Heaven and Hell in Narrative Perspective

If you call yourself a follower of Jesus, there may be a few things you want to consider. For one, if God’s love is not strong enough to draw followers apart from the threat of hell, how can that love be real and Divine and truly at the heart of your faith? The fear of hell cripples and weakens our faith, and hollows out its core, leaving only a shell. And the core of Christ is Agape – unconditional love – not wrath and fear. To be “in Christ” is to live and walk within the paradigm of this divine love. This is why, as John says, “God is Love” and “perfect love casts out all fear.”

Heaven and hell occupy the same space – earth: the terrain beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the cultures we live in. Every choice we make is an opportunity to bring heaven or hell to this world. And for the early Christians, the ultimate hope is the victory of heaven here, or the “Kingdom of God,” and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” John says that to join the Reign of God is to pass from “death to life,” or from hell to heaven.

Heaven constitutes anything integral to the Reign of God and the story God is telling – the story of reconciliation, redemption, and transformation – and God is calling everyone everywhere to repent. To repent of hell – the stories we tell ourselves, the lies and illusions and fictions we live in. The illusion of inequality, the illusion of class, the illusion of merit and entitlement, the illusion of injustice as just – these fictions constitute the kingdom of this age and all things outside the realm of God. Those who live within a fictional paradigm of reality will find them selves miserable and disconnected at the realization of the Reign of God. Those who allow God to retell and rewrite their story, and to take heed to the story God is telling, will find them selves more fully integrated with reality at this manifestation at the end of the age.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Jesus – the God who took on flesh and suffered, who drank the cup of the victim, who befriended the outcast, the unclean, and the Other. The God who stood alongside the victim at a time of oppression, who condemned the Roman Empire and the kingdoms of this world, who overturned tables of economic oppression occupying the Gentile court, who called for justice and compassion and love, and was brutally murdered for it. This Jesus was vindicated at the resurrection, and will vindicate humanity. This God is Lord over the creation. All will see the glory of this reality of love at its coming, and all will be saved.

However, “each in his own season.” Some cannot bear to embrace this vision of God’s benevolent society among us – a society where the unwanted workman at the end of the day receives the same wages as the one who came in the morning. A society where people don’t get what they deserve, that doesn’t operate on the principle of merit. A society where the least are the greatest and the greatest are the least. A society where those with a name suddenly have no name, but those without a name become great. A society where those who humble them selves are exalted, and those who exalt them selves are humbled. A society that knows no war. A society whose citizens love each other unconditionally and “share all things in common.” A society where envy, malice, greed, and lust have no place. A society where the religious Other is welcomed into the “holy of holies” behind the veil, and yet the religious Elite find them selves suddenly cast out.

Because some will see this society come into being, and they will remain close-fisted for a time, suffering the consequences of their obstinacy. But then there are those who come to an end of them selves; who deny them selves; who take up the cross of shame, humility, and servanthood; who stand against the empire and against oppression; who care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan; who give up much to see this benevolent society become a reality for everyone; and they will see the glory of Christ when the Kingdom comes. They will shine like the stars in the Reign of God. This is the story God is telling – the coming of heaven to earth and the conquering of hell. Which story do you want to live in, which version of reality will you tell yourself, which do you find most compelling?

Why People Are Afraid of Universalism, or the Possibilities of "Love Wins"

Our reality is wired to a state of action and consequence, and this sequence is abstractly referred to as “Karma.” From our vantage point within a historical cycle within historical cycles (think of Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel), we often feel as if we are trapped within what Hindus call “Samsara,” the great wheel of life. In Buddhism Samsara is a vicious cycle, only escapable by Nirvana – the total detachment from self, identity, and the world. Christianity often mirrors this reality rather than challenging it. Salvation comes through a detachment and disenchantment with this world, in hopes of transcending it and reaching another higher world.

Even the Eschaton presented in our theology does not see this world as becoming redeemed from Samsara, but being destroyed along with it – marking a break between “time” and “eternity.” Because of our Karmic understanding of reality, we have a difficult time imagining a reality where all would be redeemed and the ultimate consequence of destruction for evil would be defeated for all.

We yearn for the destruction of evil, and leave grace only a marginal area for ourselves and our tribe. We struggle to imagine a reality where Karma is totally and completely defeated and not just marginally curbed.

