H---E---Double Hockey Sticks

so, the first week in hell is over! not too bad eh?

last night a large group of us gathered to begin our new series: 4 weeks in hell.

the topic was whether or not we believe in a hell that is a pit of fire where sinners and the lost spend eternity slow roasting for all their sins.

if you have spent any time at all talking to thoughtful people concerned with matters of the faith the topic of hell will most likely come to the surface at some point. the questions usually go something like this:

• how can a loving god send people to burn for eternity?


• isn't it arrogant to think that only christians are the only ones who won't burn?


• i am a good person, why should i spend all eternity burning? i never hurt anyone, i'm no murderer! i love my family and friends...that hardly sounds fair!

most of the people at immersion last night admitted that those are fairly compelling reasons to avoid the whole topic all together.

however, we cannot truly avoid it because it is in the bible. and let us not forget that jesus does spend quite a bit of time talking about it.

so, what is the thoughtful and compassionate believer to do?

well, come to immersion for starters!! [we kid...is funny, no?]

we read and talk about it in a community interested in discovering the truth.

so, last night we read john f. walvoord's defense of the literal interpretation of hell as a place of fire & the eternality of the suffering of the dammed.

here are some segments from his article:

"If one accepts the authority of Scripture as being inerrant and accurate, it is clear that Christ taught the doctrine of everlasting punishment."

"While on the one hand [God] bestows infinite grace on those who trust him, he must, on the other hand, inflict eternal punishment on those who spurn his grace."

"Eternal punishment is an unrelenting doctrine that faces every human being as the alternative to grace and salvation in Jesus Christ. As such, it is a spur to preaching the gospel, to witnessing for Christ, to praying for the unsaved, and to showing compassion on those who need to be snatched as brands from the burning."

while these are only segments they do communicate the basic thrust of dr. walvoord's argument.

this, needless to say, made many people in the community uncomfortable and somewhat upset. but who are we to judge the ways of god? if god deems eternal punishment necessary can we, as mere mortals, really object?

after all walvoord puts scripture after scripture in his essay to compliment and support his argument. some examples from last night [click on the verses to read them]:

isaiah 33:12-14; isaiah 66:22-24; matthew 5:21-30; matthew 13:24-30; matthew 25:14-46

so, what do we do with this?

well, as we looked further into the various texts we began to notice that while some verses talked about hell being full of fire others talked about it being a place of darkness. some mentioned there were worms there that would never stop eating people yet those people were being burned too. how are these opposite images to be reconciled?

we talked about gehenna and jesus' use of that word in the new testament. gehenna was a place where garbage was burned on the outside of the city and jesus uses this place to help explain the netherworld to his disciples.

we began to see that although there are numerous pictures in the bible about hell being a place of fire the traditional view may not be as clear cut as we first thought.

clark pinnock wrote a rebuttal to walvoord [the two are friends, well, until walvoord passed away] and he wrote the following:

"[Walvoord] actually asks us to believe that the God who wills the salvation of the world plans to torture people endlessly in physical fire if they decline his offer of salvation...Who would want to accept salvation from a God like that? Has Walvoord visited the burn unit in his local hospital recently? Is he not conscious of the sadism he is attributing to God's actions? [this view of God] makes him out to be morally worse than Hitler."

although this excerpt is more personal than theological [although theologians who use personal experience in their work do tend to be more convincing] the arguments pinnock puts forth are convincing.

the scriptures quoted by walvoord often appear to uphold his argument on the surface. but only a slightly deeper look begins to show cracks in the armour. many of the passages quoted are metaphorical [and some even poetic] in nature are do not appear to have been designed to be interepreted literally. others are stories.

an example is the use of jesus' parable of the rich man and lazarus in luke 16 when the rich man goes to hell and asks laarus-who is in heaven-for some water to cool him in the flames. walvoord uses this as proof of hell's fiery reality. however, hell is not what this tale is about. it looks to have been a popular morality lesson circulating in the day when jesus walked the earth. jesus uses the story to illustrate his point, which is summed up at the end of the lesson:

He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'
" 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

the point of this story is not that hell is full of fire but that the law and the prophets all point to the divinity of jesus. that those who refuse to believe will never believe...even if a man should come back from the dead! this story was told to the readers so that they would understand better how so many could reject christ! to use this tale to defend the traditional view of hell misses the point entirely [after all, why does lazarus go to heaven? there is no mention that he was a believer or any mention about his piety or faithfulness at all...because this is not about the afterlife but is a clever story about the actions of people in this life!]

this is only part 1 so we will leave it at this: the idea of hell as a pit of fire burning forever is not as easy to prove as some would lead us to believe. the words sheol, gehenna, tartaros, hades which are all, at one point or another, translated as hell in the english bible have varied [and sometime contradictory] meanings. it appears that the traditional pit of fire depictions of hell are not necessarily the most biblical...even though the proponents for this position argue that they are! therefore, we are forced to resign ourselves to the fact that we do not have an answer yet, but we seem to be getting closer.

good thing we have 3 more weeks in hell.