Why Do We Need to Believe in Hell? (Part 2: Hate)

What causes a person to not only defend the idea of hell, but actually want there to be a hell, to need to believe in hell? What drives a person to adamantly defend hell as good and right? Last time I discussed one reason, which is fear. That is, you fear for a person you care about, you fear they are headed in a wrong direction, and attempt to communicate that urgency through threat and fear.

The issue here is not whether or not the danger is real, but whether fear and threat are effective means of leading a person to change and repentance.  Those who preach hell clearly believe it is. However there is a lot of evidence that instilling fear in a person can do a lot of damage. If we want to see people repent, if we want to see people turn towards love, if we want to see bad guys become good guys, the way we do that is not through sewing seeds of fear (you will get what you plant), but by sewing seeds of love. Love breeds love. Fear breeds fear.

Is there a hell? I don't know for sure. I've never been there. But I do know that there can be very real hell on earth for people. People are capable of profound evil and hurt. The recent mass shooting in San Bernardino of course comes to mind. There is profound hurt all over the world. There is human trafficking. There's child abuse. It's staggering just to contemplate how much hell there is, how much hurting there is in the world, or even just on your street behind closed doors.

This brings up two questions from a Christian perspective. One is how we move people to turn from hurting themselves and others. I maintain that fear is not an effective means. As Paul says, it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance (Ro 2:4). However, another aspect this brings up is hate and retribution.

It is a natural human reaction for us to respond to human acts of evil with anger. We see innocent people being hurt, and it makes us mad. Every parent can relate to Jesus saying that anyone who hurts a child should have a big rock tied to the neck and be hurled in the sea. That's wrath, and wrath is just a fancy word for anger. We feel anger when we feel wronged. We have a desire for payback, for retribution, for vengeance. Probably the biggest reason people need to believe in hell, the reason they want there to be a hell, is because they want those people who have done these terrible hurtful things to suffer. If they did not, they think, that would be unjust.

That's why the people in Jesus' time got so angry with Jesus for speaking about grace and love of enemies. Luke tells us that on one occasion, where Jesus preached his first sermon on grace, the people became "furious" and tried to murder Jesus by throwing him off a cliff (Luke 4:28). Tough crowd. They did not want grace, they wanted wrath. They did not want to see the Gentiles receive God's mercy and redemption, they wanted them to receive divine retribution. They wanted hell.

That desire for hell is common. You might even say it is instinctual.  We don't just think of it as an animal reaction though, we associate it with justice. This idea of retributive justice can be found throughout the Old Testament, and throughout every culture, including our own. In fact, America is, among developed nations, arguably the biggest proponent of justice understood as retribution. 

Retribution can legitimately be understood as a form of justice. The question is whether it is the best or highest form of justice. It is better than doing nothing, but does it result in making things better? Does it make the world safer and people better? To some degree, yes. But there is a point where it can make things worse, resulting in a cycle of retaliation and escalating violence, all in the name of justice. That pursuit of retributive justice itself makes a hell. 

If our goal is to create justice, to stop hurt, to make people good, then the question is: Is there a better way to bring about justice than retribution and wrath? This is where the gospel comes in. If you understand the gospel, you understand that what it proposes is the opposite of hell. It proposes that the way God will make things right is not by hurting the bad guys via wrath and retribution, but by turning bad guys into good guys with undeserved love (i.e. grace). Note that this is decidedly not the same as doing nothing. People may imagine that the choice is either to retaliate or to do nothing and forgo justice, but that is not at all what the gospel proposes. It's about change that leads to the hurt stopping, and people acting in love towards one another. Grace and mercy are not in conflict with justice, but they do entail a redefinition of justice. The justice of the gospel, the justice Paul calls in Romans "the justice of God" is restorative justice rather than retributive justice.It proposes that the way God will make things right is not by hurting the bad guys via wrath and retribution, but by turning bad guys into good guys with undeserved love (i.e. grace).

