Christian Views On Hell – Part 1 (Introduction)		Download	PowerPoint

Introduction

John:  We’re going to start a new series tonight. You might guess from the picture on the screen that we’ve finally come all the way full circle because we’re going to talk about the doctrine of hell. And so there’s a little bit of trepidation on my part because I thought, “Why are we going to do this? Why do we need to go to this topic?” And Tiffany, who is not here tonight, we had this really interesting discussion a few weeks back, when we were sitting at Legends — as you know, if you don’t know, we go out afterwards and have food together — we’re sitting at Legends and she said, “What’s up on the schedule? What’s coming up next?” And I said, “Well, I think we’re finally going to tackle the doctrine of hell.” And she said, not in a pun, but, “Why the hell would we do that?” [Laughter]  It was like a really good question and I’ve been thinking about that question for three weeks because there’s a part of me that just doesn’t want to do it.

An Unexamined Faith

John: So, let me back up a little bit and tell about why we do anything in this group. Because before we just talk about why we’re going to do the series, let’s just remember why we do anything. Anyone know where this quote is from? “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Does anyone know who said this?

Daniel:  Was it you?

John: It wasn’t me.

Daniel: Aristotle?

John: Close.

Daniel:  Plato … Soctrates …

John: Yes, just keep going, right? [Laughter]  It was actually Socrates who said that the unexamined life is not worth living, alright?  So, just a little test to see if anybody paid attention in any of those philosophy classes they took.  But here’s a close quote to that. Picking up on this, Elton Trueblood said, “The unexamined faith is not worth having.” That was his twist on it. Now you might be thinking, “Who the heck is Elton Trueblood?” [Laughter] Elton Trueblood was the chaplain at Harvard and Stanford before he went off later in life to form a Quaker seminary and that was during the 20^th Century. He held some prominent positions as a chaplain.  And in the midst of those institutions, like Harvard and Stanford, he really felt that bringing examined faith was one of the most important things that we can do as Christians.

So, I want to start with this.  Contrary to popular opinion, Christians aren’t supposed to just have faith.  I think this group knows this well. We’ve thread this ground really well.  But I also feel sometimes that we think, “Well, you know what, we can also just get busy.” That would be the other alternative.  Like, forget all the series that actually examine our faith. Maybe we could just get busy doing stuff, and we have that tension always in a group like this. Do we spend four or five weeks, studying a subject like this and really getting into it, or should we just get busy. And I think that it’s neither of those two. I’m setting up, of course, another false dichotomy as I’m famous for doing. It’s really not just about having faith alone or getting busy alone, there’s something in the middle. And this last week, when we’re up at the retreat, I was reminding those of us who were there of why even started Exodus in the first place, going back all the way to this summer will be seven years that we’ve been keeping this form going.  We were looking at 1 Peter 3:15-16. So contrary to the “just have faith” and the “just get busy” poles of the extremes, is that we’re actually commanded to know what it is we believe, why it is we believe it, so that we can give answers to people who asks about them.

Why Cover This Topic?

I will tell you that I think in this area, we always get questions. And my proposition tonight is, few of us have any answers. Tonight we’re going to begin by what we actually might think on our own. Tonight is going to be very simple.  I’m going to ask you to tell me what you think. I’m not going to even go into very much tonight, just to kind hear what you think about the subject that we’re going to be taking on. Before we get there, I also want to point out that Christians are also commanded to demolish those arguments that stand against the knowledge of God and that’s from 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, and this is very key because I think there are many, many arguments that stand against the knowledge of God. We rarely think of the fact that we’re actually commanded in some way to demolish those arguments with what we can. We tend to just look at that maybe solely in the sphere of spiritual warfare. We never think, “Yes, I’m actually going to demolish those strongholds that stand against the knowledge of God.” And finally I’ll say, that Jesus’ specific command focus on our mind as well as our heart and our soul. So when Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,” it’s very instructive that He also added “with all your mind.”  And so again, in the poles of “just having faith” and “just getting busy,” there’s a part where we don’t want to be.  It’s a difficult place.  It’s a place of tension. It’s a place that says, “We have to be in a place where we actually have to form our mind.” In fact, it’s the forming of our mind that really is what demolishes those arguments against the knowledge of God. It’s forming our mind that helps us. Paul says it’s the renewing of our mind that helps in transformation. So, our mind plays a very key place. I will remind that mind is not divorced from soul, it’s not divorced from heart. In fact, maybe in the time that Paul is writing, the mind, the heart, the soul all kind dwell in the same place. We’re not also creating a dichotomy between our brains and our heart. It’s probably all united in some way in his thinking.

