Comments from Pastor Billy about chapter six of his summer book recommendation - a great read for high school graduates and their parents!
The Concept of Hell Seems Barbaric and Cruel--Wouldn’t a Loving God Save Everyone?
It is never long in the Christian faith journey when one of your friends or family members will come up to you and ask, “What sort of a God would create such a place as Hell?” or “Why would He send people there since He is supposedly a God of love?” No matter how many times we can speak about the love of God and that he desires all men to turn, repent, and be saved. The thing that some people throw back at Christians who are faithful to the Bible, is why would you worship or praise a God who created Hell?
Michael Kruger includes some great quotes in this chapter from theologians, skeptics, and pastors alike. One of the fundamental issues with Hell for Christians is their belief about who God is and what he is like. If God is love and loving can he also be just? If he is merciful and kind can he also hate sin? Kruger cites Timothy Keller saying, “If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.” Implying that we often create a God that we can be comfortable talking about with others, one that can be molded and shaped to our liking. If we could completely understand God and all of his motivations and plans, wouldn’t that just make us God?
Kruger goes on to suggest that there are two things that we must do to change our way we think about Hell. One is coming face to face with our Holy and perfect God. Kruger cites great passages like Isaiah 6:1-4 where Isaiah is shown just how awesome, in the real sense of the word, God is, and how unholy he truly is.
Next, Kruger goes on to state that we must come to grips with who we are, sinners. Kruger writes, “We need to realize that we are much bigger sinners than we could ever imagine...When we compare ourselves to his perfect righteousness, then we begin to understand how far short we fall.” It is not that we are kind of sinners or fall into temptation once and a while, but that we are constantly falling short.
Now the belief in Hell doesn’t seem so far off if we have a Holy and perfect God who by his very nature must judge sin and in turn sinners. Miroslav Volf, quoted by Kruger, wrote, “If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence--that God would not be worthy of worship.” We serve a God who is worthy to worship because he will put an end to all the evil in the world. He will make all things new, Revelation 21:5, all evil will have to stand and be judged before our Holy and perfect God. It would be most unfair and unjust if God never required a day of reckoning for evil and all the injustices that take place in our world.
Imagine having a worldview that said all of this was just random, people making poor choices, you just happened to be in the wrong place, or that it is all meaningless after you die? What kind of hope would that bring? What kind of joy could you find in the midst of suffering if this is all there is without any true justice?
This fact would be discouraging and awful if it weren’t for the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that part is also true, that we have a God who sent his one and only son to live perfectly, die for our sins, rise from the dead, and through him we can have eternal life. That is the God we serve, who through his great mercy and love, even when we were still sinners, made us alive with Christ! (Ephesians 2:4-5)
In Christ,
Billy