Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:38:42

Yesterday during the children’s sermon I brought a picnic basket to the circle and opened it up to show the children each item I had packed for D and I to enjoy for lunch after church. I pulled out the blanket we would sit on, plates, utensils, napkins, cups, a cheese board and knife, storage bags to put any leftovers in, a tube of sun block, a bottle of insect repellent, paper towels, disposable wet towelettes, and stain removal for the food I always seemed to spill on my clothes. It was only after everything had been removed from the basket and piled in front of the children that I came to the “shocked” realization that in the distraction to pack everything I thought we might need for the picnic I had forgotten the most important thing of all….the food.

Jesus didn’t call Martha out because she was doing anything wrong. She was just doing what she believed was essential to extend hospitality to a special guest. Jesus was coming and she wanted him to know his presence in their home was honored. She wanted to be sure their humble home was clean and that when he arrived everything would be in place to meet his needs and make him comfortable. Fresh water and clean towels needed to be prepared to wash and dry the road dust from his feet. The table needed to be set with a warm home-cooked meal and the best of wine to nourish him and his traveling companions. And then were all the people who would pass through their home during Jesus’ stay that would need to be welcomed and fed a little something before they went on their way.

While there was nothing wrong in any of the things Martha was doing, the problem was that in doing them she had become distracted from the one most important and essential thing of all and that was simply being….being with Jesus, being quiet and still in his presence, being available to hear God speak. Martha was living a distracted life and much of the time so are we. Not only are we distracted by life’s demands and all the duties that come with being a responsible grown-up in the world but we’re all too often driven to distraction with the idea that doing more, making more, and giving more will make our lives more meaningful and our worth more valuable in this world and to God. All these distractions make us forget where our real value lies and what really matters.

Then we come back to this story and see Jesus lifting up the sister who’s doing nothing more than being in his presence and in doing so is receiving what she will never lose and can never be taken away. Looking at Jesus Mary knows she is loved. In welcoming her in his presence she knows Jesus considers her and the relationship they share as being of great worth. As she listens to his words she knows who she really is; that she is a beloved child of God, the apple of God’s eye, and precious in God’s sight.

Creating space and time for God each morning isn’t for the purpose of making our requests that God do something for us or through us in the hours that follow, but for the purpose of connecting our spirit with the Spirit of God so we can then go through our day remembering who we really are in God. There’s no one living in this world who doesn’t need reminding but as GLBTQ people we need to be reminded more than most of who we really are in God’s eyes since hearing who others have concluded we are is only the morning newspaper or a click of the TV remote away. Every day we’re hit with words that diminish our worth as human beings, the value of our relationships, and our identity as those equally loved and cherished by God and so we need to fix our minds and hearts on what we know in Christ so we can move through the day in the truth of our lives rather than in the lies of others.

So who are you really?

Hey, don’t ask me.

There’s only One who can tell you so tomorrow morning, be still, be quiet, and listen.

After my last two posts and because it’s Sunday I thought we all might be in need of a little prayer so here’s one from Thomas Merton that speaks well for the desires of my heart as I hope it does for yours. May it be a comfort for all who need comfort, assurance for those who need to be assured, and a nudge for all of us to continue to seek after the One who first sought us.

O Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me,
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
And that fact that I think
I am following Your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe
That the desire to please You
Does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire
In all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire to please You.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road,
Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
For You are ever with me,
And You will never leave me
To make my journey alone.

The WWDC is the annual conference (i.e. pep rally, cult gathering) when Steve Jobs announces the latest and greatest “You Must Own This If You Ever Hope to Have a Fulfilling Life” Apple product and this year’s star of the show, the iPhone4, didn’t fail to impress. Front and back camera with flash. HD video recording. iMovie installed. Video chat. App folders. Multi-tasking. Gyroscope. Faster speed, longer battery life, higher resolution.

Wait. I need a minute.

Sorry. It’s just so hard for me to see the computer screen with misty-eyes.

Oh, I can hear you now. No seriously I can. I can hear you, and what I hear you saying with an ever-so slightly edgy tone in your voice (don’t even try to deny it!) is this… “So what does your pathetic obsession with all things iGadgety have to do with God or faith or being a Christian Lesbian?”

