Peace on Earth

In Luke 2:14, a sky full of angels proclaim Jesus’s birth to shepherds tending their flocks with a hymn,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Looking forward to this moment, the prophet Isaiah (9:6) wrote,

“For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be uponhis shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Through his incarnation, his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus came to bring peace.

     Peace between one another.

     Peace between people and God.

At this point in the story we may collectively appreciate the sentiment, but what we think of when we imagine such earthly peace might be worlds away from the imaginings of others.

To be at peace may be to set aside conflict, but Martin Luther King, Jr. saw two competing visions of peace in the world around him, comparing “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”  In the second, King recognized the peace of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t identify himself with the comfortable, the wealthy, or the powerful, but with “the least of these.”

Peace on Earth is,

Peace to the suffering.

Peace to the refugee.

Peace to the poor.

Peace to the exploited.

Peace to the sick.

Peace to the starving.

Peace to the homeless.

Peace to those cowering from bullets and bombs.

And that means,

Justice to the suffering.

Justice to the refugee.

Justice to the poor.

Justice to the exploited.

Justice to the sick.

Justice to the starving.

Justice to the homeless.

Justice to those cowering from bullets and bombs.

Justice is the world made right.  And the peace of God is the peace of a healed world.

This is no mere sentiment.  The peace the angels proclaimed wasn’t meant only for a night in Bethlehem but to go out to all people.  In the Gospel of Matthew (5:9), Jesus tells his disciples,

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” 

This Christmastime let us hear the angelic hymn and go forth as instruments of justice and divine peace.

Walking Away From Faith

     Many, maybe even most, of us who grew up religious at some time find ourselves in a crisis of faith.  Some of us come out on the other side with our faith battered but ultimately intact. Others walk away from their faith altogether.  Whichever way we end up traveling, whether we stay or leave, many of our scars are the same.

I want to share the stories of a couple of my friends who walked away.  If your first instinct is to offer solutions, to defend Christianity, don’t.  Just listen to what my friends have experienced.  Practice empathy.  If you can relate to their stories, know that you’re not alone. 

If you’ve walked away, I sincerely hope you come back.  Not only do I believe it’s true, I also believe that Christianity is a truly beautiful thing, and I want you to be able to share in my joy. But more immediately, I hope for healing from the things that have hurt you.  I hope these stories show you that you’re not the only one who struggles or who has been damaged by the religious environment that so many of us strain against.

Friend #1

My journey out of faith started as simply an intellectual one. It was the realization that certain doctrines I had been taught as non-negotiable were maybe not as clear in scripture as I’d been told. There were interpretations, translations, or contexts that took these teachings in a very different direction. And when these teachings were among those that had shaped the course of my life and my view of my self-identity, even the potentiality of a very different interpretation required a serious step-back for evaluation.

It was here that I found myself, for the very first time in my life, willing to ask the hard questions in a purely objective way. It wasn’t as if I’d never before questioned my faith or the reliability of the Bible (which, let’s face it, are pretty interchangeable concepts for many evangelicals), but every other time I had done so, I had very much wanted to find that the truth was where I’d left it. That any scrutiny would prove that I’d been standing on the right answers all along, at least when it came to the biggest questions. Is there a God? If so, what is this God like? Who am I, and what is my purpose? What does the future hold? This was no nitpicking of doctrinal minutiae. I needed to know, truly and honestly: had I founded my whole life on a lie?

What I was able to see once the blinders were off was that every defense for faith was rooted in circular reasoning and wishful thinking. It was true because it had to be. It was true because these circumstances had proven it so; this anecdotal evidence, at the expense of all other examples to the contrary, was irrefutable. It was true because without God there is no standard for right and wrong, no gauge for morality. It was true because it could be felt, the reality of it, because the hope and joy and love of Jesus were life-changing.

It didn’t mean anything. Because those answers only make sense to those who desperately need to prove to themselves that they’ve built their lives on the truth, and when approaching it without emotional dependency on the answer, it becomes quite clear: it doesn’t hold up. The universe is vast and unknown, and we’re all just guessing.

