I am currently in the process of re-reading Rob Bell’s book ‘Velvet Elvis’. It has been a number of years since I last read it but even now, re-reading it, I am virtually unable to put it down. However as I am reading, some of what Bell says has reminded me of a discussion I had on one of my flights on my round the world trip. From the USA to England I found myself sitting next to a young guy, about 19 years old. He was tall, still had a very child-like face but he was absolutely a very deep thinker. We spent most of the trip talking deeply about matters of life, faith, spirituality and God. Though he has not grown up in the church he has obviously had a bit to do with it at some stage because he was actually pretty knowlegable about the Christian faith. He however was more interested in New Age beliefs and scientific understanding. As the conversation progressed something struck me, this obsession with New Age beliefs and scientific understanding that exists in the world today is nothing more than a continuation in eating the fruit from the tree in the garden of Eden. Let me explain.

The relevant biblical passage can be found in Genesis 3:1-7

¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

⁴ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

The key verse for me is verse 6. Eve realises the fruit is not only good for food but ‘good for gaining wisdom’. Now the first question I always have when I read this verse is why is wisdom appealing to eve?’ For now though I am going to put that question aside and just focus on the knowledge aspect. Eve is attracted, for whatever reason, to knowlege.  She wants to be ‘like God’. She wants to be able to comprehend God, least that is what it seems like to me.

In Velvet Elvis Bell talks about how everyone has faith, it is just a matter of what a person places their faith in. Some people believe in a God far outside our understanding and they believe he is the reason for our being. Some believe in many God’s who each have determined roles and they mould and shape our life based on their whim. Some believe that we exist purely due to random chance. There are many more ‘beliefs’ but they are ALL belief systems. They all rely on a level of faith.

Bell talks about how in Moses time, people honoured their God’s by making statues or carvings of them, such as the Israelites Golden Calf. These were God’s they could grasp, they could understand, they could…be like or at least comprehend. This sounds an aweful lot like what I said before about Eve in the garden.

One of the biggest debates that is raging these days in creation vs intelligent design vs evolution vs other varied beliefs about the beginning of our existence. Each of these is based on one desire though, the quest for knowlege. The desire to be able understand and comprehend all that is around us. It is all a quest for knowlege, just like Eve way back in the beginning.

Now don’t read this and hear me saying ‘knowlege is bad’ because I am not saying that. Many have come and gone in the past 2000 years and have made a big deal about this. I am not arguing that knowlege in and of itself is bad, for it is what God HAS. But it is making knowlege our GOD that becomes an issue. Eve’s desire for knowlege was greater than her desire to honour God’s commands. New Age religion, scientific reason, many of these beliefs seek to put God (or the lack of a God) in a box. New Age God’s all play defined roles, they are almost always fully comprehendable. We can ‘explain’ what the God of fertility does. We can ‘know’ exactly how to appease her. In fact in some New Age beliefs we can ‘become like God’ through ascension or enlightenment. It is all the same as Eve. It is all based on still being stuck eating the fruit in Eden.

The answer to all this is not to shun knowlege. To say that scientific discovery is bad. To say believing in any of the creation philosophies is bad. It is simply to realise that God is above our understanding. Whether or not creation or evolution is true, God is real and God created the heavens and the earth. Whether or not we believe in God or not does not make his existence any less real. We cannot define God. We cannot say ‘this is who God is’. The name we have for God, being ‘I am’ tells us all we can know and all we need to know. He is. He was, he is and he always will be.

Our task as Christians in my opinion is to not continue to get caught up in the quest for knowlege, but point people in the direction of the God who created knowlege. Now, we may USE knowlege to do this. We may USE discussion and understanding on the different New Age philosophies to do this. We may USE discussions on creation, evolution, intelligent design or whatever to do this but at the end of the day Christians say ‘you will not be able to say ‘i definitively know God’ and people who choose to follow God have to be ok with this! Because if we are still living in the Garden of Eden eating the fruit, we are in trouble.

Is there any more contentious idea in Christian theology than the idea of a loving God ‘sending’ wicked people to hell for eternal punishment? If a Christian even mentions this 4 lettered word to an unbeliever, world war 3 usually erupts. In fact I have held many conversations with people who have stated that it is the doctrine of hell that makes it most difficult for them to begin to consider the Christian faith. This is ironic given as traditionally the Christian faith believes that unbelievers will be the ones to end up in hell. Tim Kellar talks about this in his book, The Reason for God when he says,

“Modern people inevitably think that hell works like this: God gives us time, but if we haven’t made the right choices by the end of our lives, he casts our souls into hell for all eternity. As the poor souls fall through space, they cry out for mercy, but God says “Too late! You had your chance! Now you will suffer!”’

This just about sums up what I believe is a common misunderstanding on hell from people  both inside and outside the church.

