Let's Get the Hell Out of Here!

Over the last couple of weeks, many people have become very familiar with the name Donald Sterling. The owner of the LA Clippers basketball team became even more infamous than before when his very public mistress released recordings of phone conversations that revealed strong racial prejudice on his part. Investigation into Sterling’s past indicates that this was hardly news to those who had done business with him. Some of his comments from other dealings indicate that he had such strong opinions about people of other skin tones that he refused to rent apartment space to them, for which he was sued. Sterling’s, of course, is just the latest high profile case where racial prejudice has surfaced.

Last week, I taught about the development of the idea of life after death. Remember that our Jewish ancestors in our faith didn’t start with a strong idea about heaven. The official position from the religious leadership was that when a person dies, that’s pretty much it. Only over time, due to the influence of surrounding thoughts on afterlife and their own challenges in history did “heaven” emerge. It was clear God was not going to bring justice in anybody’s present lifetime, so surely God would bring it in the next. And since it may be some time before that final reckoning takes place, the idea developed of an interim state in the afterlife where people would wait in death. Where they waited was determined by how they lived their life, and was directly related to how God would handle them on Judgment Day.

That’s when a whole new kind of fear began to develop: will I burn forever if I mess up in this life?

Fear of Eternal Torture. Some call it “turn or burn” preaching. The gist of the talk is this: repent (turn from) your sin to God (confess), ask God for forgiveness, and pledge your life to following Jesus, or when you die you will find yourself being locked out of heaven and cast down to the pit of hell, where you will spend all of eternity suffering for the sins you committed during your mortal life. Sorry!

In some circles, this is the primary message of the Christian faith communicated and heard. Get saved from hell – make it to heaven is the “Good News”. Millions of people have been so convinced that this message is accurate that they have confessed, turned, and pledged allegiance to God to ensure their everlasting destiny. But as more access to information and dialogue have become available, it is safe to say that many more millions have rejected this way of thought, and unwittingly have written Christianity off – and perhaps religion as a whole, too. Statistically, church traditions that are founded on a turn or burn platform have been declining, while the number of people who are not affiliating with any religion is on the rise. There is something about the turn or burn message that is not making sense to a lot of people. And yet the question and the issue loom – what if all the awful things heard about hell is true? If it is, it’s terrifying.

Hell is so terrifying that no other concern garners any attention when it is on the table. What other problem can possibly compare to spending the afterlife in the wrong place? This fear of eternal torture is pretty compelling, and is why it dominated and in many ways took over the Christian faith for so many for so long.
But just like racial prejudice is really an issue of fear based on ignorance that education can alleviate, so our fear of hell can be assuaged similarly. While I believe this issue is more emotional than intellectual, at least looking at hell from an academic perspective may clear the blockage so we can then deal with it emotionally. Like so many other things, knowing what you’re dealing with helps you deal with it. So, how in the hell did we get hell?

There are a few hells in the Bible, by the way. There’s the most frequently used hell stemming from the Greek root word Gehenna (Hebrew: Hinnom). Gehenna/Hinnom refers to a valley outside the walls of Jerusalem that became forever defiled during King Josiah’s reign (2 Kings 22-23), and was promptly turned into the city dump and burial place for the poorest of the poor. It was a place of weeping (mourners) and gnashing of teeth (dogs battling for food). All but a couple of the times Jesus is quoted as talking about hell used this one – a literal place all the people knew about. The other prominent word is the Hebrew Sheol (Greek: Hades). Both meant the place of the dead. We would simply call it the grave, perhaps, but the ancients viewed it as a place where a person’s “shade” went after death. In that place there is not consciousness about anything – the breath of God has been rescinded, leaving a person lifeless. During the few hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth, the concept of hell was born – nobody during the history of any of the stories in the Old Testament had a concept of hell. It developed out of need to figure out how God would mete out justice; since it wasn’t happening in the present, it must happen after death. By the time Jesus was doing his ministry, people believed that upon death, one’s soul was directed to one of four chambers. Two chambers for good and great people where you were comfortable or really comfortable, or two chambers for bad and worse people where you were hot, thirsty, and miserable or extremely miserable. Where you resided until God’s final judgment was determined by how you lived your life. There is an example of this in a parable Jesus told about a rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-25) – the impoverished Lazarus finds himself in a good place after death, while the rich jerk who wouldn’t care for him wound up in the more torturous accommodations. Centuries after Jesus’ ministry, popular ideas from Dante’s Inferno developed, and have stuck up until today. But are we to take their conjuring as insight from God or biased imagination? Are we to live in fear based on the way they saw the world in the first century?

