salient.  God is good.  Love is good, but so is justice.  I don't wish to spend eternity with a god who really cares little about me, and neither would I wish to do so with a one who would refuse to punish a Hitler, Stalin, or Pol-Pot.  This brings about an interesting conundrum: Does God reward everyone (great on the love, poor on the justice), or does He punish according to what is fair (goodnight everybody)?  If He is infinitely righteous, then one act of unrighteousness on our part creates an infinite divide.  So does He punish just the one sin?  Does he wait for 2, or 10, or 20?  Where does He draw the line?

In Genesis God tells Adam to "not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." [10]  God makes it clear to Adam that one action, an act that we today would have to admit was a "private sin," had fatal consequences.  If Adam were around today he would be on a talk show where guests would stand up and rail against God telling Him that it is Adam's body and that Adam could do what he wants with it.  Another would point out that Adam eats the apples in the privacy of his own home.  A lady in the back would mention that Adam only ate one apple and God should just get over it and forgive him.  Someone would challenge God to a fight.  In reality, we do wonder why God would be so calloused as to equate a single decision with the most serious consequence, a spiritual death as well as a physical one.

Jesus backs up that same concept when he says that we should not fear people who can only kill the body, but fear God who has the power to condemn us to hell.[11] However, it is important to note that that particular passage mainly points out that we should not fear, because God greatly loves us and is watching over us, though He is not blind to sin.  This is not a New Testament invention of Jesus.  Judaism was steeped in this in the Midrash, and it is found significantly in inter-testamental Jewish literature: "Let us not fear him who thinks he kills; for a great struggle and peril of the soul awaits in eternal torment those who transgress the ordinance of God." [12]

If we are commanded to "be holy, as I am holy,"[13] that is not to be taken lightly.  God cannot tolerate sin.  If He is just[14] then He must punish sin, which is a rebellion against His rule and reign.  Since we have already established that even one sin creates an infinite chasm, then a million sins would therefore make one just as unholy as one sin.  The difference is not a comparison from Hitler to Gandhi or Mother Thereasa, but from any of those people to God, Himself.  God must punish sin, or He is no longer just.  He is not a softy.  He is jealous, judicious, and holy.[15]  He chooses to love us, not because He is required to, but because He chooses so.  The burden is on us, not on Him, except when He chooses to take it on.

            One concept that is pretty amazing to understand is that we have a surprisingly large amount of spiritual authority in our own lives.  It is amazing that God actually says to his people that they have a say in their own eternal destiny.   He obviously did that in the Garden of Eden, and He held His people accountable for their choices throughout the Old Testament.  It would therefore, be a natural conclusion to see that He would do the same today. 

            In the Old Testament, the primary belief was that much of God's punishment would take place on earth.  That failure to heed God's Law would end in famine, war, and even national destruction.  This was correct.  God did use events like these to get His point across.  It is much better to learn your lesson while you can, I assume.  The New Testament brings fresh understanding to a situation that is obvious to the observant when is says, "[God] sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."[16]

            This is not new for anyone who is paying attention.  Some evil doers who care little for anything other than their own best interests live lives of complete luxury, free of fear, want, or even un-fulfillment. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world there are innocent children that starve to death before their first birthday.  If God is doling out His justice here on earth there can be no good conclusion other than that He is doing an extremely poor job of it.  He has either forgone His justice altogether and lapsed into enormity, or He is staying His hand temporarily awaiting a more final judgment.  There seems to be only 2 possible reasons for this: The first, is that for some reason He has ceased caring about temporal judgment of these unrighteous (He is disgusted, tired, or some other related notion).  The second, and more plausible in my opinion, is that He is using a different strategy in order to work out His plan, which we have already established is one intended for our benefit as well.  If there is no judgment by God apart from the tangible, temporal world then there is simply no justice by God at all.  There must be more.

 

            Finally, I think it is of the greatest importance to look at what the Bible (particularly the New Testament) does not say about judgment.  In the teaching of Jesus, there is pointed out that the unrighteous will somehow be in a place of extreme discomfort post-death.  This is mentioned in only one place, Luke 16:19-31, where Jesus tells the story of a certain "rich man" and a beggar named Lazarus.  Scholars hotly debate this passage.  Some claim that it is a parable and should not be used to guide specific theology because that would be reaching beyond its intended purpose.  Others point out the fact that this story is vastly different from Jesus parables in almost every respect, and therefore should not be treated as such.  This second group also points out that while parables are not usually intended to instruct in the finer points of theology, it would not make sense (and be inconsistent) for Jesus to use heretical theology to teach a broader spiritual point.

            In this story, the rich man is sent to Hades (a different world than Jesus usually uses to speak of hell) where he is tormented.  Lazarus is sent to Abraham's Bosom.  A few main extrapolations can be made from the theology of this passage.  First, it would seem that both are in a possible middle place and have not faced a final judgment.  The description does not seem consistent with the Bible's description of Heaven, and is not referred to as Heaven anyway.  Second, because of this, we cannot use this passage for a reliable understanding of a final judgment by God.  What it does do is point out that there will be a difference after death between those who are deemed righteous and unrighteous, and secondly (what might seem to be often completely overlooked) that it is a foreshadowing of how many would miss the resurrection of Christ as a final statement by God concerning the seriousness of sin. 

            Having seen this, the Bible does not give a description of hell in the final judgment clearly, except to say that in the end the Devil and his followers will be tormented in a fire meant specifically to destroy inequity.[17]  The Bible does point out at the end of the passage that while the Devil will be eternally punished, the unrighteous will face the "second death."  This seems to favor strongly the "annihilationists" such as Stott.  The Bible does not seem to mention an eternal punishment by demons for eternity.  That very well could be the case, but if it is, it is extra-biblical and is mostly seen in Middle Ages literature, not the New Testament.  However, it is also unbiblical, and anti-justice to believe that God would refuse to deal with those who have actively rebelled against Him, have refused His forgiveness, and have trusted in themselves.  During life we have a choice to say, "Thy will be done," or "My will be done."  He gives us that freedom, it is obvious.  There is no reason to believe that then after life is done, God would not say to us, "Thy will be done," meaning that we who have trusted in ourselves and willfully rebelled against God and will face the natural consequences of that, or "My will be done." In which case He will follow through with the plan and purpose in eternity that He has always willed for us.

[1] Isaiah 55:9

[2] Genesis 1:2

[3]1 Peter 3:15

[4] Matthew 5

[5] Exodus 3:14

[6]2 Peter 3:8 -a great passage that illustrates God's purpose in all of this question

[7] Koran 4:93

[8] 2 Peter 3:8

[9]I am not going to cite them here.  That would take too many pages.

[10] Genesis 2:17

[11]Luke 12:5

[12]4 Maccabees 13:14-15  It is important to note that there was a substantial amount of disagreement in Jewish thought over the concept of Hell.  In Jesus' day Sadducees completely disavowed any eternality of the soul either in Heaven or Hell.  Pharisees believed in only resurrection for the righteous.  Essenes believed in resurrection to Heaven for the righteous and Hell for the unrighteous.

[13]Leviticus 11:44; phrase used throughout Leviticus

[14]one of the main themes of both the books of Amos and Isaiah

[15] Exodus20:5, 2 Thessalonians 1:6, Leviticus 11:44

[16] Matthew 5:45

[17] Revelation 20:10-14