"In our culture, divine judgment is one of Christianity's most
offensive doctrines." So says Timothy Keller, pastor of the Redeemer
Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, a church with 6,000 regular attendees at five
services each Sunday. As a minister and preacher, he says, he often finds
himself speaking on Biblical texts that teach the wrath of God, the final
judgment, and the doctrine of Hell.
In Christianity, suggests Keller, God is both a God of love and of justice.
Many believe that a loving God can't be a judging God filled with wrath and
anger, Keller continues. "If he is loving and perfect, he should forgive and
accept everyone. He shouldn't get angry."
Keller then points out that all loving persons are sometimes filled
with wrath, not just despite but because of their love. If you
love a person, he says, and you see someone ruining them with unwise actions and
relationships ---- even done by the loved person themselves ---- you get
angry.
"Ah," says Keller, "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.
I remember that as 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.
Keller's analysis continues: "Modern people inevitably think 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 cry out for mercy, but God says "Too late! You
had your chance! Now you will suffer!" But, says Keller, this caricature
misunderstands the very nature of evil.
The Biblical picture, according to Keller, is that sin is our separation
from the presence of God, which 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. 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 ask the question: "What if when we die we don't end, but spiritually
our life extends on into eternity?" Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul,
living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.
Keller concludes that Hell is simply one's freely chosen identity to
be separated from God on a trajectory that goes on for a billion years.
We see small examples of this process in addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling
and pornography. First, there is some kind of dependency (but not on 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 but 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 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. And, says Keller, you stay
wanting it; you cannot suddenly change your mind.
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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