Many people claim they cannot understand why God would be gracious at all, and this illustrates why it is that they cannot envision a reality where grace reigns over all. They want at least some punishment and consequence, either for the worst of us (Catholics) or those of us who don’t repent (Protestants). And some of us cling to the penal substitution theory of atonement, which makes a way for grace to cease from interrupting and making even one small dent in the Karmic cycle. The solution is rather that grace is an alternative satisfaction of this blood-hungry Karma beast, opening a small tunnel out by redirected consequence while leaving the beast happy.

Universalism would mean the end of Karma and the Reign of Love in every crevice and corner of creation. It would require that the totality of Grace would rule, reign, and abolish Karma in its totality in every corner and crevice. Apparently, this scares some people.

An Incarnational Vision for Religion

The point of the incarnation is that the Divine comes to us where we are, not that we have to search for it tirelessly. Sadly, for many, Jesus is a barrier to God. By this, I mean that they cannot understand how, if people all over the world and throughout history have never heard his name or about the events of his life, God can be seen as loving and as holding that dogma up as a requirement for having a relationship with the Spirit of God. It is, in fact, a Christian doctrine that we need God to come to us or our searches will be in vain. It is certainly true that humans are meant to search for the Divine and for deeper things, but if that search is in vain, God appears weak and not very universal at all.

I would imagine that if God is universal, which God is if God is God, then God must be larger than any religion. This means that if the God testified to by the Christian religion is real, then Christianity must testify to something bigger than itself, bigger than any dogma or doctrine. Having said that, doctrines are certainly great utility and, like the incarnation, act as vehicles to seeing the Divine more clearly. This is what theologians call “special revelation.”

These doctrines are incarnational because they embody deeper truths that connect us to the Spirit of God, just as the body of Jesus harbored the Spirit of God and translated it for us in comprehensible, human ways.

The Bible states that no one has ever seen God. This means that every image of God – every conception or articulation of God – is an icon, a sign. To solidify those images is to make the icon into an idol. Unfortunately, dogma and doctrine have been used to solidify images of God into idols.

John says that God is Love, God is Light, and God is Spirit. The prophets of old said God is Holy, meaning transcendent of human understandings and images. These are the most authoritative statements made about the nature of God in the Bible, and none of them represent anything less than transcendence and sublimity except perhaps love because it acts as a signifier for every action God performs among people. If God is Spirit, God cannot be solidified in dogma. If God is Love, God is understood through loving actions before the nature of God can be excavated (an impossibility).

What we observe of God are not framed representations but fluid movements. In regards to our experiences, God gives before God is. God becomes for us an experience of the Sublime. In Jesus we have observed the movement of the Divine among humans in the form of love, and we have called this good news. It is good news for the whole creation and for the future of creation.

The universal Spirit of the Divine saturates everything and gives life to all things. This God is universal and acts through love. This universal God comes to all people and does not need help. However, having been called to the discipleship of nonviolence, love, reconciliation, and the good news about the incarnated Christ and the kingdom of God, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation and the imperative to share those things that have helped us connect with the God of Love.

We speak of incarnation and incarnate the Divine in ourselves – which is why we call it the “body of Christ” – and we carry that light forward toward the reconciliation of all things.

Jesus, the Gift, and Inclusion

What we need is a Christian quasi-pluralism, a new kind of inclusion, one that transcends the borders of soft inclusion, something more robust and authoritative than a weak anything-goes pluralism or relativism, and also far stronger, more powerful, more robust and authoritative than any kind of exclusive Christianity. It must be narrow enough to exclude from within and broad enough include from without, a true embodiment of Jesus’ own paradox that “he who is not for me is against me” and “he who is not against me is for me.”

It must be rooted in the person of Jesus, not the mere name which is a mask rooted in context, a linguistic code. The name of Jesus, the fleshly body of Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, the historical events of his life, his history—these are all texts and contexts, contextualizations and embodiments of the true person, nature, and fundamental truths of the Divine. They are the lenses through which we encounter the Divine as Christians.

There is a River of Truth that runs through and underneath these texts and contexts, embodied and revealed in Jesus.

This River of Truth is born out of Gift—the reality and source within which the creation finds its flow, harmony, and balance. When Gift becomes substituted by economy, economy throws everything off balance. Economy involves merit. Gift requires that nothing can be earned or should be earned. Gift requires endless grace and love, a sort of blind reciprocity based on endless gratitude rather than entitlement. Economy breaks the flow and harmony with delay. Delay occurs when there is expectation rather than expectancy, a waiting for the Other to reciprocate. Economy throws off the balance because there is more weight on one side than the other at any given moment, always a debt which must be reciprocated.