Fine. Mock me now but in a minute you’re going to regret prematurely jumping all over my little pony and doubting me. But I, being gracious and good, will forgive you. In fact, consider it already done. Absolution is yours my Sister.

So here’s where I was heading if you would have just given me the benefit of the doubt…

A traditional happening and mega-highlight of Steve’s keynote speech is the moment when he whips out the soon to be released device of the hour and gives a live demo of it’s new features. Usually, the demo comes off without a hitch. Until this year. It was the most perfectly awkward technological glitchy moment I’ve ever seen at a WWDC.

It went something like this. In preparing to live demo the new bust-an-eyeball resolution of the new iPhone4 Steve went to open up the same web page on both an iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 so a side by side comparison could be projected up onto the massive stage screen, but instead what he got were two side by side images of web browsers unable to make a connection due to the number of attendees in the audience who were overloading the auditorium WiFi with all their real-time blogging, facebooking and tweeting. The only way Steve was eventually able to get access to the internet and continue the demo was to plead with the audience to turn off their WiFi-run equipment so he could get a solid connection. Essentially he told them to all shut up and shut down.

How often have we experienced something similar in our own lives when all we want is to make a clear connection with God so that we can know, really know, what God is saying to us but it seems we can’t get through. I don’t know what God wants me to do. I keep waiting for God to say something but I’m not hearing God say anything. I feel like I’m not able to connect with God anymore. Others have no problem speaking for God about my life but everyone is saying something different and besides, I don’t want others to tell me what God is saying; *I want to hear God speak.

It seems the biggest hindrance at one time or another for many of us in hearing from God was due to the interference coming from everyone else. How could we ever hope to connect directly with God when everyone else was blogging, facebooking, tweeting, preaching, counseling, advising and blathering on and on about what they knew God was really saying to us. Voices of condemnation. Voices of consolation. Voices calling us to repentance. Voices calling us to acceptance. Voices telling us God disapproved of who we were and what we were doing. Voices telling us God loved us just as we were. So many voices coming from so many directions that even when we heard a faint intimate whisper of God breaking through to our soul we doubted it because of the sheer number and volume of other the voices coming at us. Our connection seemed weaker than everyone else’s because while we questioned and wondered and struggled, they all seemed so certain. So absolute.

Steve pleaded with the crowd to shut things down on their end so he could get a solid connection and sometimes we need to do the same thing but rather than leaving the action to others we take action to limit how much we’ll take in from outside ourselves so we can listen to what’s being said within. That’s what it took for me in reconciling my faith and sexuality. I put aside all the gay-affirming books and all the ex-gay books. I put aside the theological arguments and biblical interpretations. I stopped looking to others to tell me what was right and what path God would have me walk. I gathered all the information. I did the legwork and the research. I studied and observed and explored. Then I put it aside to be alone with God, to hear from God, to be led by God.

Here’s the thing we need to realize. Our connection with God is never broken. God is always in dialogue with us, Spirit speaking to spirit. God is only silent when we need to be in silence with God. Can you trust that? If you sign off from all the others voices, including mine, that might presume in anyway to know what’s true for you in your personal relationship with God can you trust that God will be faithful to speak to you and that you will be faithful to listen and respond to God’s calling?

I know I’ve said this all before but when I was reminded it of again in such a perfect little moment at the WWDC, I couldn’t help but circle the wagons around it one more time. Trust God. Trust yourself. And for the time being and for as long as you need, tell the rest of us to shut down and sign off.

======

*I’m going to assume we’re all on the same page that when we talk about God speaking to us we’re not referring to an audible voice but rather an inner knowing, a feeling, a sense, a nudge. We hear God speaking to us within the words of Scripture. We hear God speak to us in an encounter with someone else or in an experience that plays out in an ordinary day. However it is that you hear God speak to you, that’s what I’m talking about.

Never succumb to feelings of loneliness.  No matter where you are, God is close by.  Remember…feeling distant from God is subjective, not objective; it is just your own feeling, not reality. - Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. - Hebrews 13:5

How is it that God can watch over all His creation spread over trillions and trillions of miles, contained in more than 70 billion galaxies and still be so close to you that God knows every care of your heart? I don’t know. I only know He does.

