HELL: Why I Left The Faith

 

Where does the teaching of Hell come from? The Bible, of course!  Or does it? As Christians, we were taught that Hell was created by God as a place of eternal punishment for the Devil and his angels. So after mans “fall” in the garden of Eden, humans who do not accept God’s saving plan via sacrifice in the Old Testament or Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross will be cast into this Hell, sometimes called the Lake of Fire, to be tortured and punished forever and ever. 

I believed this. Much of my motivation for becoming a Christian was to avoid this horrible fate. Understand what this doctrine teaches. Anyone, despite where they were born or what circumstance they are in, even if they have never heard of Jesus, will be cast into the fire to writhe in pain for an eternity. Let the horror of that sink in.  Your mother, father, and children may face this fate. Yet, despite the brutality and unjust notion of Hell, we are told that God is love and we should worship and praise him.   In what alternate dimension does this sound like something a loving God would do?  It sounds more like the erratic nature of a sadistic madman.

As I daily encountered everyday people with real-world problems, I began to question this notion.  These “sinners” were just people, good people who were trying their best to live life. They may have been alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally ill.  They may have committed crimes to survive in the brutal streets, but they were not evil. So how could a God of love destine these people to such an awful, brutal fate?

The problem with Hell, for me, was more practical than theological.  What does the teaching say about God? What kind of God is this we claim to worship. A God who demands our undying attention and adoration on the penalty of eternal torture.  Is this really a being that is worthy of attention? Hell is a horrible teaching that strikes fear in people’s hearts and forces them to convert.

This is displayed in fundamentalist teaching of The Last Days, The Rapture, the tribulation, and the Final Judgement.  As I mentioned earlier, I listened to Hal Lindsey just before converting to Christianity. He taught that these were the last days we lived in and the events he would describe would be happening soon.  There was also a very popular movie being shown in churches in the 70s and 80s called A Thief in The Night. This was a poorly shot and acted drama of the coming Rapture and 7 Years of tribulation that we were told is predicted in the book of Revelation.  The movie pictures a time when millions of people suddenly disappear as they are taken to heaven to meet Jesus. Those who remain on earth must face the wrath of God for 7 years as the bowls of judgment are poured out upon the world. Those who choose to convert after the Rapture will face persecution and beheading.

Again, we are told this is all clearly laid out in the book of Revelation. However, as terrifying as the events of Revelation may seem, it was the clever design of fundamentalists that pieced them all together in this dark drama.  More likely, the book of Revelation was written as an allegory of the Roman empire and had more to do with the events of 1st Century Christianity than with future prophecy.  FYI the events Lindsey and others predicted were to happen “soon” have never happened. However, this does not stop them from preaching these lies to scare people into believing.  We are told that what is “soon” for the Lord is not the same as it is for us, and “soon” is a relative term.  This seems to have a striking resemblance to many cult's predictions of Jesus returning. When he doesn’t, they simply reinterpret what they have said and keep going.  In extreme cases, religious sects force the end by having their followers commit suicide to go to the next realm. 

 In 1988 Edgar C. Whisenant wrote a small booklet entitled 8 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. He boldly laid out the Biblical reasons why Jesus would come to rapture Christians to heaven between September 11-13, 1988.  Was he dismissed as a charlatan?  No.  This teaching spread through my denomination like a fire in a high wind. While most ministers did not buy into it, the ordinary layperson did.  On that Sunday in September, our little Church in Lakeland, Florida, was packed, and the altar was flooded with people trying to repent before Jesus Split the sky. 

Not to be deterred when it didn’t happen, he came out with another book, On Borrowed Time.  Then a third, The final shout: Rapture report 1989 predicted that the Rapture would occur in 1989. Apparently, his calculations were off by a year. After this failure, he predicted it would happen in 1993. Failed again, and the date was pushed to 1994. Thankfully Whisenant died in 2001.  While many mainstream preachers would disassociate from this teaching, what they do believe falls right in line with this craziness and will continue to produce such nonsense.

In 1995 the End Times teaching was revived in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. This book series was well written and far outshined The Thief in the Night movie. Though the content and theology were precisely the same.  However, they failed cinematically when the movie Left Behind came out, featuring the terrible acting of Kirk Cameron. So they tried a reboot in 2004 with the walk-on performance of Nicolas Cage, which was little help to the movie.  It’s a Christian scare tactic theme that won’t die.  People are compelled by the idea of the world ending, and good-meaning Christians are more than ready to scare the Hell of people. 

The real problem with this end-times prophecy teaching is it comes more from the dispensational theology of the late 19^th century than it does from the Bible.  I became starkly aware of this when I decided to do a Wednesday Bible Study on The End Times. I wanted to make a several-week series following the “Biblical” timeline of end-time events. The problem was that there wasn't much material when I went to the Bible. I had to pick verses from Revelation, Thessalonians, and the book of Daniel and then try to piece them together.  I had to violate every rule of Biblical interpretation I had ever learned.  Not to be deterred, I just followed the outline of the Left Behind book.  I presented as gospel truth what was really nothing more than the imaginative fantasy of Tim LaHaye.  I determined to never teach this subject again. I also learned that the Bible did not give a clear timeline of events, and the idea of any future prophecy was suspect at best; at worst, they were absolute fabrications.

