Hell and a Loving God?

The following is a conversation, in progress, at the blog of Wade Burleson - a Southern Baptist minister in Oklahoma. Wade is a wonderful person to discuss issues with, because he is intelligent, respectful, and yet direct in communicating what he thinks. He recently wrote a blog alleging that non-Christians in Hell will have experiences proportional to the amount of evils they committed on earth. I do not think a loving God and eternal hell can coherently exist together, so I engaged him on the topic. I should mention that Wade has many ongoing conversations, so I am not suggesting that the exchanges below are his “A game”. It’s an interesting conversation. There is also a comment from Kevin Crowder, another Southern Baptist and quite a character.

STEVEN STARK SAID...

I find it curious that you use the idea of Hitler, and then talk of what God will do to those who "reject Christ". God's actions appear to be far worse. Hitler could cause suffering and take a life. God can cast out forever, punish forever, according to the views of this blog.

This, by any practical use of the word today, is evil.

I am not sure that concepts like "righteousness" and "holiness" mean anything unless they are words ultimately describing love itself. And the idea that hell is justice makes a mockery of the concept.

And love never fails. One sinner spending eternity in hell would certain be a failure of love.

Thanks for the post,

Steven

WADE BURLESON SAID...

Steven,

Some very good thoughts. Thanks for commenting.

I think the best response to your concerns would be an analogy. What is the difference between a man drawing back a bow and firing an arrow into a beating heart and being praised and lauded for his action, and the same man drawing the same bow and firing the same arrow into a different beating heart and being condemned for his action?

Answer: The nature of the heart into which the arrow was fired.

The former was the beating heart of a deer. The latter was the beating heart of a man. What makes the action of the man different is the nature of the one whom the man shot.

So too, the nature of God is so infinitely superior to that of any human being, that any disobedience to the transcedent God's law is a crime of unbelievable magnitude. That law, by the way, seems to be written in the conscience of every human being (Romans 1). So, I think the struggle you may have is over the holy nature of God. It is possible that you see sin against Him as no big deal. If that's the case, then the cross of Christ loses its power and meaning.

However, I do think your understanding of the love of God is spot on. God is love. The question becomes how does a loving, holy God accept unrighteous sinners? Answer: By doing for them what they cannot do for themselves through the Person and work of His Son.

The question then becomes: "For whom does God grant this unbelievable gift of grace? Answer: Those who embrace His Son.

Blessings,

Wade

STEVEN STARK SAID...

Hi Wade - thanks for the response! I apologize for the length below. I tried to keep each point as succinct as possible.

“What makes the action of the man different is the nature of the one whom the man shot.”

Motivations are not mentioned in your analogy. Why did the man shoot the deer? To leave the body to rot? If this were so, the hunter would be condemned.

Is he shooting the deer because he cannot tolerate being close to deer, because they are inferior creatures - imperfect and dirty? The man would be condemned.

This is the treatment God would be giving those who do not intellectually “embrace his Son”.

Does the man decide to spare the deer, but something still has to get shot because deer are so bad, so he shoots himself? That is not a sane thing to do. But this is the idea of “substitutionary” atonement.

If “holiness” does not include actions that we associate with love, then it has no meaning except “otherness” and “separateness”. Your argument for God is not that He is good, but rather that He is powerful.

For instance, you mention sin against an infinite God. And that infinite punishment is appropriate. But this standard would be considered evil in our world. If a toddler commits a crime against an adult, we do not try the toddler as an adult. And surely, by your own ideas, God is much more far removed from us than a toddler is from an adult.

Plus, I am guessing that your Calvinist theology includes the idea that ultimately God is the one who decides which hearts will accept him and which ones He will “harden.” Therefore God is effectively creating people who He knows will not accept Him. Therefore there is not even a legitimate offer being made here.

Or if you accept freewill, then once again, God is allowing us to make decisions with infinite consequences with our finite minds, which is much worse than me giving a set of scissors to my 2 year old son and then respecting his decision to do what he will with them.

“It is possible that you see sin against Him as no big deal.”

I can think of no greater sin than condemning a person to an eternity of suffering without hope of reprieve. Punishment is only considered good if instructs, if it makes better, or if it acts as a deterrent. Hell does none of this.

“If that's the case, then the cross of Christ loses its power and meaning.”

I disagree with you here. If you don’t mind, I will change your phrase to a version that perhaps we can agree on - “If that’s the case, then the doctrine of substitutionary atonement loses its power and meaning.” Fair enough.

Thanks for the thoughts!!

Steven

WADE BURLESON SAID...

Steven,

Good thoughts!

