Transience

pondering hell

I used to fight with God about hell. In fact, that was one of the things that kept me from becoming a Christian for a long time. What about all the people who never heard about Jesus? How could people be condemned to eternal torment because of an accident of birth? In the end, my arguments were silenced when I very clearly heard "Well, you can't help them if you're outside too."

Scroll forward 15 years. During this time I've continued to struggle with the concept, coming up with different theories about as often as I change my socks. Perhaps God knows what you would have chosen, had you been given the chance, so your destination is determined that way. Or maybe when you die there's a heavenly kindergarten where you're taught and then given the opportunity to choose God or not. The pat answers about predestination or all of us deserving hell just don't seem right to me. They contradict everything I understand about God's justice and love.

And then there are those verses which seem to indicate that we are judged according to the light we have. And the ones where Jesus says he has other sheep not of this flock. Sure, maybe that's just the gentiles, but do I know for sure?

For a while I decided that hell was just getting what you wanted. If you wanted nothing to do with God in life, well, that's what you got. The complete absence of God and everything good. But then I started wondering "What if hell were being in God's presence after a life of avoiding him? Wouldn't that be horrible, to suddenly have all your darkness illuminated by God's brilliance? To see where you hurt others, where you chose to be selfish, where you willfully chose to go the wrong way?" Perhaps the fire & pain talked about in the Bible is the cleansing fire of God as it burns away all the impurities in us.

Imagine how shocked I was a few weeks ago to discover that my current thoughts line up with the Orthodox teaching on hell. I've found that some of my views on the nature of sin and salvation also coincide with theirs, so I'm doing some more research.

A few days ago I stayed up until 3 am reading If Grace is True: Why God will save every person. I'm pondering the verses and issues brought up, as they don't coincide with what I've always been taught and believed. (The authors are quite content to discard portions of the Bible, saying that they think they contain false descriptions of God and that we should rely more on our own experience of God's love. This bothers me.) I will say, though, that I finished the book with a greater appreciation for God's love for his children. I want to recapture that sense of awe I had when I first heard that God pursues us.

Oh, to remember that God does not merely tolerate us, but passionately loves us and hunts for his lost children.

Posted by rachel at May 29, 2005 02:29 PM