Here’s the thing: Parenting isn’t about the parents. I know this post is going to get me in trouble. I know it’s going to have people angry with me at this point, let alone after they read what’s coming. I know people are going to de-friend me and gnash their teeth at me. I even know that some people are going to decide to not come see me as a counselor, which will cost me money.I do not care. This is too important.Parenting is about the kids. It is about what is best for the kids. It’s not about the parents happiness. It’s not about the parents social life, or how fulfilled they feel. It doesn’t matter that most of our life someone has lied to us and told us a lie that we can do whatever we want and that having a kid greatly limits that.Now hear me out, please. It is important that parents take care of themselves. It is important that parents be well developed and emotionally mature people. So that they can model that for their children.

You can read the rest here.

It was dark in the shed. “I come to the garden alone…” was being sung by pastors all over. I had prayed 30 minutes before that I needed some confirmation from God about the direction I thought He was taking me. I knew there were dark nights ahead. My soul lanquished inside of me. Raw wounds stung my heart and bled all over the place.

My wife and I had been at our current church for 18 months. They had lied to us throughout the process until we moved there. My wife was hurting. My bloody soul was literally in shock. I felt used, abused and betrayed by the church, Christ’s bride. Now, I was going to move my family to Michigan without a job? And I was going to have to tell people that we moved because God told me to do it? To say, I didn’t trust the church would be an understatement (and this was before I knew about angry “christian” bloggers).

So I prayed, “Dear God, I’m going to do what I believe you are telling me to do one way or another but I need a sign. I know it’s weak to ask for a sign but I need one. I need one for the cold, dark nights of doubt that I am sure are coming. I need one because my faith will be tested. If You would, I’d like to ask…I mean, I was hoping…Here’s the thing God, I’m going to go up on that stage and I’m going to pray right at the foot of that cross. I’m going to pray and if I really am hearing You, would you have someone from staff here touch me? I don’t care if it’s a preacher, or a janitor. I just need a ‘I asked the LORD and He answered me’ moment, if you know what I mean God.”

Then I went and prayed.

As I was getting ready to get up and call it a day. I felt a hand on me. I looked up and it was Rob sitting there just offering me comfort. God moved in my soul at that moment. That was January. We moved to Michigan in April. It has been the best decision we ever made. We’ve since left Mars Hill so that our family could worship in the community in which we actually live. We want to give our kids roots and Mars is about 40 minutes away.

But man, the things I learned while I was there! The healing that occurred in my life. I am not sure I can do it justice. God used Rob and Mars to bring healing to my life, and that of my family. He Rob and Mars to help me get over my hurt with the church. Rob taught me the best way to answer your accusers because he did exactly what Jesus did and ignored them. Rob taught me that Love Wins. Rob preached three of the best messages I have ever heard on forgiveness.

Sure, he preached things I didn’t agree with all the time. He said things that made me stop and scratch my head once in a while. He also taught me that it’s OK for people to disagree. We can disagree and still be brothers and sisters in Christ. Being creative doesn’t mean you hit a home run every time. You know you have really good material when the stuff you’re cutting out and leaving on the floor is really good.

He also taught me that we can have real live humans that we look up to. Before Rob, I used to say that my heroes were all dead, that way they couldn’t let me down.

Rob taught me that you can be a flawed human, with a wealth of insecurities and still change the world.

Man, I’ve debated writing this post because I am sure that people are going to read it and want to attack him. There are going to be people who say that God didn’t really talk to me that day. I may actually lose business over this post. I’ve decided I don’t care. If it were not for Rob’s influence in my life, I might not be in church today. God used him in my life in a might way.

So like John Piper once famously (or infamously said), “Farewell Rob Bell.” I would add, “I and my family will miss you.”

Enter Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle and their book Erasing Hell. I had heard this book was coming out not long after reading Love Wins. Chan is somewhat of a rising star in evangelical circles. He’s about Bell’s age, and he’s written a number of books that have sold well – Crazy Love and Forgotten God. I have not read Chan prior to reading Erasing Hell, and my only experience with him was when he led our “small” group at one of the Passion conferences a few years ago (small being around 600 or 700 people). Given Chan’s ties to Passion and some of the neo-Reformed movement folks, I’m not surprised to see that he has a problem with Love Wins.

