When I was a teenager, my parents were regular viewers of a
Sunday evening Bible preacher who conjured up vivid word pictures to illustrate
his talks. One Sunday, he talked about Hell. He said it was the
subterranean realm of the Devil and the demons, in which the damned suffer
everlasting punishment. I didn't know what to make of that, except that
it did not sound like much fun.
A few years later, I was a college freshman. I was
required to take a Humanities course with a challenging reading list. One
of the requirements was to read Dante's Inferno and discuss in class the
symbolism and fearful consequences of possibly going to Hell when we die.
The instructor came prepared, with a selection of reproduction pictures of a
flaming landscape rendered by famous Renaissance painters. His portfolio
showed in excruciating detail each of the layers of Hell, as Dante visualized
them, and to this day I can recall these dreadful scenes.
Many people today seem to think that Hell works like this:
God gives us time, but if we haven't made the right choices by the end of
our lives, He casts our souls into Hell for all eternity. As the poor
souls fall through space, they probably cry out for mercy, but God says
"Too late! You had your chance! Now you will suffer!"
I have thought a lot about this ----- could our loving God
actually be a judging God filled with wrath and anger? If He is truly a
loving God, shouldn't He forgive and accept everyone? Fighting evil and
injustice in the world is one thing, but sending people to Hell is quite
another. The Bible speaks of "eternal punishment," but sending
people to Hell as popularly envisioned is much more extreme.
Recently, I came upon some of the writings of Rev. Timothy
Keller, which have helped me put the idea of Hell into better
perspective. Rev. Keller is the pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian
Church in Manhattan, a church with 6,000 regular attendees total at their five
services each Sunday. As a minister and preacher, Keller says he often
finds himself speaking on Biblical texts that teach the wrath of God, the final
judgment and the doctrine of Hell.
The Biblical picture, according to Keller, is that
sin is our separation from the presence of God, and God is the source of all
joy and indeed of all love, wisdom, and good things of any sort. Since we
were originally created for God's immediate presence, only "before his
face" will we thrive, flourish, and achieve our highest potential.
If we were to lose his presence totally, that would be Hell ----- the
loss of our capability for giving or receiving love or joy.
A traditional image of Hell, Keller tells us, is that of
fire. Fire disintegrates things. Even in this life we can see the kind of
soul disintegration that self-centeredness creates. We know how
selfishness and self-absorption leads to bitterness, envy, anxiety, paranoid
thoughts, and the mental denials and distortions that accompany them.
Now, says Keller, ask the question: "What if when
we die our life doesn't end, but spiritually our life extends into
eternity?" Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a
self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on for ever.
Keller concludes that Hell is simply one's freely chosen
identity separated from God, on a trajectory that goes on for a billion
years. We see small parallels of this process in addictions to drugs,
alcohol, gambling and pornography. First, there is some kind of
dependency (but not to God), says Keller, and as time goes on one needs more
and more of the addictive substance to get an equal kick, which leads to less
and less satisfaction.
Second, there is isolation increasingly, by one's blame of
others and circumstances, in order to justify one's own behavior. When we
build our lives on anything other than God, says Keller, that thing -----
though perhaps a "good" thing in a sense (for example, wealth) -----
becomes an enslaving addiction, something we must have to be happy.
Keller believes that this personal dependency (which doesn't need God)
can go on forever, with increasing isolation, denial, delusion and
self-absorption.
People go to Heaven, Keller says, because they love God and
want to submit to him. People go to Hell because they want to be away
from God, because they do not want somebody telling them how to live their
lives. They want to be their own savior, their own lord. They want
to live their lives their own way. That's Hell.
Keller believes that Hell is eternal, but it is not
inevitable. God gives you what you want. He says that Heaven and Hell
essentially are our freely chosen identities, going on forever.
So, Keller leaves us with this thought: It is not a
question of God "sending" us to Hell. In each of us there is
something growing, which will BE Hell unless we nip it in the bud.
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult
Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some
personal growth this year at CPC.
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