Ordinary Time - Does God go with us to Hell?

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” (Luke 19:29-31)


There is some important symbolism going on with the colt in this story. It is a fairly young animal and has yet to be ridden or required to be a beast of burden. Just as the implements of worship in the temple were not given over to common use, so would the colt serve as a pure vessel that would carry Jesus into Jerusalem, where he would first be hailed as the Messiah, and then soon after sentenced to death and crucified.

The symbolism will continue later on when Jesus’ body is laid in a tomb that had never been occupied. Jesus was the first to be laid there.

It might be good for us to think about how Jesus occupies these new, unused places. We go to these kinds of places all the time. We enter into new phases of life, new jobs, new relationships, new challenges, and any number of other new things. We usually believe that we are receiving God’s guidance as we go. But do we think about God actually being present in those new places—even going before us there?

And what if the new place is not a good place? What if it is a self-destructive place?

Years ago a woman in my church told me her story. As a young girl, she had already suffered a number of painful, abusive experiences at the hands of people who should have been protecting her—including people in her church. At age thirteen she made a conscious decision to start drinking and to engage in a lifestyle that could easily lead to her destruction.

On the day that she made her decision, she informed God of her plan. She told me that she heard him say to her, “All right. I’ll go with you.”

She said that, in all the years of drinking heavily and partying hard, she never lost a sense of God’s presence. She didn’t claim to have his approval, but she felt that he had gone with her to this new, destructive place in her life, and had not abandoned her.

As a young adult, she entered into a recovery program and got sober. Her life found some level of harmony and she never lost the sense of God’s presence in her life. She still had a lot of emotional and psychological baggage, and she was aware of that. But she never ceased to marvel that God had not forsaken her, even in her darkest time.

I’ve thought a lot about her story over the years. I know people who have spiraled down into very damaging lifestyles and who were certain that God had turned his back on them. I’m not so sure that’s the case. I doubt that the sins we choose—whether out of deep pain, rebellion, or just plain stupidity—somehow catch God off guard. He’s pretty much seen it all.

The father in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15) didn’t physically travel with his younger son on his journey to disaster, but in a way his love remained present to the son. And when the son came home, the father was fully prepared to receive him. His love was a continuum that preceded the son’s departure, followed him to the far off land, and gathered him home when he returned. In a very profound way, the heart of the father went with the son into a very dark place. The father’s love accompanied the son as he travelled to Hell.

I don’t recommend the choosing of new places in life that are destructive. Choosing Hell is very unwise. But when we go to those places, we might not be going alone.

Can you imagine such a thing?

Hell in Proximity to God

When I think of Hell, I don’t think of a fiery place where people are being tormented by the devil (or by someone else, since Revelation 20 dispatches him). In fact, I don’t really think of a place at all. I think of proximity. Proximity to God.

I imagine all kinds of people on the other side of death. There are folks playing, laughing, luxuriating in the joy of God’s presence. Others are staring off in the distance in wonder, marveling at the recognition that God has embraced them at all. But a good time is being had by all (granted, I’ve not explored whether this is post-physical resurrection or not, but I’m doing art right now, not science).

There are, however, others in this scene. They are turned, not so much away from God as they are turned into themselves. There are those who are still demanding their rights—including the right to dislike or deny God—and they are oblivious to the joy that surrounds them. There are genocidal maniacs, like the aforementioned Hitler, who are screaming their rabid rants into an airspace where only they can hear their own, constant vitriol, while some of their victims come along and lay flowers at their feet, hoping that just for a moment, they might just look around see the possibilities that eternity holds.

These are shadow people, who stand in their own private spheres of darkness. They are seen by the others, but they see no one but themselves. There is also something wrong with them—parts of their bodies are burned away, the result of the persistent light of God that is life to many, but continues to act as a surgical fire to those in the shadows, slowly burning away the evil. For some, there may soon be nothing left.

