Hell 2: reflecting on judgment

Earlier posts on the topic: Reflections on Hell, Eternity, and Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” and Controversy.

I probably shouldn’t write this. It’s, like, midnight. But this is when I have these thoughts. And tonight, I’m typing them.

I’ve recently seen a couple of posts on the subject of deserved judgment. This is a problematic topic for me. It always gets my goat. It gets my dander up. I get riled. This is what I’m thinking, raw and (mostly) unedited.

1. I’m not going against evangelical doctrine. God will judge sin (and really, we want him to). Sin separates us from a holy God. You live a life for yourself, doing whatever you pleased, and you’re going to reap what you sow. The judge of all the world will do what is right.

2. The problem is that we think we know all the ins and outs of how this will be done.

We have this perfect little well thought out systematic rulebook:

a) the first man and woman fell into sin;

b) because they fell, they and all those after them are separated from God and upon death condemned to eternal torture in hell (unless you go with the annihilation theory, in which case those souls upon death simply cease to exist)

c) God knew that they would fall before they did, and provided a plan for a redeemer before anything happened

d) This redeemer was “in God’s perfect time” to come 2,000 years after the fact

e) Unless you have accept the salvation offered by this redeemer, you’re toast upon death. You can’t avoid it. You inherited a sin nature. All of humanity is under judgment.

Here’s the quandry: we’ve logically envisioned a story in which God knowingly created a race that would inevitably fall, thus condemning billions to eternal torture—unless they know the Son. But he left revelation of the Son in the hands of Christians, who by their apathy/refusal are not bringing that revelation to those who do not have it. Thus in effect both God and Christians are condemning billions of people to eternal torture.

Um.

Ok, now you’re going to say, dude, it’s Biblical, it’s in the Bible, and humanity deserves it. They sinned. (All, and fallen short.)

And I say, ok, well, God knew we would. So he started down this path knowing the result.

And you’re going to say, free will.

And I’m going to say, still known.

And you’re going to say, dude, are you even a Christian?

And I’m going to say: Yes! I am!

And no, I don’t believe in multiple pathways to heaven. You can’t be a good person or a good Buddhist and get in. The Bible is clear on that.

3. Here’s my position: let’s have a little grace and room for what we don’t know.

Let’s just not be so sure about stuff like eternal torture and who’s in and who’s out.

We have a lot of verses that tell us a lot of stuff, and we think we know exactly what’s going to happen because of those verses. But I’m not so sure we know 100% of everything God has to say on this matter.

Knowing Jesus by the name “Jesus” or praying the Western-formula-version of the sinners prayer is not what’s going to save someone. Nor is being all moral if you don’t know him, like those who don’t know him get some kind of karmic deal that the rest of us don’t. Salvation isn’t a magical charm or spell or rule book or balance-and-scales. Nothing we do can save us—not confession, not belief, nothing. Jesus himself said “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He didn’t say, “Repent, so the kingdom can come!” Repentance was preparation. Whether you repented or not, the Kingdom was coming (came. is coming.) A lot of the parables carry this same theme: “Ready or not, here I come!”

Someone will quote Romans 10:9 to me–“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But even here, this is little more than a shout for help. It’s accepting it. It was Paul reassuring the new believers, because Christianity must have seemed a risky play. “Just believe—you don’t have to make sacrifices, you don’t have to placate a god, you can’t do anything to earn it. Just accept it, and obey him.”

It’s still hard today. Jesus is the one who reaches down and grabs us. He does the saving, we do the accepting.

So, what am I saying happens in the case of those who are not “Christians”? If they know about Christ but refuse him—hell is there. (Whether you believe in the eternal-torture or annihilationist variety—what you believe, in the long run, really isn’t going to change the reality of whatever it is.)

But in the case of those who don’t know Jesus, because no one has told them: I think the best answer is to say those three words we hate so much:

We don’t know.

It’s a mystery. I think for the most part we hate it (especially we evangelicals). We want to know, we want to have it organized neatly, we want to systematize it, we want to teach it and write books about it and explain it and be sure of what’s going to happen when we now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep. But the fact is, everything that happens after that last breath —we don’t know what’s on the other side. We can parse Revelation and Daniel, we can imagine it and dream it (and I have), but in the end we just don’t know. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it even entered into the imagination of man…”

All we can do is pray that he keeps our soul and takes it at the end. And trust that he will.

God is the sovereign one. It’s up to Jesus what happens. Jesus does the saving. We Christians aren’t in charge of the salvation process, and we can’t grant or deny salvation to anyone. All we can do is bring them to Jesus. If we refuse to bring them to Jesus, maybe “even the rocks will cry out.” Our refusal/apathy doesn’t get in the way of God’s ability to work.

I’m not veering toward the Muslim direction of uncertainty. I believe that we can and do have assurance of salvation. Romans 10:9 provides that with great clarity (and many other Scriptures, too). If you have confessed-and-believed then you can rest assured that Jesus will keep-and-take.