Once I’d finally accepted the possibility that the truth may not be what I had been told, the bottom dropped out. My whole life had been built on the Bible as I’d learned it. It defined the universe, my sense of self, the past, present, and future. I’d built a city on this foundation—my marriage, my parenting, my goals, my hopes and dreams, my very personality. When the foundation crumbled, everything came down with it. And in the rubble, it quickly became clear that dictating a narrow view of the universe to a person from the day their life begins is one of the most damaging things you can do, even when it’s done with pure motives and the belief that you’re simply imparting truth and life to them. What it does is teach them not to think, and it deprives them of the human right to define and discover oneself. You’re told not to listen to and trust yourself, because who and what you are is inherently flawed and weak and wicked, and instead to trust only outside sources. When, from before it ever occurs to you to ask the big questions about life and identity, you’ve already been handed all the answers on a platter, what room is there to question? And who would dare do so when the possible penalty of questioning is eternal torment?

I was told what life on the outside was like. There was no real morality out there; good deeds weren’t really possible without the power and motivation of the Holy Spirit, and all other good was counterfeit. There was no hope without Heaven, no true joy without Christ, and love held no meaning without the Cross. I felt it in my bones, the truth of it. I believed with every fiber of my being that I was nothing without him. It was real for me. Not a thing on earth could have convinced me I could walk away.

But once I found myself outside the door, I was struck first by the fresh air. I could still hear all the voices I knew inside, the music and laughter, but the air had been thick and stifling, and suddenly I could breathe. It was dark, but there were fireflies. So I started walking.

And here’s what no one told me:

I could leave and lose nothing.

On the surface level, yes. People leave you. People will reject your story, tell you that you never really believed. But you know the truth, and you learn that you don’t owe them anything. Not anymore. So you let them go.

You walk through the dark until you see a light ahead, and it’s a campfire, a family. You’re a refugee now, and they offer you food and a bed, let you tell your story, and they tell you theirs. They like you for you, your individuality instead of your successful conformity, and you find the oxygen loosening something up in your soul. Maybe who you are wasn’t the mold you forced yourself into but something deeper, something that lay sleeping, dormant, but finally has the freedom to come out.

Everything I was told only existed in Christ was a lie. Maybe they believed it themselves, as I know I told many people the same thing and genuinely believed it to be true. But the fact is that there’s hope outside. There’s love, every bit as profound as the love I’d known before. An arbitrary standard of right and wrong established by a higher power is not the only source of morality; it exists in humankind’s desire to make a better future for our children, for the world’s children. And the wisdom and guidance I relished in the indwelling Holy Spirit has turned out to have been my own voice all along. Nothing has changed. I just spent decades thanking someone else for what was mine all along. I’m not flawed and weak and wicked. That was a lie to keep me needy, blind and dependent. 

I’ve lost nothing and gained everything. Everything I need is still out here, but I’ve gained myself. Self-loathing and self-distrust are slowly being replaced by confidence and acceptance. I’m learning to make my own destiny, to love and trust my own body’s wisdom and beauty. I’m learning to relish the life in front of me instead of always focusing on an unknowable future. This is Heaven now. This is the life after. 

This is everything I need.

Friend #2

I realized before my first child was two that I was done with the church. I was more scared that he would hear the rhetoric of the church than not. The same rhetoric and empty theology that had pushed a friend of mine to end his own life after he came out. The same rhetoric that allows for believers to spend more time talking about “biblical concepts” than effect any meaningful change in our world. The church’s agenda became something I was terrified my child would ingest: restriction of women’s rights, gun ownership, the American dream. Where was serving the poor, giving of one’s self, and seeking justice? I’ve always been a questioner, and I’ve never been shy about my dissent with church ideas that literally made no sense to meand had weak biblical support. But I, along with so many, did the mental gymnastics to accept the reality that I was a sinner who could only be saved from eternal conscious torment by saying a magic prayer. The more I stepped back from that machine of evangelicalism, the more I questioned, the more things stopped making sense.

I recently talked to a friend who has also left the faith, and she and I both went over Christian phrases and theology, almost laughing as we said, “what does that even mean?!?!!”.

The pieces I had been given stopped making sense. I couldn’t find the puzzle picture anymore, try as I might to make the pieces work together. Biblical inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, eternal conscious torment, the political agenda, the view of people not like us… if anything, the puzzle did come together in a strange, dark, and abusive picture. Worse, the more I examined each piece, the more I had no place for it in my life. I didn’t miss it when I threw it out. I didn’t miss trying to fit my own self into that puzzle. 

I began to trust myself, to find good in other places, and to research somewhat frantically how to raise children who are going to make the world better and be whole, healthy individuals. When you do that work, you find out you have to do it for yourself, too. When the research shows you how to give that love and wholeness to your child, you have to extend it to yourself as well. As I did it, new pieces came to light and fit together in a beautiful way. I am enough. If there is a God, we are his children and that’s enough. I recently listened to a podcast about original blessing in the place of original sin, and though I am fairly agnostic, it was a beautiful concept. Looking for the image of God in every human, and seeing that goodness and cultivating it when we can. I have loved seeing that good in the people I meet, and calling it out for them. Maybe it is light, maybe it is God, maybe its energy. But it’s something with value. I am now someone who looks for and pulls out that goodness. I’m going to keep chasing that goodness.

The Demand to Go Further

This post contains both a struggle and a hope.  It is a meditation without answers.

As Christians we seek in some way to serve Jesus.  It looks different for each of us according to our gifts and callings.

But are we doing enough?

We do not have the luxury of a selfish savior.  The Jesus of the gospels, of our faith, and of everlasting reality, who walked with his feet in the earth and is the image of the Most High, gave everything.  Every last thing, even his own life.  And he demands that we follow in his footsteps.

Right now I’m reading a volume of collected writings by Dorothy Day.  Day took very seriously when Jesus said,

When the Son of Man [he commonly referred to himself this way] comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.  Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”  Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Day saw Jesus in every person, no matter how poor, dirty, or destitute they might be.  She and the other members of her Catholic Worker Movement lived in poverty themselves so that they could give every last thing they had to sustain others during the height of the Great Depression and afterward. How many of us would go into debt to feed others?  How many of us would live in such a way that every room in our homes was open to those who have none?

I don’t think I can live like that.  That way of living seems utterly incompatible with mine.  

As I said earlier, we all have our own gifts and callings (1 Corinthians 12). I’m a depressed introvert, and I would so much rather study and write than interact with others.  But that excuse only goes so far.  I cannot change the world only from my couch or a coffee shop, I have to step outside my comfort zone to do other work as well. At the very least, as civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis puts it, I ought to go get into some “good trouble”.

I have a son who’s almost a year old now.  We’re donating his old bassinet, swing, and clothes to a needy mother. But don’t applaud!  Our closets are still full of what we don’t wear, we throw away food we let go bad, we buy what we don’t need, and there are a million more ways we could be contributing to the wellbeing of others but don’t. Maybe really it is enough.  After all, maybe we need to look after our own wellbeing too.

Perhaps my guilt is misplaced, but the challenge to do more is holy.

I’ve referenced the following quote from St Basil the Great in this blog a couple of times now:

Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief?  And those who do not clothe the naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same?  The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy.  You are thus guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not.

While I generally apply this to society as a whole, that together we have enough to take care of one another especially using the government as a tool, and while I think that if we all contribute together the individual sacrifice will be relatively small (welfare-state liberal here), I can’t quote him without at least a small amount of personal hypocrisy.  Do I model the thing I want for us all?  I vote for and speak out about broad solutions, but what of my personal life? If we all won’t do something, will I?

I am thoroughly attached to my things, to the very idea of “mine”.  What is rightfully “mine”?  Is “mine” even a morally acceptable category?  I don’t mean for people in general, I mean for a follower of Christ.  If that’s not you, these demands may not be for you.  I don’t know what you should do.

This is certainly no missive on how you should live or description of how I do it.  If this is the moral standard to which we are subject, then I am an utter and abject failure.

But there is grace, and the heart of the calling is love.  We are not expected to perfectly give everything up at once, but to be continuously led further and deeper into a life of love for God and others.  Both the end and the path are joy and growth, not guilt.

After I write this, maybe little will change.  Maybe I won’t answer the radical call quite yet, but I hope that I will be slowly but surely transformed into one who loves deeper than the world around him, deeper than he would otherwise be inclined.  Dorothy Day had that idea, the idea that changing the world was something that happened little by little, bit by bit, through small everyday acts of kindness.  I think maybe I can do that.

The Damage Done and Why I Left Conservative Evangelicalism

I can only assume that the Evangelical leaders who brought my generation up in the faith did so the best they knew how, but they did damage greater than they could realize.  In many ways, we were set up to fail as young adults and continued to be harmed along the way by a system hubristically sure of its answers and woefully short on critical self-reflection. 

I’ve struggled with depression my entire life, but my college years were some dark, dark days.

In high school and even college, I was taught that I knew better than scientists who spent their careers trying to understand the development of life on earth. My young-earth creationism withered under the weight of one intellectual battle at a time, constantly trying to hang on some shred of what I had believed, because I was taught that a particular theory of human origins was crucial to the faith I held dear and that without it, my faith would fall apart.  The years of unnecessary doubt and struggling scarred me.

I was encouraged in high school to think critically about my faith, but what it really meant was to learn ways to support predetermined conclusions.  My intellectual quest to understand and support my faith led me to eventually deny most of what I had been taught to defend. The struggle to hang on to the faith I loved fueled years of doubt and depression that nearly broke me as a human being before I realized that conservative Evangelicalism was only an interpretation of Christianity, not the thing itself.

In his 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Evangelical scholar Mark Noll concluded that, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t much of one.”  I can’t find the reference, but it has certainly been suggested that not much has changed. I have some pretty smart Evangelical friends who don’t fit that mold, but anti-intellectualism (unless someone smart seems to prove what people already believed) always has seemed to be the order of the day.

Too often, the spiritual environment was undernourished as well.  With the occasional exception of Augustine and possibly Thomas Aquinas, Christian history for most of the Evangelicals I knew may as well have not existed between the writing of the New Testament and the Reformation.  I got far more church history as part of my music degree than I actually did in church. After the Apostolic Period, Christianity didn’t seem to really exist in a meaningful way outside of western half or so of Europe until Westerners brought it there – no riches of Eastern Orthodox theology, no (relatively) quick spread of Christianity to Persia, India, Ethiopia, and China.  That’s not to say that people who took the right classes or signed up for the right majors or went to seminary didn’t find out about some of these things, but you’d never know.  The popular myopia was and is astounding.

Much of the spiritual variety I was actually exposed to was the theology of a deterministic Calvinist God I was unprepared for, who created people only to force many of them to sin, reject salvation, and be damned forever.  My Calvinist friends seemed to have scriptural backing, and I was thrown into yet more doubt and a deep depression that continued long after I rejected their theology, as I continued to struggle with doubt about God’s very existence and much of what I had been taught about him.

Let me tell you, conservative Evangelicalism is a terrible place to be when you’re depressed.  Too often, Evangelicals equate spiritual health with positive emotion.  A peer from the Southern Baptist college ministry I attended who’s now a campus minister himself actually posted on Facebook, “If you are truly being faithful you will be consistently joyful.”  What a horrible thing to say to those who are hurting. As the title of a good book on depression puts it, faithful or not, sometimes “Darkness Is My Only Companion”. Give me the savior who suffers with me, not some kind of abusive emotional prosperity gospel bullshit.  

And reading the Bible is not the solution to everything either.  I got so sick of that.  No matter what the problem happened to be, reading the Bible was almost invariably the prescription.  No, reading the Bible didn’t make me feel less depressed, and it sure didn’t clear up the doubts I had about the text itself.

Beyond all that, I was taught, both implicitly and explicitly, a theology that confused the gospel with the Republican Party platform.  The more I thought about Jesus’s words, the less I saw the gospel in the politics that were expected of me.  Where were small government and free markets in the Bible? Why didn’t conservative Evangelical politics seem concerned with the welfare of the poor or with racism or social justice?  Many Evangelicals didn’t even seem that concerned about poverty on a personal level, instead the focus was on “sharing the gospel” and “making disciples,” as if those things could be separated from the social justice of God’s kingdom.  My politics changed more and more as I read Jesus’s words about “loving your neighbor as yourself” and trying to figure out what it meant to put them into practice.

As I became more politically liberal, I joked to one youth leader I knew, “I defected, but I’m not defective.”  She responded with something along the lines of “I don’t know about that.”  While such a response might have been funny delivered in a certain way, it sounded pretty serious when she said it.  For whatever reason, I certainly got unfriended on Facebook.