Some of those are people of various religious groups who, having met Jesus in this place for the first time, realize he is the one they had always been looking for. Some of these are the wondrous gazers, who are stunned by God’s generous love.

Every so often one of the shadow people, having stood in isolated darkness for the equivalent of months or years or centuries, looks around suddenly and realizes that what they had staked their life on was not worth it all. As they face the light, their fractured bodies begin to slowly heal, and they become real for the first time.

Jesus wanders from person to person, participating in the joy that is expressed by so many. He also stops at each shadow person, laying a hand on a shoulder, not troubled by those who shrug away, the tears on his face evidence of his love for even the most broken of them. Once in a while one of them shudders and looks him in the eye, recognizing him at last and breaking into wracking sobs. Jesus embraces that one and leads the person out of that cobwebby space and into the freshness of eternity. His tears flow anew as the person’s body is reknitted into wholeness.

Okay, so I know there is no direct mention of sheep and goats, outer darkness, gnashing of teeth, or any other biblical image of judgment. But if Paul was right, and “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them,” then there might be something to think about in my fanciful story. Maybe all will stand forever in proximity to God. For some, it will be life. For others, darkness and decay.

But does it end there? Well, not to worry. It’s only a story.

What the Hell?

The artist has to ask questions in order to create. It is from the questions that the creative life emerges. Artists ask themselves what if questions, and then proceed to ask everyone else if what has come out of their questioning is really art.

Writers of fiction do this all the time. C. S. Lewis asked what God’s reconciling work would look like in a land populated by mythic creatures, and produced The Chronicles of Narnia. Stephen King asked what kind of world people would create if most of the human population was wiped out by a plague, and produced The Stand.

It occurs to me that some of the folks in the Christian world who take a great deal of heat are the ones who ask some difficult what if questions, like: What if God’s love is broader and more generous than we’ve imagined? Or, What if our dominant views about the atonement are limited and not really true to our scriptures? They usually start by asking themselves those kinds of question, and then they ask the rest of us, “What do you think—is this Christianity?”

One of the questions that always intrigue me is about Hell. Suggesting that our traditional views about Hell could be flawed usually creates a firestorm of outrage. People ask if God really assigns both the genocidal maniac and the nominal slob who never amounted to much to the eternal and fiery tortures of Hell, and some folks respond as though the idea of countless multitudes screaming in agony forever is comforting.

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once said something to the effect of, “It’s not that I don’t believe in Hell. It’s just that I don’t want anyone to be there.”

The idea of Hell—at least, the idea of Hell as a tortuous place created to take in all who deserve to go there—has its problems. First of all, the Bible doesn’t speak with a singular voice about Hell. There are multiple images related to where dead people go: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna. We are even told in The Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “descended to the dead” (some versions say “Hell”), causing us wonder what he did while he was there.

But, secondly, we struggle with some other problems as well. Since, according to Revelation 20:10, the devil ends up being tossed into the lake of fire and is tormented forever, we have to wonder: So who torments everyone else? Is it God who receives the worship of the faithful dead with one hand, and stokes the fires of Hell with the other? And he does this forever?

And we’re not really sure what it is that qualifies us for Hell. Is it our behavior, or our belief?

Here’s an example: The 20th century poster boy for pure, maniacal evil is Adolf Hitler, most folks would agree, and we would consign him to the most distant and painful corner of Hell available. But what if, just before he died (and if his girlfriend shot him in the head rather than Hitler committing suicide, just to keep things simple), he repented of his great transgressions and asked God to forgive him and then put his trust in Jesus? Wouldn’t he now be in heaven with all the saints and angels? I suspect that most Evangelicals would vote yes on that.

But if right belief is the ticket to Heaven, then wouldn’t the six million Jews that died as Hitler’s command be languishing in Hell? After all, their belief system would probably not include Jesus. So, really, based on that thinking, we can’t condemn Hitler to Hell for his actions, only for his lack of belief.

