I love being a part of a club… It’s a fun feeling. From the time I was a child I created my own sets of clubs, with exclusivity. First it was my birthday party, where only the people I liked could come. Then it was a baseball team, then that treehouse club. I also started a star wars club, because well, when you are five and people can make lightsaber sounds, well, you’re in the club. But the truth is, being a member of a club is something each of us are familiar with.
Exclusivity is what breeds clubs. You create from a young age these groups that has rules as to who can be in and out. That way you don’t have to feel so bad about yourself. But we do the same thing with Christianity and a lot. We have the Christians that go to heaven, and then we have all the rest. Maybe you’re not Christian, maybe you are not willing to believe the same things as everyone else, maybe you just don’t get it and have serious doubts. That’s not ok. Our club doesn’t welcome that. Sorry… Go home…..or better yet…go to hell. Because that’s where you are going…because you don’t believe what we do. But wait. That doesn’t seem right… I mean it does for a club, but when was the last time God talked liked that…wait…when God talked about Hell.
Hell is that place where the Christians that aren’t the “real” Christians go after life. So Heaven is now an exclusive club, full angels waiting for you with cream cheese and bagels at the party. But I’m not sure that’s exactly what God is getting at. In fact, I’m not sure it’s what Christianity is getting at?
So tonight, let’s explore Hell as we continue our sermon series: Christianity 101.
Where did Hell Originate?
Hell is a hard place to pin down in terms of where it originated. By that I mean when and where we as human beings began to believe in Hell. In the Jewish tradition, there was a place called “Sheol” or “the pit.” When people died, they went here. Now Sheol translates to Muddy waters, but the truth is that the Jewish people never believed that people actually went there, but rather that it was a dark place full of shadows, like the shadows of lives past. Now it doesn’t sound like a great place, but they believed that practically everyone went there because they believed that God was far and away in a place called Heaven but that it wasn’t really a place for people to go.
Now you are going to say to me, of course Cody, because when Jesus comes he opens the door to heaven and people are allowed in and people have a choice. Sure, you might be right. But I’m not sure that is what God or Jesus was getting at either.
In Jesus’ time, there is very little scripture to talk about this place known as hell. There are an awful lot of references to being burned and consumed like in Matthew where the good tree bears fruit and the bad tree is cut down and cast into the fire. There’s that one about weeping and nashing of teeth. But there’s something very important for us to remember: CONTEXT.
In Jesus’ time, he seems to talk an awful lot about burning and consuming of things. Outside of Jerusalem, there’s a garbage dump. Archeological digs believe it may have been the largest garbage dump in the ancient world, in fact, there is such a large area of it that archeologists are unsure if they are ever going to be able to uncover it all. But this garbage dump had pretty much everything in it that had rotted and had gone bad. They didn’t have anything else to do with the stuff. So what they routinely did was burn up as much stuff as possible, consuming it in brilliant fires that lit up in the night. The gospels really don’t mention “Eternal damnation” but rather “burning and consuming.” Heaven and Hell become a shorthand description of what happens when you die, and that desceription is the NOTHINGNESS Or the eternal life.
So now, we have to talk about where Hell did really come from. And to that of course I direct you to Dante’s inferno, where in the midst of a challenging world a storyteller created a story that passed through and used the biblical witness of certain passages and thus create hell in 7 circles. You’ve probably heard of this book, and you might have imagined its imagery because he creates hell as a place of damnation and of fire and of suffering. But remember, the Jews didn’t believe in this place anymore than we believe that things just cease to be when they die. What did we believe? Well, actually before the mid-1800s the early theologians didn’t really talk amuch about hell. Instead, they talked about the kingdom of God here on earth…not in heaven…here on earth.
A famous theologican named Augustine, who lived in the 4th century CE talked about the kingdom of God a lot. He wrote an enormous book called “The city of God” in which he articulated some things he was seeing as being of the “city of man” and others of “the city of God.” He spoke of the Heaven coming down to earth and other theologians also articulated similar thoughts about this Heaven on earth.
And what does John Wesley, founder of Methodism say about this? Well, he says that God gave out a thing called Grace. Grace is something that takes away everything that prevents us from being whole with God. There is a thing called prevenient grace, which is prevenient to everything we can do. It’s pre-birth, pre-baptism Grace. And it says that we are welcome by God. So how in the world do we see this God of prevenient grace (which by the way is now widely accepted) show a God who then has a place to separate the Christians from the non-Christians and prevents them from being with God…. there must be something else.
Reason:
Could we use our reason to figure this out? Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work in terms of Hell’s existence as well. It’s hard for me to look at my friend’s who are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or anything else and say, guess what. God is more merciful for me than for you. Does that make sense. A God who we see as loving and full of Grace…does that mean that God is merciful to so many people….well, I guess that depends on your view of God….but I can’t see that.. In fact, if we are backtracking to the wrathful God….UH OH. Wrathful God who is more wrathful to one person that another… That doesn’t make sense.
Experience
How about the experience we have. So, if that’s true, we would find that people who are not Christian would probably be the mean spirited people that are full of greed and hatred. But when I meet Muslims, my Jewish friends, and others… I see the same love in them. Ghandhi…. How about the Atheists…. Well, a few of us have had a chance to meet with them recently… And personally, I see the same Godliness in them…the same sense of call to change the world and impact others… just not the same understanding as ourselves as to why.
This makes a little bit more sense historically. Because in the past, Christians and other groups didn’t interact much…except for the crusades when we tried to kill each other…But nowadays, we interact a lot and so we have this sense that everyone is really ok… Now, ok…So we welcome these people, they are our friends, some of us might end up in an intimate relationship with them… So they are still going to Hell.
The END
So, we come to it. We’ve exhausted our resources. What the answer? Well, maybe we haven’t answered it, but with a lack of biblical evidence, a lack of historical and theological backing and real challenges from our reason and our experience, we now are left with a solution. WE don’t know if Hell exists, but we know that Jesus spoke of us fulfilling our role of bearing fruit for the world and creating the kingdom here on Earth. We can tell that Hell has been interpreted to us through storytellers and articulated into the Bible but we can’t honestly tell is Hell exists. And we can tell that creating a club with exclusive membership is a natural part of the things we do in our world in order to feel like “the in-crowd.” But I can’t find Hell in the midst of God’s love, God’s Grace, and God’s world. So maybe we have to come ot the realization that Jesus asked who he was to us…and if we answered that Jesus is a wrathful, exclusive person who sent people away, then we can get away with saying Hell exists. But if we see Jesus as loving, as welcoming to all people, and as a person who tried to make us look beyond ourselves to something greater…then maybe we have to realize that Hell probably doesn’t exist. Maybe… May you’re journey discern these things… For in it’s understanding you will find your understanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment