You may think I'm crazy or old fashioned, but this is my very first blog. I am a very intraverted person and don't normally put things that I'm thinking onto paper or blogs. I usually mull things over for days and make them the topic of conversation with friends and family. I have written one or two Notes on Facebook if that counts. 🙂 For the last several months, I have been studying, reading and discussing one of the more recent topics that has been up for debate as of late, Hell. Before I go any further, I feel like I need to share a little background information about myself. I grew up in a Baptist church and always believed everything that I was told about the Bible and about God. Never questioned anything or did any of my own study or research. In the last couple of years, I have been re-evaluating what I believe and why I believe it. Most of what I was taught was good and I have held to them. Others I have had to take a step back and re-think. I have simply been looking at things from a different perspective and seeing what Scripture really has to say about them. Hell is one of those subjects.
I recently read the book Love Wins by Rob Bell. I liked the book in some aspects and in others I did not quite agree with it. Either way, it helped me to affirm some of my beliefs about Hell and it helped me to re-evaluate some of them. For example, I still believe that not just anyone can get in and no one gets a second chance outside of this life. I searched and researched and could not find any passage of Scripture that indicated that all will be saved and will get another chance to come to Christ after death. As much as I wish that were true, it's just not there. On the other hand Rob Bell helped me to think of Hell not just in the afterlife but also as a present reality. People are living hells on earth every day including many whom we are going to be ministering to in other parts of the world and even right here in the United States.
One of the many things that dissappointed me about the whole topic was how a lot of respected Christian leaders reacted. "Farewell Rob Bell," and "he is not even a brother in Christ" were just a couple of the accusations fired his way. Others praised Bell and said nasty things about the 'farewell' crowd. It turned into a firey and very unChristian debate in which insults were hurled from both sides. Francis Chan had a very balanced view on this subject in his book Erasing Hell, which I highly reccommend for everyone to read. He applauds Bell's research and some of his insights while gently disagreeing with other aspects of his book Love Wins, and going back to Scripture to find out what it really had to say on certain aspects. Chan's main purpose in writing Erasing Hell was to take a huge step back and go to Scripture to see what it has to say vs. what we have made up about it. On the one hand, he says it is arrogant for us as finite humans to say that our Creator, God, would never send people to Hell. On the other hand he says, we have to be so careful on this subject because we cannot afford to be wrong. We are talking about the eternal destinies of real people. He also says that we cannot get so caught up in this debate that it affects the way we minister to the rest of the world, which is what Christ has called us all to do in the first place. We simply need to let God be God and we just need to obey Him. That's not to say that we can't question Him or wonder why He does what He does, but in the end we need to accept that we cannot know everything about God or who He is because He is far greater and His ways are infinitely higher than ours and we need to rest in that and let Him be in control.