Restorative justice is a higher form of justice than retributive justice. The gospel of God's saving act of grace in Jesus towards sinful humanity is a higher for of justice than the justice of hell, wrath, and retribution. It is a higher form of justice because it works better, it is more effective. It succeeds where hell fails. That's what makes it higher, more advanced, more developed, superior to the way of retribution and hell.

Those who want wrath, those who need hell see that as bad news. It means they will not get the payback justice they long for. But Paul argues that this gospel is actually good news because we are all bad guys, we have all hurt others. You may want someone to suffer, Paul argues, but there is also someone who wants you to suffer for what you did. In that economy of retribution we all lose. In the economy of grace we all win. Not by overlooking evil and hurt, but by finding a way to undo it.

Do I believe in hell? Yes, in the sense that I believe that there is clearly very real hurt and suffering and evil. I believe that suffering and evil exist. But do I believe in the justice of hell? No, I think there is a superior justice revealed in the gospel. I insist that to believe in the gospel entails disbelieving in the justice of hell. It entails moving from law to grace, moving from an inferior understanding of justice based on retribution to a superior and more morally developed understanding of justice based on restoration and love. So you might say I do believe that hell exists, but I do not believe that hell is good. I believe that the gospel reveals that hell is what God fights against, not for. To believe in the justice of the gospel is to disbelieve in the justice of hell.

What Victor Hugo wrote in the introduction of his brilliant novel Les Misérables epitomizes for me what it means to have Christ's heart for the lost,

“A society that tolerates misery, a religion that tolerates Hell, a humanity that tolerates
war, is to me an inferior one. With all of the strength of my being I want to destroy this
human deprivation. I damn the slavery, I chase away the misery, I heal the sickness, I
brighten the darkness, I hate the hatred. ”

I believe that love is stronger than hell. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Why Do We Need to Believe in Hell? (Part 1: Fear)

Discussions on hell in the Bible can quickly become emotionally heated. Whether you feel the strong need to defend the doctrine or the strong need to argue against it, the concept of hell is not just a theoretical discussion.

Ironically, debates on the subject are typically focused on fact claims of what the Bible says, as if emotions played no role at all. The motivations of why we either seek to defend or question hell is considered to be a liability, a weakness in one's argument.

Consequently, those in support of it focus on the Scriptural evidence for hell, and those arguing against it similarly focus on Scriptural fact claims as well, for example, arguing that the Greek word translated as "hell" does not mean what you think it means.

In short, one side says "the Bible says there is a hell, and that settles it" while the other side says "no it doesn't say that, it's a mistranslation." Both focus on the "facts" of what the Bible says, ignoring what motivates each to focus on what they do.

But let's dig a little deeper. What motivates people to either embrace or reject the doctrine of hell? What drives a person to assemble an arsenal of verses upholding the doctrine of hell? Conversely, what motivates a person to dig into the Greek to try and find grounds to question the doctrine of hell? If we are unreflected and unaware of these motivations that drive our interpretation of Scripture, they will still drive what we see and don't see. So if we want to have anything approaching an honest and objective reading, we need to face them.

For those of us who object it's pretty clear. We object because it seems awful and immoral. Speaking for myself, as my love for God and my neighbor increased, the horror at the thought of many of those who I love suffering eternal punishment increased with it, leading me to ask how can a loving God send people to hell? In other words, the reason I became troubled with hell was because I was growing closer to Jesus. It was as I grew closer to Jesus that I saw more and more the moral problems with the doctrine of hell. Many people feel that way, and that leads us to really struggle with the doctrine of hell.

However, the way we see this framed is that while we are struggling because of moral or emotional reasons, those who defend it are just focusing on the facts of what Scripture says. I want to propose that that is simply not true. Those who defend hell are just as much doing so motivated by moral or emotional concerns. There is no side that is just rationally and non-emotionally looking at what Scripture "says." Everyone is motivated to defend what they do because of deep-seated things under the surface.

So why it do some people feel the need so defend hell? I was shocked at how matter-of-factly my fellow Christians accepted that the majority of the world was going to hell. How could they believe this and not be deeply broken and grieved over it? The reason is because there is something going on that causes people to need to believe in hell, to want there to be a hell. This may be masked in a matter-of-fact non-emotional tone because this works well as a debate strategy to pretend to be detached and just focused on the "facts," but until we can recognize the things that are really there behind this, motivating us to "see" what we see, we will only have a superficial understanding.

