I don’t want to be rude by bringing up an unpleasant topic.

But, “what about hell? ”

The bible mentions it……a lot. It must be real. It is definitely important. But, what is it like and how should you deal with it?

You can ignore it or you can deny it. You can interpret it literally or figuratively. Let’s explore these.

Ignore it.

This is the most commonly chosen option. We’ve all been told about this very bad place and we’ve been told that if we keep on doing what we are doing that we could end up there. Ignoring it solves most of the problems of hell…at least for the short term. We don’t need to worry about the details. ….”will the coffee be cold?” We don’t need to stop doing the things that we are doing or start doing nice things for others. This is easy. It also fits nicely with the first rule of modern society. …..NEVER EVER tell anybody, even yourself, that what they are doing is wrong.

Deny it

This fits nicely with the belief that the physical universe is all that there is. “When you die. …the lights just go out” or “You die. ..you’re dirt” . This position is liberating. Because there is no absolute moral code….no universal right and wrong….I can do whatever I want……and (unlike ignoring hell) at least it is intellectually honest. But, it must lead to profound despair. By throwing out right and wrong you also throw out paradise. For this reason pure denial is not popular. It is typically blended with ignoring hell. Strangely, a lot of people accept the idea of paradise but deny hell. How do you have light without dark? Denial is often expressed in a statement like, “I can’t believe that a merciful loving God would send people to hell.” Don’t forget. …..for the greater good…..God sent his son to the cross. FWIW I believe that the cross broke God’s heart as does hell.

Literal

Hell is a deep pit full of fire and you will burn forever. Never mind the coffee. Hell is a place of unimaginable and unending physical pain. …the ultimate corporal punishment.

Figurative

The fire pit is metaphor. Hell is a bad place full of bad people.

So…how do you navigate this minefield?

I think that to ignore hell is foolish. It’s like driving down a road at night at 60 mph. You pass a sign that says:

“ROAD ENDS IN WATER. 100 FEET”

and you don’t slow down to assess the situation.

To deny hell is a little better…at least you thought about it. But, you had better be right……..because the cost of being wrong is unimaginable.

Literal vs. Figurative

This is harder. It is a continuum. …from a fiery pit to “cold coffee”.

I have to admit that I can’t sort this out very well. Most people have a very fuzzy image of a place that is unpleasant. It will be full of “bad people”……..that is……people who are not as “good” as me. After all….”I’m a good person”…..right? Isn’t it funny that the line separating the good people from the bad people always seems to be just below the person who is doing the talking. There is an irony here…… if “bad person” means people who are not as good as me……. then I will be one of the worst people in paradise.

“Good person” generally means that for the most part I don’t do bad things. And……. if the things that I do are wrong……well……they are justified by my circumstances. If I use the copier or fax at work for personal items. “It’s only a few cents a page……and besides I don’t have a copier/fax.” Or…….If I don’t track and pay sales tax on things that I order online. “It’s hard to keep up with and besides taxes are too high anyway.” Any of this sound familiar?

So…..I try a more practical approach. Hell is a place that is not pleasant. Trust me, you don’t want to be there.   It is separated by a gap that is uncrossable, even by God, from the ultimate source of love, satisfaction, and joy…..that is….God. The story of Lazarus and the rich man covers this nicely. It is the best description of hell that I can find.   Luke 16:19–31

There is another side to this discussion …and this is the most terrifying thought that I have had in years. If going to heaven is based on grace (the unearned forgiveness of sin)……and I believe that it is….then heaven us not going to be full of “good people”…..it is going to be full of forgiven sinners. The corollary is what terrifies me. Hell, for the most part, is not going to be full of “bad people”………it is going to be full of unforgiven sinners. So……. the common Christian pastime of sorting the people around us into “good” and “bad” piles is pointless. It’s not “good or bad” that counts……it’s “forgiven or unforgiven”.

In other words:

THE PEOPLE IN HELL ARE NOT GOING TO BE VERY MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE IN HEAVEN

Or:

HELL IS GOING TO BE FULL OF PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU AND ME

This puts a whole new level of urgency on the issue of salvation……….. both for me and for my unsaved friends.

Isn’t it amazing how little thought we give to paradise?