I understand that not all people, including Evangelical Christian people, would think that things worked that way. However, the questions should still be asked, and it is, in my view, the vocation of theological artists to do the asking. And when the artists ask everyone else, “What do you think—is this Christian?” we should all stop and say, “Well, I’m not sure. But maybe we should go back and check things out.”

The artist might be wrong, and answer to the question might occasionally be “no.” But the mere act of asking, when the question runs cross-grain to traditional thinking, should not result in a heresy trial.

And if someone asks if there really is a Hell, and even if we believe there is, our response ought to be a tearful one that says, “Yes, but I do wish it wasn’t so.”

Heresy and Minority Opinions

Consider the following quotations:

“. . . Higher math deals with ideas, asks questions which may not have single answers.”

“If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently, we may end in certainty.”

“By love God may be gotten and holden, but by thought or understanding, never.”

Each of these represents a possible heresy. The idea that mathematics could provide something other than precise and unquestioned answers? Oh, please. Tell that to my eighth grade math teacher. Certainties leading to doubt? Never! Our doctrines are certain, our interpretations are accurate, and if we stand firm, we will never doubt.

And God is not to be grasped by pure understanding? But what about the A’s you got in all your apologetics courses?

I read these three quotations in Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (pp. 134-5). It’s a book about writing, and is becoming an incredibly valuable addition to my small collection of resources about being a writer.

The first quotation is from Madeline herself, as she reflects on what she was thinking about when she wrote A Wrinkle in Time.

The second is from Francis Bacon’s work, De Augmentis (1623).

And the third is from the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing (late 14th century).

The book was first published in 1980. I don’t recall if anyone organized a heresy hunt to chase Madeleine down when these words were made public, since they were lauded by reviews from several Christian periodicals.

I know a man who wrote a book about God and the Bible, encouraging his fellow Christians to consider that their faith is not a concrete building constructed of propositions extracted from the Bible, but rather an embrace of the deep mystery that is God’s love expressed in and through the person of Jesus Christ. It was not a dismissal or denigration of scripture—I know this man, and his love of the Bible. Nevertheless, after the book’s publication a major Christian bookstore chain banned all of his books from their stores. I haven’t shopped there since.

Have we entered a new age of inquisition? Not inquiry—that would suggest curiosity and openness to new, unexplored possibilities—but the kind of inquisition that used to burn people at stakes or exile them to distant shores. Instead of incinerating their bodies, we now incinerate their characters and their careers. We push them out of the fellowship of believers and declare them unclean because asking hard questions seems to be the flashing warning light that signals heresy must be looming ahead.

Someone posted a thoughtful comment the other day about this blog series, wondering out loud if we sometimes label something as heresy when in fact it is merely a minority opinion. I think he might be on to something.

Certain models of practical theology insist that theory and practice, when it comes to Christian ministry, cannot be separated. We come to our theological reflections with some sense of meaningful practice already embedded in our thoughts and actions. Engaging prayerfully and thoughtfully with specific theological issues (which relate to real life and human interaction) results in the emergence of a new practice that is infused with new meaning and purpose.

Before we immediately label something as a heresy, we should allow it to be a minority opinion (unless it has already taken the world by storm), or at least a view that is “other” than the traditional one. If we let these opinions stew around only as theories and then argue them as such, then we never really know if they are valid or not. We have to ask how our theologies play out in real ministry and step out of the safety zone of theoretical insistence.

So let’s argue about same-sex marriage. Then let’s pray together and ask God to show us what ministry looks like in this new world, and how our thinking is informing our participation in what God is doing in the world.

Let’s argue about divorce and remarriage. Then let’s sit down with remarried couples and ask them where they have experienced the presence of the Spirit of Christ in their lives.

Let’s argue about the nature of Hell and the reach of God’s love and see if we can stop stabbing each other in the eyes with our heresy sticks. There might be some minority opinions that we need to consider.