I would propose that there are two basic underlying reasons that people believe in hell. I'll deal with one of those here, and discuss the second next time.

One reason people believe in hell is rooted in an urgency to see people repent, and a corresponding belief that they can be motivated by fear. That is, they fear for the person, and so they attempt to communicate that urgency through threat and fear. We can see this in the prophetic "warnings" of Scripture, including the NT, where people are told that unless they turn from their ways, they await pain and suffering. While the OT does this with a focus primarily on earthly suffering (threatening people with starvation, famine, war, rape, etc) the NT shifts the focus to suffering in the afterlife. In either case, the intent is to cause the hearer to turn from their path to avoid the suffering. Be loving or else. This is motivation by fear.

We can see this continued in the classical fundamentalist preachers of hell, perhaps best exemplified by Johnathan Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Here's a taste,

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

That's how the "good news" is preached, with a mandatory intro focused on hell. Such "hellfire and brimstone" sermons can still be heard today, Sunday after Sunday throughout the Bible belt. This is not about making sober factual claims, the way a doctor might tell you that if you do not change your eating habits there could be adverse heath risks. Rather it is intended to evoke fear and alarm. The idea is to (literally) scare the hell out of someone. That's what Hell House is supposed to do. It's meant for good. However many can attest that this focus on fear has actually resulted in damaging them, pulling them away from God and away from love. So even if it was meant for good, we need to look at whether motivating people by fear may in fact make things worse, and we also need to look at whether there are more effective means for reaching our goal (seeing people repent of hurtful and destructive behavior).

Psychologists have observed that threat and pain only work as motivators temporarily. To remain effective the threat or punishment must be escalated over time. The context of the NT, scholars tell us, is that they saw themselves at a point where they believed the end of the world was close at hand. When the world did not end, for the threat to remain effective it needed to become more and more extreme until we arrived at Dante's graphic visions of hell, and the idea of conscious eternal torment. It's kind of hard to top that, so there is no place to go from there. All you can do is scream louder about it.

Fear and threat only work in the short-term  because they are external, rather than internal motivators. That is, when a person does something motivated by fear, they don't do it because it is right or because they care, but simply because they want to avoid punishment. They are not actually good, they are simply complying with it to avoid pain. They are not motivated by love, which cares for the other, but by fear, which only sees the self.

This is why many Christians, when they lose the fear of hell, turn away from God. They do this because they never actually loved God, they only feared God. To understate the case, it's hard to maintain a constant state of fear in any relationship without it messing you up. So people running from a relationship rooted in fear -- including a relationship with God -- is probably a healthy and good thing to do. John tells us that love and fear cannot coexist. "There is no fear in love" he says. Many Christians fight that statement tooth and nail because they believe that fear goes hand in hand with love. Fear is so internalized by them that they can't imagine a relationship without it. So while some Christians question hell and fear, others question love and forgiveness. The fact is, we all question things based on what we really believe in.

That strategy of motivation by fear of punishment may work with parking tickets, but it simply does not work when the goal is to produce people who love, who care for others as they care for themselves. If we really want to see people repent from being unloving and selfish, we need to show them how to develop empathy and social maturity. Fear cannot do that. Love can. Fear may work in the short-term, but we need to go deeper than that and move people long-term towards real internalized moral maturity and social development. 

We might ask here, "If that is true, why does the NT use fear as a motivator?" This is a place where the NT is stuck in the morally wrong assumptions of the culture of the time. At the time it was assumed by everyone that physical punishment (and to be clear, we are not talking about spanking, but physical punishment that we would today consider to be criminal abuse) was "for your own good." Compared to that, simply threatening people with suffering, as opposed to inflicting it yourself with a whip, seems comparatively mild. But it is still hurtful, and perhaps more importantly it is simply not the most effective means to achieve the goal in mind, which is to motivate people to be loving and good. We need to be able to see that end goal of the NT -- motivating people to embrace Jesus' way of radical grace and forgiveness -- while recognizing that there are better, more loving, and more effective means to get there. Fear of hell is not a prerequisite to accepting the good news of the gospel.