Hermeneutics. This is a $20 word that refers to the process we undergo to understand and apply a biblical text to our contemporary context. Everybody has an approach, even if they can't describe it. I first want to understand the terms being used. Then I want to understand what the original context meant by those terms. I also want to know what biases may have existed when the scriptures were written, because I am certain that while God wants us to learn the principles that lead the whole world to shalom, I am very confident that God does not want us to adopt the biases of a world that is no longer relevant to our own. I study the Bible as a primary source for my understanding of God. But I do not believe that God dictated the words in the Bible. I believe the authors sought the help of the Spirit of God as they did their work, but I do not believe God overstepped by wiping out their worldview. This is a very good thing, by the way, because it gives us the opportunity to see over the full development of the entire Bible what ideas about God were resonating across time, and what concerns were clearly influenced by their specific historical context.

This may rub you the wrong way, especially if you’ve been accustomed to a view of the Bible as so God-breathed that every jot and tittle is from heaven above. To intentionally dismiss parts of the Bible as irrelevant may appear to be heretical. I understand that objection. But here’s the thing: what I am stating is simply the unspoken practice of the most ardent biblical literalists. Those who declare themselves purists in this regard are in denial of the countless ways they fail to take the Bible seriously, let alone literally. Let’s just be honest about this reality. I’m simply stating that I am doing it thoughtfully, prayerfully, and intentionally, so that I can glean out what appears to be the most God-breathed stuff while respectfully setting aside those parts that are, to me, clearly connected to their historical context. Yes, it appears to be a slippery slope. But we’re all on it together in various ways. The great Jewish theologians of old and Jesus and Paul were well aware of this approach and practiced it well – we are on good company, historically.

With that said, I am confident that the first century Christians had a heightened apocalyptic hope: they were sure God would redeem Israel tomorrow, if not tonight. When that happened, their enemies would experience the judgment they deserved while the faithful would enjoy God's favor, forever. I think we need to place our hope in God. But I think we need to wake up to the reality that our first century forebears were wrong. God was not going to enact final redemption in the way they thought. For me, that includes how they thought about punishment in the afterlife. I am not confident that eternal punishment for mortal sins makes sense in light of who Jesus was and how he taught and lived. I am not confident that a traditional understanding of the return or Christ, where He comes riding on the clouds to kick some butt is how it will play out. I think that's how the first century hoped it would go. But that seems incongruent with God's megatheme of redemption, especially as evidenced in the life of Jesus. I think there is something better that fits better with Jesus.

Quick aside: I know there are a great many authors who have put together deep thoughts about how this all works together theologically, where a loving God can somehow sign off on this. But I challenge the approach of those works, because they assume the reality of hell that has dominated Christian thought since Nicea, which I think is a mistake. If you want to maintain your belief in that kind of hell, that’s your choice, and I can suggest authors to help you learn the theological gymnastics required to accommodate such belief. C.S. Lewis is a good place to start.

I do not fear hell in the afterlife because I don’t think it exists the way we have popularly interpreted the depiction from the first century. I would not suggest to anyone that they approach relationship with God based on that kind of fear, either. That’s not a relationship – that’s a forced marriage. I don’t think that does God justice. There are too many other passages that speak of the overwhelming, reconciling love of God for all people and even all things for us to also maintain the notion that God will hate the majority of people enough perpetuate their suffering forever.

Which leads to another fear – not about our damnation, but about people we think should be damned. If hell doesn’t exist in the popular view, will justice ever be served?

Fear of Eternal Injustice. A number of years ago I asked the congregation to consider who they might meet in heaven. Naturally, their families topped the list, along with Mother Theresa and all the heroes of the Bible. Some even dared to suggest Gandhi. I suggested Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Osama bin Laden. People laughed. But I wasn’t kidding. And that troubled some folks. We want to know that justice will be served somehow, some way, someday, because it sure isn’t here and now. People seem to get off the hook a lot. If God is truly just, will everybody be welcomed into heaven? Is it possible to that there is a way in which God can deliver justice without our popular notion of hell, or the primitive concept from the past?
Lake of Fire. Beyond the trash dump Gehenna, other images about a place of fire and brimstone come from the Bible’s Book of Revelation. On the surface, it reads as if the author was on an acid trip that went south. Really weird images that don’t make much sense to us today. That’s because it was written at and for another time, when all of the imagery made complete sense. John’s audience (the author of Revelation) knew what he was saying, and knew that most of what he said had already taken place in their recent history. But one thing that stuck was the picture of a lake of fire where all things bad are thrown, where they remain forever. Ouch!

Of course, this recalls Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Remember? A new Terminator is sent from the future to kill off John Connor so he can’t father a revolution. The Governator saves the day by sacrificing himself as he throws the liquid metal shape-shifter into an enormous vat of molten steel. We all breathed a sigh of relief when this impossible foe finally stopped coming up for air in the vat. The enemy was destroyed, the evil gone. I think that’s the hope that is conveyed about life after death – none of the evil stuff goes forward. Hitler leaves his fascism behind, along with the gas chambers and hatred he embodied. All that was not of God in Hitler is done forever. Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t get to take any of his murder weapons through the gate, now does he take any of the darkness that loomed within. All that was not of God is done forever. But is there anything if God in them that might remain?

