Why we CAN Afford to get Hell Wrong

Lately, this argument about Heaven and Hell has gotten shallow. Our arguments have turned to this finger pointing mockery of our brothers and sisters in Christ… There are two books that are schedule to come out soon, one is by a pastor that I admire for his courage to step away from his church. That pastor is Francis Chan, whose book is called Erasing Hell. The whole point of the book is that we have to re-examine . The second book is really by a pastor whom I have never heard of, but his book is titled “God Wins- The truth about Heaven, Hell and how the good news is better than Love Wins”…. How shallow is that. When did we forget that we are a body, and when did we start being the mouth.

I am discouraged. Not because these pastors are taking on this subject, but because they are attempting to only allow their understanding of scripture to be the right one. When we shape our thinking in only one way, when we define God to a point in which we believe we understand everything about God, we are clearly misunderstanding everything there is to know about God, even if we say phrases that convince others and even ourselves that we don't have God figured out. There are going to be things that we can’t even begin to fathom, so why try to force your own theological theory about topics that have little to do with salvation. I mean, when Jesus called the disciples, did Jesus give them a multiple choice test on certain theology, and if they failed, they would not cut it? I love this quote:

“We evangelicals tend to colonize the text, make Scripture our own possession and in effect make the words of Scripture an idolatry. As a result, we have become a controlling, uninviting, judgmental people losing the ability to encounter the living God and inviting others into such an encounter. We know Scripture but we are untouched by it and so we are insulated from God who seeks to reveal Himself in and through it.”-David Fitch

I am going to not try to use scripture to defend my argument, because in all honesty, I don’t believe we use scripture to win arguments or strengthen our opinions…. No, scripture is meant solely as our insight to Christ, and our defense against worldly living. I believe scripture has power, but even the demons and Satan use scripture to battle…Do we worry about that ever?

The crux of my argument here is that all of us CAN afford to get hell wrong. We can afford to get it wrong because no matter what hell is or isn’t, Christ has disarmed it, is victorious over it, has defeated it, has made a mockery of it, and most importantly made a clear point that states that we are to storm the gates. Our message about sending people to hell, and defining hell does us no good. Our enemy is not the various theologies of hell, our enemy is oppression, darkness, evil, wickedness,  anything that even attempts to rob us of God, and not even pastors who preach that they hope every person goes Heaven..

The doctrine of Hell does not matter to your salvation, and this goes out to all my friends who are new Christians, agnostics and atheists… Because our message is not about destruction, our message is a story of pure love! The Good News is that Jesus has come for you, and is not willing that you shall perish, but often we don’t choose God whom has chosen us through the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

How much money do we waste consuming all of this. I am even at fault. As of 2:15 am May 23rd, 2011 there have been 417,294 suicides this year, as of 2:18 am May 23rd, 2011 there have been 654,177 deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year, and today alone by 2:20 am May 23rd, 2011 there have been 3,017 deaths due to hunger (2 hours and twenty minutes). We have time to discuss what hell is like, but yet we don’t have time to fight it? Hell has come now, and it has disguised itself as hopeless, painful suffering, life eating, soul sucking misery. Hell is not some far off distant land. Hell is here, trying to convince all of us that the life of mass consumption, self indulgence, self-preservation, minimal community interaction and so many other fleeting feelings and lies are true. We spend so much time saying who can go to Heaven, that we forget that our neighbors are experiencing hell right now.

Just the other day, I listen as a teenager explains to me their personal hell they are going through with their addictions. A few weeks ago, I listen to a close friend share with me some deep pain about his current relationship. Just a while ago, I got to hear about the personal hell of a rape victim.

You ask me why I think it is shallow for us to be defining hell; my answer is because it does no good for the people who are already experiencing hell right now. Jesus told Peter to storm the gates of hell because they can’t prevail against the church… When did we lose sight of this imagery? When did we stop kicking down the walls of child brothels? When did we stop holding the hands of the hopeless? When did we stop mourning with a friend who lost a child to cancer? When did we start thinking that evil and wickedness and treating each other as dumber or satan disguised as light was Christ like? When did we become shallow?