Next time we'll discuss the other major motivation behind people's need for hell -- a deep-seated desire for retributive that shapes most people's understanding of justice. CONTINUE TO PART 2 

Why Fear is Incompaible with Faith

A long time ago I wrote a paper called "How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?" I wrote it because I was really struggling with the whole hell thing, and frankly found the way my fellow evangelicals were dealing with it was really insensitive and hurtful. The big issue here is fear, and how Christianity often intentionally cultivates and breeds fear in people.

I recently got a letter from a reader who is struggling with this herself. She tells a story that I'm sure all of us are familiar with,

I recently went to a Campus Crusade event and the guy speaking told a story about how he was in a fraternity. One night his "brother" told him he was feeling down because he had just broke up with his girlfriend, and the man sharing his testimony was saying how he was going to share with his friend about Jesus but was going to wait until later that night. Well long story short his friend died that night in a drunk driving accident. He never said his friend went to hell but he essentially insinuated it by explaining he had the answer and the urgency in sharing the gospel.

The example is actually pretty subtle compared to some of the hellfire presentations many of us I'm sure have heard. The message is only "insinuated" as she says. Yet despite this, it nevertheless plants a seed of fear that has devastating effects, as she goes on to explain, 

"This put me on a trajectory of fear, knowing that my family and most of my friends in my sorority could die in a car accident as well and they could go to hell because I didn't tell them" 

As a result, she says she has "become consumed and scared with the concept of hell." I'm sure that was the intent. After all, if you are consumed with the fear that people are going to hell this will result in a person who is active in evangelizing, right? So why is fear wrong? If the danger is real, shouldn't we cultivate fear?

Absolutely not, and I'll tell you why: If there is one thing I have learned it is that fear is toxic to the soul. Love and fear cannot coexist. Either love will push fear out or fear will push out love. That's why John says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear... The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:8). 

To put it bluntly we have a choice between the way of Jesus which is love or the way of the devil which is fear. Fear leads to violence. Fear shuts out love. Fear kills the soul. Fear debilitates and paralyzes. Because of this, being motivated by fear is never good.

This is true regardless of whether there is a legitimate reason to fear or not. People are afraid they won't have enough, and so they steal and kill and dehumanize. People are afraid so they trust in violence and power and guns. When they do that, they are not trusting in the way of Jesus, they are not trusting in love. Fear is un-faith. Fear is anti-faith, anti-love.

So if that's true, why is it that so many Christians cultivate fear? Their concern is that if we don't stir up fear in people then no one would evangelize. But the opposite is in fact the case.  People stop evangelizing when it is fear-based because that's what fear does, it debilitates. Additionally, fear as a motivation to come to God simply does not work. It plants shallow roots so the person who is with God because of fear does not stay (who wants to stay with someone they are terrified of?). In contrast, when the bond is based on love then it can grow deep roots that will last.

Now let's talk about sin and hell: I don't mean the trivial "did you ever tell a lie" nonsense. I mean real harm, real brokenness, real hurt. Do people do really hurtful and horrible things to each other? Yes, they certainly do. Are people hurt and broken? Yes, more than you know. Abuse is real. Rape is real. Starvation is real. War crimes are real. In short, there is a "hell" right here that many people are in the middle of, and that matters, and we should care.

This idea of hell right now is vital because it means we need to care about people's lives right now, and not just about life after death. I believe in that, too, I hope for heaven with all my heart, I long for eternity. But life here matters. People matter. That's why Jesus spent all his time caring for people and their very real needs. When we have a theology that makes all of that a waste of time then we suck the life right out of life. Your life matters, and the life of others matters, too. If we don't see that then we are not loving.

