Perspective: Could You?

I do not expect you to agree with everything I write in this blog post, but I do hope that you will read it with an open mind and allow it to challenge you.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Could You?

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:43-45 (NRSV)

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Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2:12 (NRSV)

Promise me you'll try

To leave it all behind

'Cause I've elected Hell

Lying to myself

Why have I gone blind?

Live another life

From "You" by Breaking Benjamin

I've never been a fan of "hellfire-and-brimstone" preaching.  At a young age, I was taught that unless I took certain actions and believed certain things, I would suffer forever and ever and ever in the fires of Hell.  Maybe you have received such a message yourself.  Maybe someone has started a conversation with you by asking the question, "Are you certain that, if you died today, you would go to Heaven?"  Maybe you have been given a pamphlet telling you that you can be "saved" by (A)dmitting that you are a sinner, by (B)elieving that Christ died on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, and by (C)onfessing your beliefs to others.  Maybe you have seen a crowd of Christians holding signs, warning unbelievers to "turn or burn."

This message frightened me at a very deep level when I was a child, and the fear has followed me into my adulthood.  This wasn't a message I ever wanted to share with other people.  I never wanted to instill in others the fear I felt, and I never wanted to use fear to coerce someone into believing in Jesus.  I still believe in Hell, but I don't believe in Hell in the same way that a lot of other Christians believe in Hell.¹

Adam Hamilton, in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, points out that "most of what Jesus says about Hell seems reserved for those who are religious."²  Maybe the people who most need to heed Jesus' warnings about Hell are not the people whom Christians are generally trying to convert but rather the Christians themselves.  Maybe the people who call themselves Christians are the ones who need to "turn or burn."  I am beginning to think that maybe Heaven and Hell should be discussed in a way that "comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable."

Jesus once told a story that still "disturbs the comfortable" to this day.

There was once a poor beggar named Lazarus who lived on the street near the house of a rich man.  The rich man lived a life of luxury, and, even though he had much more than he needed, he never did anything to help the poor man.  Over time, the rich man and Lazarus both die.  Lazarus is taken up to Heaven to stand at the side of Abraham, the revered ancestor of the Jewish people.  The rich man, on the other hand, descends into Hell, presumably because of his indifference toward people like Lazarus.

In agony, the formerly rich man calls out to Abraham saying, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames."

Abraham answers him, saying, "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.  Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us."

The formerly rich man cries out to Abraham again, saying, "Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment."  He reasons that his brothers will believe someone who has come back from the dead.

Abraham replies, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."³

One often overlooked detail about this parable is the fact that, even in the fires of Hell, the rich man never changes.  He's hot and thirsty, so he wants Lazarus to drip water into his mouth.  He's worried that his brothers might suffer the same fate he has, so he wants Lazarus to warn them.  The rich man does not ask to go and get water for himself, nor does he ask for the chance to warn his family for himself.  Instead, he believes that Lazarus is the one who should be carrying out these tasks for him, proving that he still believes that he is superior to Lazarus.⁴  Notice that he doesn't even ask Lazarus directly; instead, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus out to run errands for him.

The rich man is dead; his money is gone; and he is suffering the consequences of the way he lived his life.  Still he has not let go of his decadent lifestyle, nor has he let go of his supposed place in society.  So I ask, is the "great chasm" that separates the rich man from Lazarus some boundary between Heaven and Hell, or is the chasm something within the rich man's heart?⁵  The great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis writes, "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside."⁶

When Jesus began His public ministry, one of His first messages was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."⁷  The word translated into our English Bibles as "repent" or "repentance" is the Greek word metanoia, which means "a change of mind," particularly one that results in a change in a one's behavior and attitude.⁸  If we want to take part in the Kingdom of God then we need to change the way we think about ourselves, the way we think about our actions, the way we think about each other, and the way we think about the world around us.  We need to reconsider our actions or inactions that might directly or indirectly contribute to suffering in the world.

The rich man in Jesus' parable refused to change the way he thought about himself, Lazarus, and their places in the world.  He would not change during his lifetime, nor would he change in the afterlife.

