Before I read the scripture, let me make a few introductory
remarks. I read somewhere recently that one of the problems with
the modern pulpit is that ministers are afraid to preach what
they believe. They have been thoroughly educated in current
Biblical interpretation and Christian doctrine, but then they get
into their churches and learn very quickly that, if they take
their learning seriously and preach and teach accordingly, they
get into a peck of trouble. Stay away from controversial
subjects. Do not call into question what folks learned as
children in Sunday School. Preach what people already believe.
That is the key to a long and happy pastorate. The result is the
pablum that often issues forth on Sunday mornings.
Well, I am not a masochist nor do I have a pastoral death
wish, but I am not content with giving you pablum. I hope you
are not content to be fed with it either. I hope you are ready
to be challenged to think and not simply rely on past
understandings.
The question this morning, "Would a loving God really let
anyone go to Hell?" is one to which almost all of you already
have an answer. Whether that answer is truly reflective of the
Biblical witness is what we will deal with. Let us hear the word
of the Lord:
(Luke 16:19-31)
Would a loving God really let anyone go to Hell? Our
parable seems to indicate the answer is Yes. The righteous will
be rewarded with an eternity of comfort and peace and the sinners
are going to burn. Some of you, I am sure, would be content to
leave it at that, get out of here and beat the Methodists to the
golf course. After all, that is what you learned years ago.
Others of you will not be content with that because you cannot
imagine God being unforgiving, even of the most heinous sin.
Note one thing about the lesson here: the story does not say
that Lazarus was particularly righteous, only that he was dirt
poor. And it does not say that the rich man was a particularly
vile sinner, only that he failed to notice and do anything about
Lazarus' need. Jesus' emphasis here is NOT on the fate of people
after death, but the absolute imperative of caring for the needy
while we are still alive. If folks took THAT as seriously as
they do the picture we get of the punishments of Hell, poverty
would have long ago been wiped out.
But poverty is not the focus of our attention this morning,
even though that really IS the primary focus of the parable -
more about that another time. Rather, it is this picture we have
of divine punishment. This one story has done more to influence
our long-held concept of eternal damnation than any other in
scripture. The question I raise is "How are we to understand it
in light of what we have come to know about God?" Would a loving
God really let someone, anyone, go to a place of endless torment?
The tradition, of course, is clear. Our Westminster
Confession of Faith says, "...the wicked, who know not God, and
obey not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal
torments, and punished with everlasting destruction..."(1) In the
Shorter Catechism, the answer to Question 29 concerning the
penalty which sinners can expect is "The punishments of sin in
the world to come are everlasting separation from the comfortable
presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body,
without intermission, in hell fire forever."(2) That is pretty
clear.
But these days, we do not hear that very often. Quite
frankly, many people believe Hell does not exist. In the minds
of many, Hell is only an expletive: Hell, yes; Hell, no.
But is that legitimate? The tradition surely says that
there is a literal, awful, fiery place where unsaved sinners will
spend eternity. But what about the Bible? What does that say?
To be honest, not a great deal. In the Old Testament, there
is nothing about a place of eternal torment for the damned,
nothing. Life after death for everyone - good or evil - is seen
as some sort of shadowy existence in a place known as Sheol but
not much more. There are a number of Old Testament references
like that but nothing about unending torture, even for the worst
of this world.
Actually, the first time we run into a place of after-death
misery is in the literature of Persia (modern-day Iran, of all
places). There we find a belief that says the wicked will
ultimately be judged by being placed in a stream of molten metal.
By the time we get to the New Testament, we find something
new. There are three different Greek words that are used to talk
about the afterlife. One is Hades which is basically the New
Testament equivalent of Sheol - the place of the dead. This is
where the rich man and Lazarus of our parable are. The only
difference between the Old and New Testament concepts is that
there is now a division there between the good and the bad.
Another is Tartarus. We run into that only once (in II
Peter(3)) in describing a place to which fallen angels are
condemned.