As far as the book, Chan (and Sprinkle – it’s not always clear who is actually writing) begins the introduction by stating how important it is that we get the doctrine of hell correct. He says multiple times that it’s something that we can’t get wrong. Getting it wrong puts us at risk of sending others to hell or even puts us at risk. To his credit, he also states that we can’t let tradition or our feelings dictate what is right as far as what Scripture says about hell. Personally, I find fear-based or slippery-slope framed arguments to be inherently weak. Yes, there is an element of pragmatism that guides the formulation of doctrine, but it simply doesn’t seem to me to be a fair statement that a Christian’s walk or zeal to evangelize is ultimately driven by what they think of hell. If it is, then I think there are other bigger issues that need to be flushed out.

Chapter 1 is entitled “Does Everyone Go To Heaven”. From the get-go I have issues with this chapter. First off, the simple fact that Chan boils down the Christian walk to the phrase going to heaven seem like a misstep to me. Did Jesus or the Apostle Paul ever use the term “going to heaven” as the goal of our faith? Not to my knowledge. There is a real dearth of good teaching on eschatology in Christian circles, and Chan doesn’t even attempt to talk about it all here.

Continuing in Chapter 1, Chan quotes several passages from Bell’s book. And this is perhaps my biggest complaint about the book. The way Chan interacts with Love Wins is simply dishonest. Now, I would like to give him the benefit of doubt here and think it’s not a matter of him being purposely dishonest, but nonetheless, the quotes he gives are out of context, and they don’t fully portray Bell’s thoughts. It is actually pretty easy to find paragraphs in Love Wins that make Bell sound like a universalist. The thing is that if one doesn’t read carefully or follow Bell’s train of thought to the end, they end up missing his point. For instance, Chan states, “Bell suggests that every single person will embrace Jesus – if not in this life, then certainly in the next.” Chan does add an end note on this saying that Bell says this actually isn’t what he believes (which raises the question of why Chan states it as a fact in the body of the text in the first place), but he also says in the same note that “it would be hard to say that he’s not advocating it”. Now, to me, it was clear after reading Love Wins that Bell isn’t advocating universalism, and in interviews he has repeatedly said he’s not a universalist. That is enough for me to take him at his word. Apparently Chan knows what Bell believes better than Bell!

Throughout the rest of Chapter 1, the book goes on to refute Bell’s supposed universalism. They mention some specific passages in Matthew and Revelation, and, needless to say, the interpretations offered are different than what Bell puts forth. For instance the open gates to the New Jerusalem in Revelation. Chan doesn’t really offer an answer to why they are said to be open. He just states that the fact that they’re open doesn’t mean people on the outside will have a chance to get in. Fair enough, I suppose.

Chapters 2 and 3 are Chan’s attempts to answer the question of what the typical first century Jewish belief was about hell. Apparently, Preston Sprinkle has a PhD in early Judaism, so I had high hopes for this chapter. They soon fell flat, though. In order to prove the case that hell indeed is a place of torment and torture, and may be an eternal place, several verses from the apocryphal books Maccabees and the book of Enoch are cited. The argument goes something like – Jesus used similar language when speaking of judgment as these books do, and Jesus didn’t go against what these books are saying, therefore He affirmed this views. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, I have a hard time believing that there was one unified view among Jews of what happens to the wicked when they die in the first century. Like now there were different theological camps in Judaism, and these things were things that were debated back and forth then as they are now. Certainly knowing some context is undoubtedly important, but the way they present the context here is so simplified that it comes across as a little too convenient for their argument. Also, the one thing that Chan fails to mention here (although he touches on it in future chapters) is that Jesus did contradict many of the commonly held paradigms about judgment while He was on earth. Namely, He says that those who most at risk of judgment are those who were thought to be God’s chosen people. Jesus never lets us get to comfortable with thinking that judgment of the wicked is something we can keep at arm’s length. One thing worth noting here is that Chan does admit that the Biblical narrative isn’t entirely clear as to the duration of hell and punishment. He does leave the door open for annihilationism. This is a bit of a departure from a typical neo-Reformed view.

Chapter 4 is a brief discussion on what the Apostle Paul and other New Testament writers had to say about hell. Chan has to stretch a bit here, as he equates every mention of destruction or death by Paul to mean hell or post-mortem punishment. He also spends time describing what equates to a typical Calvinist view of the wrath of God – we are awaiting the wrath of God unless we repent. He makes it clear that he believes the wrath Paul is talking about is retributive, not simply corrective. Chan also think that many people in the church simply don’t like this idea, so they choose not to talk about it. That may be true of some people, I suppose, I though it does not take a long time online to find people relishing in the idea of God’s wrath. There are a lot of books and commentaries written about what the wrath of God is, how it functions, the purpose, etc., and the view that it is retributive punishment is not a universal view. For instance, a good case can be made that wrath is simply God letting people experience the outcomes of their sinful desires. It’s something that is built into the way the universe works. The case isn’t as cut and dry as Chan makes it seem.

