H-E-double hockey sticks

I apologize for how long this is (4 pages in Word) but I have to say, this is some of the most eye-opening stuff I’ve come across in a while. Frankly, I think if you’ll read this, it will blow you away. If it doesn’t, let me know and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the message. That’s how strongly I feel about the impact this can have on our understanding of hell. Even if you do read it and think you get what I’m trying to say, if you still want the sermon, I’ll get it to you. Redeemer’s stuff is copyrighted, so you can pay for a copy on their website or I can share my copy with you. Also, I wrote a lot of this last night and didn’t have my notes, so I reserve the right to clarify once I can look over it again.

Maybe if I thought about it, I could come up with something that bothers me more than the doctrine of hell. But right off, I can't. I've passed the point of trying to explain it into something non-existent - for awhile, I was chasing Stott's view of annihilationism but I didn’t try real hard because deep down, I knew I couldn’t back it up without contradicting Scripture.

I guess lately, I’ve been focused on the fact that our own personal, or cultural, understanding surely isn’t perfect. Everyone has a sense of right and wrong, and that is initiated by God at birth (part of being made in the image of God) and therefore, part of it points us to the truth, and then there’s the other part – that which deviates from God’s system of justice. A fundamental belief in the goodness of man would have a radical impact on that, but there are also shades of gray; legal or cultural or experiential things that affect our view of life and consequentially, our view of right and wrong. More particularly to this issue, our view of punishment that should fit the crime.

For most, It’s there and hopefully being worked, molded to resemble more of God’s perfect justice. We might take the approach, “This word from God doesn’t line up with my own thoughts on just punishment.” What to do? Where someone would err, would be to take that problem, and ‘fix’ the God side, (like I mentioned I have tried to do many times) versus taking the high, and much more difficult road, of reconciling one’s ethic to match the Biblical one. T’ain’t easy and it doesn’t cut it to oversimplify with triteness and a dismissive, “They get what they deserve.” Our fellow man, the issue, and God, deserve more reflection.

Anyhoo, I am listening to the wise sage Tim Keller go through a series in which he addresses doctrines that radically conflict with the 21st century western worldview, particularly those doctrines that receive disdain from the cosmopolitan community. (New York is his audience but certainly applicable to us). They’re all amazing and if you’ve heard the man, you know I am not exaggerating. He has this gift (only word that suffices) of meshing sound, solid Bible and tremendous scholarship on the highest level, with post-modern, city-fied, and very current thought. He understands them both to a tremendous degree. He talks of absolutism and exclusivity, concepts that are despised by the free world. And he has this way of making sense of it all. Who has the balls to include Hell as one of these? Keller of course. I hope you find this as helpful as I do (and I’ve only listened to a little over half, so maybe I’ll do a Part Deux, if there is interest.)

Typical three part sermon (yeah right) and those three parts are in response to the premise, “Without an understanding of the Doctrine of Hell, you can’t fully…”
1. understand your own heart.
2. have peace
3. know the love of God.
I’ll discuss the first point and some intro and assuredly, get off on a tangent or two.

How do you reconcile a loving God with eternal Hell? That’s the question as plain as can be. Keller says, people often ask if he believes in the literal hellfire and brimstone and he suggests that this is NOT literal. Sort of whets the appetite, but I knew where he was going because Sproul and many others say the same. The shoe drops: the firey Hell is probably a metaphor, but because language falls well short of a true description and we're dealing with the metaphysical in discussing the after-life (Rex Justice's account not withstanding :). Actual hell is infinitely worse.
TEXT: Lazarus and the rich guy. Here’s a link.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016:19-31;&version=31;

Ever noticed that they don’t name the rich guy by name? I never noticed and even if I had, I wouldn’t have thought much about it. Lazarus has a NAME with God, an identity in God and rooted in the things of God. The rich guy? His identity is in his status and wealth. This defines the man. Can anything be more applied to America today and the prevailing icon of the self-made man? I instantly thought of the "eye of the needle" passage and many other illustrations on the same subject. Namely, that it is so hard for prosperous, well adjusted people to see the need for redemption. One of those tangents and I'll have to put the brakes on that one, because that gets into Jebo's "the one sermon you would preach" for me. By the way, as a Baptist you should know the answer. Its “whatever God told me to that morning.” Joking.

Keller is a big fan of the great 19th century philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. (looking now at his bibliography, he also wrote something called “Christ’s Judgment on Official Christianity”, which intrigues the hell out of me [pun]) In his book, “The Sickness Unto Death”, SK defines sin as placing anything at all before God. I think Keller says this in every sermon because it applies to everything, and in addressing his audience, especially good things.

