Once a month, I publish a post where I encourage people to send in questions about just about anything. It can be sports related. Pop culture related. It can be about my opinions on food. We’ve covered a ton of ground! But often, I get questions about theology and the Bible. And I love those questions.
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In the months leading up to the release of Theologizin’ Bigger, I’d engendered a bit of controversy for loudly, definitively, and repeatedly stating that Penal Substitutionary Atonement—the idea that Jesus was sent to satisfy the wrath/justice of God by paying the penalty that we deserve via his crucifixion—was terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad theology for a number of reasons.
It’s a theme I’ve covered several times even in just this space.
Like in this post:
Or this one:
Or this one:
I’ve never had much of an issue saying where I stand theologically.
Which is why it shouldn’t be too surprising that I ruffled a few feathers by talking about the obvious defects of the theology of hell as a place of eternal, conscious torment.
Speaking of hell as such a place isn’t much more than a timeshare sales tactic. It is selling you a gospel of manufactured value that you will one day wish to be rid of but find almost impossible to get out of.
In sum, my view is that there are textual arguments to be made for eternal conscious torment (the idea that hell is a permanent and perpetual state of anguish), annihilationism (the idea that some people will be condemned to hell, and that hell will be vanquished for all time), AND universal repentance/salvation (the idea that all will come to confess their collaboration with sin and accept the free gift of God’s grace).
But which of those would require the least powerful god? Which would require the most powerful god?
Which requires the least gracious god? Which would require the most gracious god?
Nobody’s theology is ever solely textual.
There are things that we must wrestle with in order to arrive at positions that lead us beyond the training wheels provided by the text.
I will not take the training wheels off of the text just to end up settling for a god less powerful & gracious than I can imagine.
Eternal conscious torment leaves us with a god that is either incapable of saving everyone from the consequences of their collaboration with sin, or one who is unwilling to do so. A god who would rather see some people tortured for eternity than to save them from that fate.
Not only does scripture not require such a god, faith demands that we not worship such a god.
I know the doctrines, beloved.
But eventually, we must deal with what the god of our imagination tells us about the state of our heart.
Choose this day whom you will serve.
Will it be the limited and/or petty god who fights an eternal hell to a stalemate?
Or a will it be a Bigger God?
I like playing with words. So that’s what I do. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements of other sorts, I’m always trying to figure out how to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words.
If you’ve enjoyed any of the words I have to offer, check out my book Theologizin’ Bigger: Homilies on Living Freely and Loving Wholly wherever books are sold!
So, stirrin’ up trouble about hell is a bit of what I’ve been up to lately. You can ask me about almost anything, tho!
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