First…….. what is paradise?

Fluffy clouds? Halos and harps? A tropical garden?

If you take nothing else from this post, know this: Paradise is normal. Paradise is God’s first plan for you. He built a perfect, sustainable ecosystem and put us in it…. and then….HE joined us there. It was great….it was, in fact, perfect……..but we mismanaged it. We still mismanage it.

Most of the world that we see every day is the work of man. This world…..the world we have built……… is abnormal. No wonder we are unhappy. No wonder we are dissatisfied. We try hard. We sense God’s original design in our hearts but as a community, what we build falls short. The world that we live in is broken and we know it….. no doubt it is a disappointment to God. He wants so much more for us.

I have to think that Eden is the pattern for paradise. Beyond that I wouldn’t speculate on the details. However, the key feature of paradise is that there will be a close relationship between God and man. We will see him, talk with him, visit with him……enjoy his company. We will be surrounded by his love and his generosity. I don’t worry too much about the rest of it. Will there be poison ivy? What about my favorite food?  Will my dog be there? Will my family & friends be there?………… OK, I do worry a bit about that.

I suspect that the Garden of Eden in Genesis is at least partly symbolic. I don’t claim to know the details of what heaven will be like. The general shape of God’s original plan for you is a place where all of your needs are met. There will be no hazards. The things that you sense in your heart to be evil just won’t be there. That will be the new normal.   God the father, your creator, will be very close…… you will be at peace, at rest………….and you will be satisfied……….because you will be where you belong.   You will finally …… for the first time………be in THE place that is NORMAL for you. You will be in the place that God made you for………. the place that God made for you.

Wisdom from the X-files

Can there be a more important question? Your entire path in life will be altered by your answer to this seemingly simple question. Everything that you do today will be affected. And yet, very few of us have given it the thought that it deserves. We avoid it because there is no clear unambiguous answer. We avoid it because the consequences of being wrong could be devastating. We avoid it because we don’t like being told what to do…….and what not to do.

This is a binary question…… there are only 2 possibilities and they are mutually exclusive.

The proof that God doesn’t exist:

This is really an unfair question. It is very hard to “prove” a negative……but I’ll try. What is real is limited to what can be measured by man using today’s technology. Or, if you can’t measure it……..it doesn’t exist. Since God cannot be found in a laboratory or in the fossil record, he cannot exist. The obvious problem with this is that every day we expand our reach. Science grows. Knowledge grows. And so, the definition of what is real expands. Things that were not real yesterday are real today…..things like magnetism, black holes, human DNA, the internet. Another problem is that very real, very important things that cannot be measured become not-real. Things like love, honor, hope, fear, and respect. This position begins with an assumption. The assumption is that our knowledge is complete and since we haven’t “found” God, he can’t be real. This, of course is a bad assumption.

The proof that God does exist.

There is a reality that is beyond what we can measure. There are things that science cannot find and explain. We can sense it. Some people sense it more than others. We are fairly comfortable with this…….until it begins to interfere with our desires and our plans. This is a very important point. Many people reject God because they don’t like him interfering with their plans. Let’s face it, God can be disruptive. His plans can interfere with our plans.

So, there are things that are real that cannot be measured. They touch our lives every day. Joy, love, our thoughts, our personalities. The question is, “Is God one of them?” If you want God to physically manifest himself to you, you are probably going to be disappointed. He just doesn’t seem to work that way. So I look for indirect evidence of God.

The first of these is the large empty place in our spirit. We sense that we are incomplete. We are lonely, unloved, facing death, unsatisfied. We try to fill the void with busyness: work, hobbies, sports, food, alcohol, drugs, sex. Yet, it is always there, just under the surface. I have heard this described as a “God shaped hole”. We know that something is missing. No matter what we take from the physical world, there is a void in our spirit that we cannot fill in the material realm. The thing that is missing must be non-material. It must be spiritual.