We therefore do need to help people connect with God's love when we can (and that includes caring for their material needs). But if we really want to do that then we need to do it through real relationships. You can't address those kinds of things by handing out a pamphlet. It needs to be deep and real. And it needs to be motivated by love not fear. Love heals people, it makes them come alive. Fear is what drives people to do all sorts of profoundly hurtful things, it is what makes people shut themselves off from love.

The problem with the whole fear-based "if you don't tell your friend about Jesus they will get hit by a truck tonight" argument is that it puts a pressure on us that is really God's alone to carry. It is not our job to save people, that's God's job. It is our job to simply love them as best we can. We need to trust God to save people. But instead we have this messed-up idea that it is all up to us, and God's hands are tied, and because of some ridiculous technicality (not saying a particular prayer, not formulating the doctrine of the Trinity just right, not being born in the right Christian country) they will be tortured forever and ever in an eternal holocaust camp, and it is 100% up to you to prevent the whole thing. That is completely absurd, and frankly it's abusive. It puts us in God's place, placing an insane burden on our necks. How could you love or trust a God like that?

So let's talk about trusting God. The bottom line is that if we are going to trust God, then we need to be able to trust that God is not going to just shrug while the people we love go to hell. We need to trust that God cares more about this than we do. If we are troubled by the idea of people going to hell, that is not because we are "doubting" but because we have the same heart for the lost that Jesus does. That voice of protest in us is Jesus in us. That is God's love in us. God is not less loving than us, God is unimaginably more loving than we are. Paul prays that we would really get a hold of this.

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us be the glory." (Eph 3:17-20)

Read that again slowly and really let it sink in. We are to be rooted in love. A love that is so much wider and longer and deeper than we can possibly imagine. And that love is the basis for trusting that God can do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." That is who we are trusting in. That is what our God looks like. That's why Jesus repeatedly said to people "do not be afraid."

Let me conclude with this: People often ask after reading my paper on hell what my "answer" is. First of all, here is NOT what I am saying: I am not saying "God is really loving, and so when people are in hell it will be for their own good." Hell is not good, and God does not want anyone there (whether that means people who are suffering right now or in eternity). Love cannot tolerate hell.

What I want to suggest is that we have a reason for hope. That hope is based on two solid foundations:

First, God's love revealed in Jesus shows that God wants to break everyone out of hell. God loves all of us. As 1 Tim 2:4 says "God wants all people to be saved." That is God's deepest desire.

The second factor is that God is able to save us. The reason I have hope for this is the cross and resurrection. The cross shows God's amazing way of overcoming an unsolvable problem in a crazy upside down way that no one could have imagined. It shows that God can find a way where it seems impossible. It shows that God's love is able to overcome death and hell. It shows that death is not the final word.

So based on those two things together I think we have a solid reason for very real hope. I hope that God is loving enough and creative enough to break through to us in our stupidity. Now, this is a hope, not a certainty. In this life certainty is something we rarely have. What we can do is trust and hope based on the evidence we see. So this is no a baseless hope that amounts to wishful thinking. It is a hope based on he solid ground of who God is in Jesus and what God did in Jesus. In the end it's about trusting God, trusting in love. That hope allows me to love without fear.

The More I Follow Jesus, the Less I Like His Teaching

Over the years I have been increasingly troubled by the doctrine of Hell. As my love for God and my neighbor increased, the horror at the thought of many of those I love suffering eternal punishment had increased with it. In other words, this was not a crisis of faith, it was the result of my faith. The more I experienced God's grace in my life and grew to share Jesus' heart for the lost, the more I was troubled by Hell.

Now what makes this even more complicated is the fact that most of the statements about Hell found in the Bible are said by Jesus. The one who is leading me to question Hell, is the very one who teaches it. Similarly, Jesus is known for preaching love of enemies and nonviolence, yet many of his teachings use very violent imagery. Again, how can we understand these apparent contradictions? How can we think of Jesus as compassionate and loving when he says such harsh things?

