Last week we began a three week Halloween series we’re calling - Heaven, Hell and The Walking Dead. It’s a series to answer three of the most asked questions by Christians and non-Christians: what happens after we die. As we talked about heaven, we learned that Heaven is a real place where Christ dwells and believers who have gone before us are present. We were then challenged by Peter last week to practice mercy, grace, forgiveness and love.
This week we will continue our conversation by talking about hell in church.
In a recent 2014 Pew Religious landscape Study, it was found that the public believes more in heaven than they do in hell. Roughly seven-in-ten (72%) Americans say they believe in heaven — defined as a place “where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” according to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study. But at the same time, 58% of U.S. adults also believe in hell — a place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”
Almost every major religion believes in some form of eternal justice. That is, God or Gods are reliably JUST and weigh the good and the bad of a person’s life determining their eternal resting place. So it's not surprising, the survey of non Christians also believe in a place of hell or heaven.
It’s interesting to note that Muslims are similar to Christians in views of an afterlife, with 89% saying they believe in heaven and 76% believing in hell. Among other non-Christians, however, beliefs that there are places of eternal reward and punishment after death are not as widely held. Roughly half of Hindus, Buddhists and Jews believe in heaven. And roughly a third or less of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews believe in the concept of hell. Not surprisingly, far fewer religious “nones” — a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who say their religion is “nothing in particular” — say they believe in the existence of heaven and hell. Fewer than four-in-ten (37%) “nones” say they believe in heaven , while 27% believe in hell.
I believe in heaven and hell. Many don’t want to believe in hell because they believe all of the human race has some good in it so hell seems a bit harsh for a few indiscretions. But how good is ‘good enough’ when it comes to getting into heaven or hell?
I can remember a few years ago having a discussion with a professing Christian. We were talking about the idea of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. At one point, I brought up the report (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/34.125.html) that Jeffrey Dahmer, the rapist, mass murdering Milwaukee cannibal, professed his faith in Jesus before dying. To which my Christian, friend said, “Too bad for him that he wouldn’t get to go.” I couldn’t let the error in theology stand. I spoke of deathbed confessions, unmerited grace and mercy of God and the major reason for Jesus’ coming. I might as well have been talking to a wall. The person said, “God would never forgive His hideous actions.” Stunned, I ended the conversation with the comment, “ I don’t think we get to judge a person’s heart so I’m glad my eternal fate isn’t in your hands.” We laughed nervously and backed away from each other.
Let’s have a little fun. If everyone has some good in them, I need for you to give me five famous people's names to help with an illustration.
Who is the best person in the world today - almost perfect?
Who’s the worst?
Where would you put (pick characters of the current culture)…. And…… And
Okay now that we have scale, let’s ask the question - based on their level of goodness where would you put the get to go to heaven or goes to hell dividing line?
Where is the line? Who gets to make the call? The problem is we all have hearts and a nature which cries for what we want over and above other people’s needs or wants. Let’s just be honest for a second, we point at others who act worse so we can justify our own defects or minimize our sins so we can believe we are good enough to be in God’s presence.
The mainstream media doesn’t help us in seeing ourselves as we are. They promote the worst in humanity as a barometer of what really ‘bad people’ do. They also normalize the worst of humanity. The more we see humanity's problems, the more we believe it's normal. And if it’s normal then a God of love would never condemn anyone to torment for just being normal. Therefore, Hell must not exist.
However, this perpetuates two myths.
The first is that God’s justice is judged on some form of a sliding scale based on human knowledge. What was wrong 100 or 200 years ago is not wrong today because we are so much smarter today. But this is a lie. God’s justice remains fixed and when judged by Him, we are judged by His standards, not ours.
Hell began because God is completely righteous and morally perfect. His ways are above our ways (Psalm 18:30). In God, there is absolutely no imperfection, no blemish (1 John 1:5), and God Himself is the standard of what is good, right, and moral. Because of this and because of His righteousness, all fall short of the glory of God. Not one person alive aside from Jesus Christ has or will live up to His standards. This is why Jesus came—He came to die in our place so that we would never be separated from God (Romans 3:23, 5:25).
This leads to the second myth: God determines your place in eternity when in truth in effect we do. We have a choice to ignore the teaching of the ages and continue in our own power or to believe in a God whose love contains choice, discipline, justice and believe in the idea that a life worth living begins with a relationship with the God who only asks we chose to change from our selfish, self centered ways to selfless and invite him in to help us do what is not natural. Live an otherness beyond our normal nature
As C.S. Lewis said, there are, in the end, only two groups of people in the world—those who say to God, “Your will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Your will be done.” Eternity is a door locked from the inside.
God’s love is just. It offers mercy and grace for all willing to recognize the problem in the mirror, admit it and accept the help being offered. Hence, the reason Christians believe God broke through the veil of the spiritual in the form of Jesus. He came to make sure we understood his love was about justice. All actions have a consequence but Christ has come out of love to minimize the eternal effects through His own sacrifice.
Preacher/Theologian JD Greer says it this way: “People often feel that hell is some great blemish on God’s love,” (but) “The Bible presents it as the opposite. Hell magnifies for us the love of God by showing us how far God went, and how much he went through, to save us.”
As a Christ follower, my understanding of heaven is informed by the teachings of Jesus. The New Testament speaks of heaven more than 3 times more than hell. But it does speak of hell.
The Old Testament does not speak of hell directly. To be fair, the ideas of a paradise for the righteous separated by a gulf from the place of fire and torment where the unrighteous were tormented in flames, are all concepts found in the Talmud.
The Talmud is a collection of writings that covers the full gamut of Jewish law and tradition, compiled and edited between the third and sixth centuries.
The writers of the Talmud took their ideas from the Greeks and the Egyptians of their day, and these ideas were incorporated into other Jewish writings like 1 Enoch and the teachings of various Jewish rabbis at the time during the 400 year gap of time between the end of the Old Testament scriptures and the coming of Christ.
However, Jesus spoke of Hell and even used some of these ideas. The Bible clearly and explicitly teaches that hell is a real place to which the wicked/unbelieving are sent after death. Hell is this infinite and eternal death which we have earned because of our sin. Christ talked about this. He describes “Gehenna” as a place where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44, 46, 48). He spoke several times about weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who are “cast into outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30). He also gives the parable about inhabiting a “place of torment” (Luke 16:28).
From what we can gather from Scripture, Hell was created for the rebellion of Satan and the angels that followed him (Matthew 25:41; Romans 6:23). Scriptures indicate God never intended Hell and the lake of fire for mankind but that is where all will go who choose not to put their faith in Jesus Christ. The most important question is not where hell is or even when it was created but how to avoid going to hell. We avoid hell when we choose to believe in Jesus Christ—the One who died to pay for your sins and all who choose to put their trust in Him.
Be careful what you choose.
Reference:
https://youtu.be/JIjh3E5nw5g (4:54- 7:12)
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/10/most-americans-believe-in-heaven-and-hell/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2015/01/did-jesus-speak-more-about-hell-than-about-heaven/
https://www.crosswalk.com/special-coverage/heaven-hell/what-does-the-bible-say-about-hell.html