The second is hope. ….or the lack of it. We will all die. From an historical perspective we will die soon…..possibly very soon. No matter how good your life is, it will end in a few years……at the most in a few decades. Science leaves us with nothing but despair. You will die and the lights will just go out. We intuitively sense that there must be more…….an afterlife. But, in order for there to be an afterlife……….paradise, there must be a creator, God.  You can argue about the fine points of his nature; but, ……No God….No afterlife. I sometimes hear people describe their vision of paradise. What they describe is a very nice place that conforms to their ideas of right and wrong. It is comfortable and is populated by people that they like. Anything and, for that matter, anyone that they don’t like is not allowed. If you notice, they never mention God in their paradise.   Because, in point of fact, their paradise has no external God…… THEY made it up…….THEY are the creator……..THEY are the God of their own paradise. This is very common. But, how can somebody who can’t create a handful of dirt create a paradise and resurrect themself? Better yet, if they can create paradise, why don’t they just make themself immortal.   Why?    Because they aren’t God. If you ask them if they are God, they will look at you like you have 2 heads.

The third is our innate moral code. We all know what is right and wrong. If you ask 1000 people to list 20 things that are right and 20 things that are wrong, you will pretty much get 1000 copies of the same list. This is built into our DNA. We are born with this knowledge. Where did it come from? Darwinian evolution doesn’t handle this well. Darwin tells us to eat and feed our children. Giving food to a homeless person whom we don’t know and whom we will never see again is not “positively adaptive”. Cheating on your spouse spreads your DNA. Nothing could make Darwin happier. But, we all know, without exception, that it is wrong. Our innate moral code came from somewhere……….God. Don’t get me wrong. It is common to do things that are wrong for a good reason. We all do this. We have an enormous capacity for justification. We do things every day that we have found ways, often highly creative, to justify. But, if we dig deep into our hearts, if we go to that small quiet, uncomfortable and possibly scary place……our conscience……we still know what is right and wrong. We just don’t do it. In modern society we have decided that if something makes us happy, even in the short term, then it must be OK. We have essentially replaced the restrictive concept of “right” with the more flexible concept of “it works for me”. This means right enough to get by with…..for me…..for today……even if it’s not “OK” for my neighbor. It’s hard to fit God into the modern concept of “OK”.

The forth is the historical record. Jesus died and was resurrected. At least 40 people saw him. 12 apostles spent the rest of their lives testifying to the resurrection. All but one of them died horrible deaths rather than deny it. Today we would execute a man based on the testimony of one or two witnesses. How can we ignore 40 witnesses? Therefore, Jesus is devine. Jesus endorses the Bible. Therefore the Bible is reliable. The Bible describes God in detail. Therefore God is real.

So, Christianity hinges on the resurrection. This is the most important decision in human history. This is the most important decision in your life. Did Jesus rise from the dead? I believe that the evidence says he did.

So, we are pretty much left with two possibilities: either there is a powerful external God who has created a Paradise…..or there is nothing. Incidentally, I have heard hell described as “the Nothing “.

We like God when we are in trouble, when we are in pain, when we are in desperate need. We don’t like him when we want something, when we have a perfectly serviceable justification, and he says, through that little voice inside of us, “No……that is wrong”. Faced with this problem, we typically push God back into the box, hide the box in a closet, and do what we want. Even then, though, when he is safely stowed away, when he can no longer interfere…….in our hearts we know that he is real, that he is right, and that we are wrong.

How do we decide? As Mulder and Scully on the X-files say, “The truth is out there”. How do we conform ourselves to the truth? Because fighting against the truth is a losing proposition.

If God doesn’t exist, then do whatever you want. But you better hurry, because you will soon die and the lights will just go out.

If God does exist, then why does he allow the “mystery”? Why doesn’t he appear in a cloud surrounded by lightning and thunder……shout my name. …..and give me my marching orders?

The answer is repeated over and over in the bible. At every encounter with God it is the same. God approaches, often from a great distance, he comes almost to us. Then……he requires us to take a small step toward him. Invariably this step requires faith, risk, and trust. Think of Peter walking on the water.

God comes 1000 miles. …..but he then requires us to take that one step.

The small step that is required of us is a token. It is tiny and ultimately symbolic. It is not much….certainly not payment in full….certainly not enough to entitle us to anything. But, from God’s perspective, it is about all that we can offer…..in that light it is huge. It symbolizes our desire for relationship with God….and it underscores our smallness before God. We cannot “earn” our relationship with God. We cannot purchase it. We cannot deserve it. We cannot do something that will obligate God to admit us into relationship. Ultimately, we offer our little token and God opens his arms.