The third word is Gehenna. Gehenna was the name of a ravine
south of Jerusalem. Children had been sacrificed to the god
Moloch there during the days of Ahaz and Manasseh. But when King
Josiah ascended the throne, he ordered that it be desecrated. It
was turned into a rubbish heap where fire burned continuously.
Everything there had been consigned for destruction. Thus, the
"city dump" came to be identified in the Jewish mind as the
perfect symbol of God's final rejection of wickedness. This was
Jesus' description. Of the twelve times in the New Testament
that we run across the word Gehenna, eleven of them are on the
lips of Jesus.
The Lord was right vivid in his descriptions of the
afterlife for the unrepentant. In Matthew 8, Jesus calls it
"outer darkness."(4) In Matthew 13, he calls it "the furnace of
fire [where] men will weep and gnash their teeth."(5) In the ninth
chapter of Mark, he describes it as a place "where the worm does
not die, and the fire is not quenched."(6) In Luke's gospel, he
tells the story that we read a few minutes ago. The rich man
cries that he is in torment in the flame and he begs for Lazarus
to come and dip his finger in water so, with just a drop, the
man's tongue might be cooled. Not pretty pictures.
The final description of Hell in the New Testament is found
in Revelation 21. Hell is pictured as "the lake which burns with
fire and brimstone, which is the second death."(7) How much of
that description or the descriptions Jesus gave are meant to be
taken literally is an open question. After all, the pictures are
self-contradictory - complete darkness and burning flame are
mutually exclusive. The language is symbolic, symbolic of a fate
which no one would want.
Obviously, there are people who are living in situations in
the here and now which no one would want. Did you happen to see
this week's Time magazine about the plight of Christians living
in Iraq?(8) Things are far worse for them now that their nation
has been invaded by another so-called "Christian" nation. Now
the Islamic fundamentalists, who had been in check under the
previous regime, can operate openly and have been targeting
professing Christians for elimination. Despite what the
administration says, Christians in Iraq are absolutely not better
off than before. I am sure they would agree with the old Welsh
woman who, when asked if she were looking forward to life after
death, replied, "If it's anything like this life, I want no part
of it." That, I guess, is why some want to say there is no
literal Hell. We have enough Hell already.
The problem is that words about Hell ARE there in Holy Writ,
and if we take scripture seriously, we cannot simply pick and
choose among the teachings we like and the teachings we do not
like. The best we can do is try to interpret those teachings
faithfully, even the teachings about Hell.
Then what DOES the Bible make of Hell? Scripture is simply
not definitive. There is an indication that there will be
different degrees of punishment,(9) and of course, simple justice
would demand that - the punishment has to fit the crime. Perhaps
Dante had the right idea in The Divine Comedy. He portrays
sinners living in Hell in circumstances designed to show the
nature of their sins: gluttons must lie in the filth of a pig
sty; hypocrites go about in heavy cloaks that are gilded over;
traitors (who coldly planned their treachery) are more or less
encased in ice. You get the idea. They have effectively made
their own punishment, their own Hell.
To be sure, there are times when punishment is helpful, and
every decent parent knows it. But NO decent parent would say
that punishment that does not have correction and finally
restoration as its aim has any redeeming value. And it surely
can have no value for the God whose very purpose for a fallen
world has been, since the beginning of time, the redemption of
creation. What I am leading up to should, by now, be obvious.
The more I study, the more I dig, the more I become convinced
that the God of love whom we have come to know in Jesus would not
condemn someone to the kind of Hell our tradition has always
described.
Then what would God do? Obviously, I cannot say for certain
but I am rather drawn to the idea of punishment with a purpose, a
concept of Hell that would allow for final restoration. That
would seem to make sense, not to mention justice. A friend of
mine describes it as a "period of adjustment." Some will require
more than others, and for a few, it will be a HELL of an
adjustment.
