Introduction
In the summer of 2019, I spent a month in eSwatini, a small country in southern Africa. Within the first week in the country, Disney Channel star, Cameron Boyce passed away in his sleep. I had learned about his death from one of my team leaders who had gotten a text from his brother when Boyce’s death was announced. Though none of us had ever known him personally, his death definitely struck a chord in me and my teammates. He was 20 years old, a few years older than most of us, and his death was not expected. When we heard about his death, one of my teammates asked, nearly immediately, whether Boyce had been a Christian. I was taken aback immediately; that question hadn’t crossed my mind at all. My leader told her that he didn’t think so, or, if Boyce was a Christian, he wasn’t open about it. Her response was, “Wow. So that means he’s burning in hell right now. That really is the disadvantage to this whole Christian thing.” I’m sorry, what? I had a lot of trouble with this statement, but I didn’t say anything.
I knew I didn’t agree with what she had said, but I didn’t really have any backing. I’ve never been one who can just whip out Bible verses for debate, but I did know that the Bible called God loving, forgiving, and merciful. How was eternal punishment any of these?
When I got back from my trip, I was just weeks away from starting my senior year in high school, and I knew I would be having to choose a topic for my senior thesis. After my experience, I forced myself to choose hell. I wanted to dive into this idea. I wanted to learn what I believed and why I believed it. And this is what I came up with…
Permit Me to Hope:
The Deconstruction of an Eternal Torment with Love
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (NIV Holy Bible, Genesis 1:1). These are the first words of the Bible, the beginning of the Christian narrative. The words between the Genesis narrative and John’s Revelation form the foundation for the Christian religion. From these words, Christians over the centuries constructed the doctrines that make up the belief system of the faith. These doctrines include commands for daily life, the inner workings of the church, and conceptualizations about the character of God.
Though some of the most fundamental, the doctrines concerning the afterlife are highly contested among Christians, and especially so in recent years. For most Christians, it is believed that there are two options, heaven or hell. Each is an “essentially deserved compensation for the kind of earthly lives we live” (Talbott). Traditionally, heaven is the reward for those who believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, and hell is a place of eternal punishment for traditionally defined non-believers.
In his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards described hell as
"a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that [those damned] are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed [...] [Sinners] hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; [there is] nothing that [sinners] can do, to induce God to spare [them] one Moment" (Edwards).
Many Christians believe in the same hell as Edwards while simultaneously believing that “God is love” (NIV Holy Bible, 1 John 4: 8). Through the doctrines of widely acclaimed theologians, various verses in the Bible, and definitions of mercy and forgiveness, it can be presumed that the eternal damnation to hell, of traditionally defined non-Christians, is in contradiction with the notion of a loving God.
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Excellent, thank you.
Posted by: Ovid Radulescu | May 14, 2020 at 09:05 AM
Well Done! Gracefully thoughtful, and concise. You expressed yourself very well.
I especially resonate with the idea that inclusivism allows me to have hope.
You will undoubtedly get pushback. Fear not. Many believe and have faith with you.
God bless you, and his peace be with you!
Posted by: Mike Jones | April 22, 2020 at 01:42 PM