MysteriousFaith

Heaven, Hell, Damnation & Other Light Topics

A part of my own personal journey - the challenge of accepting unconditional love and the very Christian concepts of mercy, grace and forgiveness.

In a moment of tender love only a mother is capable of, my mom will often remember my childhood, calling me “her little man.” My serious nature was a very bad match to the psuedo-cultic world I grew up in. Where more well-adjusted kids probably came through the experience fairly intact, I did not. Where these kids could laugh about the double standards, the obvious hypocrisy, the needy nature of the teachers and leaders, I could not. I brought my serious nature to every class, every conversation, every Bible lesson, every relationship; something that most around me did not. Where for some of my classmates our dysfunctional group could be trivialized, I could not disassociate the legitimacy of these leaders with the supposed spiritual truths we were being taught. In my mind, if these men were even reasonably close to actual truth, it was not worth minimizing what they taught - my eternal destination rested on taking them and their teaching seriously.

Making my serious nature even more problematic was a deep insecurity over other’s love for me. I could simply not conceive of a heavenly Father that could love me unconditionally. The God I grew up with was mean, petty and always angry. As religion is want to do, we spent a lot of time actively discussing eternity. We enjoyed talking about hell and the concept of damnation. We were particularly comfortable with damnation; our discussions were never more rich than when we talked about the world drowning as Noah floated to safety or when we visualized as a group the agony of Hell.

Upon deeper reflection, it strikes me that our comfort in talking about Hell was extremely sick. A very real part of us relished talking about the pain, agony and suffering in Hell. Too much of our time was spent rationalizing the brutal nature of Hell, justifying why people ended up in eternal damnation. We were not only comfortable with it, we felt it made perfect sense. We expressed no compassion, no remorse, no depth of feeling. Where I grew up, no one would have wanted to explore whether or not the descriptions of the afterlife were metaphors, not to be interpreted with wooden literalism. Not viewing these passages with wooden literalism would rob us of a very real part of the teaching that actually encouraged and defined us. From time to time a spiritually insightful person would show a glimpse of joy at the idea of a God who saved us from such a fate; but even this glimpse seemed to quickly diminish as we again gravitated to the eternity of suffering Hell represented for us.

And so, as a teenager, my life was on a collision course. On one track was an unmistakable sense, based on my life’s experience, that no-one could love me. The concept of such a thing as unconditional love was as mythical as Medusa’s snake-head. It was fictional, an allegory held out to illustrate some deeper truth, but certainly not truth itself. On the other track was a view of eternity that rested squarely on a God who would ultimately forgive, redeem and sanctify His believers. A future with Him required one to believe you could personally be loved unconditionally - something I could not accept. Even today, the idea of a God whose defining characteristic is love is something I struggle with. These two ideas, at odds with one another, led me to a period of my life that was perhaps darker than any other. For years, each week was marked by at least one evening of crying, sobbing out to God to save me. I had grown up in a religiously charged environment where people talked about life changing experiences when they had “gotten saved.” These were not stories about drug addicts that had kicked the habit, or of wife beaters that had found inner tranquility. No, these were people who looked like us, who seemed to have no egregious sin they were fleeing. And they rapturously described being changed as they were saved. They talked about how their lives, their desires, their passions, their very emotional construct, was changed the moment of their decision to become a follower of Christ. As you can probably imagine, no such moment of transcendence had marked my conversion. I had multiple dates in my Bible that marked decisions to be saved, and yet no such emotional change came over me.

Were I a less serious child, I would have become cynical. Had I not been a peace-maker, always willing to see myself as the problem, attempting to heal whatever argument my family was having, I would have rebelled and distanced myself from this emotionally charged experience. These steps certainly would come, but only after spiritual and emotional wounds that would infect my future indefinitely. But my serious nature had an iron fist wrapped around this conversion experience: if I did not share their experience, I must not have been sincere, I must have missed something, something I did not understand or was not serious enough to follow through on. And so these two tracks carried with them emotionally charged trains of thought that collided. I would go to bed and stare at the ceiling, out the window, convinced I had missed some great truth, some intellectual realization, or was coveting some hidden sin that prevented me from knowing God. For me, my serious nature had to assume I was somehow the problem when people were angry with me. My sense that something I had done, some omission, was at the root of my inability to have a relationship with others, came into my view of God.