I don’t believe Rob Bell is 100% right. I do believe that Rob Bell believes in Jesus Christ, and the Jesus is whom Mr. Bell strives to be like. I have read his book. I don’t believe Francis Chan is 100% right. I do believe that Francis Chan believes in Jesus Christ and the Jesus is whom Mr. Chan strives to be like. I will probably read his book.

But in all of this we must remember that God’s ways are not like our ways. If God chooses to do something different than what I have been taught to believe about hell, than that is under God’s direction. But at the same time God is not going to teach us about Love and Justice and Compassion just to turn around and do the opposite. To all my conservative Christian friends, this is not even a hint at universalism, I believe there is a hell and God takes NO pleasure in having anyone there, but this is a hint that God is teaching us about Love and Justice and Compassion, and we can’t discredit the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can’t afford to miss the good news of the Gospel for our shallow understanding of the afterlife.

Your job as a Christians is to stop defining God, and start living with God. When you read about the day of judgment in Matthew 25, God does not say to the righteous that because they had such great defined doctrine and that they could define hell clearly and have a clear image of what the Bible says and because they took everything literally that they get into Heaven… No, far from that, God looks at how they lived out their faith. You see, salvation is not contingent on your works, but your belief in God is shown through your works. Gal 5:6b”…for the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love.”

I have wasted so much time being absorbed by this debate. May we stop that, and may we start being absorbed in the Mercy, Justice and Humility we find in Christ, and may we in turn do that very thing to others.

Much Love.
Casey

Love.Wins.

What we really believe is evidenced by how we live, not by what we say.- Donald Miller

What a powerful quote in a dangerous era, isn’t it? In a time where everything in life is so up and arms, anything we say (even if it is in support or in condemnation) is up for scrutiny. Everything is examined and nothing is neutral. Nothing is ever able to be neutral.

I got the chance to spend the weekend with some very awesome kids. Shout out to Five Oaks Youth Homies!! “umm, yeaaa word, sing it out now, Kirk Franklin in the House.”  And let me tell you, there is very little joy in life when compared to spending a weekend with 78 youth and 12 adult leaders at a conference.

Before I went on the trip, I had a pretty tough week with some things going on. As many people know, life is NOT easy by any means, not even for an old pastor’s kid like me. I find everyday just as challenging as the day before, but for some reason, this past week was just hard.

Some folks all around the community had begun to share stories with me. They are very graphic stories, so please be aware of that before reading them. (No worries, I will keep them short)

Story Number one: Delinquent. A young lady was put on probation. Most people would think that it was because she was a delinquent, always getting into trouble. She was known for using drugs, for skipping class, for the occasional thievery. In those terms, it is clear to me, she has done wrong in her life. On the outside we see what she has done wrong. But in her home life, and the reason she is now seeing a probation officer is because her mother would prostitute her out to male drug dealers so that she could get her high. One would hope this would never happen, or if it did, only once… Try nearly once a week for more years than I am willing to admit.

Story Number two: Rape. Fear has this interesting way of capturing a person’s life. It can make you submit too many things, and for this daughter, it was her father. Her father was known by the town as this great man. He was wealthy and loveable, but to his daughter, he was this demonic addict who in the flip of a switch continued to ruin her life. Most nights were fine, but when he went out on the town, he came home, late, and rape his daughter. The worst part is, the judge gave the man special considerations and accommodations, I guess the judge did his part to help the wealthy man out because the wealthy did his part to make sure that judge was re-elected.

Story Number three: Suicide. This is sensitive subject. There has been a drastic increase in numbers of suicides nationally. The 3rd leading cause of death for teenagers is suicides. There are 1800 suicide attempts made a day by teenagers. The worst part is not reading these statistics, the worst part is when you see the faces of these statistics every day. The hardest part of this topic is listening to parents question everything in their life because they had to bury the freshmen in college, with no explanation as to why it happened.

Story Number four: Self-Mutilation. Choking, burning, cutting… I remember hearing a story about a young man who hated every aspect of his life. His family life was broken, his friends were all around him, but yet he was lost. He tried hard to impress every person, but yet never could. So he began to cut his inner thigh and began starving himself, because he felt ugly, he felt lowly and he felt useless.