A Toom tangent again but not to be missed: assessing ‘goodness’ is tricky business. I happen to think all Christians hold to the doctrine of Total Depravity. (a radical inclination toward sin such that you are not capable of pure goodness) Most Reformed people (and this hell thing isn’t really about that) would say the Total Depravity isn’t a great description because it implies that man will choose the worst option all of the time. The worst people in history, Hitler for example, didn’t even do this. What it really says, is man is incapable of doing good at any time, apart from God. There is relative good and people can debate this, but what I mean by saying that I think all Christians believe this, is when you define good properly. We look at goodness in relative terms.

Killing someone because you enjoy killing them ... 0% good
Killing someone because they have wronged you ... 1%
Killing someone because they have killed someone else ... 20%
Lying in order to save yourself embarrassment ... 40%
Giving money to a charity because it makes you feel good ... 80%
Preaching, singing in church ... 70%
Singing in church if you're John Daker ... 0%

All of these will obviously vary according to how much selfishness is involved, just giving examples of what could be.

The ONLY things that are 100% good are those things done with a gratitude for God and a desire to please him. Further, the ONLY way this is possible is when we live by the Spirit. And the Bible is clear in that, we don’t have that ability unless God reveals himself to us, redeems us from our nature, and allows us to live in the Spirit, through the vehicle of Christ’s righteousness, HIS nature. Hopefully, in this context, you understand and agree with what I said about everyone believing in “Total Depravity.” If not, let me know and I'll try to make it more clear.

Those without God reject God in everything they do. How can I say that after I’ve allowed for relative goodness? Because relative goodness don’t cut it in God’s eyes. This is an illustration from God of his HOLINESS!!! God wants us to know Him, and knowing Him involves not just being acquainted with love, but also holiness. Isaiah understood this, Paul understood this. Hopefully I haven’t lost you if you’ve read this far, but the ultimate point here is…

If something has to be motivated by a love for God in order to be considered good AND...
If God’s standard of goodness is perfect goodness without any blemish AND...
If God has to grant us Christ’s nature in order for us to even be capable of this THEN...
Apart from God, there is no good in us.
Again, this is NOT a discourse on Reformed theology but has a deep connection with where I’m going on the Hell thing. Hold that thought as I try to get back on track.

So Kierkegaard and Keller team up and are joined by CS Lewis on this definition of sin. Remember, “Placing anything at all before God”. Those who don’t place God first have other things and for the rich guy in the parable, those things were status and wealth. It should be explicitly noted here that given he was a Jew, HE COULD NOT HAVE HAD STATUS AND WEALTH WITHOUT BEING SOMEWHAT RELIGIOUS! Very important as in the eyes of his contemporaries and probably, if we saw his life on paper as a series of actions, our view would not be negative at all. It could be anything of course, relationships, kids, spouse, all “good” things that would score north of 50% on our chart, but certainly wouldn’t meet God’s standard of good.

SK/Keller then talk about these sins and them actually being addictions. In fact that we’re all addicts. Whatever you struggle with, is an addiction for you. This is some of the most brilliant part of the sermon and hard for me to properly explain but the point of it is to show the human condition as such and Keller says, in a bit of irony, that the Christian life, indeed the human life, is managing and putting out fires. The unregenerate spend time serving their addictions and putting out fires that threaten the addiction or perhaps, in glimpses of recognition that this “thing” is getting out of control, they attempt to manage the very addiction as well. Does that sound so very, very sad to anyone? The Christian life, to be sure, is no picnic because he is also putting out fires, trying very, very hard (hopefully) to put the fires out which push him away from HIS addiction – following God. This is an addiction to be cultivated, indeed the only one that should be. And it is not a natural one in the flesh, only in Christ, requiring spiritual discipline and effort to keep the addiction going. If this sounds counter-intuitive, following God is an addiction in the spirit, something that can't be avoided, but in the flesh, it is not something we want at all. Exactly why we should be on guard to live just that way so that our past nature doesn't rule the roost, Christ's nature will take over, and we'll naturally be inclined toward God, even addicted to God.

And the hallmark of addiction in the flesh is a misunderstanding of self. Ultimately, the loss of self in the addictions which have come to define self. (in the parable, the rich guy) Godly addiction would be the opposite of that and in one of those weird, poetic moments, it actually is the only way to find self and know self in objective truth!!! (see yourself as others who know you see you, and as God sees you) To die to self is to trash the broken, sinful, addicted self, to know yourself and to become yourself in Christ ... the self that God designed and recognizes!!! Isn't that great!!! Dang, that's good. If you don't think it is, I obviously didn't explain it well - let me know. Precisely why the parable mentions Lazarus by name. He's in touch with God and thus, in touch with self. He knows who he is. The rich guy lost so much of self that he truly no longer was himself and God doesn't know the name of this distorted person, because he has no name - only that his sin defines him. His new name is "rich guy" as defined by his addiction.

