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Saturday, March 19, 2011

What Must I Do to Avoid Hell? Part 1

Subtitle: What does Hell mean to me?

(Note: This is a multi-part series since it's a lot bigger than I originally thought.)

Rob Bell has been in the news quite a bit lately. His new perspective is all the buzz. Bloggers and even mainstream news like MSNBC are talking about his position that Hell is a myth. Since Hell has been a component of Christian theology since the beginning, this is big.

The doctrine of Hell has always been an unpleasant one. The notion that there is somewhere that an apparently large number of souls exist in torment for eternity is, to any caring person, a nasty proposition at best. The idea that sins committed in a lifetime should be punished forever seems like overkill. And, really, is it nice to think that God would save just those who have faith while not saving all the rest? What kind of narrow-minded, mean-spirited God would pick that arbitrary concept? So it should not seem odd to us that it is under attack these days not only by atheists and skeptics, but by those who call themselves Christians and even Evangelicals. What might seem odd, though, is that anyone (like me) would think to rise to its defense. I mean, seriously, if we could figure out that the Church has been wrong all these millennia and there really is no place called "Hell" or the like, wouldn't that be a good thing? Well, for me, the answer is "No." You see, Hell has meaning to me.

It is not possible to shift the doctrine of Hell into oblivion without having a major impact on all sorts of other areas. The first and foremost is the assault on God's character. Since God is supernatural, the primary, most reliable, best method we can have of knowing God's character is to simply know what He tells us about Himself. So what does God tell us about Himself? Well, we know He is Holy (really, really Holy ... since it is the only attribute of God that is not only repeated twice in Scripture, but repeated three times in those two places). We know that He is Just. We know He is gracious and merciful. We know that the Bible is full of references to God's wrath. We know that He is good. We know that "God is love". (I put it in quotes because it is ... odd. He isn't "loving" or "lovely" or the like. He is love. That is, whatever love is is defined by God.) We know a lot about God because these are the kinds of things He has told us about Himself. Now ... strip off that whole "eternal damnation" thing. What do we know now about God? Well, He would certainly be merciful (where "mercy" is defined as "not getting what you deserve") and gracious (where "grace" is defined as "getting what you don't deserve"). So far, so good. Of course, we'd have to remove that whole "Just" thing. That's out the door. And the whole "wrath of God" thing would have to go, too. He's a friendly God now. And what about "Holy"? No, not so much. Having stripped off any sort of punishment for sin, that one doesn't work so much either. Of course, since all of these have been dismantled, we will certainly call into question His reliability and, with that, His faithfulness. I mean, there are all those things about "wrath" and "justice" and the like which we can't really hold, so what else is He lying about? And, of course, that would also terminate the idea of God being good. Oh, this isn't going well, after all, is it?

This is just the beginning. While we don't like the concept of Hell, the first and foremost impact if we strip it from the pages of Scripture is the impact on the character of God. Don't believe, however, that this is the last impact.

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