God doesn’t display himself in a scientifically irrefutable way because he requires us to take that token step. …..with an act of faith…….a public acknowledgement of our love and desire for relationship.

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

We like to believe that we are in charge. Nobody likes to be told what to do. Even worse, we hate it when somebody tells us that what we are doing is wrong. We like to pass judgment on others and we hate it when others pass judgement on us.

These are reflections of our opinion of our place in the cosmos. We believe that we are the center of it all. What we like, what we dislike, what we think is right, what we think is wrong……..all of this is of utmost importance. It must be……. because we are of utmost importance. But,   where does this leave God? More to the point…… what is our correct relationship with God?

Our tendency is to use God as a tool to work our way through our “to do” list. We trot him out on Sunday for an hour and tell him how much we honor him. Before we go to bed at night we pray a prayer that sounds a whole lot like a “to do” list……….but often it is our “to do” list, not his. Worst of all, we pass judgement on his activities. How many times have you heard……or said,

“I can’t believe God would __________________”.

Think about the relationships in your life. Who is it that you give a “to do” list to? Who is it that you critique their behavior? Who is it that you shun because you don’t like the way they behave………a child, an employee, a servant, a subordinate, an enemy……..or the creator of the universe.

Either God created the universe and everything in it, including us……. and we are a tiny peripheral piece of it or we are the center of the universe…………………….and God is a supporting character.

You can tell which camp you usually fall into by looking at your thoughts about God……….. and your prayers to him. Do you praise him, thank him, ask for his guidance? Or do you give him assignments and tell him things that he is doing that need to be fixed? Do you go to him for moral guidance…….. or do you pass judgement on him?

Is your relationship with your creator centered on his majesty and on your humility? Or, is it centered on your hubris?

As Dirty Harry put it, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Or, as John the baptist said, “I must become less and he must become more. “

I am by nature a “lumper” rather than a “splitter”.   As I see it there are two great religions in the world…….Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.

I am a Christian……..I believe in intelligent design. I believe that we were built by a creator and then put here. I don’t accept the theory that we are a giant cosmic biochemical accident. In order for my belief system to hold water, I have to accept as fact 2 ideas that cannot be proven:

1. An intelligent creator made everything here for his own purposes.

2. Christ lived, died, and arose…….and by doing so, bought for me a place in paradise.

Without these 2 central tenets, my belief system falls flat on its face. Because I accept these basic ideas ON FAITH, you call my belief system a religion.

The secular humanist believes in Darwinian evolution. We don’t talk about this, because Darwinian evolution is “scientific”; but, the Darwinian also accepts ideas that cannot be proven.

1. A collection of simple atoms can assemble themselves into complex molecules, assemble the molecules into a cell, become alive and reproduce.

2. That cell can then, given a lot of time, by the action of hundreds of billions of consecutive, additive, adaptive, yet random chemical accidents, turn into Angelina Jolie.

There is not a whiff of laboratory evidence that either of these things ever happened or that they are even possible. In short, the Darwinian must accept these tenets ON FAITH. Because if they are not true, then his entire belief system fails.

Darwinian evolution is a religion for the same reason that intelligent design is a religion. Both are founded on faith.

So what is the difference between these 2 religions? And, how do we choose?

Intelligent design has a creator. The creator offers an afterlife but has expectations of us. Darwinian evolution has no creator, no afterlife, and no expectations. In essence, the choice is between a religion that offers an afterlife but imposes expectations and a religion that is free from expectations(rules) but offers no hope of an afterlife(you die then you’re dirt).

Intelligent design is constraining but hopeful. Darwinian evolution is liberating but hopeless. And you pretty much have to choose……….I used to try to split the difference and believe both…… but I found it to be intellectually dishonest. If you try to believe in God (the creator) and evolution (the accidents) at the same time, you wind up believing that God built paradise(because you want an afterlife) but that everything else is an accident (because the scientists told you so).