Chapter 5 is a chapter I mentioned earlier. In the chapter, Chan tries to deal with the fact that the vast majority of instances where the New Testament speaks of judgment it is in the context of believers. In fact, Chan says of Revelation, “This isn’t an evangelistic tract written for unbelievers – the hell passages here weren’t designed to make converts and scare people into the Kingdom. They were designed to warn believers to keep the faith in the midst of adversity”. And, actually it’s hard to find a lot to disagree with in this chapter. I would say a lot of the same things. The warnings of judgment that Jesus, Paul, and the other NT authors give aren’t for unbelievers – they are to the church. I find this fact simply hard to square with what Chan says elsewhere in the book, though. Elsewhere, Chan makes a point to say that it is unbelievers who risk facing the fires of hell.

In Chapter 6, Chan attempts to offer something of a theodicy (an answer to why bad things happen or why there is evil in the world). He starts with Romans 9:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?

It isn’t surprising that Chan takes the Calvinist view of this passage – God creates some people to be damned and some people to be saved, and we are in no place to question Him. Now, getting in depth in this passage is more than I want to do in this review, but there are other ways to interpret this. The view that God creates some people destining them for hell is simply not a view held by all theologians. I would say that at present it’s held be a minority of them, but I suppose it depends who you ask. Again, I don’t want to get too sidetracked with this, other than to say, I think Chan is wrong here. I believe God desires all to be saved, and I believe He loves all people.

Chan continues in this chapter to cite various Old Testament passages – Job, Ezekiel, Lamentations – talking about how we cannot hope to understand God’s ways. Now obviously there is some truth in this. God is God, and we are not. God runs the universe, and we don’t. However, I think the line of reasoning that Chan is taking is flawed. The Christian view of God and his ways can be somewhat informed by these OT passages, but our primary source of revelation about the Father is Christ. Christ supersedes all our previous notion of what God is like. Christ assures us that the Father isn’t unknowable. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Jesus said that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. We needn’t be afraid that God is erratic and arbitrary.

In closing, Chan assures his readers that although he has talked about some things that can be quite terrifying, they have no reason to fear. If we repent, we can avoid hell. Again, point taken, but it makes the point he makes in Chapter 5 a bit puzzling. One the one hand we are to fear warning, but on the other have assurance that God has mercy for us now. Now, I will agree that there is always some amount of tension between justice and mercy, but the road that Chan goes down to have these two hold hands is simply incomprehensible to me. And that’s my general perception of the book. Chan has written a book that on the surface seems to be an attempt to give reader clear answers about heaven and hell. At the root, though, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Is God truly knowable? Is my salvation really secure? These are not little questions.

Comparing Erasing Hell to Love Wins, which is sort of what we’re asked to do, I’d have to say that Love Wins is a much more compelling book. It all comes down to this – what do we believe God is like, and what is the story that we find ourselves in. Bell gives readers answers to these questions – whether you agree with him or not. He enables people to have vision of a salvation this is bigger than hell avoidance. He paints a picture of Christ who is making all things new, who isn’t abandoning His creation, and who dealt with sin once and for all on the cross. I find the story that Chan presents in Erasing Hell much harder to grab onto, and I have a hard time seeing it as inspiring or compelling.

I also took my daughters horseback riding at a farm where a little five year old boy lives. He’s dying. There’s a good chance he won’t see the end of next month.

Last night I found out another little baby boy died. He was still born. His parents have been trying to have kids for years. They buried him on his due date.

Life is hard. I’ve had my share of hard times. Compared to kids dying though, they seem like nothing.

It seems that it’s always a matter of perspective. I mean, have you ever just asked yourself, “Who Cares? Who cares about this whole stupid mess?” Certainly the Psalmist did time and again.

Then of course there is the issue of Theology. There’s the issue of people who have no idea what to say, feeling like they have to say something. There is the issue of what is said usually being not all that helpful.

I’m convinced all of our stories were meant to be told together. We need each other.

And yet people hurt us.

There’s so much hurt and anger in this world of ours. So much about life that doesn’t make sense. Can I be honest with you? I think one of the biggest problems we have with God is that there is a lot to Him that we can’t understand. Oh we want to. We rail and scream against our lack of control but at the end of the day we simply cannot wrap our brains around this Divinity.