Is this all there is?

I want to take a little bit of time and flesh out some thoughts on this whole doctrine of hell. This discussion will by no means be entirely exhaustive and probably would not, in this skeleton stage, hold up to serious questioning. However, I want to at least attempt to portray some thoughts I have been having over recent years, stimulated by various teachers and authors. I, like so many other people, also struggle greatly with the traditional view of hell being a place of fire, brimstone and eternal punishment, but ‘struggling’ with an idea is not enough to cast it aside. Still, for a long time I have been caused to wonder “Is this all there is? Does our loving God eventually send everybody who chooses to not be re-united with him as we were always meant to be, to a place where they are eternally and unconditionally punished? Is this our only option?”

Another way?

I vividly remember sitting in a class at college under the teaching of Keith Farmer. Keith has a way of explaining God’s love for people that makes you almost drift off into some place of pure bliss. In my classes he was so passionate about the love of God that all I ever wanted to do was to sit, listen, and in some way, for the first time realise just how much God loves us. I remember this because not long into the conversation one student was bold enough to ask ‘So how does Hell fit into all of this bliss?’ The answer was short, because we did not have time at this stage to flesh it out, but the answer opened a door that I have been slowly peeking through for the past few years. As many great teachers do, Keith answered the students question with another question. He simply said something like, “What if Hell is not a place of fire, brimstone and punishment…but simply a place people have freely chosen to be when they have decided they want nothing to do with God?” This probably doesn’t quite do Keith’s question justice, but it conveys the basic idea’s. Tim Kellar says something similar in The Reason for God when he says,

“In short, hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity.”

‘What if Hell is not as I had grown up being taught?’ This idea knocked me over. Is it even possible for there to be another, entirely different view of hell that more closely ‘fits’ (I hesitate to use that word) the idea of a loving God? This is a question I had not given too much more thought to until I read Kellar’s book which re-ignited within me the flame seeking to discover what this ‘other’ idea of Hell might be and whether or not it actually fit biblically.

Could hell ACTUALLY be a symbol of God’s love for us? If so, how?

Kellar devotes a whole chapter to the question ‘How can a loving God send people to hell?’ In it he basically argues that this whole notion of God ‘sending’ people to hell, as I quoted him explaining above, is preposterous and entirely the wrong way to look at God and his role. Kellar basically asserts that hell is nothing more than the place people go who have freely chosen to reject God. This is interesting because it almost makes sense. What if, in God’s love, he actually allows us to choose to live for eternity without him? As Kellar sums up,

“All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want, including freedom from himself. What could be more fair than that?”

In this way of thinking, far from Hell being some place of God’s eternal punishment, Hell is a symbol of just how much God loves us! That ultimately we do choose where we spend eternity. Who do we love most, God or ourselves? Kellar quotes the great theologian C S Lewis, who once wrote,

“There are only two kinds of people – those who say “Thy will be done” to God and those to whom God in the end says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”

Kellar goes on to explain that,

“We know how selfishness and self-absorption leads to piercing bitterness, nauseating envy, paralysing anxiety, paranoid thoughts, and the mental denials and distortions that accompany them. Now ask the question: “What if when we die we don’t end, but spiritually our life extends on into eternity?” Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centred life going on and on forever.”

A place without God

So what if hell is simply a place ‘without’ God that God allows people to go for eternity if they choose to live a life without him? I remember Keith Farmer talking about how every good thing comes from the love of God. To chose to live without God is to chose to live without love and everything that comes from it. Though in the world some people who choose to live without God experience and in fact exhibit elements of love, at the end of the day, what if God grants people who choose to live without him what they are ultimately desiring, complete separation from him? This is as painful to God in many ways as it is to those who choose it. Each and every single person was designed and made to be in relationship with God. When Jesus died, he died so that EVERY single person could be re-united with him, but they have to choose it! All sin IS forgiven (not will be forgiven), it IS, but people have to choose to accept to be re-united with God. Perhaps hell is simply the place God makes for people who choose to reject this? And, it just so happens, that this place is terrible because, ultimately, for a person to be without God…is hell. As Kellar says,

“That is why it is such a travesty to picture God casting people into a pit who are crying ‘I’m sorry! Let me out!”

Anyone who CHOOSES to live with God will get that choice, it is only those who make the decision to either not believe IN God or not to enter into relationship with him, who miss out, and are granted what they actually desire?

There is much more to say on this topic which I will leave for another time. At this stage it sits as a great ‘idea’, but how does it fit biblically? I mean, the view of hell being a place of fire, brimstone and eternal punishment must have come from the bible, how can all that just be swept away for an idea? I won’t say much but what I will say is this, in looking into the biblical argument for the traditional view of hell I was highly surprised with what I read. Those discoveries are for another day!