Keep in mind: Jesus’ words in Matthew chapter 5 (part of the Sermon on the Mount) are filled with minority opinions. Think about it: Six times he says, “You have heard that it is said” (majority opinion); six times he counters with, “But I say to you” (minority opinion).

When we take on the role of being heresy hunters, we may become the assassins of minority opinions. We might be wrong. And we should tremble at the possibility.

A Lenten Reflection for March 8, 2013

Therefore, thus says the Lord, assuredly I am going to bring disaster upon them that they cannot escape; though they cry out to me, I will not listen to them. (Jeremiah 8:11)

Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)

“You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:44)


Often I find myself wanting what I want, no matter what. I know that eating a certain thing is not good for me, but I want it anyway. Get out of the way and let me eat it. It’s my body. The consequences are mine. It’s my right to want what I want.

Jeremiah spoke to a people that wanted to worship idols and play international politics by the rules of the world. Like their ancestors, they wanted what they wanted. In the end, God let them have what they wanted. They didn’t want to listen to him, so he cooperated by not listening. When they received the consequences of a life without God, the horror of it made them cry out, but God wasn’t listening. At least, not for a while. Jesus wasn’t seeing much improvement in his day.

I think that’s probably what Hell is: Eternally getting what you want. Imagine the weakest, most stumbling desire for God exploding into glorious flame when God is encountered face to face. Then imagine the most stubborn, angry desire for something other than God, and getting it. Forever.

What would it be like to live in a city where there is no goodness, where each person lives only for personal gain and pleasure, where power is the only currency? That would be Hell. That would be getting everything you demand, if what you demand is anything other than God.

I tend to lean on the words of Richard John Neuhaus: “In this life, and in the age to come, followers of Jesus can have everything they want, if everything they want is Jesus.”

A Lenten Reflection for March 5, 2013

For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. (Jeremiah 7:30-32)

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. (Psalm 78:2-3)

If there was ever an apt description of Hell, the valley of the son of Hinnom—or, Gehenna, as it was called in Jesus’ day—would be it. The ancient Hebrew people joined in with the idol worshippers in the local area and sacrificed their own children to a fire-filled god in that valley. In the time of the Roman occupation of Israel, Gehenna had become a flaming garbage dump, where refuse and the bodies of executed criminals rotted and burned day and night.

The account of this tragic failure of the people of God says something about the nature of evil. Some might say that God is in control, that he is sovereign, and all things come from his hand—good things for blessing, bad things for discipline and punishment. After all: Either God is in charge or he isn’t.

But in some ways, God isn’t in charge, at least not in that way. God may be sovereign, the rightful ruler of all things, but the realm over which he is king is a broken, distorted realm. The ancient Hebrew people embraced an evil that was of their own making, and it was an evil that had never entered God’s mind—we are told that he never commanded it. The people took upon themselves a sin that would mark them for generations to come and bring a curse upon the land where their children’s ashes were scattered.

And yet, God did not give up on the people. The psalmist writes, “Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; often he restrained his anger, and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again (78:38-39).”

I am amazed that this dark episode wasn’t edited out of the Bible. It’s the dirtiest of all laundries and you would think that people would just want to forget it. But they kept the story alive for generations, reminding their descendants that the people of God are a broken people and capable of the worst evils imaginable. The most astonishing thing that would be passed on to each generation was that, in the midst of human failure, God remains faithful. God remembers our frailty. We might suffer the consequences of our embrace of evil, but God still forgives.

I wonder if the first 10,000 years or so of eternity is spent in abject amazement as people are confronted with the pure reality of both evil and forgiveness. We see them now abstractly; then we will see face to face.

Theology and Vampires

Later this month—May 17-19, to be precise—my collection of short stories, Dark Ocean, will be available as a free download through Amazon. A special bonus at the back of the book offers a few chapters from a previous novel, This Side of Death.

This Side of Death is a horror story. It involves vampires. I should probably explain why I like to write theological-type things and also creepy, spooky stories. Both my mother and my wife have their own explanations for my behavior, but I don’t buy into the whole demonic possession thing.