I believe that Darwinian evolution has done more damage to Christianity than any other idea in the history of mankind. If you accept Darwinian evolution, then there is absolutely no need to believe in God. Why should you believe that God created paradise if you don’t believe that he could create the dirt beneath your feet? This is where the trouble begins. It is very easy to take the next intellectual step. No creator……No God. And that is, in fact, what is happening in our world. People are turning away from Christianity. Why? Because we no longer need God. Science has it all covered.

I believe that those who take that next step after Darwinian evolution…………that is, abandonment of God………will miss out on paradise at the very least.   Even worse……………for them that is the best possible case scenario.

I believe that more people will miss out on paradise over Darwinian evolution than over murder, rape, lies, theft and mistreatment of their neighbors combined. It is these, at risk, people that I worry about.

So……..the next time somebody pokes fun at creationists, stand up for the intelligent designer…….the guy who formed you and put you here. They will likely laugh at you, though perhaps not to your face. But, you may reveal a little crack in THEIR religion…….a tiny defect in their belief system that the creator can slip in through. You might save them from the Darwinians.

First, what is a “moral code”. It’s a group of ideas, maybe even rules that you fall back on when making decisions about how you will run your life. Usually, we go to our moral code when trying to decide whether something we want to do is right or wrong. Today’s question deals with how you choose your code.

Specifically I’m asking for a citation. What book, religion, or philosophy did you find your moral code in? As a young man, the first moral code that I followed was from the Boy Scouts. I don’t claim to have met this code in my life. It is a goal

Be Prepared

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

A scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

Later, I added the Bible:

Love God, Love your neighbor. Don’t lie, steal, or murder. Honor your parents, sex is for husbands and wives, don’t covet, rest on Sunday.

There are other moral codes…….I chose these because they are widely accepted…….. and they make sense. Obviously, the fact that I am a Christian played a part as well.

The point here is not which moral code you choose. The point is……is your moral code external or internal? An external code is likely objective. There are many to choose from. Some are very good, some are very bad. If you choose an external moral code, the code you choose will define you as a human being. It is very likely that your opinion of the people around you is largely shaped by their choice of a moral code. FWIW…… their opinion of you is shaped by your moral code. This may explain why people sometimes react to you in ways that you don’t understand……. or like. Another point about the external moral code is that there is a moral authority that validates the rules…..in my case, the creator of the universe.

The problem is that most people do not choose an external moral code. If you cannot name the book, religion, or philosophy that is the source of your code, then you fall into one of two camps.

The purely internal moral code:

This is a set of ideas and rules that you use to guide your life. They are rules that YOU made up because they make sense to you. The problem here is that when you make up your own set of rules, you tend to come up with rules that say that anything that you really want badly is OK. Your internal rules rarely restrict your behaviour. If you really want to have an amorous relationship with a goat……..it’s probably going to be OK in your home grown moral code. The main use for your code, then, is to beat up others because they aren’t following your rules. But, they are YOUR rules…….. there is no good reason to expect others to follow your rules. What you can expect, is that they will follow their rules……and since all of these rules are home grown, their rules are just as valid as yours.

The no code plan:

In this case, you have no foundational set of rules, internal or external. You decide each case based on the facts at hand. This allows you flexibility. What is wrong today may be ok tomorrow, based on changing circumstances. The no code plan, however, is highly susceptible to manipulation, justification, and rationalization. We humans are masters at this. The no code plan also makes it hard for others to deal with you. The friend who wouldn’t lie to you on Monday may decide that lying to you is OK on Tuesday based on circumstances.

I suspect that most people operate somewhere between and an internal code and the no code plan. They have a few basic rules; but, often make their moral decisions on the fly using the facts at hand.

I believe that the best choice, not necessarily the easiest, is to adopt a good external moral code and follow it as closely as you can. This will restrict your behavior a bit. It will cut way back on manipulation, justification, and rationalization. It will make you a much more predictable person for your friends, family, and acquaintances. I recommend the 2 codes at the top of this post. They have served me well for most of my 65 years.

Fair warning…….. this post likely contains things that you will not like. It is unusual to be able to offend and annoy people on both sides of an issue at the same time.         What can I say…….it’s a gift.

First off…….. some ideas and definitions. The analysis that follows is based on these precepts.

