This is one o the coolest videos I’ve EVER seen. And I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it.

I love that we are talking about hell.  It’s time it was brought out of the closet (the dark ages) and looked at very deeply. Before you read this post I would suggest reading the post that inspired it.  John Shore asks, “Is God’s Justice Different Than Ours? Hell, No!“

John asks a remarkably good question in his post.  He ask, “To me the real mystery is why it’s not considered at best absurd and at worst dangerous to suggest that God has a sense of justice diametrically opposed to the sense of justice that is innate to just about every human being.“

Much of the debate regarding hell centers on the few passages that are in the Bible.  And to be fair and honest, all arguments about hell must include the rational acknowledgement of their presence.  The problem then becomes trying to understand their meaning.  The problem as I see it, is they rarely are talked about in context of all Scripture.  We base our understanding of it on just the passages, as though they exist in a vacuum and trump everything else.  The traditional arguments ignore God’s consistent call for mercy, God’s system of justice that is decidedly restorative, not exclusively punitive, and most importantly, the cross.  Most of our approaches to hell ignore the grace that God re-established at the cross. So when Jesus talks about hell, it must be in light of the mission he’s engaged in, not opposed to it.

It’s fair to ask a question when trying to determine the meaning of the passages.  “Do our understand of those passages jibe with the intent and purpose of the cross, which is to re-establish the awareness of grace that has existed before time?” In other words, does God simply ignore the cross at the final judgment (separating the sheep and the goats) or does the passages regarding hell have a different meaning?

In debate, when an argument reaches absurd proportions, it’s usually time to re-examine the underlying assumptions about the argument.  And this is the problem of hell.  The current theological framework of hell is patently absurd.  It makes God out to be a monster.

On Facebook, David Chapman responded to John’s post by saying,

“He would be a sadistic monster. God would be infinitely worse than Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, or any other mass murderer because at least those people got released from the pain…well not according to Fundi’s because most of them conceivably did not accept Christ because they were a different religion so they were tortured in this life, then died and get to be tortured in the next for eternity for the crime of not being born in a part of the world where Christianity is prevalent. God would be torturing people for ETERNITY for a finite crime…I wouldnt want to worship that monster.“

Could it be that the image of God who creates our current understanding of hell, is actually us?

What say you?

“Regarding hell, what Chan and others must do is show how the traditional view of hell is in any way “just,” and philosophically speaking I have not seen this done well in either academic or popular Christian literature.” Jeff Cook on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed

I don’t know about you but that is one of most intriguing things I’ve heard in a loooooooooong time.

What if the love of God never left us? We just couldn’t see it until we had exhausted all of our own efforts.

If Jesus is the Son of God, what does it mean when God chooses to engage suffering?

How is God satisfied by eternally punishing someone.  Is the concept of eternal punishment the exact opposite of satisfied?

Anyone?

Author, Brené Brown

ht: Jeromy

“Old man, old man take a look at my life…life…life. Cause I’m a lot like you.”

This is the top song on my iPod right now. Reminds me a lot of the song Cats in the Cradle, done very well by Ugly Kid Joe, and My Father’s Gun by Elton John.  Deep reflections of a relationship with a father.

I was thinking about the impact my father has had on my life. Our image of the father deeply shapes who we are.  They make judgments of us, and because they are so important to us, we accept them.  I was deeply blessed in life with a father that continuously told me he loved me.  He was never afraid to kiss me on the lips right up to the time he died.  I thank him for that courage, the willingness to show me affection.  So when my parents divorced and he moved 30 minutes away, it felt like a million miles.  My bedrock had been torn apart as I invented reason he had left.  Children do that.

Now at 44, I wrestle with what it means to be a father to three young children. It is arguably the hardest thing I do in life.  Some days my children push me in ways that tear at me. But when they lay their head on their pillow I am reminded that there is nothing that could ever make me stop loving them.  I now have a new appreciation for what my parents went through in life.  It rarely turns out the way we planned.  Yet every morning I wake up I am reminded of their courage to continue…even when it’s hard.

“It’s not about winning.  It’s about the rivers you cross.”

And it has been hitting me lately why we fight so vehemently about theology.  If we are created in the image of God, our image of God deeply shapes who we think we are.  To look in the mirror is to see the image of God.  And if we can’t see that image, what options are there.  I sadly get all the fighting, the arguments, the dialog, and the discussion.  It comes from a deep place.  We long for God to be loving because we need and want to be loving.  We long for God to be just because we need and want for justice.  Yet much of our attempts at love and justice are thwarted by our own lusts and desires for self-destruction, bents that tear at our hearts.  And all the while we settle for something that curbs our longings, at least for the moment.

If I have done one thing in my life it has been not to settle for what has been given to me.  I chose to look in the mirror and find the image of God.  It required facing my deepest fears, the possibility that I really was absent of God.  I wrestled with it, tore it apart, and put it all back together again.  This process cost me more than I could have imaged.  It cost me friends, acquaintances, and someone very special to me.  To leave the old self behind means leaving the person many people have come to expect you to be.

Yet my search has given me a peace that I cannot describe.  In the darkest of days, I am reminded that my Father is still there.  He has never abandoned me.  But I have also learned that my father was willing to let me experience pain for the sake of my freedom, maturity and growth.

“By the way he walked he taught me how to believe.”

It seems to me that in a lot of the spin regarding Rob Bell’s book, an interesting thing happened.  Much of the dialogue suddenly turned to people defending people’s choice to exclude themselves from heaven.  Yet the tension Rob is really confronting is God’s need (or our historical orthodox position) that God keeps people out.

What say you?

“Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain–particularly the frontal lobes and anterior cingulate-where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.” It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.”

Michael Gershon, reviewing Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman’s, How God Changes Your Brain.