I think that’s the problem. We refuse to admit there is some ambiguity. We want certainty where God demands faith and obedience. One of my friends lamented to me that there is just sometimes where God doesn’t make sense. I couldn’t agree enough. We can’t see God. We cant’ touch God. I think that’s why God tells us we need each other.

Sometimes, we simply have to trust in God’s character, not our ability to explain Him. More often than we do currently we need to make room for disagreements. We need to make room for people to experience Grace. We need to remember that Jesus came so we can have life

together.

The apostles didn’t all share the same ideology. They did all share a relationship with Jesus. May we all be able to say the same.

Finally this past week, I figured it was going to end.  I was actually happy. I figured I’d be able to stop hearing about it.  Then came the acquittal.

Then came the facebook status updates blowing up…

Some languished at the lack of justice for the poor murdered little girl.

Some cried out about the injustice in the world.

Some wondered openly if there was such a thing as justice.

Some just went too far.

“Someday the jury will have to answer for what they did.”

“ I hope that God decides to take a loved one from the jury.”

“Someday that evil woman will get what she deserves. The coals of Hell will be heated for her forever!!!”

And they went on.  Many of my Christian friends were excitedly pointing to the day that this woman would end up in hell.

This post is not about her guilt or if there is a Hell.
This post is about Christians that miss the point of the gospel. This post is about God being in the redemption business.

Moses, David, Paul are all guilty of murder. They all killed people. It would be hard to argue that Paul didn’t  kill babies younger than this little girl in Florida.  They never got the justice “they had coming to them.”

God redeemed them. I have to say I didn’t see a lot of posts by Christians saying they hoped that would happen for this woman.

You see embedded in those posts was honest anger. I get that. But I also think there was a little bit of “I’m better than HER, because I would never do THAT!!!”

Yet, James says, if you break one part of the law you break it all.

So we’re all guilty and God is in the business of offering us all redemption, even child killers.  My desire for justice rails against that. My desire to love my own skin is thankful for it.

I don’t know if this woman is guilty or not. I imagine she probably is and yet the evidence wasn’t enough.

I know that wherever she is, and whatever she’s done Jesus died and rose again so she could have eternal life and be freed from the guilt of her actions. Jesus paid it all. All to him we all owe.

I was reading an article about how good news no one talks about is out there. One of those was about the gulf’s recovery from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It made this point:

“What we will talk about is how no one expected fish, crab and shrimp catches to be average compared to past years or that oil chomping microbes would go to town feeding on our disaster. And more importantly, the Loop Current that was on track to carry the oil to the Florida Keys just broke. As in, it broke off into a big swirly hilariously named Franklin Eddy, which unexpectedly contained the oil in a tidy circle of cool. We’d like to think of Franklin as a bongo-playing beat poet who doesn’t have to play by your current rules, maaan.

Had it not been for Franklin, the oil would have hit the Keys and made its way up the East Coast, and there wouldn’t have been a whole lot we could have done to stop it. Thanks to Franklin, which no longer exists, much of the Florida coast was spared from the oil altogether.”

I don’t really have much of a point except to say maybe the hand of God is was in this. Its nice to remember this when life fights dirty.”

I found this profound for a couple of reasons: First off, it is a demonstration of how God is such an awesome engineer (says the professional engineer), who has contingency plans within contingency plans within contingency plans for when we make things go awry. Secondly, it just reminded me how negative I sometimes feel when I listen to too much news – because bad news sells, so we rarely hear good news (or Good News) from the news media.

The second article, 7 “Ancient” Forms of Mysticism That are Recent Inventions, made me laugh even more:

Yoga as we know it today — a set of postures (asanas) combined with breathing techniques — dates back to around the grand old year of 1960. In other words, yoga is as old as Bono.

So all of the Yoga wars that have been fought “for God” by Johnny Mac an others are all just pretty much (as previously noted) bunk.

So, maybe quoting Cracked.com from time to time is a little bit like quoting Cretin poets.

One of the common issues that I deal with in couples counseling is related to the aftermath of mistakes.

A spouse cheats

A spouse uses painful words like a scalpel to cut as deeply as possible.

An angry outbursts scares the bejezus out of a spouse

A secret offense is brought to light.

The list is quite long, and I am sure you could probably add two or two hundred things that you have experienced or heard of happening.

Invariably, the question posed to me is, “Why can’t she get over it?” or “Why can’t he just move on? I said, I was sorry. I feel bad about it.”

