How Do God's Love and Hell Go Together? They Do but Not the Way You Think.

Every time it happens, I struggle with how to handle it.   After all, I’ve just met the family.    And the funeral home did reach out to me so that I could give them some comfort in their time of grief.  So, I ask things like.  “What did your mom or sister believe?”   Or “What church did they attend growing up?”   “Tell me a little bit more about their connection to God.”   Sometimes, they look at each other, trying to find some answer that will help me see this person believed in something.   And sure, they usually come up with something.   And it helps.  It helps me know them better, but it also gives me a little wiggle room.  

The great Presbyterian writer, Kathleen Norris put it well.  “A relationship with God is like a marriage.  The only two people who really know what is going on are the two people in the relationship.”  So, I always give that relationship the benefit of the doubt.    But every now and then, it becomes uncomfortably clear that, when it came to God at least, this person didn’t have any relationship at all, even loudly proclaimed that fact.   Maybe their spouse did or their kids, and that’s why they call me.  Sure, the person had many good qualities.   But for whatever reason, they acknowledged no connection to God, maybe didn’t believe such a being as God existed at all.     So, what do you do then?   I usually say something like, “Now, George or Mary knows the love of God as they didn’t know it here.  Then I launch into a little moment to urge those present to not wait until death to know that love, but to know it right then and there.”   After all, at a funeral, folks can be open to the good news of God’s love in a way they normally aren’t.  So, I always throw a little gospel pass down the field, hoping someone will catch it.    But here’s what I don’t do.  

I don’t ever say something like, “Well, we don’t know where George or Mary is right now, but they could be burning in the eternal flames of hell.  After all, they refused a relationship with God, and now God has honored their choice with separation from God forever.   I pray that you don’t make the same mistake.”   But should I?  After all, that’s what the Bible teaches.  Or does it?

Maybe you have a friend or a family member for whom this is true.  They don’t believe in God at all.   Or maybe they simply don’t believe in Jesus.   So, what happens to them if they kick the bucket?   Is that it?  Are they done, cut off from any hope of connection with God forever more?  How can you know?  In these words, God begins to show the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Matthew 7:9-11, Ephesians 3:14-15

So, if you’re not a believer, what happens after you die?   What does the Bible tell you?  Starting today, and over the next several blog posts, we’re going to go deep into that question.  I’m telling you that because if you expect me to answer all the questions you might have in this one, I won’t.   But hold on.  Over the next weeks, hopefully, I will.  In the meantime, don’t hesitate to reach out to me with your questions or comments or concerns by emailing me here: kennedym@fpcoh.org

But today, I want to take a look at the bigger picture first, to look at this question from the image of God that Jesus used again and again, of God as a parent, most particularly a Father, as in the very prayer we pray each week.  

Every time, I put tabasco sauce on something (which is a lot – I love tabasco sauce), I remember the story, and I feel sad.   It’s weird.  Sometimes, a little detail of something horrific can stick in your mind for years, even decades.   That’s how it’s with tabasco sauce and me.  As a child, I saw that detail in a news story, one of the first news stories I remember catching my young eye.  A young child had died after brutal abuse at the hands of his own parents.  And this article detailed the awfulness this little boy experienced.  And in those details, the tabasco sauce stuck with me.  You see.   His parents, as a punishment, had regularly forced him to chug a bottle of tabasco.   That terrified me.  I could imagine, the fear, the terror, the agony of that, not simply the pain of the tabasco, but knowing it was the people you looked to for love, for care who were torturing you like that.  I tried to Google the story.  That made it worse.  I discovered, to my horror, that this punishment is kind of a thing, what’s called “hot saucing” the kids.   

And yes, child abuse happens all the time, likely even more so, in the distanced days of this pandemic.  Who knows what tragic horrors have occurred behind closed doors?  But boy the stories of it trouble me.   For a parent to betray their child like that, to destroy their trust, to wound their body and soul, I find it almost more than I can bear.   

When my son was born, I remember realizing.  That kid looked to me and my wife for everything.  We were his whole world.  And because of that, he was so very vulnerable.  So, I wanted to make his world as safe and loving and secure as I could, as any loving parent would.  To know that parents exist who choose to make their children’s world instead a place of pain and terror, I can hardly grasp.      

So, it’s strange to me that Jesus picks this image for God.  To see God as a Father presumes big expectations of God, of love, of protection, of faithfulness.   But Jesus tells us, again and again, that’s who God is, that God loves us as a father loves a child.   And when you talk about God, you’re talking about a love that goes beyond what any mortal parent can provide, a love that goes on literally without end.   And if Jesus tells you that’s who God is, a God who loves you with a tenacity, with a faithfulness, with a compassion that goes even beyond that of the most dedicated father or mother, then that’s who God is.  

But do you see what this means?  