In 2006, in the midst of Israel’s war against Hezbollah, my church held something of a praise and worship open mic night.  Before I sang and played my guitar, I prayed for the innocents caught in the crossfire of a brutal bombing campaign across Lebanon.  I even had friends on the ground in Beirut when the bombs were coming down.  Even if they didn’t care about Lebanese Muslims, my fellow Christians could have at least cared about the large number of their Arab brothers and sisters in the faith living in the most Christian country in the region.  Instead, I got chewed out by a member of the congregation for daring to pray for the people of Lebanon.  It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it was just one cranky guy, but I had seen similar, Anti-Arab and Islamophobic attitudes all around me for years.  How could I remain in such an environment?

Even if I wanted to stay, there was no place for me in conservative Evangelicalism. I was a stranger in what had been my spiritual home.

Who am I now?  I’m deeply scarred and still trying to heal, but I’m finding my footing on firmer ground than ever before, and my faith has gradually but steadily gained strength over the course of years.  Chronic depression makes it hard, but I think I’m starting to find some degree of peace. I’ve discovered a God of love instead of vengeance, gotten a firmer grasp of what the Bible is and isn’t, and found a wealth of Christian thought and spirituality I never knew existed.  My faith, that though not free from doubt and filled with unknowing, contains a wellspring of life and rests on a firmer foundation than the sand upon which what I began with had been built.

  

Hope Greater than Hell

In addition to other sources, this post owes a great debt to a fantastic article by Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware.

*******************

“There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell, if it lay in my power,” wrote C.S. Lewis. There are few if any beliefs held by Christians as difficult to swallow as that of human beings suffering for all eternity in hell.  The seeming hopelessness and injustice of hell has caused many to walk away from the Christian faith and torments many others who stay.   

If that sounds familiar, if you left or if you are still struggling, if the destiny of those in hell is a gut-wrenching obstacle to your faith, this post is for you.

At this point, some Christian readers are probably rolling their eyes, grumbling, and already sure they know and strongly disagree with what I’m about to say. They might be right.

The following is a suggestion that hell may not have the last word.  

It is an argument for the real possibility of a universal reconciliation between God and all of humanity, one in which salvation through Christ is extended to all people and hell is left empty in the end.   

Let me be clear, however: I am not talking about a universalism where all religions are the same and Jesus doesn’t matter.  The possibility of universal salvation is only through the person and work of Jesus and the acceptance of his loving gift of life.  When he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:8), he meant it, and so do I.

The Christian message has historically been referred to as “the gospel”. The English word “gospel” comes from the Old English translation of the Greek wordevangelion, meaning “good news”.  In other words, the Christian message is meant to be a joyous proclamation.

As the prophet Isaiah (52:7) wrote, 

How lovely on the mountains
   Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace
   And brings good news of happiness,
Who announces salvation,
   And says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

The gospel is often presented as something like this: “All people have done bad things.  To be just, God has to sentence them to an eternity suffering in hell, but he sent Jesus to die in our place and take our punishment.  If we accept his sacrifice, we are saved and can have eternal life with God.”  While the language of this formulation and some of its theological details belong to modern American Evangelicalism, the rough outline of punishment and salvation through Jesus are and have been held in common by most Christians around the world and throughout history. 

But the other side of the coin, “The vast majority of the people who have ever lived will suffer in hell for all eternity,” doesn’t sound like good news at all. It sounds like devastatingly terrible news, even if we’re being offered an escape.

Ware quotes Fr Sophrony, who wrote the following in his biography of St Silouan the Athonite:

It was particularly characteristic of Staretz Silouan to pray for the dead suffering in the hell of separation from God... He could not bear to think that anyone would languish in “outer darkness.” I remember a conversation between him and a certain hermit, who declared with evident satisfaction, “God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.” 

Obviously upset, the Staretz said, “Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire—would you feel happy?” 

“It can’t be helped. It would be their own fault,” said the hermit.

The Staretz answered him with a sorrowful countenance. “Love could not bear that,” he said. “We must pray for all.”

“Love could not bear that.”