The answer could not have been more obvious to such a serious child: God had not saved me because something was wrong with me. I was the problem, and while He had an eternal solution of rest and security, I would never know it as long as I persisted in being difficult. What difficulties was I bringing to Him I would plead? I lay in my room silently sobbing, praying, begging God to show me what was wrong. In my mind’s eye at the very moment I type this sentence, one night in particular comes to mind. I see myself as a fly on the wall would: looking up at the ceiling with tears streaming down my face. All around me is black as night has wrapped itself around the sleeping house. My hands are tightened into small fists, the knuckles white from the pressure they are exerting on themselves. My bed is torn apart, as if a child sick with fever has just broken the fever and is bathed in cold perspiration. I can make no sound for fear of angering my family. My fear knows no bounds and as such, must seek out some relief, some release from the private agony I now feel. My mouth is wrenched open in silent sobs that turn into a gagging sound as I envision myself being thrown into Hell by a God who refused to accept my pleas. “I am sorry God … please forgive me!” For what I now wonder? What sin had I committed as a child that was so heinous I could not be forgiven? I know now it was the sin of being unable to trust Him completely; but the scared child at that moment in time could never have conceived of a love I had not ruined. After all, had he not been the source of so many arguments, so much pain, so much conflict, and so much anger? And so must God feel about me: He must want to rid Himself of me. Hell would be a matter of convenience to Him, a means by which He could rid Himself of the eternal problem I was certain to become, the ultimate cosmic trash can.

I had absolutely no concept of forgiveness. I could not imagine the consequences of this word. Rarely having known security at home, seeing any semblance of security in God was not something I could envision at all. My prayers would repeat over and over a cry out for God to forgive me. I would rack my brain in a vain attempt to find something that was separating me from Him, some secret sin I had hidden away. But forgiveness never came. I knew no peace, no rest.

The night grew longer and my fear and pain only built. The tears came, the eyes reddened, but no solace came. Where was this peace that had been promised? If this did not constitute being truly sorry what did? What must I give, how serious must I be, to know eternal rest? Finally, rest in the form of sleep would come. It was a restless sleep, marked by the fear that only the imaginative mind of a child can both generate and feed upon. Tomorrow night would the scenario replay itself? It largely depended on what happened at church and at home. For several years, this scene replayed itself in my room at night. I went forward at revivals, I met privately with teachers, telling them I was a sinner on the fast-track to Hell. One teacher was kind enough to express concern to my parents over the pronounced lack of security he felt as I described why I knew I was not saved. He went as far as to tell me that if I was not saved, neither was he. That just confirmed in my mind Jesus’ statement about the way to Hell being really wide and the way to Heaven being narrow. I figured maybe we could share a bicycle or give Gabriel a two-for-one as we got pitched into the bottomless pit. Needless to say, nothing comforted me. Rather, I wore out whatever limited spiritual muscle I had built up through that tender age. From time to time in the remaining years I would spend in church captivity, I would find within myself something spiritually moving, but it was never the same. I see now that the distance I put between my faith and ultimately my family, stemmed from the complete burn out I experienced at this age.

No more precious promise is held out to religious followers than the promise of eternal security. The very nature of eternity, the glimpse into heaven, is promised only to those select followers. Much of what guides religion are the requirements it puts on its practitioners in order to enjoy eternal bliss in heaven. And this blessed hope is not to be trifled with. We have seen in recent years the lengths demented men will go to in order to secure a place in that distorted reality we all envision as paradise. So many across time have done the unspeakable act of bravery or the despicable act of terrorism in the vain hope of knowing eternal peace. For too many, this world has been too painful and too awful.

Into this fear, this deep insecurity, our profound sense of the temporary nature of life, steps our friend religion. Not all interventions at this moment of truth on the part of religion are wrong or misguided. But too many are. Too much of Church history is marked by men profiting on the deepest insecurity of mankind - the hope that something done, said, given or offered on this earth can secure peace in the next world. Religion seems to need the fear of hell to create the joy of heaven. Is this really the essence of heaven? Is it necessary to so fear hell that we embrace the idea of heaven and whatever means must be used to secure our place there? Or is such a perspective the truest insight into what creates evil? Is such a view of eternity the motivation we find in those willing to die to terrorize others, in the vain hope they will secure a life better than the pitiful means they have know thus far in their tragic lives?

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• September 1, 2004

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One Response to “Heaven, Hell, Damnation & Other Light Topics”

1. Jim Shobert Says:
   September 7th, 2004 at 7:06 pm

   What a poignant treatise. It touches the heart of a father in a deep way. No one can imagine the struggles another goes through trying to find solace in the God they seek. Too much of our existance is based upon experiences similar to what we have had with our earthly fathers. It will be wonderful to some day fully embrace, love and enjoy true fellowship of our heavenly Father. Maybe our experiences here on earth are the stimulus which propels us into the arms of the one who does love us unconditionally.

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