So that leads us to what the heck do we do in this group? Look at all the series that we’ve covered over the past few years that form our minds. I just kind of went back today and looked at all of them that sit somewhere on our website and all the different topics that we’ve taken on, and it seems to me that we’ve covered a large spectrum of things. Some of these series lasted one or two weeks, some of them lasted 12 or more.  Some of them you should have gotten college credit for sitting through.  [Laughter] But all of them, in the end, come back to a question that I think we’re going to take on tonight which is, Why study any of this? Why study any of these?

And so the answer I would give to Tiffany is I think that it helps to form our mind to go to places that people care about. Do people care about this? You know, during the retreat, I had laid out a book, which I forgot to bring with me, that I’d compiled of testimonies of former Christians who have left the faith and why they had left. They were answering the question, “Why I no longer believe in God?” And they had given answers and we compiled it, 12 pages of small paragraphs that people had given as their reasons for leaving.  And the subject we’re covering tonight, which is the doctrines of hell, really were at the heart of many of them. I’m going to just to read one, because there were so many of them that touched on the theme that I thought, I’m not going to beat it into the ground, let me just read one. Here’s one of those answers as to “Why I left the faith?”

Why I Left The Faith

“What really did it is the ideology about eternal damnation. Eventually, I had to reject the idea that a truly loving God, a God that was good and whom I could trust, would send people to hell for disbelief. God didn’t seem to care if they had a rational reason for it, if they had been born into a wrong religion, if they had never the opportunity to learn why Christianity was true. He didn’t care if someone had the integrity to believe what honestly appeared true rather than give in to fear and believe or try to believe in an attempt to be safe after death just in case hell was really there or really existed. I tried to weasel these ideas about hell around too, to soften them, but when my best friend died who was not a believer I was forced to confront it head on. I concluded that if God really would send people to Hell for disbelief, even when people had really valid good reasons for disbelief, then he was an uncaring, petty, tyrant, blank of a God that didn’t deserve to be worshipped in the first place.”

That’s the checkout story of just one of thousands of testimonies posted on the site in response to that question. And so, that’s all I have tonight. Ready to pray, you guys want to do some more songs? [Laughter]

What Do You Think About Hell?

John: What I’m going to do tonight in this spirit of interactivity, normally, I’ll talk and you interrupt and you ask questions, but tonight I’m going to do something totally different. If you’re comfortable, what I’d like to do is, I’m going to ask you just where you’re at right now, “What do you think about hell?” That’s the question, what do you think about it? And I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while, I’m just going to sit.  [Laughter] Just without even a single verse being cited about it, without even thinking about it.  I want to know, what do you think about the idea of hell. And my theory is that most of us probably have some reservations, and that’s okay.  You know this group is all about that. So let’s just start with that simple question. You want to like prime the pump? You want to dive in and get us going? Okay.

Monique:  I had no idea why we’re doing this this week, and I just got through talking to a friend of mine about this topic.  And I forgot the name of the book, but there’s this book that just came out, I think it’s by Rob Bell, I’m not sure.

Others:  Love Wins.