Earning, debt, economy, merit, calculated reciprocity—Paul condemns these and excludes them from grace, from the “Law of the Spirit.” He says that there is no condemnation for those who walk by this law. When we subscribe to a system of economy and debt, or any “system” for that matter, we break the flow, harmony, and balance of creation and lose our integration, psychologically accruing a debt and falling into disintegration. This is condemnation. This is the “Law of the flesh,” because it belongs to the realm that has fallen into disintegration and that has been wrecked by the Curse of economy, the realm which is not fully integrated with the realm of the Spirit, and with the ultimate reality of all things – the Gift.

It is with the awareness of the Gift, the rejection of merit, and the consciousness of the River of Truth that is (dis)embodied in the texts and contexts of dogma and doctrine that we can begin to move toward a new kind of inclusion.

Genesis 1-11 as Ancient Macrohistory

Scholars have differed on the nature of Genesis 1-11 as long as the sciences have been around. For some, it is historicized myth; for others, it is mythicized history. Still others choose one of two extremes: a linear, didactic, strictly literal historical account or a purely fictional myth stripped of any power, inspiration, or spiritual truth. The first extreme deprives the narrative of its obvious symbolic and literary elements. These elements are important for understanding early Jewish theology and anthropology. They also give cause to compare the Genesis narrative to other ancient creation and flood narratives that came beforehand, illuminating what kind of countercultural statements the Genesis narrative made in contrast. The problem with the latter extreme is that it typically motivates people to dismiss the Genesis narrative as too primitive, barbaric, outdated, and irrelevant.

Unfortunately, American Christians have usually failed at wrestling with this text graciously due to the extreme social pressures laid on seminarians and pastors to interpret it completely literally and non-symbolically. In places like Europe, living in the tension is expected. This is the best and most honest place to be.

I would argue that Genesis 1-11 is best understood as an ancient form of macrohistory. Macrohistorians look back and trace the general trajectory of human history in evolutionary terms and attempt to make meaning out of it, typically offering a prediction of the future. This is what I see in Gen 1-11: an early project in sociology, a history of human development. Here’s an overview of this “macrohistory”:

(1) Eden (hunter/gatherers & agriculturalists); (2) Exile (nomadic herders); (3) Flood (city-dwellers); (4) Babel (empire-builders). This follows the general trajectory of what anthropologists know about ancient history (and pre-history). From a normative, human point of view, this is a progress, an ascent. Each stage maps an increase in knowledge, advancement, and complexity. However, from a countercultural point of view, or a Jewish perspective, this was actually a descent.

According to the Genesis 1-11 narrative, sin began with the will to power and knowledge. This led to disobedience. Once in exile (nomads), the hunter (Abel) and the gatherer (Cain) raise evil to the next level: murder. Once the land is populated with city-dwellers, there is widespread violence and abuse (flood account). The final level is oppression and empire (Babel). Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, YHWH becomes most angry with oppressors. The major Jewish statement is this: YHWH, unlike the other gods, has complete control over the created order but made it good and values it. He also values man who he made in his own image. This is not the case with the pagan gods. Also, man is not portrayed as gaining progress in his will to power and knowledge, but rather he is seen as becoming increasingly violent and evil. The New Testament provides a rescue plan for the creation: the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth. Otherwise, the created order will continually spiral downwards as in the Gen 1-11 narrative because of man’s evil. This is how I believe Gen 1-11 is meant to be understood, if we want to be honest and biblical. It is greater than mere myth and greater than literal, historical account.

Evolving God: How We Should Understand Divine Holiness

We’ve all heard it said before: “when we are weak, He is strong.” Let’s flip that around and say the other is also true: “when He is weak, we are strong.” But we’ll get to that later.

We’ve been told over and over again that God is holy, and that this is primarily his nature. But let’s just stop and define the word “holy” for a minute. Holy means set apart, different. Is it enough to say that God is different? Don’t we have to define how he is different? How do we do that? Normally when we hear holy, we think “good” and “righteous” and even “distant.” But we still have to define “good” and “righteous.” We normally think that for God to be righteous, He must be against the wicked and set to slay them unless a miracle happens, unless blood is shed and He feels better. Normally, I don’t think a person is “good” or “righteous” when this is their nature; I would assume they were pretty evil, actually – that is, if they have to shed an innocent person’s blood to feel better about evil people.