So here I am, on a day where gray clouds fill the sky releasing occasional bone-soaking downpours of rain, blogging about death and dying on a blog purposed to encourage and support my GLBTQ brothers and sisters in their journey of faith.  But this is where I am. Life on this earth and the life that follows occupies center stage in my thoughts these days with everything else fading into the background. I care what’s happening in the world to my GLBTQ family but for today I care even more about the impermanence and preciousness of being human and being alive.

I suppose it makes sense that after telling you in recent days what I don’t believe about the next life, I should tell you what it is that I do believe. After all my notions on the non-existence of hell indulge me one more time while I share a little about the vague imaginations I have about heaven.

As a young girl I’d look up into the black night sky and catch glimpses of heaven’s brilliant light breaking through tiny holes in heaven’s floor. The stars proved heaven’s existence to me because with my own eyes I could see the light of God bursting through the darkness. There it is. Heaven. Up there!  A few decades have passed since then and I no longer cast my eyes to the sky as I did then as though heaven was a place beyond the clouds somewhere “up there.” I’ve shed my childish notions of a physical locale where wings and cloud jumping are the standard forms of transportation and choir rehearsal and harp lessons comprise the better part of every day in eternity.

I’ve let go of fluffy clouds and streets of gold but I haven’t shed by belief that heaven is reality; an un-mappable destination in the spiritual realm and that one day we will stand face to face before the Lamb. I don’t know the details of what heaven will be like nor do I care about the nuts and bolts and set design. All I know is that one day we will be there, all those who have loved us and that we have loved will be there, all those who have despised us and those we’ve despised will be there, and the One we worship and adore above all others will be there illuminating our souls and clearing away the blindness from our eyes and that, my dear friend, is heaven.

I want you to understand I don’t believe in heaven because it sounds like a nice idea. It’s not fear of death or fear of nothingness after death that makes heaven a “must have” in my heart and mind, but rather this: just as I’m no longer able to believe in hell because of the eternal love, boundless mercy, and extravagant grace of God, I’m led with equal resolve to believe in heaven for the same reasons. We are God’s creation, born out of the love of the Godhead. We were given life to be loved by God and to love God, and as there is no end to the eternal love of God, so  there will be no end to those whom God loves. This is nothing more than common sense if you believe in a God of love.

There is no end to our relationship with God. No fierce or gentle parting of the way. God loved us while we were in our mother’s womb, has loved us every moment since and will continue to love us forever. Think on that. We will be loved forever and in a way we can’t begin to comprehend in the here and now because in the there and then all doubt will be erased. No longer will we struggle with our worth to be loved. No longer will we judge ourselves as too flawed or too fallen. We won’t shuffle our feet or shrug our shoulders at the very mention that God is crazy in love with us. No. Standing on the other side; standing where our spirits will be set free from their fleshy imprisonment; standing where we will see clearly with new vision; standing where we will be made completely, perfectly whole; we will know beyond a shred of a doubt that we are loved for we will be standing on the other side of hearing God said, “You are mine. You have always been mine. Enter in to all I have in store for you, for the mysteries and abundance I have prepared for you. I invite you in. My Son welcomes you in. My child, come.”

This is where my faith takes me when I consider the impermanence of life. It takes me to the foreverness of life in the presence of God even as it reminds me of the precious treasure of this one day. No matter what is happening today; no matter how painful the journey, how difficult the challenges, how great the losses, we are alive. We have this day. Yesterday is over. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. So it is today that matters. Eternal life is coming but abundant life has already begun.

This morning I woke to another day and I am so deeply grateful to be alive to see it and for the next 24 hours I want to come into the day with all of me, holding nothing back. I will take the heartache just as I will the heart’s delight. Until the sun falls tonight I want to take full advantage of this day and use it up to the last drop in the best way I know to do. I want to take note of what’s beautiful around me and seek ways to bring change to what is broken and in need of repair. I want to give God glory and praise, give love to those around me, ease someone’s suffering, celebrate someone’s joy, and say “thank you” as often as I can.

This life may not be our final home, but this life matters none the less and even while my heart is heavy over the thought of future losses and sorrows that are to come, I take joy in knowing that all suffering will one day end, all that is lost will be restored, and all that we mourn will be turned to joy. If not on this side, then on the other. This is where the love of God and faith in that love takes me. May your own heart say “Amen.”