Monique: Okay, yeah, and he’s like, you have to read it.  Like I think I totally agree with it, but it’s so controversial.  I haven’t read it yet, and now I’m definitely going to before we start the series because I just want to compare. But personally, when I look at the big picture, and just  because I know God — it’s different when you know God than when you’re not a Christian —  knowing God, knowing his love, knowing what He went through, what Christ did, the gravity of that kind of sacrifice, the grabbing, the pervasiveness of sin and all of that, I don’t have a problem like I always remember God is holy, so I don’t have a problem with the existence of hell, but I’m very curious as to like where our doctrines come from, because since this book came out, people are saying, “Oh the Bible really doesn’t like talk about that often. It’s not really like, it only says ‘gnashing of teeth’ once, it might not be a real place.” Like all these things that might just be appeasing culture in society, but at the same time like, maybe it’s true, maybe we don’t know as much as we thought we know. So, I’m open to the idea that maybe I don’t understand something or there could be different explanations, but honestly, I’ve no problem with it.  Like I think is God super holy and so I think when you don’t choose him, you know I don’t know what hell looks like, but…

John:    So you’re not troubled by the idea of a God who tortures eternally people in a fiery place for the fact that they were born into a Hindu family in India?

Monique:  I honestly don’t. But the problem is, trying to explaining that to somebody.

John: Well how about the Hindu that’s born in India that I just described?  [Laughter]

Monique: I mean, explaining that, it’s a . . . this is a difficult like belief within our Christian doctrine to try to explain to someone like, “Yeah, believe in this. Believe in our God. By the way, does this…” It’s difficult. That’s why I’m glad we’re tackling this because I’d like to have better answers and have actual scripture and like just have, sort of, backup for more ideas. Because I think hell’s been thrown around way too much, too. Like there’s so many like fire and brimstone and like, “God hates this and God hates you and you’re all going to…” There’s way too much condemnation in the church.  But the answer is not to go completely to the other side either. But I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me, it just doesn’t. I feel like God is ridiculously holy and like, anything compared to that I deserve to go there.  Thank God for grace, you know?

John:  Alright.  That’s a view.  Yes.

Jill:  I think also, kind of what you’re saying, hell is really caricatured, as this like, “there’s fire there” and “there’s like demons and pitchforks.”  I don’t really believe that it is that literal of a picture. I do believe that there’s a hell, I do believe it’s a place, but I believe that it’s separation from God, which makes sense to me because God can’t be a part of sin once the judgment comes.  Then there’s going to have to be a separate place.

John: Okay. Who else wants to jump in? Morgan.

Morgan:  Yeah. I mean it’s the cognitive dissonance almost more than anything else where, yes, I believe it’s real, I believe people go there for some reasons and, you know, that God’s judgment is just and good, but, you know, it’s a very difficult concept that for the most part, like in practicality in real life, I just don’t think about it very often and I try not to almost.

John:    Is that like a defense mechanism or something?

Morgan:  Yeah, in some way, yeah. I think I have to say that honestly where some of it might be a defense mechanism.

John: Yeah, I mean clearly I want you think about it, right?  That’s the reason we’re doing this series because I want to think about it.  Because the alternative is to think about it with somebody for the first time when they’re asking about it. That’s probably the wrong time to be formulating your ideas.  And that’s been the cause of a lot of damage for people, okay?  Anyone else?  Yeah.

Joseph: I would say I don’t think about it much either, in the sense that I can’t visualize it.  I can’t picture it all. And, like I’m very visual, so if I can’t picture it at all, it’s almost like it’s not there.  Even though I know hell exists. And then at the same time I have problems with the way that it’s portrayed in the church and really that hell is portrayed in some churches in some places as this horrible place and your faith is just your get-out-of-hell-free card.

John:    And how would you like it portrayed, I mean, what do you see it more as?

Joseph:  I see it as more separation from God, but at the same time, I feel like it’s our faith that needs to be emphasized.  Not, you’re avoiding this place.

Morgan:  That’s really scary though.  Like I don’t know if that’s … you know, like,  okay, we might push away from the fire and brimstone or something like that. But if we really believe that all things are held together by God, and through God, to think of absolute, like Jill had mentioned, complete separation, that’s extremely scary. That’s more scary than fire and brimstone, to be honest. And I agree with Joseph, I don’t know what that looks like.  I mean how can we?

