This idea has always been difficult for me to grasp.
My instinct is to say that, no, there is no way Hell exists.
And it really aggravates me when people emotionlessly quote the scripture verses that point to the existence of Hell.
And it really worries me that maybe we're taking all of this a little too literally.
I'm not trying to lead into a crazy anti-Christ spiel or anything spectacularly hippie but I'm really not into the whole fire & brimstone stuff of today's churches either.
If you take even a blurry look at it, you can see that it is so very inconsistent.
Is it not hard for anyone else to comprehend a God who can one minute be the taught definition of love, a God who supposedly "created my inmost being; knit me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139v13 NIV), and the next minute He is this almighty damner who allows the very creation which he "knit together" to be viciously likened to "snakes" and a "brood of vipers" whose only fate must be to be "condemned to hell" (Matthew 23v33 NIV)??
Well that's where I fear we got it wrong. I think the God-breathed words of our God-called brothers of the written Word let a little of their emotional side slip in when they cursed their flesh to hot fate, and I understand the anger--I do. I understand the anxiety about getting it wrong and about messing something up forever, because that's what we, as humans, do, and it gets to be a little frustrating and we tend to get a little frantic...but to turn on each other and to insist that the same God who created us in His image and for His purpose is as finicky as our species in changing His mind, that He is as capable as we are to forget His promises and ignore His own teaching and turn His back on us, throwing us into a fiery pit forever?? That's taking it a little far, and it's a little sad that we have taken it that far for as long as we have.
Why did God send Jesus? To die, right? Could it not also have been to speak to us in a way we would better understand? To enter into our world as one of us and to speak our language so that we would better know what he had been trying to say all along? He dumbed himself down for us, and we got it! We understood it so well that we killed Him because it made too much sense, and it scared us because to believe it would have meant caring about it and caring about it would have meant following it and following it would have meant failing (because that's what we always do) at the very one thing that meant the very most of all. So we killed Him. And God knew it would happen, but He did it anyway, because he wanted to save us. He wanted to die for us. He knew it because he knows us.
Because, remember, He created our inmost being. And if we're not all good, that must mean He created the bad, too. Now, I'm not about to say that this is a big game to God and that He set us up for failure or any of that--I believe God loves us and that He has a purpose for us--but if I looked at the Bible the way some of my peers do..if I made myself believe some inconsistent bullcrap they feed themselves, I would fall. Hard. I know that because I did. I'd either fall or I'd be fake. And so I tried faking it. I "believed" everything the Church taught me about God through their interpretation of the Bible and I saw it's riddles and I couldn't make them out so I chose not to solve the puzzle, because that's what they told me to do. "Just believe! That's where faith comes in."
Uh huh... okay. Or how about this: How about we let God speak for Himself for a change?
How about instead of interpreting the Bible and molding it and shaping it and giving it excuses so that it all fits together and looks a little less inconsistent and instead of just shoving some faith & belief in where there are gaps, we stop shaping it and we take God's word (which can be found in other places besides the Bible, believe it or not) through the people He places in our lives, through our experiences, through our world, through nature, and through our communion with Him, through all the things that speak Him (whatever is good, whatever is pure...sound familiar?) and let Him say what He wants to say, let Him make himself known to us instead of us trying to make Him up. How about we do that?
Because the God that I know has shown Himself to me to be real, and in those moments when we were closest to each other, I could feel His heart, and it isn't one of hatred and anger and damning. He loves us. Every single one of us. Just like I love my daughter (only better). (She came from my womb, so you could say I had a hand in knitting her together.) I could never send her to Hell. I'll send her to time-out, sure! I'll even spank her now and then and goodness knows I yell. But to send her to die and burn and be saddened and tortured for all of eternity?? Heaven's no! I would die for her first! And.....huh..... isn't that what God already did for us?
So, no, of course God does not send people to Hell. There are hells on earth. There are moments that are hellish. There are times when we feel trapped in an emotional or physical or relationtional torment, but to live there forever? No. We are promised otherwise. We are promised that, as long as we believe, we will be forgiven and loved and will live with our Father in Heaven. And we all believe. Even if we don't know it, we do. Each of us was built with eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3v11 NIV).
Maybe there's a little tiny temporary Hell down there somewhere and it's really just Satan's shack or something and God sends some of us there when we're too thick and hard-hearted to change, but do you really think any of us are going to continue to blaspheme God while we're down there with our flesh melting away? Do you really think it's in the nature of our fallible race to stick anything out that long, even when it's clear what we've been denying is actually so very very true? Blah. The idea of it is laughable. And do you really think that, if God were to send one of his kids to Hell (or timeout, if you will) and they were to, while they were there alone with their sadness and their hopelessness and their scalding body, turn toward God with tears in their eyes and a genuinity in their heart and apologize, plead to Him, cry out to Him for love........is your God the kind of God to turn away??
Mine isn't. And if He was, to me, He wouldn't be the kind of God worth loving..worth following. The resurrection would be moot, just like Paul taught us. He would have saved us without really saving us and.... what the heck kind of Faith Story is that?!
[Disclaimer: I do not claim to know it all...I only share what I think I know at this moment in time. This is, after all, only a blog.]
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