Skip the witty lead-in.
Pass on the relevant but lengthy personal anecdote.
Don’t bother with an introduction that ends up longer than the actual post.
For once would you just get to the point. These people have other things to do, you know.

Memo back to Self:

I know I know I know.
Quit nagging me already!

Oh. Hi. I’m sorry you had to hear that.

I’ve been telling you for the last week that I don’t believe in the concept of eternal damnation, fire and brimstone, or that anyone will spend all eternity in perpetual time-out for their sins, so now seems a good time to take that a little further as to how believing all that impacts how I believe about sin, salvation, and Jesus as Savior.

Sin. Salvation. Savior.

Here is me stating the obvious: as long as children die of starvation in a world where others live in abundance, as long as anyone hates another, as long as even one living being is treated with indignity, until everyone is valued equally, and until all oppression and violence is wiped from the face of the earth, any arguments about our enormous capacity for sin seem unnecessary. Call it spiritual brokenness, the actions of a wounded soul, wrongdoing, transgression, sin, it makes no never mind. These things that we do, by whatever name we call them unleash injury on others, damage ourselves, and grieve the heart of a God who desires so much more for His creation.

Christian teaching refers to the presence of sin that covers our world as original sin, the idea being that the most holy, righteous and adorable among us are sinners to the core.  Adam and Eve sunk their teeth into a crispy morsel of forbidden fruit and at that moment humanity was sunk, so that on all our human resumes were stamped the words, fallen being and the only means by which that label could ever be replaced with new creation would be through the salvific work of Jesus on the cross.

In Christ’s death on the cross, sin and salvation collided and in that moment something so extraordinary took place that we’ve spent our lives as the church trying to make sense of it all, yet despite the best formulated ruminations of theologians and doctrinal decrees, we’ve hardly scratched the surface of all the mystery held in that one eventful day that unfolded in the course of human history. Even so, we can’t leave it alone. We keep coming back and trying to unravel more and more of it because we’re drawn to the cross like moths to a flame. And what a radiant flame it is.

Christ’s atoning work on the cross, the way of salvation provided, is understood and described in a variety of ways within the Christian tradition, each providing a different angle on what salvation and Jesus’ role as our Savior means. Two of the more familiar theories, and ones that many of us in the church tend to overlap and meld together are the ransom theory and the theory of satisfaction.

Ransom Atonement
Mark 10:45 tells us that “Jesus came to be a ransom for many,” which I understand to mean that we were under the control of sin; in essence sin had taken us from God and now we were owned by sin. So that we might be returned and reconciled to God, Jesus paid the ultimate price as a ransom that bought us back. In this way we doubly belong to God; both in that we were born of God and were then bought back by God.

Satisfaction Atonement
In Romans 6:23 Paul warns that “the wages of sin are death.” In our sinful condition we have dishonored God as His creation, and having caused such damage to all humankind through our sin God requires that a penalty be paid. We owe a debt for the wrong we’ve done but the only way to satisfy such a debt must come through the offering of a perfect sacrifice. The irony and poignancy of the story is that it is God alone who can provide the debt that must be paid, that being through the gift of Jesus, who as fully God and fully man can be the only true and perfect sacrifice.

This is atonement as I understood it for much of my life but in time I found them to be problematic in that both of these theories portrayed God in a way that doesn’t ring true for me by offering the image of a God who demands human sacrifice and the literal shedding of blood to move him to forgive sin. The gods of mythology and religious cults predating Christianity demanded human sacrifice but then they were vindictive gods, temperamental, arbitrarily ticked off by humankind, cruel and at times little more than a ramped up version of the neighborhood bully. None of them were the God who is Love. None of these were the God of whom Jesus proclaimed; the God who is a loving shepherd, a widow searching for her lost coin, a mother hen who guards her children, a father rushing to the side of his wayward son, a creator who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field.