Joseph:  I would agree that it’s more scary for us.  At the same time for somebody who doesn’t believe doesn’t believe in God, separation from God or fire and brimstone, fire and brimstone is going to be a lot scarier for them.

John:    Okay. It seems like the person that was just expressing their view about why it was they could no longer believe in God, had a problem with the idea itself and the way that God would actually even allow a place like this to exist or that even, in judgment, send anyone there. That’s where the real tension lies for a lot of people. Yeah.

Heather:  Well in response to that, as far as the separation from God, that I agree with Jill, that I feel like it’s a separation more than a fire and brimstone place, but in response to Morgan, I would say like, that is scary, but I would like to think of it as heaven and, have you seen the movie “What Dreams May Come”, where she goes to hell because she commits suicide, but not because it was like a big sin, but because she is so blinded to it that she can’t understand that. And I kind of view it more as that, as the reason that they’re separated from God is because throughout their life God has pursued them and pursued them and pursued them, but when it comes to the judgment, it’s like he’s done pursuing.  And so they are lost in themselves and that creates a separation from God because they can’t see outside of that, to welcome God into their life.  And so like when you were talking about like Jill had a problem with like, with God condemning people to hell, yeah, but that’s because I don’t see it that way. I see God as pursuing them with love his entire existence and then not understanding, not recognizing or not choosing him.

John:    Let’s stay on that idea for just a second longer. Does anyone not buy that idea, that God is constantly pursuing people, and that he’s really giving them, in one way of saying, many, many chances to find salvation.  Anyone disagree with that?  Yeah? Disagree?

Jeremy:  I probably wouldn’t frame it in that way at all. I actually don’t believe in a hell.  I don’t believe that it exists anywhere. I think hell is a theological and sociological construction. And at the end of the day, I think I’m okay with some kind of purgatory in the sense that there’s some kind of refinement that happens, but I’m not even sure I’d go that far.  I think that it’s inconsistent with …  I think it’s inconsistent for me with the numerous passages that talk about God’s love, and I understand the perspective of God’s holiness and sin and on and on and on and so forth.  Yet, I can’t really understand how all that works in a content of a God that supposedly loves his creation so much to have done these things, whether that’s through Jesus or even through creating us, and even it becomes perplexing to think of being created in the image of God only to be destroyed.  And I wonder does God destroy God’s self. But in that very quality of creating us in God’s image, isn’t it something of God a little bit knocked down a little bit when God sends that creation, that thing that was created, to a place for eternal punishment. I don’t actually think it’s a place or an existence or anything like that, so…

John:    Anyone else? It’s open to everybody that’s here? Tonight’s really informal, I’m doing very little talking tonight. Yeah?

Monique:  I kind of feel like what contributes to confusion about hell, or however you want to say it, it’s two things: It’s kind of like Jeremy’s point of view, where they just don’t think it’s consistent or we can’t wrap our mind around it, so we just want to do away with it, because we’re like, this isn’t congruent with love, or you know, whatever. And I also think that the way we present Christianity as a whole makes it very difficult to understand hell. Because we like present it like this happy package, like if you’re a Christian, like you have all these things in God,  you know, who could be against you? And like, life is great. And we just offer this package that’s just isn’t, it’s not real, it’s not real life. And so people will say, “Well if God is pursuing me,” let say like Heather was saying, you know, God pursues your whole life and you keep rejecting that, and I think there may be some truth to that, I don’t know exactly how I’d word it, but some people would say, “Well, no my father died when I was two, , my mom left, like my brother was a drug addict, like whatever, people are dying in Africa, people are dying over here. Where did God pursue me?  Like, my life was a mess, like I never, nothing was handed to me.  Like you’re just lucky, you’re blessed.” Whatever they want to call it. And so , for them, it’s just like, God didn’t pursue them, why would they want that, and then on top of it we’re saying if you don’t choose him, he’s going to send you to hell. So it’s like we’re just selling this really weird package I feel like… And then that’s why Christians themselves are also confused, especially if you lived a really sheltered, bubbled life, where very few things, I mean, that’s awesome if very few things have ever happened to you that are bad, but it makes it even harder to understand hell. And like it goes one with the other, like, “Why bad things happen if there’s a God?” goes with, “How could there be a hell if there’s a God?” It’s like to me, they go hand in hand.