I started writing This Side of Death a few years ago because my grandchildren were reading the Twilight series and trying to convince me that vampires were not evil, but were actually a misunderstood and marginalized race of beings. I set out to show my descendants the truth about the undead.

But the story sort of got away from me and I discovered that it was fertile ground for exploring questions of faith. In This Side of Death, a family has suffered the loss of their husband and father, a good man who died a horrible and violent death. The son, Jay, drifts from anger to disillusionment to a deep sense of responsibility. His sister, Vickie, mostly stays in the anger mode.

They are drawn into a story of violence and horror, seeking to answer the question, What is hell? For them, hell has come to visit them on earth. Vickie declares that God himself should be banished there after what he allowed to happen to their father. A local priest, who keeps appearing at the margins of the family’s life, speaks pastorally to them and offers a way of thinking about life and God that they have not yet considered.

This story will end up being a trilogy. The second book, Morana, should be out this year (if my copyeditor will quit having a life of her own and do what I demand!) and the third is in process. Anglican priests keep popping up in the story, sometimes as key characters. They provide the theological and ethical voices of the stories. In This Side of Death, they offer a perspective on the nature of evil; in Morana they actively confront social injustice that appears in the form of human trafficking, a horror that is orchestrated by—you guessed it—another vampire.

Fiction—especially creepy fiction—is a great way, I believe, to hash out theological ideas. Characters get to wrestle with their doubts and fears in ways that are not always permitted in Christian non-fiction (nevermind that most Christian publishers won’t publish the kind of fictional trash that I write).

The one who used fiction as a theological vehicle better than anyone in the world was Jesus. His parables tell stories that offer characters that walk out the implications of his teachings. The characters don’t always fare well, and sometimes suffer great pain. But the stories make the point, don’t they?

Evangelicals Need a New Definition

And maybe even a new name.

I once asked a group of Catholic friends how they defined the term evangelical, and they saw it as identical to fundamentalist. Each one had a story of an evangelical cousin or uncle who hammered them at every family gathering, insisting that Catholics were on a sure pathway to Hell. For these folks, evangelical brought up descriptors such as judgmental, condemning, and mean.

If I’m reading the political pundits correctly, evangelical is a term that refers to a block of USAmerican voters that conflates nation and religion, lining up with the extreme right of the political spectrum. Evangelicals appear to hold a great deal of power in making or breaking particular political campaigns.

I’ve heard others say that evangelicals are the folks who hold to a wooden and hyper-literal view of all aspects of the Bible, see the theory of penal substitutionary atonement as a theological hill to die on, and have a clear understanding of who is in and who is out with God.

I am saddened by what I see in these descriptors. If these are what define evangelical, then I don’t want to be one.

But none of these are proper definitions of the word. The word evangelical comes from a Greek word (used in the New Testament) that means good news. When Jesus, in Mark 1:15 says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news,” the term “good news” utilizes that Greek word.

It’s actually an ancient term with military implications. After a battle, a runner would leave the front lines and bring news of the outcome to the military leaders. If the battle had been won, then it was good news. The messenger was the good news bringer. The messenger was the person who bore witness to the good thing that had happened.

This meaning is at the heart of the word that we now call evangelical. To be evangelical is to be the bearer of the same good news that Jesus brought: That the kingdom of God is at hand. It is to speak of a reality that has already come to pass. Keeping in mind that those folks who don’t like the idea of God’s rule and reign (perhaps like the army who lost the ancient battle) might not hear the message as good news, it is proclaimed nonetheless because it is believed by the messenger to be true.

The message granted to us is not one of political power or domination; it is not about who has been assigned to heaven or to hell; it is not license to stand in judgment over anyone. It is a message that is intended for the good of all, and it is one to be both proclaimed and demonstrated.