If “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and loves infinitely more powerfully than any other being, can that greatest of love bear to see the eternal torment of those in hell?  1 Timothy 2:4 says that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” and the sacrifice of his only Son suggests he is willing to go to the greatest of lengths to do so.  And yet our God-given free will allows us to reject him.

There are two sets of passages regarding the matter in the New Testament, some that talk about judgement and hell and others that speak to the salvation of all people.  We have a tendency to give precedence to the former and qualify the latter.  

In the Gospel of Luke (16:26), Jesus tells a parable in which Abraham says to a man in hell begging for mercy, 

“Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.”

In Mark 9:43-48, he says,

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The word translated here as “hell” is Gehenna, a valley outside Jerusalem where the city’s trash was dumped and burned, hence the imagery of fire and the “worm [that] does not die.” This is the word most commonly translated as “hell” in English bibles.  Other imagery used in the New Testament includes “outer darkness” and a “lake of fire.” 

These pictures are most likely meant to be evocative rather than literally descriptive of what one might experience in the afterlife.  Indeed, theologians have variously theorized that the true suffering in hell comes from things such as complete separation from God, the confrontation of one’s true self, or even the experience of God’s love itself.  For example, the seventh-century ascetic and theologian, St Isaac the Syrian, writes:

I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love.  Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love?  I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any torment.  It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God.  Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all.  The power of love works in two ways. It torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend.  But it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties.  Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret.  But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes humanity’s final judgement based on how they treated others, which he describes as their treatment of God himself. The first half describes the actions of the righteous and their consequences, the second (41-46) describes those of the wicked and their consequences:

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”  Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

It should be noted that the Greek word translated as “eternal” in this passage and elsewhere, aionios, does not necessarily mean forever, but rather “lasting for an aion” (where we get the English word “eon”) or “age”, potentially a finite rather than infinite period.  Indeed, New Testament writers use aionto refer to both the present world as “this age” and what comes afterword as “the age to come”.  In the final verse of this passage, however, both life as well as punishment are described as “age-long”.  This would seem to suggest that, at least in this case, both are of equal eternal duration, and this may be the case, although theologian Thomas Talbott argues that aionioshere carries a connotation of quality rather than duration, pointing instead to their source in the eternal nature of God.  In any case, aionios, can be used in ambiguous ways, and we should be open to the idea that the eternity of hell may not be as certain as we think.

A second set of texts speaks of the extension of salvation to all people.

Perhaps the simplest of these is 1 Corinthians 15:22:

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

“In Adam all die,” while understood somewhat differently by Eastern and Western Christians, is a statement of an original sin whose effects are decidedly universal.  It is generally argued that “all [being] made alive” is merely a potentiality, not a fact that will certainly be accomplished, but Paul does not say “all maybe made alive,” but “all shallbe made alive.”  And why should “all” in the second part of the sentence be any different than it is in the first?  However one balances it with other passages, the verse is decidedly universalistic in tone.

We read similar statements in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  For instance, Romans 5:18-19 says, 

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousnessleads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  

And Romans 11:32 says, 

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

This last verse comes at the end of a series of difficult chapters (9-11) that describe God “hardening the hearts” of certain people and groups of people so that they will not accept him.  These chapters have been frequently used by Calvinists to argue against the idea of free will in salvation and that God will irresistibly choose some people for salvation and others for damnation apart from any volition on their part.  

Seen in the context of Romans 11:23 through a universalistic lens, however, chapters 9-11 take on a significantly different character.  If God must temporarily harden the hearts if certain individuals, how much greater will their reward and forgiveness be at the end of all things?  They are not consigned to eternal punishment against their will, but only temporarily held back for a greater purpose.  Who knows if even a temporary hell is their destination at all?

Other verses speak of universalistic ideas in the language of reconciliation and union.  For example, Colossians 1:19-20 says,

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Likewise, 1 Corinthians 15:28, a key text for patristic theologians like Origen and St Gregory of Nyssa, says,

When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

If these passages are to be taken at face value, then what of hell?  

The doctrine that God punishes wrongdoers is firm, but to what end?  The standard answer is justice: a person who has done wrong must pay for what they have done.  (Though we might here ask what justice it is for a finite crime to receive infinite punishment?)  But what has been gained?  Does a loving and merciful God derive satisfaction from taking vengeance upon those he loves?  Would he not rather be reconciled with his wayward loves?