John:    Okay. Yes?

Andrew:  I always had the idea that hell is the ultimate act of mercy.

John:    Hell is an act of mercy, you said?

Andrew:  Yeah, because if you have a person that has rejected Christ, if they’ve been presented Christ numerous times and God’s pursued them to the extent of they’re no longer able to seek Christ, to put them in the presence of God is more traumatic to that person than to put them away from God. So to me, it’s the ultimate act of love. If you didn’t receive me when you were on earth, then you can’t receive me after earth, and this is how I’m showing that I love you still, by not letting you suffer in my presence.

John:    And do you think that whatever would happen to the unjustified soul, let’s say, coming into the presence of God, you think it’s worse than what would happen if they were sent to eternal torment?

Andrew:  You see, that’s where I believe the absence of God is eternal torment itself.  I think being in the presence of God for a non-believer, seeing the Shekinah glory, seeing the essence of creation …

John:    Let me take a straw poll.  Does anybody in here believe that hell is a fiery place? Raise your hand. [Laughter and discussion]  I mean I’m just saying, would you make a room for it?  Make room for it?  How many people think it’s more likely than not that it’s a fiery place? We know we can’t know anything for sure. How many people think that Satan is going to hell in the end, anyone believe that?  Majority of people? It’s just the reason I’m bringing up Satan is that he’s a creation. I mean Jeremy was talking about, God sending his creation to hell, but I mean, everything is created by God, including Satan. So it’s just interesting, just curious as to whether you make a distinction, for example, like Satan it’s okay for him to go to hell, right?  But it seems like … Is it fiery for Satan, by the way? Like everybody seems okay with that, it’s just we start talking about people then everybody’s talking about separation and darkness and all those other things, but nobody’s really comfortable with the fire. And by the way, we’re going to go into that, we’re going to talk about a some length.  You know there’s a lot of people who believe that it’s not a literal picture of hell that we’re given, It’s just the best descriptive word that could be used to describe a place of torment. But, just curious as to whether people think that’s the case now. Who else? Anyone else? Jump in? Anyone else want to jump in with your view?  Yes?

Heather:  It’s so hard to talk about. I mean to go over and to have a cohesive view of all these things.

John:    Do you feel that it would be easier to just not to talk about it? Because I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve come across this issue as being a huge stumbling block, not for people who don’t believe God. Actually, this is a greater issue for Christians. Because I think people especially in your generation are left with a legacy of trying to deal with all of the tradition about hell, all of the views about hell, with very little teaching about hell.

Monique was talking about Rob Bell’s book which I have intentionally decided not to bring into this conversation because there’s more serious treatments of this subject. This subject has been an issue for more than 2000 years. This subject was an issue even in like the inter-testamentary time, there were debates going on between the Pharisees who believed in an afterlife and a hell and the others of the School of Hillel who didn’t believe that, and believed in like the termination. So even by the time of Jesus, there are all these debates about whether there was going to be a resurrection, whether there was going to be a body, taking place before Jesus even got involved into this discussion about his own resurrection. There was already debates about what happens to you after you die that were going on for hundreds of years and the Rabbis were debating.  So this is not a new issue and I think that the reason it come to the fore when Rob Bell brings it up is because he’s fairly prominent as an author and he was kind of assumed to be within a certain camp. A lot of people thought maybe he was somewhere in the evangelical camp so, for one of the favorite sons to come out with basically taking of an older view of maybe universal salvation, right?  Which is probably the closest to what he’s come from the analysis I’ve read. You know, kind of sends some tremors right? Because people who go to school like even this one, you know, that’s one of the things you do. You wear flip flop, you play the guitar, and you read Rob Bell, and that’s how you know you’re going to heaven. [Laughter] So, if he comes out and says that there might not be this traditional view of hell as an eternal burning place, then people kind of get wigged out, right? That’s why it’s generated so much fury.