I take great comfort in Revelation 21:6-8:

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

This verse encapsulates a warning of judgment and the essence of hope. Those who thirst after God will find him. But there is a “second death” awaiting those who willingly embrace their sin nature and seek to become expert sinners. I think this statement is the clear answer to the idea that hell isn’t eternal. This, right here, at the end of time and the beginning of eternity, there is a clear end in this verse. Those who are evil will be over and done.

This verse even gives hope for me. Even when I struggle with basic doctrine, I am a Christian. Why? Because I am thirsty. I follow Christ. I obey him. And He Saves Me. (Daily, even.) Not because I obey him, but because in some grand mystery I throw myself on the grace he freely offers me. Doctrine doesn’t save me, right beliefs don’t save me, nothing saves me except Jesus and the mercy of God.

But at the same time, while we have assurance of our salvation, I don’t think we can have assurance of another’s damnation. Or that we should even seek such assurance.

It seems far too often to me we delight in the idea of another person getting damned. Of them getting payback for all eternity. Of wishing worse for them. “Hell’s too good for them,” I’ve heard it muttered. “There’s a special place in the coldest regions of hell for such.”

We are uncomfortable with stories of jailhouse conversions and grace at the moment before execution. Because the killer gets off scot free. We like grace when it’s handed to us, but not always when it’s given to someone else.

It’s a tricky thing: we have to do everything we can to present the good news so that those who accept it have assurance—while at the same time holding in tension the fact that, if they die never having heard the name of Christ, we just don’t know what happens then. We unfortunately have no assurance they are saved—but neither do we have assurance they were damned. The most we can say is, “Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?”

4. Yes, we have a part to play. I know that. I’m not saying we should let God use dreams and stay out of the process. God always uses human agents to tell the story—why, I don’t know. Seems to me angels always do a better job of delivering messages, and no one ever shot an angel. Still. This is where it gets sticky. Jesus told us to go into all the world and proclaim “Good News.” To release people from the hell they are in right now, not just the hell of later. (Yes, I know, that mixes up some of my theological statements, but bear with me.) And, he didn’t tell us to save or make converts so much as he said make disciples, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. This is a process command. This is less about saving people from eternal eventual hell and more about making them into obedient God-obeyers now, who can go out and change the world.

In other words, we don’t go on mission in order to save people from hell, because nothing we do or say will save them. We can only point the way to Jesus. It is Jesus who saves. We go on mission not to save people but out of obedience to Jesus. He told us to go and proclaim good news of salvation (“now-and-not-yet Kingdom”) and make disciples—and so we do.

5. I have been told if I think this then we really shouldn’t bring Jesus to those who haven’t heard it before, because accepting Jesus is hard. It’s easier to risk whatever happens when we don’t know about Jesus. But I think this is wrong on several counts, now that I’ve reflected on it a few years:

a) Not to beat a dead horse, but Jesus told us to do this, so there’s an obedience issue.

b) We are meant to proclaim good news now, not leave people in the horrible situations they are in

c) the people who are most apt to accept the Good News are those who have never heard it before. Saudis, for example, are statistically far more responsive to a Gospel-offer than a Gospel-saturated American or European.

6. You might think, if we don’t believe in hell, we won’t have motivation to evangelize. Dudes—look around. Look at the stats. Belief in hell isn’t a very big motivator right now.

7. When the church refuses to take the Gospel to someone, I think they are risking hell as much as sinners themselves. It gets me very angry. Especially if you believe in eternal damnation of the sinner—if you refuse to make sure the Gospel is shared with those who don’t have it, if you refuse to do everything possible to ensure the widest number of people can hear it, if you just don’t care—it’s just incredibly, angeringly, unthinkably callous and selfish that people would not care that thousands will die today and go into that kind of future—all because we didn’t do our jobs.

If they inherited a sin nature and never hear about Jesus—they will go into a Christless eternity. Is it their fault? They didn’t beg to be conceived or born. They had no idea they were being “born with a sin nature” or “born into a sinful society” that would corrupt them by the “age of accountability” into sinners bound for eternal damnation. (We don’t, of course, condemn people under the age of 5. That would be cruel.) Through no desire of their own, they were born. They will group in a human society that is broken, frail and steeped with sin. According to our thinking, if they die never knowing Christ, they will burn in hell. And the one group of people that know Christ, who in effect have the Golden Ticket, the Cure, the One Way Out, the Blue Pill–

–for the most part, can’t be bothered to bring it to them.

 

I think we don’t because we think we’ll look foolish presenting the Gospel (if they reject it). Because we have prejudged their likelihood to accept it. Because we have prejudged whether they deserve to be in our club or not. Because we don’t want to invest the time it takes to make disciples. But that’s a post for another midnight hour.

 

I probably shouldn’t publish this. But it’s 12:20am where I am, and I’m tired, and I’ve done enough writing (and a little rewriting, despite my earnest promise to myself to publish raw and not edit—at least not edit much).

I’m hitting publish anyway.

Please, someone, set me straight.

 

Standard disclaimer: this post is my own, and a reflection of my own inner struggle with some of these things (and I know a number of you struggle with these as well). My agency and those within it are solidly within the evangelical realm (grin). They may wince a little at my posting this, but I admire them for the freedom they give me to express myself.