Let me be clear about something. At the moment of Jesus’ death, I unequivocally believe the earth and all creation were changed to the core in a way that best be described as supernatural mystery. Even though I don’t believe the spilling of blood was required by God, it’s still true for me to to say that Jesus brought salvation for all and everyone. The Savior of the world had come and through him God’s saving presence entered our dusty little planet and washed over it like a tsunami in an arid desert. I kid you not. The world the second after Jesus died was a completely different world than it had been only one second before. The veil was torn in half. The death of Jesus broke through the darkness and three days later Jesus’ resurrection brought forth new life and the end of all hopelessness and for this one stone in the wall of my faith I’d take a bullet.

I’m so failing here at saying what I want to say and never will be able to say. I have no words nor voice to speak of it. Not in a way that’s worthy of it. Okay, continuing on.

Listen, as much as I believe that something utterly glorious and mysteriously divine happened on the cross that altered this world as we know it and set us free from a destiny never meant for us, I no longer believe that God sent Jesus to die. God didn’t demand someone die for us. God purposed that someone live for us. The Son of God was sent to embody and reveal the true nature of God. Not the God of law and retribution. Not the God who slayed all who opposed the children of Israel. Not the God who demanded sacrifice. Jesus came to bring the Good News and the Good News was that we had it all wrong;  God was loving, compassionate, and of tender mercy. A God of holiness who could be touched by the unclean and not be defiled. A sinless and pure God who could break bread at the table with the sinner and unclean. A God of judgment who was swift in bringing justice to the oppressed. A righteous God who was quick to humble the self-righteous. God sent Jesus to demonstrate his love for us and the demonstration of that love was so great, colliding so fiercely against the God who was portrayed by the religious leaders of the day that Jesus was killed for it. He was murdered on the cross for speaking and living out the love of God and refusing to back down, refusing to shut up, and refusing to stop rattling the temple doors.

So what does the cross mean to me? Oh, it means everything. Salvation entered the world that God knew from its very foundation was his intention to provide, not through Jesus’ death but through his living and his dying. In the cross Christ demonstrated the extent of God’s love for us, not that he was destined to die, but that he would choose regardless of the certainty of death to proclaim the Good News, eat with the sinner, touch the unclean, free the captive, and give sight to the blind even on the Sabbath. In this demonstration of giving up his life for us  humankind responds and is transformed. We see there is a different way to live. There is another option for us beyond sin and self. In Jesus’ witness of forgiveness for what he suffered on the cross we have the model to forgive and be forgiven so we can be set free to love.

I realize I’m not inventing a new view of the cross. It’s an old one that’s been around for a really long time and a position in which many liberal theologians place themselves. Originally it was known as a healing view of the cross; by our witness to the events of the cross we are healed from the wounds and brokenness of humanity. Rene Girard called it the mimetic desire theory in that we are compelled by Christ’s example to imitate him. A more recent theological position knows it as the theory of moral influence, that Jesus’ example influences us toward moral living, but before I knew that others had boxed it up and labeled it something, I just knew that for me the cross was transforming, altering the world and re-shaping how I could live if left to my own devices.

Jesus is my Savior beyond one single great act of salvation two thousand years about but every single day of my life, hour by hour, minute by minute. God’s love spared me from an eternity in hell, and Jesus saves me from myself every time I’m confronted with a choice to hate or to love, to retaliate or to forgive, to grab or to give. Every time I look toward the life of Jesus I’m challenged to live in the way Jesus modeled empowered by the Holy Spirit.  When I think of the cross and remember Jesus’ forgiveness for the robber at his side and the soldiers at his feet the way is set for me to receive God’s forgiveness and extend forgiveness to others, including myself. That is the power of the cross.

Jesus saved me and is saving me.
And I am and forever will be in his debt.
Thank you.

After all I’ve said I know that those who scratched their heads and flipped their Bibles over my view of hell (and the lack there of) are still scratching and flipping more than ever. And that’s okay. This is my faith. My relationship with God. My human understanding of the divine Creator, the loving Savior, and the eternal Spirit. I shoot, I score, and sometimes I miss. Like you I’m just trying the best I can to live as faithfully as I can to what I best understand. It works for me.

So to sum it up I’ve gone on record that I’ve come to a place in my life of faith, my relationship with God, and my deepening understanding of grace that I no longer am able to believe that anyone will ever be consigned to the suffering of eternal punishment and banishment from the presence of God. While it seems reasonable to me that there would be a time and place for divine purification and correction there must in my heart and mind ultimately come a time when the soul of every man, woman, and child will be re-united with their Creator.

