As you could probably guess from my previous post, I felt a large amount of relief when last week's heat wave broke. Part of me wishes that it had lasted a few days more, though, for one reason. Last week, I passed a sign outside of a church in a neighboring town. The sign struck me so strongly with its humor and theological depth that I decided to write a blog post in tribute to it. On Tuesday, I took a trip to the church to take a picture of the sign and was crushed when I saw that it had been replaced by something much more boring (something about putting your trust in God I think).
Against all hope, I went to the church office and asked about it. The secretary explained to me that I had missed it by a few days and that the sign had been replaced right after the heat wave ended. “That's such a shame,” I said to her, and it was. Now I'll probably never have a picture of a sign saying “You think it's hot here...”, though I'm crossing my fingers that they'll put it up again during the next heat wave. As a silver lining to the story, the secretary told me about a few similar signs that she had seen and enjoyed, including “Dining preference for eternity: Smoking or Non-Smoking?”.
I did a quick Google images search when I got home and found some other gems: “I kissed a girl and I liked it. Then I went to Hell”, “There's no AC in Hell either”, and “You may party in Hell, but you'll be the barbeque!” And lastly, a friend offered up her own picture of a sign noteworthy for its practical advice: “Stop, Drop, and Roll Doesn't Work in Hell.”
Over the last week, I've been racking my brain trying to think of reasons why churches would think such signs were a good idea. I tried and failed to imagine a scenario in which someone would pass a “Hell sign” and say to themselves, “Wow! Damn that's clever! That humorous pun had a terrifying effect on me. Let me pull my car over right now, go into this church, and give my life to Jesus so I don't have to go to Hell.” Perhaps such a situation has taken place before. But if it has, that person has begun his journey with God because of selfish fear of being punished for eternity. Using fear to draw people in to church, or to convince them to keep attending services, is rarely a good idea for promoting a healthy Christian community, one which truly loves God and neighbor. “Fear-based faith,” as I call it, never seems to last long or be more than skin deep. Our relationships with God should begin, be lived out day by day, and end, in love for Him. We can love Him in part for saving us from punishment in the next life, but our faiths cannot be centered on avoiding personal torment.
Neither should our evangelism. Persuading people to believe in God by making them scared of Hell is far too popular a strategy. A few days ago, I was listening to a theological debate. The subject was whether, according to the Bible, those who reject God and lead evil lives will be afflicted with eternal conscious torment (as in the image of Hell we have been raised with), or if those people will simply cease to exist. (This is obviously a topic that can't be dealt with now; suffice it to say that I lean toward the latter option.) An argument that came up time and time again from the proponent of the traditional view of Hell was that believing in an afterlife in which the wicked will be annihilated would make it much more difficult to preach the “gospel” to non-believers. “How can we convince people to turn to Christ,” he was basically saying, “unless we scare them into it?”
But when we look at the writings of the New Testament and the early Church fathers, avoiding Hell was rarely their main emphasis. God was so much more to them than solely a god of wrath and punishment; Jesus was so much more than a way to avoid a terrible fate in the afterlife. This is especially true in the speeches made by Peter and Paul in the book of Acts. To quote a previous blog entry of mine: “When the apostles preached the Gospel around Palestine and the Roman Empire after Jesus' death, they did so with the strong conviction that the people they were speaking to needed to repent and be saved. But the emphasis of their speeches was the wondrous things that God had done and would do in and through Jesus. They were excited; they couldn't stop talking about Christ. We see the same thing in Paul's letters, where Jesus is continually on Paul's mind and in his heart. The apostles saw in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection all of God's plans coming to fruition.” God's plans for us and for the world. God's love. These should be the reasons we believe.
There are terrible effects in this life and in the next for conducting our lives with hate, violence, and cruelty. I also believe that there are consequences for rejecting God, though I am more than willing to give God the prerogative to know the hearts and intentions of non-Christians and to pass judgment on them as He wills. What it comes down to, though, is this: We should want to obey God out of love and with the knowledge that He is worthy of our praise, rather than wanting to escape personal punishment; and that our main goal should be eternal life with God rather than the avoidance of Hell. I'll allow the apostle John to have the final word: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)
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