Often this comes across as defensive to the offended spouse and even to me as a counselor. The following are some steps that I believe are helpful in repairing broken relationships.

1. Leave all the but’s in the barn.

You’ve heard this one before, “I am sorry, I feel bad that I did that, but….” Invariably, an accusation or degradation for the spouse follows that but. Here’s the problem, when you say I’m sorry but___________, it sounds like you aren’t really all that sorry. It sounds like you’re wanting to make sure that your spouse gets some of the blame too.  It sounds like your saying the adult equivalent of the four year old, “She did it too” defense. It’s silly. It’s shallow. And it is not helpful. If you messed up, own that. Don’t try to deflect blame. Don’t try to pass it off to your spouse. Just admit that what you did was wrong. No one made you do it. We control our own actions. What is interesting to me is that when someone commits to this idea of actually owning their own mistakes, their spouse will often start admitting their own errors.

2. Double down on your patience level

If you have done something that has damaged trust in the relationship there is absolutely nothing you can do that will “fix it.” You may have to answer a lot of questions. You may have to answer the same questions more than once. You may have to answer questions that don’t seem relevant to you but matter immensely to your spouse.

3. Check your ego at the door.

Click here to continue reading this post at my own blog.

At any particular point in time, there is a range of “acceptable” views on any particular subject.  This “window” of views can be “opened” or “shifted” through the serious suggestion of a view significantly outside the mainstream.  In doing so, even if the “radical” suggestion is not adopted as mainstream, the window of “acceptable” views will be increased.

Opening the Overton Window can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the subject at hand.  Additionally, the attempt may utterly fail if the person trying to open it does not have the perceived gravitas to do so, or if the window of “acceptability” has sufficient rigidity in its foundation.  As I have read Love Wins, read its critiques – from positive to negative and all spots in between – and listened to Rob Bell’s responses to questions/criticism surrounding it, I’ve come to the conclusion that, strategically, the goal of Love Wins was not to promote a particular view of hell as superior to another, but rather to open the Overton Window on the doctrine of hell in order that the Gospel might be better seen as independent from it.

The Thesis is the Thesis

As I have read numerous reviews of Love Wins, I have been struck by an odd correlation.   The way the reviewer interpreted Bell’s thesis paragraph (page vii) almost always predetermined how they would review the entire book.  Here is the thesis paragraph:

This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and that to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

Reviewers have tended to interpret this two ways:

Option One: Bell is saying that the practice of equating the rejection of hell as eternal conscious torment as a rejection of Jesus is “misguided and toxic”.

Option Two: Bell is saying that the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment is “misguided and toxic”.

While basic English syntax should clearly indicate Option One is Bell’s intention*, those who have been the most scathingly critical (or commented on the book without reading it) have chosen Option Two as their interpretation of Bell’s thesis. In doing so, it is no wonder a number of them found the rest of Bell’s narrative confusing or contradictory (looking at you, Justin Taylor).

By failing to understand the thesis of the book, many of the reviewers, critics and re-posters (90% of whom haven’t actually read the book) end up dueling straw men or heading down tangents that are not even the focus of the book.  Additionally, a number of the critics (John MacArthur, John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, John Chisham and the rest of the hyper-Calvinistic wing of neo-Reformed theology) ironically end up proving Bell’s thesis (Option One) correct in doggedly refuting Option Two, as if it were what Bell was arguing.

Bravo.  Yay team.  Let’s all hold hands and sing:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our certain and doctrinally pure view of hell and the wrath of God…**

Following the Actual Thesis

If we follow Bell’s actual thesis, which is a call to epistemic humility (allowing for doubt or the possibility of equally possible interpretations of the same set of Scriptures) over epistemic closure (disallowing any doubt as to the “correct” interpretation of a set of Scriptures) when it comes to issues of pareschatology, eschatology, the mechanics of soteriology, the book is not at all confusing.

Because one of Bell’s purposes is to refute the epistemically closed view that a denial of eternal, conscious torment in hell is a denial of Jesus, he provides multiple views of both heaven and hell from historic Christianity.  This includes the Eastern Orthodox view of the afterlife, the Hebrew view of the Kingdom of Heaven (as supported by NT Wright), annihilationism,  Universal Reconciliation, and several points in between.

He also tackles the question of “who’s in and who’s out” of hell, by laying out the exclusivist and inclusivist views, and all points in between, with the most emphasis given to the “exclusive inclusivist” view (also espoused by C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham).