I’m more than aware of the kind of objections and emotions that taking that position can bring up for those of us who are Christian and even more specifically for those of us grounded in a conservative or evangelical tradition. No one knows this more than I do because the Anita of ten years ago would have been horrified to know that one day she’d be believing what I believe today. But then, come to think about it the Anita of twenty years ago would still be rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth over the ever-so gay Anita of 2010 so what say we leave those girls in the past to resolve their issues while we continue to move forward, shall we?

Split personalities aside, I understand some will take issue with the conclusions I’ve come to but honestly, I’m come to a place in my life where I simply can’t believe any different. The grace of God as I understand it and have experienced it compels me in this direction. It presses me to reject a God of infinite love who could bear to be separated from even one of His children for the span of eternity. I’m unable to come up with any argument strong enough to be at peace with the idea that the will and desire of God that all would come to Him will ever be less than fully realized. I’ve tried. I didn’t leap over to this side of my beliefs. Grace dragged me here kicking and screaming the whole way and when new glimpses of human cruelty have filled me with a longing for a wrathful God to exact revenge on those who harm the innocent, grace has blocked my way to running back to the safety and certainty of my former beliefs where the fires of hell and an angry God settle the score. Even if everyone else thinks I’m pushing the envelope or standing on shaky theological ground. And if in the end I’m wrong about this or about being gay or anything else that I hold as true at the core of my being then being wrong is a risk I’m willing to make. I’m willing to put everything on the line because at this point in my life I refuse to put any limit on the reach of God’s love or the extent of God’s grace. To do so would be to live and speak in a way that denies the very essence of all that I have encountered and understood God to be. I would be lying to say any different…or to say nothing at all.

In case it hasn’t yet dawned on you, you just witnessed an unparalleled digression from where I was originally headed. That happens when I’m passionate about something and when it comes to these things I have enough passion to light a fire from a pile of soggy wood and used matchsticks.

Which is good because it’s now dinner time and I need to get the chops on the grill and the salad in the bowl before my wonderwife returns from a day in the trenches, which means my thoughts on “Sin, Salvation, and The Savior” will need to wait until tomorrow.

No, I’m not kidding. You just read what was meant to be an introductory paragraph that ended up turning into a lengthy post that never even got us to where we were headed in the first place. Dang, you sure put up with a lot from me. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t tolerate it, so how do you do it?!

Okay. For real. I promise. Tomorrow.

If there is no consequence or judgment then what is the purpose of right and wrong? Why defend the helpless and vulnerable? Why do good?

The answer seems so obvious to me that I wonder if I’m missing something. Is the question more complicated than I’m understanding it to be? I doubt it would be the first time.

We do good because God has been good to us. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We show mercy because mercy has been granted us. We clothe and feed the poor because as God has fed the birds of the air and clothed the flowers of the field, God has provided for us. Hell slips out of the equation when our actions flow from a place of awareness and gratitude for the good we have received from God.

If fear of hell is what motivates good action, if the only purpose of right behavior is to avoid hell, then the good being done would be tainted and cheap, done less for the sake of good and more as a means of self-preservation. Doing good would be nothing less than the most selfish of actions.

But no. We defend the helpless, feed the hungry, care for the orphan and the widow, stand up for the oppressed, and forgive our enemies because God has made it known to us that everyone who lives is a beloved child of God and deserves nothing less than to be treated with respect, compassion, and dignity. We feed the hungry because they are hungry. We feed the hungry because it lessens their suffering. We feed the hungry because given other circumstances in our own lives, we would be the ones with empty hands and stomach.  We feed the hungry because God told us to feed them and because Jesus modeled it for us. We feed the hungry because we are so grateful for the love of God poured out in our lives that we need to release it into the world by giving of what we have received. If there is no reward for goodness at the end of our lives then isn’t the reward we receive in the moment in easing another’s suffering and adding to the goodness in this life, enough? Oh, I hope so.