By the way, I want you to know that I believe whosoever desires Christ is a recipient of the grace of God. In other words, nobody desiring the Lord is unrewarded!

Also, I admire your desire to protect the reputation of God. In any way that I have fallen short of presenting a loving, holy God whose justice is always and only perfect and right and love always and only unconditional, then I have failed in my communication.

Wade

STEVEN STARK SAID...

Thanks for those words, Wade.

Here are your premises taken from two different comments:

“I believe whosoever desires Christ is a recipient of the grace of God. In other words, nobody desiring the Lord is unrewarded!”

“I can assure any sinner who asks that the punishment of hell, though just and according to deeds, is not something even the best of sinners would ever desire.”

(from a comment to Kevin)

If no sinner would ever desire hell, then why would anyone reject Christ?

There are only two reasons I can think of:

1. They do not understand what is going on.

1. They are not of sound mind.

Can anyone add to this list? Remember we are assuming Wade’s premises that no sinner would ever desire hell. If this is true then, if presented with all the facts and a sound mind, every sinner would certainly accept Christ, who is the escape from hell.

If a sinner goes to hell because of either reason I have listed, is this justice?

Thanks!

Steven

KEVIN M. CROWDER SAID...

Steven,

A few things:

1. Christ is not the escape from hell. He is the eternal God who must be worshipped.

2. Christians (those who are "regenerate") daily re-condemn themselves to everlasting punishment EVEN with the knowledge of the Word of God. The facts remains we still love our sins more than we love our God.

3. "but God" (Ephesians 2:4) Best two words in all the Bible.

K

Fri Feb 12, 09:37:00 AM 2010

WADE BURLESON SAID...

Steven,

Were a person truly unable to understand (like an infant or the mentally incapicitated), I would agree with you wholeheartedly that hell seems unjust.

But Romans 1 says that an understanding that there is an invisible and immortal God and that He is to be worshipped-- and not men or idols--is written in the conscience and heart of every human being. So it seems to me that the Bible is saying just the opposite.

All understand and disobey their natural inclination to worship the Creator.

Blessings,

Wade

STEVEN STARK SAID...

Wade,

"All understand and disobey their natural inclination to worship the Creator."

From my conversations with atheists, I think this is false. There are good reasons not to believe (the problem of evil, examples of "unintelligent design", God's hiddenness, etc.). I personally feel that belief in God is a matter of taste, and the only reason to believe is whether you want to or not. Nothing logically compels us to believe. *note that I mean the traditional Western concept of God here.

Your are suggesting that people do have the capability to understand the situation of salvation and damnation. Then why would they choose damnation, something fundamentally outside their own best interest? It's incoherent to think that they would, I think.

Also, according to your view of God being "infinitely superior" to man - certainly this is a much greater distinction than the difference between a mentally handicapped person, or an infant, and an adult of sound mind. If we do not hold infants accountable to adult law, why should an God hold finite men accountable to infinite law?

Kevin,

Some responses:

1. By whose dictate must God be worshiped? By his own. There are better ways to insure your own worship than by remaining relatively hidden and "catching" the non-believers after death. Why not appear in all your power and present them with their options? This would surely convert the entire world.

Some suggest God does not do this out of respect and love for man and his freewill. Of course, this doesn't make sense if He then consigns people to Hell who did not realize it was that serious. This is not love. Love is rescuing someone from a dangerous situation, when they do not recognize the danger.

2. A daily personal condemnation is no substitute for being held in condemnation against your will for eternity.

3. I come back to this idea. If everyone really understood the situation, then why would anyone reject Christ? It is incoherent - the action of one who is not of sound mind, or of one who does not have all the facts before him.

Thanks for a very enjoyable conversation!

Kwotes again

History is not the study of what happened. It's the study of what probably happened. And what probably happened is not necessarily what happened.

The eskimo hunter asked the missionary, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I still go to hell?"

"No," said the priest, "Not if you did not know."

"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"

Wisdom is not knowing, but being. The Christian mystics instructed seekers to enter the Cloud of Unknowing with a trusting heart. The wise heart is not one that understands everything - it is the heart that can tolerate the truth of not knowing. - Jack Kornfield

You say you can't create something original? Don't worry about it. Make a cup of clay so your brother can drink. - Rumi

Commission

One reason that I have not been blogging much lately, is that I have been commissioned to write a string orchestra piece for the Edmond Memorial High School Orchestra. My good friend David Koehn is the director up there, and he had the brilliant idea to write a grant for an original work so that the students could see what it is like to premier a new piece. The performance is only one aspect of the process. The rehearsals will be very collaborative, since I will almost certainly need to alter elements of the piece once I see how it does or doesn't work. I will be attending many rehearsals. I actually caught one last Wednesday, just to hear the orchestra play, and I was very impressed.

