What 'Judgement House' did to me

The fear that permeates religion demands that to spread, a larger fear must exist. Selling or marketing religion, as opposed to offering the wonder of love, requires a maneuver not unlike that of a pots and pans salesman, who is taught to introduce people to a problem they don't know they have then to sell them a solution he happens to be selling. Or more precisely, "Spread fear, sell hope."
Fear breeds in a cocoon of scarcity and insecurity. A natural human response is to bargain our way out of it, the net result being that folks who have come to religion by fear have really made a business deal with God. We are sons and daughters of the living God. We are not business partners who have made a bargain to avoid some unpleasant consequences.
-- Leonard Sweet, Nudge

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. --John 17:3

I had originally planned on talking at length about all the reasons why 'Judgement House' is something that I think is a bad idea. Things like, borrowing the 'Haunted House' idea from the culture and use the fear it creates to drive people to a decision; how it focuses on conversion rather than discipleship, how those many of those 'conversions' are suspect, how it is a truncated Gospel that lacks the relational emphasis that is at it's heart, and how you have to pretty much already believe the Heaven/Hell/Divine Judge paradigm in order for it to have any affect on you at all. And, most importantly, how it presents a distorted image of the Father.

Instead, I have decided that I would just talk about what 'Judgement House' did to me, as one who was already a follower of Christ. In a post almost 3 years ago, I briefly mentioned that I was disturbed by the production, and that I wrestled with it's portrayal. But there was 3 months of wrestling, reading, doubting God, and depression that preceded that short post. First came the doubts -- could a good God in whom there is no darkness conceive of such torture? Is tossing someone into an eternal fire really a Just punishment? The production made God seem more like Nero, making humans into torches, rather than a God who loved. As a result of these images, I began to lose faith and in an effort to save my faith I began to read widely on alternative views on the subject. I read on the Greek, Roman, and Medieval influences on the concepts of Justice, Wrath, and Hell (among other things). And I read about and seriously considered 'Ultimate Reconciliation' -- so much so that I probably would hold that position today (there aren't as many verses you would have to stretch to believe this as you might think), had I not found C.S. Lewis's 'The Great Divorce'. It's is a shame that I had never heard of this work of his. Though it is fiction, I think it provides a much better way to discuss the subject in our time than images out of Dante's 'Inferno'.

So while some of my friends (and I do still very much consider you friends, even if I disagree with JH) are singing the praises of JH , I will be rereading 'The Great Divorce' -- anyone want to read it with me?

Oh, and just as an FYI, don't bother asking if I want to participate - I've been through that hell already and I'm sure you don't want to pay for therapy. In fact I might need to disappear for about 3 months until the belief in hell's ability to save is out of everyone's system.

Hell and other things

This week has been and interesting week; I had a confluence of messages from Father. The first message I blogged about in a previous post. Then I started reading "Abba's Child" by Brendan Manning. In the book he talks about how, in our relationship with Father, there are 2 critical things that need to be settled in our hearts; His character, and our identity. Brendan says that the biggest problem in the American church is self-rejection because it contradicts the voice that calls us 'Beloved'.

The 3rd message I heard this week can be found here:
Hell: Isn't the God of Christianity an angry judge?

I found this message on the website for a book called 'The reason for God' by Tim Keller. It might sound strange to say that this message fit in so well with the other messages, but you need to hear it to understand. Tim describes hell as placing your identity in something other than God, and to me that fit very well with Brendan's message that our identity is 'Beloved of God' as well as God showing me personally that I was not abandoned like I once thought.

I will say that I think explaining the Cross as cure, like Wayne Jacobsen does, actually would fit better in this message than Tim's brief description of the Cross does. At any rate, take a listen and feel free to comment!

Adventures in learning to drive

My oldest son now has his learners permit, and as dad I'm the one who gets to sit in the passenger seat and attempt to give him pointers as he learns to drive. He has actually been doing very well, but yesterday we had our first close call. We were driving down the road in the right-most lane and a little ways up ahead there was a car stopped in our lane. As we got closer, my son still hadn't started to brake or let even let off the gas. I began to yell 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' at the top of my voice out of sheer terror as the bumper of that car quickly began to close in. As he finally began a much harder than normal brake, all the thoughts of things that could still go wrong filled my head and continued to cause a great amount of fear; 'What if there is a patch of gravel in the road and we end up sliding into that car, or what if the vehicle behind us can't stop in time because we haven't given them much warning.' I have experienced both of these before, so my experience tells me that you can never brake too early, only too late. My son probably saw things differently than I did for 2 reasons. First, being a new driver he probably has the idea that the car will always do exactly what you want it to, so you can 'stop on a dime' if you want. Second he was the one behind the wheel, and being behind the wheel give you more options than the passenger has. As the passenger, I was in sheer terror and I wanted to be anywhere but in that car in those few moments.

At the risk of over spiritualizing this incident, it got me thinking about how we often take people where they don't want to go. We sometimes take them on a ride of sheer terror, and they will do anything you ask if you would just them go. Paul encourages us to give grace to the hearer, but do we? How often have you heard this coming from someone who loves to tell people about hell -- "Jesus preached on hell twice as much as he did about heaven". I've heard countless people tell me that, but now with the age of computers we can now easily dispel that myth. I went to biblegateway and did a search of only the gospels and found the following statistics.

• Hell appears in the Gospels 11 times, you can get up to 18 times if you include verses about 'outer darkness', and 'fiery furnace'.
  
• 'Kingdom of Heaven', 'Kingdom of God', or Kingdom (in reference to the previous) appears in the Gospels 110 times.
  
• Heaven appears 135 times.
  

Apparently Jesus actually talked about God's Kingdom 10 times more often than he talked about hell. Jesus never dismissed the reality of hell, but it obviously wasn't his main method of inviting people into the Kingdom. Now you know the truth of the matter the next time someone tries to tell you that, you can tell them you know better. May we give grace to a world that is already familiar with fear and terror.