And if there’s no punishment for wrongdoing what’s to prevent us from going and getting what we want no matter who it hurts or what the cost? If someone is driven by self-centeredness or lacks any magnetic integrity in their moral compass then I suppose there’s nothing to prevent it. In fact, the threat of hell and damnation has done nothing to hold sin in check, even in Christian communities where there’s a strong belief system centered around a final judgment and eternal consequences for sin. Look around. Examples abound. Priests sexually molest children. Religious leaders engage in infidelity and financial corruption. Churches build elaborate edifices to worship God in while the homeless and hungry are all around them. Denominations spend vast resources attempting to keep certain people out of their churches while doing far less to reach out and gather more people in. Scripture repeatedly makes it all too clear that it’s sin to not clothe the poor, shelter the homeless, or feed the hungry. It’s sinful for Christians to marginalize the oppressed and refuse the outcast when everything about Jesus life witnessed to the opposite, and adultery and child sexual abuse would seem to be no-brainers in the sin department. Final judgment. Consequences for sin. Existence of hell. And still, Christians do wrong.

So does removing the threat of eternal consequences change anything? Probably not and it shouldn’t because there would seem to be far more valuable reasons for avoiding wrong doing. How about these for an example?

• You want to be and be known as an honorable person of good character.
• You want to follow the wisdom and instruction of God and the example of God’s Son out of love for God.
• You want to honor the One who loves you by doing good and avoiding wrong.
• You wish to avoid doing anything that would bring harm and pain to another human being.
• You want to avoid the consequences in this life that come from wrong doing, whether those consequences are played out for the world to see or known only in the secret place of your own heart.

Again, I might be over-simplifying the question. I’m open to correction, comments, and more questions. I still have at least one more post in this spontaneous series…maybe two. Depends on where your comments lead us.

I could take this question in a million directions but instead I’m going to give an answer that ends before everyone’s attention span does. It might be close.

I can choose to reject God but that doesn’t mean I have the power to make  God reject me. In Matthew 23:37 Jesus’ said that those who had killed the prophets and stoned those God had sent to them that but instead of rejecting them for their actions, God “longed to gather them as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” To say that God will reject those who reject Him would be to say that human will has ultimate supremacy over God’s will. I can’t fathom that nor can I accept that the will of God could be held captive and bound to human will.

I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love–not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord! Romans 8:38-39

If nothing can separate us from the love of God then it stands to reason that even with all my self-determining mojo unleashed even I can’t separate myself from the love of God. While it’s not possible for the person rejecting God to experience the comfort and assurance of God’s love at the same time, God’s love remains there all the same, as God remains ever near.

But no one who chooses to flee from God will have God’s embrace forced on them. Heaven won’t be bursting at the seams with the unrepentant. No one will be marching into the Kingdom of God bearing placards that denounce the existence of God. No will be held captive in God’s presence who wills to be elsewhere.  God will not constrain anyone against their will, and no one will be coerced to surrender their will to the will of God.

Instead what God will do is go to any lengths, travel any distance,  and take all the time necessary to pursue those who have yet to return to Him. God will not force them but rather God will woo them like the lover of our soul He is even if it takes beyond this life and mortal death. Yes, even after death will continue to pursue the one who runs from God because neither human will or death will have the final word but the final word will be spoken by God calling “you are mine, you are mine, return to me.“  This is the relentless pursuit of God’s grace the English poet Francis Thompson so powerfully described in The Hound of Heaven, a pursuit that in the end beckoned him to return to the arms of God. The language of the prose can make it bulky to shift through but this introduction to the poem portrays a bit of it’s passion and the relentlessness of God’s love.

The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit. – The Neumann Press Book of Verse, 1988.

Or is it just me?

Anyway, I thought since I was willing to tackle some questions from you, you might consider taking on a few questions from me every now and again. Questions I ask because I really want to hear your thoughts on them, especially if you have a different take on God’s judgment, hell, eternal punishment and other similar lighthearted fare. Here are two questions I grappled with for a long time:

How will God ever be satisfied knowing that there are some of His creation suffering in hell and eternally separated from His presence?

How can those in heaven ever be free of sorrow knowing that those they love (children, spouse, parents, friends) are in eternal torment?

I could never come up with any answer that was even remotely tolerable to me, but if you’ve found an answer around the conflict between the absence of all sadness in heaven and the existence of eternal damnation, I really want to hear how you’ve worked it out for yourself.

Come on. You know you wanna.