The back ally of my Detroit home was dark and littered with the remains of refrigerators, old tires, bent metal pipes, and just plain old trash. As I moved my garbage cans out for the trash collectors to pick up the next day, I saw John sitting on the grimy pavement leaning up against the chain-link fence of the neighbor's yard. John lived there, kind of. They didn't actually let him in the house. So he had to sleep in the backyard. He was probably in his 50's but looked much older. His face was worn like an old chewed-up rag, a scraggly beard covered it, and his curly greasy hair hung down over his ears; it hadn't been washed in months. His nose was like a small basketball on the end of his face, lumpy and hung off-center; a bright red ran across his cheeks. Whiskey nose, they call it. It was Rhinophyma, a severe nose swelling condition often seen in alcoholics though the actual cause is unknown.  

John had obviously been drinking. He was always drinking. I decided it was time for me to witness to him and try to lead him out of his life in the darkness of sin to the light of Jesus. John affirmed that he believed in Jesus. Everything I asked him about, he agreed with. I was getting perturbed. How can you live in this open sinful life but say you trust in Jesus? I decided to push harder and pressed on the issue of drinking, letting him know this was a sin that Jesus could free him from. He responded with the fact that Jesus drank. Alcoholics always brought this fact up, and I hated it. He was using Jesus to justify his sin. I noticed I was getting angry. I don't like it when I get angry, so I backed off and just began to ask him about his life. 

John described his life as an 18-year-old boy who went to Vietnam. He told some of the horrors of war, the stench of dead bodies, the children he saw killed, and coming home with nothing and nowhere to go. He had started drinking way back then, and life had only worsened. Some 30 years later, his own family still didn't want him in the house but would allow him to sleep in the backyard like a stray dog. So he pitched a tent and made that his home. 

John's story struck my heart like a lightning bolt to an oak tree. My conscience was split with the realization that I had no idea what it was like to have lived such a difficult life. My cozy middle-class upbringing had never known a day of difficulty. Who the hell was I to be casting judgment upon this man? Who was I to be calling him a sinner? What was wrong with us (Christians) who have assigned this man a place in Hell simply because he was addicted to alcohol? What would I be doing if my life and been through what he went through? I could not escape these thoughts nor pull the knife out of my conscience. 

What is this concept of Hell? Where does it come from?  Christian talk as if it’s all about love, grace, and forgiveness but make no mistake, the concept of Hell weighs heavy in all their thoughts and is the motive for much of their action. 

To understand what Christians believe about Hell, one need only look at the sermon given by the famous American Theologian Jonathan Edwards and his sermon on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God.  The sermon is alive with passion and rich with metaphor and visual imagery.  It is perhaps the best Christian work on the subject of Hell as he weaves together the prevailing concepts of God’s wrath with scripture strewn cleverly across its pages.  In descriptive detail, he displays the Bible’s concept of God's wrath and the Christian idea of a Hell of eternal torment.  Consider some of the significant points and imagery he invokes. This is what is in the mind of the Christian and how the Christian sees the common sinner. Behind their smiles and proclamations of Jesus' love lies a sinister belief in the utter depravity of their fellow humans.  I could no longer, in good conscience, look at people through such a lens of disgust. Listen to the words of this famous sermon and realize this is at the heart of Christian belief:

 "They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using his power at any moment to destroy them."

 This is the Bible's picture of humanity preached by evangelicals and fundamentalists. They DESERVE to be cast into hell.  By the mere fact of being born human, this God stands ready to cast all into Hell.  The only way to escape is to bow in fear and submission and hope that God chooses you to be one of his Elect.  Jesus is pictured as the fire escape. But do we ever stop and really think about this?  What a horrible concept. Listen to Edwards again:

 

"The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood."

 

Edward’s pictures God has an archer ready to unleash his wrath and be drunk with blood. He is an angry God, and he is angry at you.  I dare say you were not taught this picture of God in Sunday School.  However, I think that Edward’s accurately pictures God as Christians perceive him.  But is this a being worthy of your worship and unconditional surrender? Listen again:

 

"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, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire;"

 

Edwards famously pictured God holding individuals like a spider over a burning fire who deserves nothing less than to be dropped into the inferno. 

This is the motive that was beneath everything we did as Christians. We went to the inner city to rescue poor sinners from Hell.  Sure, we did things like offering food, clothing, and help with education, but these things were only done so that we would have the opportunity to preach Jesus so that they could be saved from this type of Hell.   This is all that matters in the myopic vision of the Bible Believing Christian.

My encounter with humanity gave me a different perspective. Rather than depraved humans deserving of Hell, I encountered hurting people who were products of their environment and victims of the reality of their experiences.  Apparently, I had more care and concern for humanity than their supposed creator.