1. There is an afterlife…. the Bible says so……. but in addition there is something written on our hearts that tells us so. You can argue about the details, but I believe in an afterlife that is beyond scientific explanation. The afterlife will be divided into a “nice place” (paradise) and a “not nice place” (hell). I want to end up in the nice place even though I am a bit unclear on the details.

2. All humans are fallen, imperfect beings……..We all do bad things. There are differences in degree, but we all fall short. I’m a better person than Hitler.   But;     God’s spectrum of good to evil is so vast, that,  compared to God,   the difference between me and Hitler is pretty small.  In a word…… it’s insignificant. To use a metaphor…… If evil is San Francisco and good is Boston, then Hitler is the west side of tenth street in St. Louis……and I’m in the middle of tenth.  Looking west from Boston, Hitler and I are hard to distinguish.  BTW,  my apologies to the good people of San Francisco.

3. According to social scientists, those who identify as Christians are just as likely to do bad things as those who identify as non-Christians. This ranges from priests abusing children to using the handicapped spot when you have no significant handicap. (That just drives me crazy)

4. Admission to paradise is through grace……acknowledging Christ and accepting his gift of forgiveness.

So here is the analysis:

If we are all fallen beings, and entry into paradise is through Christ’s forgiveness…….. then paradise is not going to be full of “good people”………….. it will be full of forgiven sinners. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? If you aren’t annoyed yet, just wait……it gets worse.

There is a corollary. Hell is not going to be full of “bad people”……. it will be full of unforgiven sinners.

Even worse…… the people in hell are not going to be substantially different from the people in paradise.

Kind of adds a new urgency to the business of “marketing” Christianity to our friends and family doesn’t it?

This just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Our human need for justice cries out……. the bad people must be punished……at least all of those people who are “badder” than me. We want THEM to go to hell.

But, in the process, we overlook the fact that we are sinners too. If you really want fair……. If you really want justice……..then we all go to hell….. both sides of tenth street.

There are 2 choices here:

Plan A………..the Fair plan……….. We all go to hell.

Plan B………..God’s plan…………….We accept Christ’s gift and go someplace better than we deserve.

Plan B looks like the “hot ticket” to me.

It is very common to talk to somebody who is skeptical about matters of spirituality. After all, if you can’t see it, it can’t be real……..Right? This same person, however, will believe just about anything you tell them as long as it is “scientific”. There is very little skepticism in our world about matters of “science”. I think we need to take science with a grain of salt. To put it another way, we need to asses matters of science with the same cautious, critical eye as we do matters of spirituality. As a disclaimer, I worked 40 years in a job that was applied science. I am by nature and training a scientist.

So……why should we look at science with the eye of a skeptic?

1. The scientists haven’t figured it all out yet. Every year we learn more. In 10 years we will know twice what we know now. In 10 years, some of what we “know” today will be wrong. We will look back and laugh at how naive we used to be. In 1492 the greatest scientific minds of the age told Columbus that the world was flat. In the middle ages they were in laboratories trying to turn lead into gold. In the late 1700’s, they bled George Washington to treat his pneumonia. In 1980, they believed that ulcers were caused by stress and treated them by cutting out your stomach. The scientists are smart, most of them are honest, and they are trying hard. But, THEY DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING.

As Will Rogers said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble…….it’s what you KNOW that ain’t so.”

2. Astrophysicists are the people who tell us how the universe formed and how it behaves…….how we got here.  They describe with complete confidence the “big bang”, the expanding universe, black holes and so on. But, if you question them closely, they will say that their theories don’t fully explain the universe. In a word, the theories are wrong …….or at least incomplete. For the universe to behave as they say it does, there must be much more mass and energy out there than they have found. They call this “missing” stuff “dark matter” and “dark energy”.  Here’s the rub. The “missing stuff” amounts to about 80% of the observable universe. In other words, the scientists who are telling us how we got here are basing their theories on observations of a system that they have only seen 20% of. This is not a great confidence builder. One of the “missing” things is the “Higgs boson”……and no I can’t explain it. They even call it “the God particle”. This may be an astrophysics joke.

If somebody proposed to explain to you how your car works after inspecting in detail the radio, A/C, and heater, but without ever having seen what goes on under the hood, they would likely get it wrong……and, you would be correctly skeptical.

