“Hell” to its logical conclusion

I’m going to give you a heads up: This is going to be one of the rare posts when I get up on my soap box and don’t get down for a few minutes.

Steel yourself.

Obviously there has been a lot of talk in the past couple of months about Hell…particularly with Rob Bell’s book (and now we know Francis Chan is writing a bit of a rebuttal that is due out in July). Now I have NO DESIRE to wade into that theological quagmire (if for no other reason than it seems virtually impossible to have any real discussion on this topic without digital yelling from either side…respect and kindness do not seem to be character qualities of Jesus we care much about when we disagree).

But tangentially associated with the topic of Hell was a discussion that David Platt and James MacDonald had in April in the “Elephant Room“…a conference that brought 7 mega-church pastors together to discuss various controversial topics with diverging view points.

On a quick side note, without getting into it too much…I was pretty disappointed with where the conference ended up. Though I really liked the idea of the conference, the conversations were, I felt, fairly unhelpful. Each of the pastors revealed how significantly they are attached to Sunday-centric church in that almost every answer ended up with the topic being discussed on how it related to Sunday services (even when the topic had nothing to do with the worship service). For instance, the 2nd session was “The Culture in the Church vs. the Church in Culture.” The “conversation” devolved into the pastors debating whether Perry Noble was right in playing AC/DC’s song Highway to Hell at their Easter service to reach people who weren’t Christians. Case and point, the question became oriented around the worship service: How far is too far in the Sunday service?

In my humble opinion, it actually highlighted our biggest problem in the church: Most people are still operating in a Christendom mindset.

But I digress.

That’s actually not what I wanted to write about.

One of the sessions saw David Platt (author of the book Radical, which seeks to really challenge Christians living into and accepting the American dream) and James MacDonald teeing off about Platt’s point of view. What it devolved into (you can read a pretty accurate transcript here), was James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll going after Platt for making his church live in a poverty mentality rather than a theology of abundance and joy (Platt’s 4500 person megachurch sold their building, gave much of the profit to third-world organizations and give more than 50% of their tithe to dealing with poverty. Platt’s book also went on to sell millions of copies, almost all of which he gave away). One poignant anecdote was when MacDonald scolded Platt for cutting crackers out of the Children’s Ministry budget so they’d have more to give to people who were starving. MacDonald seemed incensed by this action. Essentially, they took him to task for being a bad steward with the money given to him/his church, saying he should enjoy/use/partake in some of the money for himself/their church while also trying to be generous with giving it away to organizations that deal with systemic injustice/inequity. (it’s really worth reading the notes linked above)

Now you should know that I’m going to fall on Platt’s side on stuff like this. I think scripture has an even, consistent and compelling point of view that God is putting the whole world back together as we speak (every single part of it, from individuals to systems of injustice), and that, as Christians, we are God’s representatives, co-laboring with him until the day when everything is put back together. That means Christians should care about poverty because God cares about it. The early church saw about 96% of funds leave the church to help people in need, while today’s evangelical church sees 93% stay in house for budgets, buildings, staffing, in-house ministries, etc. That’s a significant reversal, right? (For more details on this research, click this link to a fantastic PDF by Ray Mayhew, it’ll change the way you think about money and the church)

However, this Elephant Room conversation was also happening in the midst of all of the Rob Bell/Love Wins kerfuffle…and these two things really began to merge together in my mind over the past two months.

Mainly, I wonder if some people are taking their beliefs to their logical conclusion. (meaning I don’t think they are!)

Just consider the interplay of these two, widely held beliefs/practices:
1) Every person who doesn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, calling on his name, asking forgiveness through his death on the cross, is going to Hell for all of eternity (I’m not arguing that this is true or not, simply saying many evangelical traditions hold this belief ).
2) Evangelism is more important than something like poverty. Evangelism changes someone’s eternal destiny. We must take an eternal view of things lest the person ends up on the wrong side of point #1. We have limited time and resources. Let’s focus them on the eternal things.

Now let’s put those two things together and suppose they both are 100% accurate (again, I have no desire to defend/affirm anything theologically related to Hell in this post). If we follow these principles to their logical conclusion, we have a pretty large issue on our hands. Mainly, that the people who are dying most because of things created by systemic poverty, by-and-large, aren’t Christians. That means we are implicitly saying, with the way that we as individuals and churches spend money, that we are ok with all of these people dying NOW and spending an eternity of suffering and torture in Hell.

That’s what those things add up to.

To make this train of thinking as succinct as possible: If we don’t keep people who aren’t Christians from physically dying from things like systemic poverty, we are talking about millions upon millions of people going to Hell because we didn’t really try to do anything about it.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why more people aren’t making that connection. It’s what their faith strictures add up to. If you have whole swaths of people groups that are dying from poverty and don’t know Jesus, you’re saying all of those people go to Hell for all of eternity. They suffered their entire life on earth and now they will suffer for all of eternity. But if we actually care about dealing with something like poverty, we save countless lives BEFORE they go to Hell and then provide an opportunity for them to come to know Jesus before death eventually comes (as it does for us all). I don’t know about you, but generally speaking, I’m pretty open to listening to people who just saved my life! And if they tell me this Jesus guy is the reason they saved my life, I might just be open to listening.

The best way to teach people about God’s grace, redemption and provision is to help them experience it. Healing, redemption, grace, love, justice, peace…these aren’t floating ideas in space, they are realities that are supposedly at work in the world!

Now here’s the thing: I don’t particularly like this line of thinking, of saving people from dying only because we want to save them from Hell. I’m of the opinion that we should “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty” because that’s what Jesus did and told us to do.

But you may disagree with me or read scripture in a different way. EVEN IF YOU DO…essentially, as things stand now in the world, if you think everyone who doesn’t know Jesus is going to Hell and you really don’t think poverty is worth investing massive and significant time and energy into addressing, you’re OK with all of those people going to Hell (but it’s ok, right? After all, they live in a different part of the world, I don’t know them and they look different, smell different, talk different…so it’s ok.) (***Please note the sarcasm). But we are fine talking about how important evangelism is in the United States, particularly for white, middle-class suburban folks.

This actually isn’t to pull out the racist card. But I do think it’s Western evangelicalism on full, naked display.

I’m of the opinion we should deal with poverty because the offer of Jesus was the availability of the Kingdom to everyone NOW. That we offer the existence of heaven BEFORE people die, and in heaven…there is always enough to eat, drink, etc, just as in heaven we have the fullness of a redeemed, personal relationship with our Father. That was Jesus’ message: The availability of the Kingdom in every aspect. The isolation and loneliness that sin injects in separating us from our Father is removed; but all of the ravages of sin in the flesh (like starvation, curable diseases, genocide, etc) are also dealt with. In heaven, sin in every form doesn’t exist and because of that, Jesus taught us to pray (and thus to act) “May your Kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This seemed to be a key teaching of Jesus: “It’s not like this in Heaven, may earth be like it is in heaven. Now go do something about it with the power and authority given to you by your heavenly Father just as you have seen me do it.”

But if I can’t convince people of those theological realities, maybe we can at least show the logical conclusion of the way we believe and live.

If you don’t want to deal with things like poverty because it is riven throughout scripture, that Jesus himself had things to say about it, then do it because if you don’t, you’re saying you’re OK with millions of people going to Hell while we casually shrug our shoulders.

(A final thought: Recently I heard it said that it’s helpful to paint thing in polarities and extremes, to use black and whites from time to time, because in those instances, at least you know where you’re pointed. That is what I’m doing here.)

So how about you? Where are you pointed? What are your thoughts on the subject at hand?