In terms of soteriology, he describes six or seven views, including Penal Substitution, the Ransom View (held by C.S. Lewis) and Christus Victor.

In each of these cases, Bell’s purpose is not to pick any one as the “correct view”, but rather to examine that there are multiple views within orthodox Christianity, and to examine how allowing the mystery in the actual workings of God to exist as a mystery rather than as a certainty might actually allow us to live the Gospel as Jesus taught it, with the emphases he gave it.

Love wins, according to Bell, regardless of whether hell is empty or if it is populated for eternity.  Our desire should be identical to God’s – that no man should perish.  If this means that God saves everyone in the end, that would be awesome.  Our desire should also be that God is, indeed, love – which requires that man have free will to either choose or to reject Him without coercion.  If this means that man’s choice to reject God leaves him apart from God for eternity, Love still wins.

The Danger

In talking to a highly-trusted friend of mine about Love Wins, I was reminded that one of the dangers of this discussion would be if one came away believing that if everyone will be saved in the end, there is no need to ever choose to follow Jesus in this life.

I agree, and I’m pretty sure (as he’s said in multiple interviews) Rob would agree, as well.

Bell makes the point that the time to decide is urgent, and that time only moves forward for us, and that Jesus’ admonition is to choose now, today, and that there are serious, possibly permanent, consequences to rejecting him today.

Just because we are not completely certain about eschatology, pareschatology and the mechanism of soteriology does not mean that we have not been given clear glimpses of their vectors.  As such, the mode and method of hell is unimportant, and the call of the Gospel to live in the Kingdom of God/Heaven is relevant today, for today, for tomorrow and for eternity.

Bell’s purpose in opening the Overton Window that has been held shut by the white-knuckled neo-Reformed churches surrounding his hometown – as someone with the gravitas to do so, and with the historical orthodoxy to back him – was simply to allow room for the church to breathe.  To accept mystery where it ought to exist, rather than force certainty and a false gospel of evacuation.

Shalom

* – As much as my eighth grade English teacher drove me to distraction with her (literal) communist sympathies, the few useful things she taught me were sentence diagramming and basic written logic. Despite her political proclivities, I continue to find myself wishing some folks (looking at you, Kevin “I’m Not Dennis” DeYoung) had Mrs. Waggoner for English, as well.

** – Just doesn’t have the same ring as the original song…

Hell in the Bible

First off, you won’t find any references to hell in the Old Testament.  The only thing you will find referenced after death is Sheol, which is translated as “the grave”.  All people die and go to Sheol, the righteous and unrighteous.  Their bodies remain there, but they are still viewed as individual souls.  In the Septuagint, this word is translated Hades – a word used a few times by Jesus – where Hades, in Hellenistic mythology was a state of limbo where all souls dwelt, awaiting the final judgment.

In the New Testament, Hades is mentioned five times – Matthew 16:18 (in this case referring to a literal place in Caesarea Philippi called the “Gates of Hades”), Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 20:13; 20:14. This is also translated as “death”, “the grave”, and “the pit”.

In one case, 2 Peter 2:4, the word “hell” is translated from the word “Tartarus” – a place in Hellenistic mythology, recorded by Plato in 400BC, there the judged dead are imprisoned:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment.

This reference comes from The Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish mythological work also quoted by Jude, and (as noted by Peter) it was a place for imprisoning fallen angels, not human souls.

The third and final word translated “hell” in English versions of the Bible is Gehenna.  This word comes from ge hinnom – The Valley of Hinnom.  The Hinnom Valley lies alongside the Old City of Jerusalem, and by the first century AD was a city dump.  Earlier, it had been the place of child sacrifice to the god Molech, and was thus considered cursed ground.  In order to prevent the spread of disease and stench, along with reducing the volume of garbage, Gehenna was constantly kept burning, while dogs roamed around the edges, fighting over scraps of maggoty meat, their teeth gnashing at one another.

Jesus refers to Gehenna 11 times, and his brother James, once:

“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of genenna.” (Matthew 5:22)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into genenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into genenna.” (Matthew 5:28-30)

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in genenna.” (Matthew 10:28)

“And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of genenna.”(Matthew 18:9)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of genenna as you are.” (Matthew 23:15)

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to genenna?” (Matthew 23:33)

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into genenna, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into genenna. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into genenna, where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” (Mark 9:22-28)

“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into genenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:4-7)

“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by genenna.” (James 3:6)

These are all of the times “hell” is mentioned in the Bible.