But maybe there’s another story here. Sure, the image of God begins with a relatively violent being that is more powerful in war than any other, but throughout the OT He is always seen directing his violence against the oppressor and vindicating the weak. The other gods were not oriented towards vindicating the weak; they were in support of the oppressor. In this way, YHWH was different. He punished the oppressor (with warning) out of LOVE for the oppressed, the weak.

But the story does not end there. In the NT, this God reveals the fullness of his righteousness and justice in Christ. He sends his Son to proclaim forgiveness and love, and the gift is butchered. But God does not give up on humanity. He raises this gift from the dead, sealing his commitment to forgiveness and love. Here God is scandalously different on another level: He does not conquer through weapons of war, but through the power of powerlessness, through weakness. In this way, the weakness of God is greater than the strength of men (1 Cor 1:25). Out of love, Jesus asks God to forgive his slayers, which would mean nothing if he planned on paying them back later. He walks the road of love, even to the point of death. He is the God who sacrifices himself, the God who serves. “Through the Son, God also reconciled all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, thereby making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20).

Caesar and the Romans, those who oppressed the Jews in Jesus’ day, made peace through the sword, through shedding other people’s blood. But Jesus made peace by shedding his own blood. Because peace only comes through peace and you can’t fight fire with fire. This is how God is holy, good, just, and righteous: He is eternal, self-sacrificial love. This is why I can say that when He is weak, we are strong.

Modern Utopianism and the Unholy Trinity

Surrounding the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, there was a movement toward rationalism, reductionism, and a more mechanical view of the universe. With the growth of human knowledge came many good things such as overthrown superstition, new medicines and cures, higher and more effective levels of transportation, better living conditions, etc. However, with the rise of human knowledge and progress came the rise of human pride and over-confidence coupled with a higher rate of intellectual progress than of moral and ethical progress. In other words, knowledge was enthroned and ethics did not prevail at the same speed.

Around the same time as increasing scientific progress, a more utopian vision arose. The way I choose to summarize the vision is through three tenets in a new trinity for a new religion: science, technology, and education. The major, secular thinkers of this time sought cures through science, convenience through technology, and morality through education. This was how they sought to build a perfect world. They understood nature as mishap and in need of perfection, which they believed they could do with their increasing knowledge of science. Nature was a machine, and machines can be fixed. They believed that if people had more knowledge, they would naturally be good and moral citizens, contributing to this utopian vision. Of course, this vision never achieved its end; in fact, nature is now even more screwed up as evidenced by environmental degradation, our convenient communities of high technology that are losing sustainability and turning into impossibilities, and people who have more questions than answers. After scientific “laws” and “order” were established in a post-Newtonian context, turning our view of nature into clockwork and machinery, the laws began to collapse at smaller levels in Einstein’s new theories in physics.

As a result of such unforeseen failures, there has been a new attitude arising in critique of modernity, recognizing its victories while pointing out its failures – a posture scholars classify as “post-modern.” However, there are some who appear to still carry on the modern myth – what today could be called GTE, or a Grand Theory of Everything. The biggest proponents of this view call themselves the New Atheists – scientists who continue to believe that salvation will come through science and that religion is useless and destructive. Many post-moderns find themselves caught on the outside of everything, disillusioned at humanity’s over-confidence in answers and final, systematic explanations of everything. They are incredulous of the belief that all truth in every area, whether scientific, metaphysical, ethical, or whatever, can be summed up in a simple and elegant equation.

In the cross of Christ I see an event that stands in subversive contradiction to the religious, political, and social orders of its day. It is an event with no easy answers, with a man – both human and divine – who cries out that his God has forsaken him. Within this picture we find solidarity in the brokenness, disillusionment, doubt, and paradox experienced. We also find resurrection. Resurrection that follows a messiah who loved and forgave unto death, even forgiving those who were murdering him while the words left his mouth. In a world of disillusionment and doubt, where answers are scarce and intellect has bypassed ethic, I stake my hope on the giving of oneself to others. I may not have the empirical proof in my hands that this is the answer, but I have found glimpses of good and hope in those who love one another. It is my conviction that love could heal this world if people would commit to it. I know that people don’t want to, and this is why I look to a messiah who grants the power to do so. I don’t believe that the salvation of our lived reality exists in a utopian vision based on science, intellect, or easy answers, but in a revolution of transformative love.