Poet John Milton once mused, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, [and] a Hell of Heaven."  One of my favorite stories beautifully demonstrates this concept and illuminates the need to change the way one thinks.  It is not a biblical story, but I cannot help but think that it contains a lot of truth.

There was once a man who had the chance to travel to both Heaven and Hell.  He traveled first to Hell where he saw tables covered with food; the people gathered around the tables, however, were skin and bones.  The man took a closer look at the people and noticed that wooden splints immobilized their arms.  Because they were unable to bend their elbows, they could not get any food to their mouths.  They were wasting away, unable to feed themselves.

The man then traveled to Heaven, where he saw a banquet just like the one he saw in Hell.  He noticed that the people of Heaven also had splints on their arms, but, unlike the people of Hell, they appeared healthy and happy.  The man watched the people closely to see why they fared better than the people in Hell.  He watched as one resident of Heaven reached across the table to feed the person across from her.  The people in Heaven realized that, though they were helpless to feed themselves, they could still feed each other.

The man then traveled back to Hell.  To one emaciated person, he said, "It doesn't have to be this way.  Feed the person across from you, and he will feed in return!"

The denizen of Hell barked back, "Why should I feed that lowlife?  I'd rather die!"⁹

In this story, there is only one difference between Heaven and Hell.  In Heaven, people are doing exactly what Jesus taught people to do: they have learned to love one another.  In Hell, people don't love each other.

Now I ask you, the reader, to take a moment to examine your own heart.

Imagine that you are sitting at a table at the otherworldly banquet described in this parable.  Could you feed the people around you?  You might think about the people in your family, the people at your church, or the people in your neighborhood and think, "Of course I could!"

Now imagine that you are sitting at the table surrounded by the people you hate the most.  If you don't think that you hate anyone or if you don't want to admit that you hate anyone, then imagine that you are surrounded by the people you dislike the most.

Maybe the people around you have a different color of skin than yours.

Maybe the people around you are people whom you consider sinful because of their sexuality.

Maybe the people around you practice a religion that is different from yours.

Maybe the people around you are bank CEOs, insurance adjusters, politicians, lawyers, fundamentalists, rich people, atheists, Democrats, Republicans, egotistical megachurch pastors, or undocumented immigrants.

Maybe the people around you are former friends or estranged family members who did you wrong in the past.

Imagine that you are sitting at the table, surrounded by those people, whoever those people are in your case.

Could you feed them?

Could you lift a spoon to their mouths?

Could you let them lift a spoon to your mouth?

If the answer is no, then you need to repent.

God knows that I do.

I wonder if some Christians believe what they believe about Hell because they don't want to spend eternity with the people they hate - because they think that those people are unworthy.  Nobody really knows what happens when we die, but there is a reason that Jesus places a great importance on love.  There is a reason that Jesus tells us to love our enemies.  There is a reason that Jesus urges us to forgive each other.  According to Parker Palmer, "True community might be defined as that place where the person we least want to live with always lives."¹⁰  I wonder if the same might be true about God's community.

C.S. Lewis, in his brilliant novel The Great Divorce, writes,
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."  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice, there would be no Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened.¹¹

I do not believe that God's goal is simply to "sift the wheat from the chaff" or to "separate the sheep from the goats."  I believe that God's goal is, in the words of St. Paul, "to reconcile to Himself all things."¹²  If we won't be reconciled to the rest of humanity, then we will be the ones missing out.  We will be the ones putting ourselves through Hell.


Notes:

1. I make my case for Hell in my perspective "The Gates of Hell."
2. Adam Hamilton.  Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics.  2008, Abingdon Press.  p. 116
3. Based on Luke 16:19-31 (NRSV)
4. Rob Bell.  Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  2011, HarperOne.  pp. 74-76
5. ibid
6. C.S. Lewis.  The Problem of Pain. ch. 8
7. Matthew 4:17 (NRSV)
8. Wikipedia: Metanoia (Theology)
9. Wikipedia: Allegory of the Long Spoons
10. Parker Palmer.  "A Place Called Community."  Christian Century, March 16, 1977.
11. C.S. Lewis.  The Great Divorce. ch. 9
12. Colossians 1:20 (NRSV)

The photograph of the soup spoon was taken by Donovan Govan and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.