Paul, the early Christian missionary, wrote a letter to a community in ancient Corinth that is in the Bible. In it he talks mentions that we will be held accountable for how we lived. What we do with our lives will be seen for what it’s worth – some of us will build with ideas and concepts straight from heaven – metaphorical gold and priceless gemstones. Others of us will build our lives on stuff that is not born of God or heaven, the stuff that hurts ourselves and others – straw and stubble. Paul says that when we die, it’s like we go through a refiner’s fire, and all that is not of God is stripped away. For some, the refining will reveal the beauty of God. For others, nothing will be left but, perhaps, the smallest fraction of their soul that was never allowed to develop. Paul says they both survive the refiner’s fire. Paul believed that what Christ did served to give us hope in the completeness of the grace and love of God. This fits. And it is good news.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we might admit that we really want retribution meted out on the people we think deserve it. But we generally view ourselves pretty favorably in comparison. If we really want equal justice across the board, it means we’ll experience the refiner’s fire like everybody else.

What do we want to happen in terms of justice, anyway? At the end of the day, I think we want the bad stuff to stop, and the victims of bad stuff to be restored. Jesus forgives the sin of an adulterous woman, a paralytic, and others before he was asked for it. And then he commended them to new life. Why should we think it would be any different when life is over? Justice prevails in the end, but a better justice than we can conjure. A true justice that restores even the most broken to new life.

Before I get to a final, perhaps most important fear related to hell, I am reminded of a conversation a pastor friend of mine told me about. A woman he had just met, who knew he was a pastor, decided to break the ice with him by asking, “So, am I going to hell?”
“Why would you ever think that?” my friend wondered.
“Well, that seems to be what I’ve been told. I don’t go to church, I do stuff I’m told ticks God off - why would God let me into heaven?”
He asked her, “Have you ever experienced a moment when you knew you were loved unconditionally?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“The Bible says that God is so full of love that God is love, and that love comes from God. The love you experienced originated from God. It is that God that you are trusting to do the right thing.”

He told me that she went silent and tears welled up in her eyes.

The One you are going to face loves you endlessly – more than you can possibly love yourself. It is this Good, Loving Creator who you will face. So, have hope!

There is still the need to talk about a final fear of hell.

Fear of Fueling Hell Here and Now. Another friend of mine visited Furaha Community Centre in the slums outside Nairobi, Kenya, where we feed orphans every school day. After walking through the slum and taking everything in – the filth, the hopelessness, the stench – he looked at another of my friends and said, “There is only one word to describe this situation: F@#%!” He is a pastor. We generally reserve such words for only the most rare, special occasions. Having been there, I think his use was appropriate! He went on to talk about how we as a human race created this, and it is up to us to do whatever we can to fix it. He is right. The quicker we catch on to the fact that we, collectively, have created the mess we find ourselves in, the quicker we just might be to repent. And the quicker we are to repent, the more open we may be to learn from Jesus how to live differently so that more of the life God has for us is experienced by more and more of God’s children.

The system that gave birth to Donald Sterling’s racism wasn’t created by him – we collectively allowed it, and in doing so have perpetuated racism’s hell.. Extreme poverty is a living hell that the human race created. Violence in all of its form – be it rape, racism, economic injustice, theft, murder, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, war – everything you can think of that does not fit into heaven – we as a human race created it. Maybe you didn’t wake up last Monday with an fiendish laugh accompanying your plans to ruin the world, but when we don’t think and act in the ways of God, the ways of Hebrew Shalom, the ways of Jesus’ Eternal Life present, the ways of Love, we perpetuate it. Knowing what exists and calling it out is good – acknowledgement always seems to be step one in the process of change. But simply calling it out won’t cut it, and may just end up turning us into a different version of the hateful sandwich board guy who lists out all the people who are going to be judged by God. If you want the hell on earth to stop, you need to do your part in not sowing into it. Watch your attitude, for starters. If you find yourself calling people out pretty easily, you are probably coming off as a judge. That’s why I asked you to pray for your daily dozen, that God would bless the people around you and that you would get an opportunity to love and serve them. Be Jesus where you are with the ones you’re with. That is a powerful step toward defeating the hell around us.

Of course, we are involved in a whole lot of stuff at CrossWalk to address some hell on earth where we can. When you support the church, you support everything we stand for. You stand for teaching people a new way to live and believe. You support the ways we reach out to the community. You support the recovery that happens in these walls for hundreds of people every day. You support providing safe shelter women and their children in Tijuana who have suffered abuse at the hands of men. You provide food for orphans in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and in so doing, you have giving them a literal future and the real potential for transforming their slum into a city.

In doing what you can individually, and together what we can do corporately, you are making a grand statement: “Let’s get the hell out of here!” What we sometimes use as an expression to leave an uncomfortable setting, we as Jesus followers hear it as a rally cry to take care of the business our species has created. Who better to do this than the ones who claim to follow the teachings of the one who did it more than any other before or since?

So, perhaps in addition to your morning declaration that you choose to walk with God, and in addition to praying that God blesses your daily dozen and moves you to opportunities for love and serve, maybe you should proclaim, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Amen.