Would a loving God allow something like that? It surely
sounds more reasonable to me than the traditional concept. How
long will it last? Again, the tradition says forever. But the
tradition also said at one time that human slavery was God-ordained, and in some churches even today that women are second-class citizens. Concerning our understanding of unending Hell,
it makes more sense to me to say it probably depends on the
situation. Again, the punishment would fit the crime.
In preparing for this message, I checked every New Testament
reference to Hell to see if ANY of them say it will last forever,
but the best I could come up with are references in the English
Bible to "everlasting punishment."(10) But something must be
understood here: the Greek word rendered as "everlasting" -
aionios - literally means "belonging to the ages." There is only
one entity to which aionios can be applied - God. There is far
more in aionios than simply a description of that which has no
end. Punishment which is aionios is punishment which befits God
to give and punishment which ONLY God can give. Aionios
indicates quality, not quantity.
Does that mean that there is a possibility that everyone
will eventually be saved? Our tradition wants to say ABSOLUTELY
NOT. But the scripture seems to speak with two minds on the
subject. There are places where it seems to indicate YES,(11) and
there are other places where it indicates NO. And if scripture
is not crystal clear, we had best not be making any absolute
statements. However, if we take seriously the freedom of choice
God has given us, it seems we are forced to conclude that there
is a possibility that some will continue to reject God, to hang
on to their sins, no matter how much "adjustment" has gone on.
As C. S. Lewis has written, "There are only two kinds of people
in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those
to whom God says, in the end, 'THY will be done.'"(12)
I have seen Gehenna. It was on a trip Christie and I took
to the Holy Land some years ago. We were on a tour bus driving
by the wall of the old city of Jerusalem when our guide pointed
our attention to an area out the window to our right...Gehenna.
I was surprised. I would have figured it to be an awful, smoky,
smelly dump, but it was a park: tall trees, green grass, playing
fields for youngsters' ball games. The fires have long since
gone out. Unending Gehenna? Apparently not.
What does that do to the church's efforts at evangelism? In
years past preachers used the concept of escaping from unending
torture in Hell to motivate folks to accept Christ and do right.
I would suspect that we could have done it better. After all, if
the gospel is the good news we claim it is, we should have
emphasized the LOVE of God and God's desire that all humanity be
saved. Instead, we have tried to SCARE people into the kingdom.
And, let's face it, that has not worked.
If our witness is to include the reality of Hell at all,
perhaps it would be better explained like this: God, in divine
love, wants EVERYONE, but God will force no one. And because
that love is so great, God refuses to condemn someone to the
Garden of Heaven who is allergic to flowers.
But allergies can be cured, even spiritual allergies. And
THAT is our word of evangelism; THAT is our good news. The
medicine is there. The remedy was carefully and lovingly
prepared almost two thousand years ago...on a hill outside
Jerusalem called Calvary. All that is necessary now is to have
enough faith in the doctor to come to Him. His name? Jesus
Christ. How much does it cost? Nothing. It is paid for by
insurance...Wooden Cross, a subsidiary of Eternal Life. And the
premium has already been taken care of by the agent. It is
guaranteed non-cancellable. It is the best plan on the market
today.
The doctor even makes house calls. He says, "Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, and opens
the door, I will come in..." Would a loving God really let
anyone go to Hell? I think the answer is the same one we came up
with after we read our lesson - Yes, even though it might not be
the kind of Hell we have tended to picture. But even that is not
necessary. Thank goodness! Thank God!
Amen!
1. "Westminster Confession of Faith," XXXV:2, Book of Confessions, (Presbyterian Church, USA), 6.181
2. BOC, 7.139
3. 2:4
4. 8:12
5. 13:42
6. 9:48
7. 21:8
8. "Iraq's Persecuted Christians," TIME, 9/27/04, p. 44
9. Matthew 23:14
10. Matthew 25:41, 46; I Thessalonians 1:9
11. John 12:32; Rom. 11:32; I Cor. 15:24-28; I Tim. 2:4-6; etc.
12. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, (New York; MacMillan, 1946), p. 72
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