Exploring Gehenna

So, since Sheol/Hades is “the grave” for all people, this is not what we would consider “hell” (as a place of punishment).  Since Tartarus is only mentioned once and is clearly a reference to a mythological place for the imprisonment of angels (not men), it is also not what we would traditionally consider “hell”.  Therefore, Gehenna is the word we would most associate with “hell”, as a place of punishment.

So, some observations we can make about Gehenna from these passages:

1. All of Jesus’ references to gehenna are made to religious people, and are made in reference to sinful behavior. None of them are spoken to unbelievers or in reference specifically about unbelievers – and for that matter, none are made in reference to one’s lack of belief or orthodoxy.
2. All of the references to gehenna can be reasonably viewed as references to the literal location – a burning garbage dump, where bodies are filled with maggots (worms that, to the ancients, appeared to have come from nowhere and do not die – transforming, instead, into flies) are consumed in the flames.
3. If we look specifically at the passage from Mark, which is the one most often quoted by those supporting a view of gehenna as a place of eternal, conscious punishment, Jesus refers to it as “where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’“  This is a direct quote from Isaiah 66, where the prophet describes the view of the fallen Assyrian army (in the Hinnom Valley) “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.“  It is a view of dead bodies on a funeral pyre, full of maggots, being burned to ash.

A problem we’re faced with, in trying to create a systematic or logistical description of hell – gehenna – from these passages is that there is scant information contained therein as to how gehenna operates.

Now, one reasonable question we can ask is “what did the people associate with the word gehenna?”  If Jesus’ audience considered gehenna to be a place for the eternal punishment of the souls of the wicked, we can reasonably assert that he never needed to explain what it was or how it worked.  So what do we know about contemporary views of gehenna?

Gehenna does not show up in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, Apocrypha, or the Pseudepigrapha. The only ancient literature that gehenna shows up in as an eternal place of suffering are in the Rabbinic writings of the Mishna and the Talmud. But in these cases, gehenna is a place similar to Purgatory, where the souls of most sinners go to be purified for up to one year of suffering – with Sabbaths off.  At the end of the time of purification/suffering, the souls of all but the most wicked enter the world to come, while the most wicked (a very small number) are then permanently destroyed (see Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin (7) Ch. 11 “Chelek”; and also here). So, the only context under which the people would have understood gehenna (depending on the accurate dating of the Talmud, which is believed to have been orally transmitted during the Babylonian captivity, hundreds of years BC, but was not written down until the third century AD, we can say that it was between 400 BC and 300 AD) is either as a temporal city dump OR as a form of Purgatory.

So – looking at the passages that simply refer to gehenna doesn’t give us a very clear or complete picture of hell.  Where else might we look?

The Rich Man and Lazarus

In Luke 16, we read the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

So does this give us logistical or systematic information about hell?

1. First off, this is a parable in a series of teachings that are also parables, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus is conveying a real story about real people, so we cannot definitively say that this is a story meant to convey literal truth.
2. This story does reference some beliefs from pseudepigraphic books – The Book of Enoch and The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, along with the Rabbinic work, Genesis Rabbah.  In these beliefs, Sheol/Hades has different places, separated by a chasm or a river, where the wicked dead and righteous dead are kept until a day of judgment.  So, the question becomes – did Jesus consider these works authoritative, or was he using them as common Jewish mythologies his audience would have been familiar with?
3. We know nothing about the rich man or Lazarus’ temporal life, in terms of their orthodox belief, just that the rich man was rich, and that Lazarus was poor and afflicted with sores.  We do not know why the rich man was in Hades and Lazarus in the Bosom of Abraham.
4. Ultimately, this is a story of ethics, not one trying to teach about the cartography of hell.  While we might make some guesses, we do not know if Jesus was teaching about a literal truth or a literary truth (a story familiar to his listeners).

Sheep and Goats

The next Scriptures often referenced in arguing for a conscious, eternal punishment view of hell comes from Matthew 25, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

So let’s examine this passage:

1. Once again, we’re dealing with parables, as opposed to literal description, so we cannot assume that this is a literal description of the Judgment.  The purpose of this passage is not to describe the logistics of hell, but to make an ethical point.
2. Even if it is a description of Judgment, the criteria for separating sheep from goats is the treatment of those in need – the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick and the imprisoned.  What separates the sheep from the goats is their works for the poor, not their orthodoxy of belief.  Arguing that this is a literal story, rather than a parable, opens an entire can of worms when trying to explain grace, faith, works, etc.
3. “Eternal Punishment” – this could encompass annihilationism (being destroyed for eternity) as well as eternal, conscious punishment.  Additionally, the Greek for this phrase (kolasin aionion) translates to “an age of pruning/correction”.  This, too, could support annihilationism, and even the Rabbinic view of gehenna (similar to Purgatory), in addition to eternal, conscious punishment.

