love wins

“I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.”

                                                              Rob Bell

______________________________

“I hope they burn in hell”

I’ve hear it said

So, I suspect have you

We have this thing

Those of us raised in place nominally Christian

About heaven and hell

Hell is a big deal in many churches

It is huge part of the message

Turn or burn

Behave or burn

Be the way we tell you to be, or burn

Not for a moment

Not for a day

Or a year

But for all eternity

Hell is thus very useful

It is something that can be used to control

To manipulate

To Coerce

It is also very problematic

How do we hold fast to a concept of hell where most of the people who have every lived will be placed in eternal conscious torment by a God who, we say, is Love?

How do we have a faith is that about us finding our best self

Our most loving self

If a primary motivation for faith is not the desire to transform and reconcile the world,

but the desire to avoid punishment?

And what do we do about the fact that “hell” reveals such horrible things about us?

I hope he burns in hell!

I hope she gets what she deserves?

I wonder if Jesus ever said that?

I wonder if Jesus ever thought that?

I, sadly, have

Even though I am not sure what I believe happens to us after we die

(I tend to believe we came from the Sacred, and when we die we go back to the Sacred)

Even though I tend to believe that even after a person dies, whatever happens is about restoration and reconciliation

There is a part of me that doesn’t want those I feel are evil to “get off”

I suspect they don’t

But I suspect that whatever challenge and discomfort they face comes more from a new awareness of what they have done, and who they have been,

As they see themselves in the light of God’s perfect love

Than it does from God actively punishing them, terribly, for all eternity

But there is a side of me that wishes that those people I see killing our planet

Harming the vulnerable

Neglecting the poor

Oppressing others

Would “get it”

That the Sacred would treat them the way I think they deserve

Perhaps that God would treat them with the same disdain they treated others

But God is love

And God cannot be other than love

And to that end I think whatever God does

Is aimed at change, and recreation

At restoration and reconciliation

I think God never gives us

Even though, as Bell notes

The Sacred “gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.”

Perhaps it is true

That some will find themselves in the presence of the Sacred

And will be

And will stay

The same greed, angry, hateful people they have been on earth

Perhaps

And how that plays out I do not know

But I suspect being a person of hate in a world of love would be hell

Perhaps it is true that some will find themselves in the presence and go

“O my God!”

And see themselves for the first time

And in remove throw themselves into Love

I don’t know

But I do know this

There will be something next

And the Sacred will be there

And Love will be there

And Love wins

And I should be hoping for that

For every single person on this planet

Every

Single

One