Story Number five: Divorce. This was a hard one. The father left the mother for some young girl. The mother is now raising 3 kids all on her own. I have never met a more bitter woman, but I have also never seen a mother invest instantly into her daughters lives, never seen a mother take on both of the roles of parenthood, and I would have to say, never seen a mother find joy as much as she has admitted to.

You see, today I am not here to tell you how messed up our world is, no, in fact that would be an understatement. You see, if I stopped there, and just shared these depressing stories with you, what would I be doing? If I shared these stories with you, only to show you “why” we need love in this world, I would be missing the point.

Love desires to destroy sin. And it is ruthless in doing so. The love I am talking about can only be found in Christ. You see without Christ, all we have hope for in this world is that someday, we will be dead, in the ground and never have to worry about that pain happening to us again. For as long as we live we will carry the weight of that pain on our shoulders, no matter how well we suppress it. Please do not go another day thinking you are alone in this world.

I have four things I want to say in closing:
1)      Do not be afraid to feel what you are going through. I am honored to meet with a lot of people in my day, trust me, I am NOT a counselor nor am I an expert, I still have SO much to learn, I am only a listener and sometimes I can say things, but when I meet with these people I get to hear their stories. There is nothing better in life then when I get to hear these stories, partially because I get to see what they are feeling. The reason I say this is because I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I hear people say sorry for crying (I say it too) or being angry or just frustrated. The best thing for a human soul is to be honest and to not fear what you are feeling. That is the worst for you. When you push all those feelings deep down, you become drained faster than you could ever imagine! Be honest about what you are going through, and if you feel angry or sad or want to cry, do it! NEVER EVER be afraid to feel what you are going through, to address your feelings. It is ok to cry out to God, to beg why!
2)      Live out sacrificial Love. Suffering is happening ALL around us right now, but God finds infinite worth in His creation, so I beg all of us to do the same. If God is ruthless against evil and ruthless against sin, and is destroying it, may we also do the same. May we join with Christ in the ministry of mercy, justice, peace and reconciliation. When we hear stories and statistics like this, may we be moved not to just pray but to action as well. Sacrifice for the cause of Love. Join in mission with Christ.
3)      You are NOT alone. PLEASE if you take anything away just know that you are not alone. Christ is with you, and in the moments you do not recognize Him, may you realize that the community is desiring to surround you, to be with you in the moments you want to cry in your closet, to the moments you are jumping with joy. You are not alone in what you are going through. Many others have a journey like yours. Don’t take this journey alone, share it with others who want to be a part of your life.
4)      Bring Joy into their lives. Christ came to party. Christ came to hang out, to be joyous, to enjoy the company of others. Christ is singing and dancing. Tony Campolo shares a great story about throwing a birthday party for a prostitute in a restaurant years ago. The prostitute never had a birthday party before, and Tony and the people he was with decided it was time she had one! So they decorated the place, made a cake and sang to her, all while inviting all the people she knew. It is a beautiful story about how God wants us to bring joy into other people’s lives. Through parties for them. Enjoy their company, laugh with them! Life is not all serious. If all you have to offer a person is a few words and a bowl of soup, that is not enough! BRING LOVE AND JOY into the lives of people!

I say all of this with great Love for people. But know my Love is not as great as what God is offering you every moment. I want you to know freedom, but I can’t give it to you.

May you experience joy in your life, because each of us are suffering in a way, hidden or out in the open. May we show what we believe about our God by the way we live.

I leave you with this Psalm:
Psalm 3
A psalm of David, regarding the time David fled from his son Absalom.
 1 O Lord, I have so many enemies;
      so many are against me.
 2 So many are saying,
      “God will never rescue him!”
                         Interlude

 3 But you, O Lord, are a shield around me;
      you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.
 4 I cried out to the Lord,
      and he answered me from his holy mountain.
                         Interlude

 5 I lay down and slept,
      yet I woke up in safety,
      for the Lord was watching over me.
 6 I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies
      who surround me on every side.