The Lake of Fire

One of the most vivid descriptions referenced in talking about hell is the Lake of Fire from Revelation.  In Revelation 20, we read:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

This passage has a lot of meaning that could be unpacked. Some of the high points, as they relate to our conversation on hell:

1. This is from a genre of writing called “apocalyptic literature“, which is highly symbolic and sometimes hyperbolic.  Arguing for symbols in Revelation to be literal is quite difficult, and often inappropriate (leading to all sorts of wild interpretations).
2. Just from this passage, we have a number of problems of making the “lake of fire” literal.  Not only are the wicked dead (whose names are not in the book of life) thrown into the lake of fire, but “death” and “Hades” are thrown into the lake of fire.  So we have to argue that “death” and “Hades” are figurative, but the “lake of fire” they are thrown into is literal.  Additionally, “death” and “Hades” are ended when their are thrown into the “lake of fire”.  But to argue that the “lake of fire” is eternal, conscious punishment, we must argue that the wicked dead thrown into it are not ended.  So, in essence, we must make a couple illogical steps to support a view of conscious, eternal punishment.
3. The dead are judged “according to what they had done”, not according to their having the right orthodoxy.  Aside from this, there is no indication of what determines whether or not one’s name is written in the book of life (be it literal or figurative).
4. The lake of fire is referred to as “the second death”.  This seems to argue more for annihilationism (or the Rabbinic view of gehenna) than for conscious, eternal punishment.
5. This does indicate that there are those whose names are not found written in the book of life (be it literal or figurative), and that they are thrown into the lake of fire (be it literal or figurative).  This would seem to be a good argument against pluralism or Universal Reconciliation.

What About Paul?

The Apostle Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles”, is silent on the issue of hell, and that his few references to the wicked in the world to come reference “destruction” or “death” rather than “punishment”. This would support an annihilationist view moreso than other views of hell. Additionally, one could argue, if hell was conscious, eternal punishment for all but cognizant, believing Christians, Paul would have spent much more time and space in urgently outlining it, explaining it and clarifying the right steps that have to be taken to make sure you avoid it. But that’s not the case.

What to Think

So what should we think?  Probably one of the best articles I’ve read on this subject is by pastor Glen Elliott (written a two or three months before Love Wins became a subject of debate), who posits (like Bell) that we not hold to a pareschatological doctrine as a test of faith or fellowship.  There is enough room for doubt as to the cartography and mechanism of hell, along with the criteria God uses for His righteous judgment, that we ought not demand a specific view from Christian believers, but that this should fall under the auspices of non-essentials.

From examining the Scriptures and the likely cultural understanding of their First Century audience, we can somewhat safely assert that multiple views are possible (with varying degrees of certainty): Annihilationism, eternal conscious punishment, and possibly the inclusion of a purgatory-like state from the Rabbinic view of gehenna.

Even so, pluralism or pure Universal Reconciliation (with the Rabbinic exception, noted above, which would allow for Revelation 20’s view of the book of life and the lake of fire – literal or figurative – to be true) are not supported in Scripture.

Regarding “who’s in and who’s out” – this is ultimately up to God, and we have no business judging whether or not someone who has died is in hell (be it Ghandi, Spurgeon, or Hitler).  The Scriptural support for a strict exclusivist paradigm (where only a small group of individuals who believe the “right” doctrine are “in” and all else are bound for hell) as the only viable model is quite thin.   Most Christians actually hold to some degree of “exclusive inclusivism” – where they believe that there are people (children, the mentally disabled, those who have not had the chance to accept or reject the Gospel) whom Jesus will save in the afterlife who were not fully cognizant Christians in life, but that the criteria for this are up to God.  They often point to Romans 1 for some evidence of this:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

As Bell notes in Love Wins, the teaching Jesus and his disciples passed on to us is about how we should live, love and believe today, and that we should trust Him to take care of tomorrow.  How we live today determines how the Kingdom of God looks to others today – and thus it is urgent that we live righteous and upright lives, and that we make disciples of all nations.  Not as a form of fire insurance, but as a form of worship of our Creator and for our own salvation, today.  We trust God with our todays, and we can trust Him with our tomorrows, whether we are alive or dead.

Shalom