What We’re Going To Do

John: I actually think the arguments that we could look at are a lot more mature than just asking a bunch of questions.  We really would like to see if we can look at what other people who study this have to say. And that’s kind of format that we’re going to take, just so you know. We’re going to look at three or four different views on hell. We’re going to look at maybe like a traditional view, we’re going to look at maybe some of the people who believe maybe there’s some metaphorical beliefs about it, maybe some of the people who believe in the annihilationist view, that maybe in Hell maybe we’re just completely annihilated, there is no eternal torment. We’re going to look at a universalist view, which even within Christianity there are people who just believe that Christ’s sacrifice is so complete and so important that actually reconciles all people to him, which of course might lead us to the question, then why believe in Him in the first place? Which is a valid question to ask.

I think we’re going to look at all these different kind of views but the more important thing I want to get out of this is not so we can walk away with some views. Yes, that would help form our mind.  But the more important reason that we’re doing this, I think, is because I really don’t want this conversation to be had the first time somebody’s really pressing you because I’ve seen too many people either completely fumble with the discussion to the point where really they’ve just made up stuff on the spot, or what I’ve seen most likely, is people walk away with so many tangled doubts in their own mind that they start to really wonder what it is that they do believe. I think it’d be better to work it out because it does take enough consideration like God’s sovereignty and salvation and our views of who God is, the very doctrine of God and I think because all things come down to, even what we believe about the scriptures. And let’s see if we can focus on just even what’s in the scriptures, it’s going to give us enough room to wander out loud. And so we might even start with just some of the passages from scripture that even talk about hell, so that we can even just see them all to even counter simple discussions like the one I’ve read already, like there’s only one time it says “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Like we should know, is that true? Is that the only time it says that?  The answer’s “no,” but we should look at where that is, just so that we can like put up the pieces on the board and then start to formulate some of those. Anyone else want to jump in? I don’t want to cut off anybody else. I’d really like to hear people who are troubled by this, or if you think, “No this is a wonderful way to go.” Yeah.

Karissa:  I’ve been looking forward to this actually, this series. I think for me, just when you look at the characteristics of God and we say that God is a just God, God is good, God is all-loving.  I think what I want to get out of this hopefully, what I’m hoping we get to maybe, is like how when we say that God is a just God, how that also makes Him loving maybe. Because, just some I think I’ve heard some people say of, “Well, if God is all-loving, how can He send people to Hell?” That’s something I want to have a kind of answer for if I’m going to believe in hell is, how maybe sending people to hell is actually loving? I don’t know.

John:    See. Even the way you say it.  It’s hard to even say that straight right?.  Yeah, because we shy away from it, right?  C.S. Lewis said if there’s one doctrine in Christianity he’d jettison, this is a paraphrase of course, it would be this doctrine.  He would just jettison the idea of hell. If there’s one thing that would make his job as an apologist easier, it would have been getting rid of this doctrine, because this caused more people trouble, and that was back in a modern time. You could you imagine what people think of hell some 60 years later and how times have changed and views of God have changed.

The Immaturity Of Our Discussions About Hell

John: My cousins, they were like 6 and 8. They were sitting at the Thanksgiving table with my niece and nephew who were also 6 and 8, a boy and a girl and a boy and a girl.  And they began this very theological discussion we’re having right now. It kind of began like this: my cousins who were raised in a little bit more of a conservative church said to them, doing their duty, they were evangelizing my niece and nephew, and their evangelism went something like this: “You know if you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re going to Hell right?” [Laughter] Like straight out just like that. And of course, my niece and my nephew, coming from a more liberal denomination said, “Nah-uhh.” That was the response. [Laughter]  And my cousin said, “Yeah-huhh.  You go in the fire.” That was the answer.  And they go “No we don’t, we don’t go in the fire.” “Yes you go in the fire.”  So you guys have to believe in Jesus so you don’t go in the fire.