We often see justice this way, merely as recompense, but the Bible speaks of God as a sort of cosmic parent, so let’s consider a parent punishing their child: A good parent doesn’t punish to give a child “what they deserve” but to correct them and make them a better person. Change is the object.  Beyond recompense, justice is also a state in which all things have been made right.  George MacDonald suggests that, “Punishment…is not the thing required of God, but the absolute destruction of sin.”  Like Origen, Isaac, Gregory, and others, MacDonald sees God as a kind of ultimate physician, allowing a punishment that at its core is corrective rather that retributive.

The Bible says again and again that God passionately loves the whole world. If there was a way to rescue all, even the dead, would an infinitely loving God not do so?  If we agree with St Isaac the Syrian and others like him that the torment of hell is one of self-reflection and the overwhelming guilt of rejecting the very source of love or even the experience of rejected love itself (this is a common view amongst Eastern Orthodox Christians), why might God not allow those individuals the chance to change their minds?   

C.S. Lewis, though not a universalist himself, imagines such a scenario in his book, The Great Divorce, in which those in hell are allowed to visit heaven where they are constantly bid to stay, even though many refuse.  Nevertheless the offer remains, and the bidding never ceases.

The Bible itself suggests that death may not be the end of God’s eternally loving invitation through Jesus, with 1 Peter 3:18-20:

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah…

This is otherwise described in Ephesians 4:8-10:

Therefore it is said,

“When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
          he gave gifts to his people.”

When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.

While Christ’s descent and ministry to the “spirits in prison”, traditionally referred to as the “Harrowing of Hell”, is generally seen as the rescue of the faithful who died before Jesus’s ministry and death, those who were disobedient in the time of Noah hardly represent God’s faithful before Christ. It’s possible that this preaching was not meant to be salvific in nature, but I see no reason to prefer such an interpretation.  As Psalm 139:8 says, even “if I make my bed [amongst the dead], you are there!”

Nonetheless, free will allows us to say, “No.”

This is what kept C.S. Lewis from adopting the universalism of George MacDonald, whom he greatly admired and was greatly influenced by.  It is certainly possible that free will shall prevent an eventual emptying of hell, but perhaps love wins.  In his book, In the End God, J.A.T. Robinson suggests that perhaps love itself may win over even the hardest hearts:

Everyone may point to instances in which he has been constrained to thankful response by the overmastering power of love. And yet, under this strange compulsion, has anyone ever felt his freedom infringed or his personality violated? Is it not precisely at these moments that he becomes conscious, perhaps only for a fleeting space, of being himself in a way he never knew before, of attaining a fullness and integration of life which is inextricably bound up with the decision drawn from him by another’s love? Moreover, this is true however strong be the constraint laid upon him: or, rather, it is truer the stronger it is. Under the constraint of the love of God in Christ this sense of self-fulfillment is at its maximum. The testimony of generations is that here, as nowhere else, service is perfect freedom.

Perhaps this is not so.  It may be that the universal reconciliation between God and humanity is only a hope, but we must hope for it.

In the end, we must ask ourselves, “Does God win?”  If so, what does that mean?  If his will is that “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), is the eternal presence of persons in hell not a defeat?  Can God’s purposes be frustrated forever?

A Christ-centered universalism seems to me to be the only way in which God truly wins and his purposes are fulfilled.  In my mind, it is the purest triumph of love.

But can I say any of this with absolute certainty?  No, I cannot.  But do I believe it and hope for it?  Yes, I do, and it fills me with such joy and hope as no other Christian idea does.  This is truly good news.

I have great hope to affirm with Julian of Norwich that, in the end,

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

                                                      

For ease of both reading and writing, I have not given the detailed citations that I would in an academic publication.  If you want more information on the sources for anything I have written, leave a comment below or message me directly, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

The Gospel is Bigger than You Think

Preach the gospel always, when necessary use words.

This quote is generally attributed to St Francis of Assisi, although he almost certainly didn’t say it.  It gets panned a lot, and St Francis himself was a prolific preacher, but maybe it’s worth a second look because of how it encourages us to see the gospel as something much bigger than a spoken message.

