So what about hell?

This week (March 15), a leading pastor of one of the post-modern emergent churches released a book titled called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. In a video teaser for the book, this pastor made this troubling statement: “Will only a few select people make it to heaven? ... And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? Millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message, the center of the gospel of Jesus, is that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus. So what gets subtly sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. How could that God ever be good? ... And how could that ever be good news?"
So how do we respond? What is important to understand is that God doesn’t send just anyone to hell, but only those who reject His revelation and choose to suppress the truth that He plainly reveals to them. In some ways, people choose to send themselves to hell by never choosing a saving relationship with God. Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle put it this way: “Hell is only for those who persistently reject the real God in favor of false gods. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, either people will say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ or God will say to them, ‘Thy will be done.’”
The thought that a loving God would be tolerant of our disobedience to Him can be taken to the ultimate extreme by arguing that if God was tolerant of everyone then he should also be tolerate of rapists, child molesters, pedophiles, and sex-slave traders.
But such an idea is really absurd because a God of love is actively at work protecting His children from sin and evil by separating them from it. As Driscoll puts it, “In this way, God is a father who is tolerant of all who obey Him … but … is intolerant of those who sin against Him and do evil to His children.”
Think about it – we live in a world where our culture does not tolerate those who drink and drive, steal, rape and murder. We separate those people from society by incarcerating them. So if God does not do this as well, such action would be shameful, unjust, and certainly not loving. It would almost seem like God was approving and supporting evil if He did not punish such actions by separation in hell.
As always, we are on a slippery slope that is slowly leading to the demise of Christianity in America. Until next time,
Pastor Sam