I hope the students enjoy this unique experience and find it interesting. I can only think of a few times that I have been a part of an orchestral premiere, and it was super interesting each time.

This piece will be a single movement, 5-8 minutes in length. I have decided to call it "Oklahoma Trails" an homage to the exhibit at the OKC Zoo of the same name. I am up to my neck in staff paper right now, and up to my brain in musical notation software. Rehearsals start in about a month, and the premiere will happen on the orchestra's Spring concert in May. I will keep you posted, and thanks for your interest!

Obviously I am very excited about it!

Kwotes

I have been reading "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path" by Jack Kornfield. He is a Buddhist teacher and a very nurturing, caring writer. And he fills his books with page after page of wonderful stories and sayings from friends and famous alike. I will list a few for starters that have meant something to me over the last week or two. They are by anonymous teachers, monks and nuns unless otherwise attributed.

"The white swan in the snow is a white swan in the snow."

"Spiritual practice is what we are doing now. Anything else is a fantasy."

"Enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident prone."

"To neither suppress our feelings nor be caught by them, but to understand them - that is the art." - Jack Kornfield

"It’s either here and now or we’ve missed it."

My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes...most of which never happeend.” Mark Twain

“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.” Sri Nisargadatta

And one from a friend on Facebook:

"Whether one is atheist, agnostic, religiously affiliated, or self-declared spiritual, an existential struggle with the absurdity of suffering is critical to wisdom."

Beatle Free

Our string quartet was recently asked to play a wedding reception. The bride-to-be had seen us perform locally, and I was excited to hear from her and to book the gig.

She had one stipulation though.

"NO Beatles please!"

I laughed to myself and thought "man, there must be a good story behind that!"

I asked her about it. She replied that her fiance simply did not like the Beatles.

Wow. I felt like I had spotted a thought-to-be-extinct creature in the wild. I quote from the Rolling Stone album guide concerning the Beatles - "Theirs is the final, great consensus in popular music - not liking them is as perverse as not liking the sun."

Now I quote Mr. Burns from the Simpsons - "Since the beginning of time, man has longed to destroy the sun!"

Actually, I have met one other person who did not like the Beatles (and I am talking DISlike here. Obviously the Beatles are not everyone's favorite music). This guy was an artist, and he expressed his opinion to me one day. I asked him for a reason. He responded with the universal criticism people use for any artist they do not like.

"All their songs sound the same."

????!

He did add this qualifier - "...except the song 'Eleanor Rigby'....I kinda like that one........but I prefer Herman's Hermits."

Perhaps my friend's parents or grandparents lived in the South, after John's infamous and misunderstood "bigger than Jesus" comment, and perhaps they attended mass burnings of Beatles records and paraphernalia. Perhaps, at the request of several voices in the South in the 1960's, my friend's parents bought up the Herman's Hermits catalogue and got their kids hooked on the safe stuff.

And perhaps my friend has a brother, and he is getting married soon?

The Kalam Cosmological Argument part four

Disclaimer: These posts assume the view that the Big Bang was the actual beginning of all time, matter and space. This is just one view of many in cosmology.

I am going to try to finish up this series of thoughts on the Kalam Cosmological Argument in the next couple of weeks. Here is the argument in its most common form today, as promoted by William Lane Craig and others.

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This short post will focus on the argument's circular nature. The first premise uses the phrase "Whatever begins to exist". Yet anything and everything that has ever begun to exist (that we know of) is part of the universe. So "whatever begins to exist" is equal to "the universe." So we could reformulate the argument this way:

1. The universe has a cause.
2. The universe is the universe.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

or you could do it this way:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. Whatever begins to exist begins to exist.
3. Therefore whatever begins to exist has a cause.

"Whatever begins to exist" and "the universe" are only distinguishable from each other if one assumes a perspective from outside the universe, which is what the KCA is trying to prove. So you have to assume it to be true for it to possibly be true.

We could also recall the ideas from posts one and three about causes. Since everything existing in the universe now did not pop up out of nowhere, but is rather a reorganization of materials that have always been here, then nothing has ever truly begun to exist except the universe. So once again - "Whatever begins to exist" = "the universe", and the KCA does not offer a useful philosophical proof.

Powers of 10

This fantastic piece of film was made by the office of Charles and Ray Eames,

two of the most renowned designers of the twentieth century.

It is another attempt to demonstrate the scale of the universe,

yet it also includes an added adventure into the very small.

It is definitely worth 9 minutes. I have watched it half a dozen times.