It doesn't get any better than that, but it also falls under the category of "the foolishness of the gospel". You deny the state of your self, then, if you realize something of the self, you blame others for your problems or condition (back to denial again), and finally, you live in despair and total isolation, embracing this new self because it is all you know. The rich guy in the parable implies that it is someone else’s fault, that had he known, he wouldn’t be in torment and would’ve followed God. Yet the parable is clear, “'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' Chilling isn’t it?

I saw the silly movie "Click" the other night. You probably know the premise - guy is consumed with his career, a good thing, doesn't have enough time and he begins skipping past parts of his life using a magic remote control. The remote is a fabulous tool that solves all his time issues. Then, it begins to take over, skipping stuff that he doesn't want to skip, only stopping at the next step in the corporate ladder. Soon, the guy is old, and dies, having missed all of it. His body was at all the birthdays, Christmas, vacations, but he wasn't there. The remote, once the answer to all his problems, became hated, and he couldn't get rid of it. Instead of using it to manage his life, it took control and destroyed him. He says to the magic guy, "I didn't want to miss all that". And the guy says, "yeah, actually you did. The remote knows your desires and patterns and works accordingly." Had he never had the remote, he still would have been absent from that stuff, fast-forwarding to the next big career moment ... HIS addiction.

Now here is where it gets good. (I know, it only took 4 pages) Based on CS Lewis but I paraphrase because I don’t have it in front of me. If we don’t believe in eternity, we will live life quite differently. These little tendencies toward impatience or misanthropy or whatever don’t need dealing with if I live 80 years, in fact, they may not ever grow enough to even be realized. BUT, if I see life as eternal, what will these things look like in a million years, if they continue to grow???!!! You’re a little jealous? Unchecked by the gospel, what will that jealously develop into? Need to work on temper? In a million years, your anger will consume and define you. A bit cynical? I don't even want to think about that one.

Lewis goes on. The door to hell is locked from the inside. What of the iconograph depicting people clawing to get out? That is not correct. Hell is all these addictions, all this sin, taken to their fulfillment. You are in a constant state of all your weaknesses being heightened to their fullest extent. You’re in ultimate denial that they are there in the face of horrifying manifestations of them. You’re in a state of blaming something else for them to the nth degree. You’re in total and complete and utter isolation and it is eternal. You're Daker and you think you're Pavarotti.

I don’t know about you but this seems worse than any physical torment flames or fire can conjure. It is mental anguish, unalterable and irreversible. It is hell, and hell, a very personal and deep and all-consuming FIRE that can not be extinguished. A focus on the physical is what we’re about, we talked about goodness already and said that God doesn’t really care what’s being done but rather about the motivation. We know that the church is obsessively distracted and preoccupied with outward actions being the mark of the man versus dealing with man’s sinful condition that is wholly internal. Hell, heaven are no different. We will exist continually, in the spiritual realm. The physical is so trite and irrelevant by comparison. Anyone who has ever been ‘down’ and they think through all the physical blessings they have and wonder why they’re depressed KNOWS this, inherently. Why do you think celebrities and wealthy people are seemingly miserable? Because the physical has so very little to do with it. The condition of the inner man, that is what we’re talking about and I think what is going on in hell.

So OK, Toom, I thought you were going to explain hell so that we can reconcile it in light of God’s love. Lewis does this so well, I think. Again, I have to paraphrase.

What do you want Him to do? Forget that we ever sinned? Forgive everything we’ve done so far and give us a fresh start? Intercede in dealing with our addictions and help us to stop their development? OK, he has done that and more in the person of Christ, and at a great cost to himself! Or do you want Him to simply leave you alone? Yes, he can do that, too, if that is your wish.

There you have it. That is hell. Period. Giving man his cherished and treasured free will. We want it so badly. We want freedom and autonomy and achievement and God to turn us loose so we can be all that we can be. With apologies to the US Army marketing department, that will reach a tragic and horrible and unfathomably devastating end. Yes, perhaps on earth, but most assuredly in eternity when God ceases to provide even a common grace to your life. Our selves are wickedly predisposed such that, left to our own machinations, every deed we do, every thought we have, every inclination, will apart from God’s saving grace, even his commongrace which prevents the current earth from slipping into chaos, devolve into a hellish existence where every deed, even those that once had a percentage of ‘goodness’, will be raw and radically evil.

To those who don’t know Christ, they get exactly what they want, and it is now clear to me, that even in that state, they will not call for God. They may in fact not even know that their life ever ended, such will be the extent of the disconnect. They'll know it intellectually maybe and they may call out to God, blaming Him for their fate, but certainly not in full realization and thinking that they would choose glory if it were offered. They wouldn't. We assume that hell comes and so comes awareness that they've rejected the Creator and there will be that knowledge, just as there is now, that they are not in harmony with Him. And yet still, the denial and the blame shifting will continue. They will lack awareness of self even more than ever, to the extent that like the rich guy, even their very identity has disintegrated. No awareness, no identity, no desire to change. Hell, indeed.