Scientists cannot prove that God doesn’t exist. They don’t even try. They don’t have the tools to assess the supernatural. And yet, the conclusion that we must draw from listening to them,  is that they have everything figured out…….. and that God isn’t involved. If you think about it, they begin with the tacit assumption that God does not exist, because any explanation that involves the supernatural is discarded.

All that I am asking you to do is to maintain a healthy doubt…..a healthy skepticism about science and it’s limitations.

Because, in that 80% of the universe that we haven’t seen…….yet……. there is plenty of room for God.

Does God get a pass?

I’m reading Job.  The book asks a lot of questions but has few answers.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Who is responsible?

How should we respond?

Does God get a pass for the bad things that happen to us?

This last question is the big one.  There are millions of people who reject God, Christianity,  and ultimately paradise over this last question. They usually say something like this:  “I refuse to accept a God who would let my son die.”  I can sympathise……two of my sons have died….. and I have struggled with this for a long time.

Spoiler alert……….I don’t know the answers;  but,  I’ll make my best guess.

There is evil in the world.  It was here before we were.  Did God create the evil?….. did he make the serpent? ……..Did he create Satan? I don’t know. I do know that God dislikes evil and told us how to avoid it,  how to control it.  He gave us guidelines (rules) to follow. Then he gave us free will….. the right to follow or break the rules.  This free will, for better or worse, is unlimited. There is no question that much of the evil in the world comes from the exercise of free will…… the other guy’s free will……. and ours. God also gave Satan free will. Even more, he gave Satan permission to attack Job. He also strictly limited Satan’s ability to do evil to Job. In a word, he set up the parameters for Satan’s attack on Job.

So…….Why do bad things happen?

Either God made them happen,  God allows them to happen, or they slipped in while God wasn’t looking (the devil made me do it).

I have trouble with the last choice. It speaks to a God who is at least careless and at worst impotent. It allows us to choose anything that we don’t like and blame it on Satan. We give God  credit for the good things and we blame Satan for the bad things. This leaves God as a nice guy, but not exactly the Clint Eastwood, superhero type.. I think that the creator of the universe is a little more potent than that.

So…..God either actively orchestrates the bad things or he stands by and allows them.

I think that both of these things are going on.  Clearly in Job,  God stands by and allows Satan to attack Job. He even dictates the terms of the attack. I don’t know why.  Could it be a test of faith? A sign of God’s confidence in Job? Could God have been using Job’s suffering to teach somebody nearby………..maybe me……..a lesson about faith? Job is ultimately restored but the question of why? is never answered. What I finally come to is this:  it is easy to love the benign, soft focus, smiling,  God in a cloud who gives you whatever you want. That is in fact Satan’s description of the relationship between God and Job before the attack. It takes a much stronger, more powerful and more trusting faith to love a God who allows bad things to happen, and who does things that we don’t approve of.

I think that there are bad things that happen that God actively orchestrates.  These are the things that are painful in our short term,  temporal world; but, that lead to positive eternal outcomes.  This is a bit like the chemo that makes your hair fall  out today but cures the cancer that would have killed you. When something undeniably bad happens to me, I say a prayer:

“God,  I thank you for what you have given;   even though I don’t understand it, I trust your wisdom in what you have taken away;   and I praise you for what I have left. ”

Job said a similar prayer in his pain.

So…… why do bad things happen?   I don’t know.

Who is responsible?       God is….. either actively or passively.

How should we respond?   We should recognise that God is smarter and more powerful than we are….. that he is in charge…. that he loves us and in the end will make it right.  We should trust him, we should love him,  and we should praise him……. even when we don’t understand…….today.

As a friend once said,  “I have to believe that he knows what he’s doing.”

So…… does God get a pass?  In a way this is a trick question. It assumes, as do many of us,  that we get to pass judgement on God….. that we are his supervisor.  It assumes that we are wiser and more in tune with creation than God. This is hubris at its peak. This is also the crux of the problem in our relationship with God. Either he is in charge……..or we are. Either God is external to us……..or we are God.