I sometimes feel like our discussion of hell is not much more mature than that.  Like we might laugh at that, but it really comes down to it. I want you to ask yourself: Is your comfort with the doctrine of hell in any way impacted by the fact that you believe in Jesus?  And you’ve already found him. You know maybe we have that luxury of not thinking about it so much because we kind of feel like, “Well, you know, if it’s there I’m not going there anyway. At least not according to the doctrines that I believe, you know? So, I’m okay with it theoretically being there because I’m already not going there.” Jeremy?

Jeremy:  You said something that really caught me and that you were talking about universalism in that Christian tradition, and you said “Why even believe in Jesus then,” right? But that was really peculiar to me like, is that all our belief in Jesus is?  A get out of … I mean basically to me what that said is, “Well my belief in Jesus is to get out of hell, right?” But if that’s not the case, our belief in Jesus is not about hell, it’s not about an actual Satan, it’s not about any of those things, right? It’s about something else, then my thought it, what are then opened up to in a very different way.  You know, if our life is supposed to be something else, or if it’s about some other kind of deeper truth which we’re just afraid to really think about or make a decision on and then go with it, so…

John:    I think there were some Christians out there who if they found out — just going out on a limb here — if they found that Christ was going to reconcile all things to himself, which the scripture says that, but if they found out that what that meant was that everyone’s going to be saved. Make that assumption.  There’d be a lot of Christians that’d be bummed, not overjoyed, that God would save all of creation. There’d be a lot of pointing at what they did, “I believed, and0″ I was there,” and “I was right,” and “I went to church,” and “I gave” and “I,” “I,” “I,” “I,” right? Isn’t that the craziest thing about Christians right there is that that would be our first reaction: “I.” As if the fact that God who created everything is going to reconcile the entire universe, if that’s the interpretation, that our first reaction would be “how unfair that was to me!”

Jeremy:  It makes me think of the parable, too, of the son who returns after being in exile, right? And the response that the elder son has is kind of selfish, really self-centered issue. You have this other person who didn’t deserve, and dah-dah-dah, or on and on and on and so forth.

John:    Yeah. That’s probably one of the reasons that Jesus told that. I think that we should instruction from that. So, a lot of thinking going on that we’re going to do, hopefully some answers along the way, too, but I hope that you’ll work out some of the things that you believe.

I leave you with this question.  The hardest thing I encountered all the time is people who talk about the circumstances that God allowed them to be in. So think about yourself as a person in this country who has the benefit maybe of knowing people who are Christians in your family, or maybe going to a Christian school, or growing up with friends who brought you to church or in some way be connected to a place where you had the freedom to even decide what you’re going to do, as opposed to the person who’s living in a country where they’re born into a religion, just assume that it’s theirs, and they’ll actually be killed if they decide they want to change it. Are we on equal footing somehow? Is there something there that we have to think about when we deal with it?  I mean those are just difficult questions to ask and I’m just leaving them there so we can kind of think through them, because I think sometimes it’s very easy for us . . . I mean, on one hand, it’s very hard to do this subject; on the other hand, for some of us, we have a natural escape, and I don’t want you to take it, which is:  “Yeah, yeah sounds terrible but, you know, oh well, I’m already in, so…” And I think we got to take a little bit broader view than that because I think it might kind of tell us something about us and the reason that we really have Jesus in the place that we have in our life. Maybe He needs to grow bigger than He is right now in the place we have him. I’m going to leave it there, it’s a good intro just to get us thinking.

Next week we’re going to have some of our friends back and we’ll start with the traditional view of hell and some of the verses that back that up and then go from there, okay?  Let’s pray and close up:

Lord I’m thankful that you give us room to even ask the questions and I’m hopeful that your spirit in the deliberation of this room and the wrestling that takes place here will illuminate something for us. Lord each one of us is coming at this issue from a different place, and you know those places, and Lord I know and I pray in your sovereignty that you brought us into this room for a reason, that in out wrestling, in our speaking to one another, in the voicing of our doubts and even our hopes, that we might come together and produce the truth that you give to us because we have come here to deliberate openly, in your name, and for your purpose and under your guidance. We pray this in your name, Amen.