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who gets to ring hells bells?
Been uneasy about hell for years now. But something coming clear. Softening or weakening the teaching on hell isn’t the long term answer. It’s completely understandable that it’s happening as it’s a response to a real abuse of the teaching (often terrifying the very people God means to comfort and comforting the very people God means to terrify.) But the fact is, Jesus is the figure in the Bible most closely associated with hell. Before he hits the scene, it’s the foggiest, the murkiest thing. But that’s the key. Jesus alone can be trusted with this. The teaching on hell is something we’ve abstracted; that is, taken out of context, removed from it’s intensely personal connection with Jesus. We’ve plucked it up like a piece of fruit and put it in our 12 point statements of faith, where it’s been separated from his voice; and there, it’s rotted. Jesus spoke on hell through angry tears. He spoke in the context, always I think, of defending the poor and oppressed, warning their oppressors of hell.
But we’ve taken this intensely personal, context dependent language, and abstracted it. Placed it in our systematic theologies, inserted it in our statements of faith. The Apostles Creed didn’t do this. Whoever put the apostles creed together was closer in history to the words of Jesus. Perhaps understood that he alone was authorized to ring hells bells?
February 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
that is some of the most insightful words on hell that i have heard in a long time. yo should write a book, maybe call it: ‘Jesus and the Gehenna Monologues’;
i see clearly how this takes us back to lectio divina too: this perspective causes us to enter scripture through the eyes filled wth angry tears of Jesus Himself. no intellectual subjugation and analysis from outside, no tearing it apart, but enter it as it stands, as we have inherited it. embrace and imbibe rather than dissect and categorize.
this deep reading of scripture, taking it in and having it slowly dissolve into you like a coughdrop, might be the way forward in many of the “controversial” issues of scripture that trusts that the words we read are words God means for us to embrace with mystery and wonder, child-like.
thanks for that ken!
March 7th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
“Warning oppressors of the poor” is only half the story….”if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It is better to lose part of your body than to be thrown into Hell in one piece” or something to that effect. “Many will say to me in that day Lord, Lord haven’t we done many things in your name….” and he responds with “I never knew you.”
There is this relational aspect with Jesus that will also make a difference on where we spend eternity, and that makes me nervous. I think it is supposed to. There are some fairly strong points that Jesus (and Paul too) makes about personal (read moral) behavior making a difference on where we end up.
Being uneasy about Hell is a good thing! Not telling people the full story is not. That doesn’t mean it has to be in the form of the famous Edward’s (or Moody) sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” but it can be, and should be, told with tears that inform.
I have a hard time trying to out think past historical figures (Billy Graham is one)who spent life times crying out for people to be saved. Whatever Hell is, it isn’t a place anyone would want to find themselves, whether for eternity or for a short time.
I had a friend whose dad got saved on his, what was thought to be, last night alive, after having a vision of Hell. It changed his life from a hard, self-willed, stubborn man into a weepy, tender lover of Jesus who went on to live a long life. I heard his story face to face several times. I would watch him as he teared up as he told it.His thankfulness to God for His mercy welled up in his expression.
People need to know.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Clif,
Great post! I do think it’s more than half the story–more like the centerpiece of Jesus context for the hell warnings. But you’re right that he doesn’t just warn the Pharisees about hell, he also warns his disciples. I went back to the sermon mount text that you cited, and it’s in the context of Jesus talking to his disciples, warning them against the righteousness of the Pharisees, not to take their short cut path to holiness. The whole thing is framed as a rebuttal of the Pharisaic approach, “you have heard it was said….but I say to you.” So that’s the part I’ve wrestling over, the context part. I just read Matt. 25 this morning before getting your comments. I think the refusal to care for the poor goes along with the context of oppression (warning the oppressors) because the bible sees the poor as oppressed (those words often found together).
Somehow the words of Jesus about hell have to be joined to the voice of Jesus. Christianity is about bringing people into a direct contact with God where the words are not separated from the voice. Without that direct hearing expereince, the words
are distorted, especially on the matter of hell, or at least that’s what I’m seeing.
ken