Another View of Hell

Yesterday our family went on a crystal digging expedition and as the dad I did a lot of the digging.  Today I woke up and was a bit sore...but when I went to lean over outside my back seized up.  I came back into the house and stumbled back into bed.  My wife put some icyhot on me, and I took some advil, and then an hour later I needed to poop.  My wife was gone to the store so I had no help getting out of bed...10 excruciating minutes later, I made it to the toilet but some poop (of one of the biggest poops of my life, BTW) ended up in my underwear.  The mess I made in my rear end needed a shower...which took another 10 excruciating minutes to finally begin.  I got through the shower (hot water on my back helped) and then got out and took some alleve, which I should have taken to begin with, and now though I feel lousy I can at least move around without wanting to fall on the floor and roll up into a ball and cry. 

A few years ago I had an experience in which I had a stomach flu hit me in the middle of the night and had awful things coming out from multiple orifices.  At the time I thought that was hell, and maybe this has been in that same category.  When you are writhing in pain in your bathroom, covered with feces, knowing that every movement you make is going to be worse than the one before, isn't that a scene of what hell might look like?  I only had the worst of this for a few hours...can you imagine eternity like this? 

I am hoping that my alleve will hold me through the afternoon, and that maybe some more stretching will be helpful.  Tomorrow is Easter, where we proclaim the good news of the resurrection, the hope and the peace that comes out of chaos.  Well, I need to believe this truth, that God is going to restore and redeem me in the worst moments of my physical life. 

The Good Place

My current favorite binge watch is The Good Place, with Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, and a bunch of other people I don't know.  It's wonderful, and somewhere in it there is a sermon series.  The premise of this episode is that Kristen Bell wakes up across from Ted Danson, wondering where she is.  He tells her that she is in the good place...all the good deeds she has done through her life has gotten her to be where she is, and she is placed in a neighborhood of 322 people where they can spend their eternity.  As the show goes on (spoiler alert!) we find that she was actually a terrible person, and other people she is with are not nearly as good as we think they are, and eventually at the end of season one we find that their existence is all part of a cruel experiment in which they are really in a version of The Bad Place, torturing one another. 

Of course, I really do love shows that speak about greater things, even if they are wrong.  In watching them it makes me think about what it is that I believe.  One of my favorite scenes is in the pilot, in which Ted Danson explains what it takes to get to that good place: 

Ultimately it's all a lie, since in fact these are people in the bad place, but I found that the expression of this was so similar to how many people think about heaven and hell, right and wrong, that I think it's a great teaching tool. 

I've still got a few seasons to go through, and know that there is more to come...but I am so glad to have come across this show. 

The Power of Proper Questions

So yesterday I came across this interesting bit of information about how the methodology of surveys in the creation vs. evolution debate is often part of the problem.  If the surveyors ask only whether one believes in evolution (all chance) versus creation (all design), then they get one answer.  But if they ask about whether it's all natural selection, or evolution that is in part guided by God, or whether humans have always existed in their current form, they get different answers. 

It's not that I really think it is important as to what the answer is...whatever process you believe brought humanity into its present form takes a kind of faith, either in the always-changing views of science or a particular interpretation of the first book of the Bible.  Over the years I have come to believe that people have changed, though God may well be a part of this process of change. 

Isn't change the way that God works, even as God himself is unchanging?  Consider dogs.  There are many breeds of canines, but they are all technically dogs.  It would be hard to think that a cocker spaniel is the same thing as a St. Bernard which is the same thing as a golden retriever...but they are.  Because dogs have been bred in such particular ways we have these kinds of breeds developing in such a short time.  Why do we then assume that any other kind of life can't change gradually given a much longer period of time? 

Even humanity has changed...think of how there are different skin colors, facial features, or sizes based upon what kind of ancestry one has.  Would a scientist from another planet assume that a pygmy from Africa is necessarily the same kind of human as a white person from northern Europe? 

Yet all this being said, I still believe in creation.  Whether or not it is the specific form of Genesis-1-six-days-of-creation is for me a question I don't really care about.  I am more interested in the Biblical witness that humanity and its history has been guided and directed by God, even today.  Genesis 1 may be a factual account of history, or it may be more likely a poetic account of how things came to be over millions or even billions of years.  In truth, I really think that Christians have sometimes got far too caught up in particulars rather than seeing the big picture. 

You could make the same kind of argument about the nature of how a question is asked when it comes to hell.  If you only ask, 'Is there a hell?' some may want to say no.  Their perception of what hell is may well make them want to think it can't exist; and while some have come to belittle hell as simply the context for a Far Side cartoon, others may in fact still be haunted by visions from hellfire and brimstone preaching.  But what if we ask, 'Is there a point where one may well be fully separated from God?'  then it changes the question. 

Over the years I have 'evolved' my Biblical understanding of hell.  For a long time I simply thought that it was the place where God was was not.  The worst part of hell would be the eternal knowledge that you could have been with God, but chose not to.  Now, though, my understanding has changed to a view that I believe takes the Scripture more seriously.  When we think of 'eternal destruction', I think we do better to put the emphasis on the second word, destruction.  To be destroyed means the end of something, and that it is eternal (the adjective helping to shape the noun) means that it cannot be reversed.  God would often destroy things (especially in the OT) but that doesn't mean that it ended forever...consider Jerusalem, for example.  It was destroyed, but God restored it and will continue to restore it in eternity.  But if something is eternally destroyed, it ceases to exist totally.  Will one who has rebelled against God or rejected his Lordship mean that there will someday be an end to their existence?  I believe so.  Just as many people have as their greatest fear death, so the sense that there will be a time of no more existence is a great horror for many.  Some would almost rather spend eternity in hellfire sulfuric torture than to not exist (so egotistical they are!), but perhaps the greater curse is God finally saying, "You...no more."  And then it is so. 

To me this seems a more God-honoring view of hell than eternal torture.  To me the thought that every existing, eternal moment is sheer brutality does not match up with God's nature.  But it is in God's nature to destroy a soul and purge its existence from his holy and glorious creation. 

And so, do I believe in hell?  Yes, I do...but not in the way many think of it, just as I don't think of evolution or creation in the way that many think of it.  God is much more creative in his creation and destruction of life than we can ever imagine; don't box him in so much that it removes his essential nature because you interpret one or another Scripture in a certain way. 

It's so often how you look at things that make the difference.