If the earlier definitions I offered hold sway, then I suggest we find a different word with a proper definition. It would be a shame to lose a word that is rich with meaning and purpose, but it might have to happen. There is some biblical precedent for such a change: The ancient Hebrews became Jews; the followers of The Way became Christians. It has happened before.

I don’t have a replacement term. But maybe one might emerge if we Christians, rather than being known by our political preferences, or by our tendency toward judgmentalism, or by our rigid theologies, we were known by our love. I wonder what would happen then. Maybe those who are impacted by that love would hear that good news and offer a new name to us.

Let’s give it a shot.

The Doctrine of Election Questioned

I’ve always struggled with the theological concept of election. As it was often presented to me, it described how God has elected, or chosen, some to be saved and live eternally with him in heaven, and elected others to suffer eternally in Hell. I know the doctrine has a long history, but it still has always given me fits. It made the unfortunate ones who were excluded from God’s favor seem like the human presto-logs that were needed to keep the fires of Hell stoked.

Theologians and biblical scholars like Lesslie Newbigin, Gerhard Lohfink, Christopher Wright, and others have helped me with this. They frame the idea of election, not as God’s way of excluding some over others, but rather the election of the few for the sake of the world.

Israel is God’s elect, gathered to be his own people through whom, all the families of the world would find blessing (Genesis 12:1-2). Israel came to into existence for the sake of the world.

Jesus is God’s elect, and through him God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Corinthians 5). Jesus was born, lived, suffered, died, and rose from the grave for the sake of the world.

Those who follow and trust Jesus are also gathered as God’s elect, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world that God loves and is reconciling to himself. We participate in God’s mission for the sake of the world.

I know that different faith traditions have other views of election. However, there is, in my view, a problem with the idea that God would simultaneously love the world and yet pre-condemn the majority of human beings to eternal suffering and torment. I don’t see that the larger narrative of scripture supports that view.

The ability and freedom for people to receive or reject God’s love is a human prerogative rather than a divine imperative.

Evil Wins?

There’s been a lot of blogging activity generated lately about Hell, especially since writers like N. T. Wright, Rob Bell, and Rachel Held Evans (I’m just finishing her book, Evolving in Monkey Town – I highly recommend it) have questioned some of the traditional views about the topic. I know it’s risky even bringing up the subject, since asking questions like these often results in accusations of heresy or universalism. Nevertheless, I’d like to add a question.

If what some people say about Hell—its tortuous environment, its isolation from God, its hopelessness, its eternality—is all true, then in the end, does evil win? Rob Bell says that Love Wins, and I think he’s on to something. But if others are right, then doesn’t evil win as well?

Maybe Satan and his minions don’t conquer God, but in some scenarios he gets his own kingdom in the end. Evil doesn’t get destroyed after all—it just gets its own eternal territory. In that everlasting house of horrors, evil has its way with all who have not qualified for Heaven, either because they prayed wrongly (or not at all), they believed wrongly (or not at all), they were born on the wrong side of the planet or at the wrong time in history, or because they were just hideous and evil in their crummy 65 years or so on earth. If those are the ways people get damned forever, then one would expect some irony in the smoky gathering in Hades. After all, Hitler (who was clearly hideous and evil) must be there right along with all the Jewish people he slaughtered, since they didn’t believe rightly. Right?

Hell appears to be a place where the heavenly cry in Revelation 21 does not apply. It’s only in the new heaven and the new earth where God “. . .will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). Not all the first things, of course. Evil gets to stick around. In Hell, evil wins. Forever. And ever. In it’s own private kingdom. And God can’t interfere. Those are the rules.

So does God lose? If you win some and lose some, you still lose something. Right?

In spite of the fact that it is dangerous to question these kinds of things in the evangelical community, I recommend we do it anyway. I’m not suggesting that we acquiesce to our own discomforts or play fast and loose with orthodox faith, but I am suggesting that we re-examine what is orthodox in the first place. Is it ever possible that we might get things wrong?

There is something wrong with our orthodoxy if evil wins in the end.