So what is the gospel, and how do we preach it?

The English word “gospel” comes from the Old English translation of the Greek word evangelion, meaning “good news”.

At its root, it goes something like this:  People have done bad things and come under the power of sin and death. Jesus died to erase all that and rose from the dead to offer us eternal life and relationship with God if we are willing to accept it.  There are a lot of different ways of understanding how that works, but that’s for another post.

Evangelicalism follows a theological tradition that emphasizes the gospel as a story of personal redemption and the Christian life as one of personal relationship with God.  This is an important aspect of the gospel, but ultimately it’s incomplete on its own.

When Jesus wandered through first-century Palestine, he framed the good news like this: “The kingdom of God is at hand.”  This kingdom is not a physical one with borders but rather a way of living with God and one another that transforms ourselves, our priorities, and our relationships with other people.

The kingdom of God flips the values of our world upside down, so much that the “first will be last and the last will be first” (Matthew 19:30, 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30) and prostitutes and those who collaborated with the Roman occupation enter in before the religious elites (Matthew 21:31). To enter the kingdom of God requires one to become like a child and is exceedingly hard for the rich.  Jesus said,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-10)

and,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. (Luke 6:20-26)

The kingdom of God is a place where you love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and pray for those who persecute you.  And it has massive social implications.  

In Matthew 22:39, Jesus says commands us to love one another just like we love ourselves and likens it to loving God Himself.  Love here is more than a warm fuzzy feeling, it’s a prioritization of needs and wellbeing, sacrificially if necessary.  So how do I express my self-love?  When I’m hungry, I feed myself; when I’m thirsty, I drink clean water; I keep a roof over my head; I give myself an education and many other things; and when I’m sick I go to the doctor.  If this is what I do for myself, this is what I should also seek for others who need it. The kingdom of God requires us to reorient our social, economic, and political, as well as spiritual priorities in ways that may be uncomfortable and challenge our existing ideologies.

Make no mistake, Jesus calls for personal salvation.  In John 3:16, he famously said “For God so loved the world that he sent his Son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Later he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:8). 

But accepting that and entering the kingdom of God demands a whole new way of living.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says to his disciples,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

“Go and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”  It is a charge for Christians to make disciples, not just converts, people who truly seek to Jesus fully.

The college ministry I attended for much of my undergrad years took the first part of that very seriously.  In addition to evangelism, they focused on memorizing scripture and mentoring others to help them live a holy life and make more disciples in their image.  They were and are wonderful people, but there was a lot they left out.  On a spring break retreat breakout session, I asked about addressing poverty and social justice as Christians.  The results were…underwhelming: “Um…try reading Amos.”  Profoundly unsatisfied, I found plenty enough to put together a bible study on the subject that spanned both Old and New Testaments and required multiple sessions for a group to work through.  Earlier, I had also started a small charity in college dedicated to dealing with global poverty, social justice, and HIV/AIDS.  Trying to get people at that student ministry to care or even donate their pocket change was…difficult.  A few people (including my amazing future wife) were interested and joined up, but the most I generally got was something along the lines of “Oh, it’s so great that you’re doing that” and that was it.  Most people we more concerned with “sharing the gospel” and “making disciples”, as if these things could be separated.  Exploring the social ramifications of Jesus’s teaching like Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6:17-49) or the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” didn’t really seem to be on their radar when it came making disciples and teaching them to follow what Jesus commanded.

Personal salvation is important, but a gospel that is not also social falls short of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (The reverse is also true.)

Preaching is the proclamation of the gospel, but it must be more than words (and those words must be about more than just how to be “saved”): it is showing God’s kingdom to the world by living it.  It is showing the world transformed relationships, politics, economics, communities based on love for one another.

Feeding the hungry proclaims the gospel.  Prison reform proclaims the gospel.  Fighting racism proclaims the gospel.  Standing with the poor and oppressed proclaims the gospel. Sacrificially giving your time, money, attention for the sake of others proclaims the gospel.  These things proclaim the kingdom of God loud and clear, sometimes more so than the words we speak, as necessary as those are.

     Perhaps more than anything else, we preach the gospel when we live a transformed life, and how we live out God’s kingdom may well speak far louder to the world around us than our words about personal salvation do.