“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you…you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”
Jonathan Edwards
Do I want hell to be real? This is a much tougher question to answer, and I think most of the critics of hell are concerned about “this question” of the heart more than trying to rightly divide scripture. My answer is simple, “No, I wish it were not real.” But I am a small human being with limited understanding – – and I have never beheld the Glory of God firsthand. As God warned Moses “You cannot see my face and live.” God isn’t addressing opinion, he is stating a fact – – dust and ashes cannot stand up to radiant glory; we melt like wax before the majesty of the Almighty.
And as I contemplate hell, I don’t want anyone, and especially those I love, to go there. As Paul said in Romans 9:3, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off for the sake of my brothers…” He knew how high the stakes were when a person refused the gospel, so he did all he could to warn people of the reality of a Holy God’s wrath. But Paul’s warning came from a place of genuine love and compassion for others; not from a position of power and pleasure when considering the eternal demise of others.
HELL AS A HAMMER
I am afraid many people teach and preach hell because they enjoy bullying others. For them, hell becomes a hammer that is wielded as a terrifying tool to threaten unbelievers with. Beat them into submission so they will turn from their wicked ways, “Let’s spread the gospel through unmitigated fear.” When people try to do this, I believe untold harm occurs. Especially with how an unbeliever views God.
2 Corinthians 4:4 presents the problem like this, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Satan wants to keep people away from seeing the beauty of God. The way he primarily does this is by putting forth a false narrative: God is stern, unloving and fierce. He is like the petulant Zeus standing high on a mountain firing bolts of lighting at the silly little people who are vandalizing and spraying graffiti all over his pristine earth. God hates you — so get used to it!
When preachers boom this sick message loudly from a pulpit – “God has come to pulverize and pound impertinent humanity to dust” – Satan wins! No one will ever want to find their deliverance in a being they detest.
Some of you might argue: “But aren’t we supposed to teach about the fear of God?” Even Jonathan Edwards himself built much of his preaching ministry off the truth that “God abhors you!” And hey, Jonathan Edwards has been heralded as one of the greatest American theologians and thinkers we ever had. I believe there are different forms of fear, but the fear that makes you not trust and hate the God who made you is not the biblical form of fear. The Bible teaches God is Holy, Pure, Righteous, but he also “SO loves us!”
God really cares – – Zeus couldn’t care less.
But how can you disagree with Jonathan Edwards? Especially when there are many verses in scripture that argue for an angry God? Take Deuteronomy 32:41-42 – “I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh— with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired heads of the enemy.’”
This sure sounds like God is coming to pound and pulverize? Well, he is . . . but it isn’t that simple. If you ever studied Jonathan Edwards, you will learn that he was a man who believed that the use of reason and logic would always bring you to proper conclusions. It was the method of understanding his favorite philosopher of his day, John Locke, used. Empiricism says test a theory and take it to its final end. Jonathan Edwards would often do this with the teaching of hell: Scripture teaches hell is real, scripture teaches sinners go there, scripture teaches God hates sin….therefore “be warned you scurvy spider!” Makes sense, it is logical, it follows the progression of reason – – but empiricism, like a well-oiled machine, doesn’t always take into account variables of the heart.
Let me try to explain what I mean: When I was in college, I took the class Macroeconomics, very boring. I can specifically remember a discussion we had on how to determine correct algorithms to calculate the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. The basic formula for GDP can be calculated like this:
- GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Exports – Imports
My professor said this was the basic idea, but it was a very simplistic formula. To be more accurate to reality as it is, you needed to include other human conditions and variables – the impact of the tax rate, govt. subsidies and benefits tend to depress the workforce, the irritating impact of regulatory codes on startup businesses, Federal Interest Rate impact on investment – and each condition entered will alter the numbers of the GDP drastically. In other words, to determine something as complicated as GDP, you must realize there are a lot more human factors that must be considered.
The same is true with how we communicate to others about hell. Yes, it is real, and unrepentant sinners go there, but we often don’t factor in the enormous weight of the “Compassion Quotient” of God. To determine that you must spend a lot of time in Luke 15. Jesus tells three very familiar stories for one purpose: to show how God will do anything to win your love and rescue people from themselves.
* The Sheep (3-6): God is pictured as a good shepherd who will leave 99 sheep to find the one sheep that went missing. God isn’t callously grumbling that the stupid sheep have run away, he is desperate to bring the stray animal back into his fold!
* The Coin (8-9): God is pictured as an anxious woman who lost a very valuable coin. In her worry, she lights a lamp and sweeps the house to find the coin. She will do all she can to find the missing coin; in the same way, God sends his Spirit of Truth to conduct an all-consuming search and rescue mission for the lost. We must not allow any angry bully pulpit pounding here!
* The Son (11-24): God is pictured as the grieving father whose son ran away; and when he sees him coming home, he runs to him! God is running to those who want to come back. God wants to run to you in your dark state of the soul. He isn’t angry with you, he is longing for his child to come home.
Where is the disgust, the abhorring, and the “holding a scurvy little spider over the fire on a thin thread?” This isn’t primarily who God is, nor is this how he thinks about you. He is thinking more about the work of restoration of broken humanity than any other project. As the Bible declares, “Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it.”
SAVE IT FROM WHAT?
This is the tricky part: God’s coming vengeance. Wait a minute! You just got done saying God is not angry, now you are saying he is? Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 32:20-21 and explain why God’s fury burns. It isn’t from delight in destruction, he has been rejected and replaced with other disgusting things, listen…
And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them;
I will see what their end will be,
for they are a perverse generation,
children in whom is no faithfulness.
They have made me jealous with what is no god;
they have provoked me to anger with their idols.
2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not wanting any to perish, so he is patiently waiting. And while he is waiting he has sent his Spirit to woo you back to himself. The cross is a sign of how desperate he is for you, he loves you. Hell was not in his original design for you.
Those who end up there, have chosen to go there. As C. S. Lewis says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
Is hell real? Yes. Is hell something you should want for someone else? Never! But it is a person’s individual choice, not the result of God’s pounding fist. So don’t blame God, it is you that sends you there.