If we are God…..why haven’t we cleaned up this mess.  Why have we allowed poverty, disease, war and pain to go on? It’s pretty simple.  We haven’t cleaned up the mess,  because we can’t,   because we aren’t God.

I don’t know about you,  but I’m not feeling very Godlike today.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

Toxic Christians and Marketing

There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t spend some time trying to clean up the mess left behind by a toxic Christian. This is a difficult topic because it straddles a gap between Christians who are doing a bad job of showing Christ to the world and non-Christians who would use an episode with a toxic Christian as an excuse to avoid doing something that they weren’t going to do anyway.

So….what is a toxic Christian?    My definition is: “a Christian who is focused on some aspect of the faith other than loving God and loving his/her neighbor.”

First of all, they are Christians. They are saved. They will be in paradise. They honestly believe that they are doing God’s work. They tend to be legalistic. They focus on one or more of the 600 some odd rules that are scattered through the bible. Invariably, they choose a rule that is being broken by somebody else. This results in a self righteous presentation of our faith. This is often accompanied by an element of anger. This is often seen as hypocritical. The toxic Christian often speaks for the faith by condemning others. The subtext is “I’m better than you.”  FWIW they are not better than you.  By focusing on the sin of others they manage to push their own sinfulness into the background.

Why are toxic Christians a problem? It’s simple. Our job is to draw others to Christ. We are here to market Christianity to the “unchurched”.   A toxic Christian can drive more people away in a day than I can draw back in a year. How many times have you talked to somebody about Christ only to have them reject him outright based on something a toxic Christian did or said to them 20 years ago?

We often see Christianity portrayed in a bad light in the media. We are portrayed as angry, judgemental, and legalistic. This saddens and offends me. There are TV shows that I avoid because of their consistent portrayal of Christians as bad people. But, where does this come from? I believe that these shows are often striking back against toxic Christians. I also believe that these portrayals of toxic Christians do more damage to the faith than the many shows that portray and even glorify the occult.

My son was badly injured in a motorcycle accident. He was paralyzed for a while but was on crutches and was relearning how to walk. A young, devout, but toxic, Christian walked up to him and said, “I can heal you right now!” He said a brief prayer and then said “walk!”    Nothing changed.       He told my son that the reason that he wasn’t healed was due to my son’s failure of faith. You can argue about the theology involved all day. The point is that the presentation of Christianity by that young man moved my son further away from Christ not closer. Many years later, I still haven’t fully overcome the damage that that kid, and others like him, did in 10 minutes. By the way, my son can now walk!

Toxic Christianity is about bad marketing. It is about a narrow, legalistic focus on secondary rules. It misses the forest of God’s deep abiding love by focusing on a tree that is one of the hundreds of God’s rules. It is driven by something, anything, other than Christ’s love for all of us…..ALL OF US.

So, how do we market Christianity? I can begin with what will not work. You will not draw others to Christ with bulletproof dogma, with miracles, with bible quotations, with the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. You will not lead others to Christ by beating them up over rule #342. You will not save somebody with any message that implies, “If you were as good as me you might get into heaven.”

Others will come to Christ when they see what you do….how you live….when they feel the joy and love that radiates out from you. They will see the evidence of the great treasure that you have found. They will say to themselves. “I don’t know what he has……but I want some of it.”

I have heard it said that joy is the surest sign of the presence of God.

If you think that you might be toxic when interacting with somebody, ask yourself these questions. “Is what I am doing right now motivated by love for God and love for this person?” and ”Will what I am doing right now draw this person to Christ?” If you are not absolutely sure that the answer to these critical questions is yes, then just stop. By not driving them away you may give somebody else a chance to draw them to Christ somewhere down the road.

Let me be more blunt. If you are a toxic Christian, the most productive ministry that you can undertake may be to sit down, shut up, and let somebody who is focused on God’s love and love for their fellow man do the heavy lifting.

I am convinced that there are many people who will die unsaved because of an encounter with a well intentioned but toxic Christian decades ago.

If you are the victim of an encounter with a toxic Christian somewhere in the past,  I am truly sorry. Whatever he or she said or did…..it did not come from God but from a fallible human being…..just like me. Don’t let his or her bad job of marketing keep you from the love and joy that you are meant for.