Even since I can remember, I’ve loved movies.  And this time of year, when the award nominations come out, I try to watch more movies than ever, especially those nominated as the best.   That’s how I ended up watching the film, Judas and the Black Messiah a few months ago.  The nominations hadn’t come out, but I knew.  When they did, this film would be there.  So, I wanted to check it out.  

If you don’t know, the film tells the story of Fred Hampton, one of the leaders of the Black Panther party in the sixties (he’s the black messiah in the title), and of how, one of his closest colleagues (the Judas) ended up betraying him and getting him killed.    The story has all sorts of tragic complexities within it, but one hit me more like no other.  

In the film, one of the members of the Black Panthers, a 19-year-old named Jake Winters, gets chased by the police.  He ends up disarming one of them and putting him on the ground.  The officer looks up, hands spread, begging for mercy.  You see Winters staring down. Then you see it happen.  You see him make a decision.  And he fires the gun.  And you know.  He has crossed a line.  He is no longer just a political revolutionary.  He has become a murderer.  And moments later, Winters is gunned down himself.  

Then the scene changes to a neat, white kitchen.  And you realize. Fred Hampton is visiting Jake Winter’s grieving mom.  And as they sit and talk, she reminisces about her boy.  She talks about how loving he was as a child, how gentle and kind.   And you see what’s happening. She is telling Fred.   That’s who my boy was.   Yes, in that moment, he made a terrible mistake.  He ended a man’s life, but she knows too.  Her son was more than that.    

And that scene haunts me.  Why? It speaks to a great fear that every parent has.  G.K. Chesterton spoke truth when he said this about love.  He said: “Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is.  Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”    When you love someone, you see the truth.  You see their strengths, their weaknesses.  You see their faults even as you see their gifts.   And you yearn to see the gifts win out, to see this person you love become their best self.   But you know.  It can go the other way.  Every child, as they grow up, can make fateful choices, choices that lead to worst choices, choices that hurt them and others. And you yearn, you work, for that not to happen, but you know.  As much as you try, in the end, it lies out of your control.   Things could go wrong, tragically wrong with this beautiful child you love.    But if they do, you know. You are still bound to them.  Yes, you see the ugliness that has led them to a dark place.   But you see the goodness that remains even in the midst of all that mess. 

For, you may not always like your kid, but you will never stop loving them.  You will love them no matter what.    That’s what a loving parent does, what a loving dad does.   And if this is who Jesus tells you God is again and again; if you read in Ephesians that God is not just a father to those who follow Jesus but is a Father to everyone, then that forces a question, a question that has to be asked.

Would any loving father, any loving parent, as an act of love, consign any one of their children, no matter how broken or twisted, to agony without end, to torture and suffering that will last forever?  Does that make sense?  Sure, God exists far beyond our limited understanding.  You can’t limit God to the image of just a Father.  He’s a judge too, a God of righteousness and truth.  But if Jesus calls God a loving Father, then that analogy, as limited as it is, still has to be true.     

So, how do Christians reconcile a loving heavenly Father with the idea of a God who subjects millions and millions of his children to agonizing brutality that goes on forever and ever and ever?  To be honest, most Christians just don’t.   They believe in hell when it’s convenient, like for maybe Hitler.  But they don’t really believe in it for Uncle Bob or Aunt Sue or their kind atheist neighbor down the street.   Yet here’s the problem.  If you read the Bible, you can’t ignore Hell.   You find images of it all over the place, including in Jesus’ own words.  So, what do you do?

You realize.   The problem doesn’t lie in hell.  The problem lies in people thinking they know what hell is.   The problem lies in thinking you know what the Bible tells you about it.   That’s why next week, we’re going to look at what the Bible does tell you.  And as you do you will find.  Who Jesus tells you God is, this loving Father, is profoundly, beautifully true.  God does love you in the same way and even more so, that if you’re a parent, you love your kids.   

More than that, hell, at least hell as the Bible actually portrays it, affirms that truth.  You discover hell is not a terrifying, brutal place where God lets his children be tortured forever.  No, Hell is a profoundly beautiful act of God’s love.  And in that love, you will not find a God of endless torture, but a God of unrelenting faithfulness.  You will find a God who never, ever gives up on any of his children.  You will find a God whose love cannot, in the end, be resisted.  You will find, a God whose love will, before all is done, bring all of God’s children home.  

So, if you want to know who God is, you have to start by listening to what Jesus tells you about his father.  But you don’t stop there.  No, you look at who Jesus shows you God to be.   And what does Jesus show you?  Jesus shows you a God who became one of you.  Why? To save you.  Jesus shows you a God who even as you killed him, loved you, even prayed for you.  And what word did Jesus use when he prayed?  He used Father.   “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

And as God and Jesus are one, then God the Father was praying that prayer too, so you know it was answered. For, on your worst days, you have a God who will never quit you.  You have a God whose love will never walk away.  You have a God who is bound to you as tightly as a mother to her child, as unwaveringly committed to you as a dad to his kids, and even more so.   And in the face of that love, not even death, not even hell itself, stands a chance.