There's a movement among emerging folks like me to focus on the teachings of Jesus over the doctrines of Paul as a way to get away from legalism and back to grace. I like the idea of getting to grace, but I've always had a problem with this for two reasons: First of all, Paul is all about grace, and any legalistic dogmatic interpretation of him is a misinterpretation. Second, Jesus (as we have seen) is anything but easy to interpret. In fact, if one takes a literalistic approach to the teachings of Jesus they are sure to come up with the most un-Christlike teachings imaginable. So in light of that, I'd like to offer a more sophisticated approach to interpreting the teachings of Jesus that take all of this into account.

Let's begin with the parable of the unmerciful servant (Mt 18:21-35). Jesus tells the story of a king who forgives his servant for a huge debt, but then when he hears that this same servant has refused forgive very small debt, the king becomes enraged. Jesus tells us that the king "handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed." and the concludes “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Now the debt the servant owed was basically unpayable. Scholars say that it was more money that an entire kingdom would have had, and so it would be like us saying "a zillion dollars" meaning he would never be able to pay it, and would thus be tortured forever. So are we to conclude from this that if we don't forgive others that God will torture us in hell forever? It is crucial here to look at the context: Jesus tells this parable in response to a question from Peter were he asked Jesus "how many times must I forgive, seven times?" Jesus answers "no, seventy -seven times" (v. 21-22). So if we read this like an accountant we would need to conclude that we should forgive 77 times, but God does not do this. God (according the parable here read in a pedantic fashion) does not even forgive seven times like Peter suggests, or two times for that matter. Just one chance and then that's it. God here appears at first infinitely merciful, forgiving a huge debt, and then suddenly flips and wants to torture us forever.

Does God suffer from some form of borderline personality disorder where he is at first loving and forgiving, and then suddenly becomes brutal and merciless? Are we more merciful than God? No, this is a parable, and a parable is essentially a loose analogy. As everyone knows, if any analogy is pressed too far it becomes absurd (as we can clearly see here). The broad point Jesus is making here is that it would be really horrible if we were forgiven a great debt, but then turned around and were merciless to others. We should treat others with the same grace that we need, and which God has richly shown us.

This is an interpretation that fits with the overall point of this pericope. To read it literalistically would mean that the point Jesus was making to Peter was completely undermined by Jesus' own parable -- be merciful as your Heavenly Father is... who is not merciful at all! Clearly, that cannot be what Jesus was trying to convey. To understand Jesus we need to listen to context of his larger point which is always about showing mercy to others, about radical unconditional grace.

Now, so far I've just been following rules of basic biblical interpretation -- considering genre (a parable), reading a passage in context (explaining to Peter why we should forgive more than seven times), and focusing on authorial intent (teaching that we should show great mercy as God has shown us great mercy). Let's take that a step further now: In the above parable Jesus compares God to a king who -- in the way dictators do -- flies into a rage and orders torture for an ungrateful servant. Yet if we keep reading in Matthew, we see that a couple chapters later, Jesus questions the entire idea of comparing God to a king. "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:25-28). In other words, Jesus models the way of God, not as one who "lords it over others" but as the servant Lord, and calls for us to embody that way too. Following Jesus means rejecting the way of domination, the way of kings.

So to the extent that you have embraced that idea, you will have a problem with the above parable of the king. You'll read "God is like an angry king" and think "No, Jesus teaches us that God is not at all like a king, God is like a suffering servant," and you would be absolutely right. In each of these parables, Jesus is turning our thinking upside down. He begins by turning the idea of payback on its head. When he says "not seven times, but seventy-seven" he is alluding to a passage from the Old Testament where Lamech says "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times" (Gen 4:24), and reversing it. Jesus replaces escalation of violence with the escalation of mercy. In the second parable he is similarly dismantling our understanding of greatness, and redefining how we see God. God is the servant. Power is about lifting people up, not pushing them down.

In doing this, Jesus not only dismantles our traditional concepts of what justice and power are about, at the same time, he also dismantles his own parables. Once we have embraced Jesus' understanding of servant lordship, we cannot accept the crude comparison of God to a volatile dictator. So when reading these parables as disciples of Jesus, we need to keep in mind that each one is beginning with the assumptions of the crowds. He begins there, with their familiar ideas of kings and slaves and torture and then introduces a radical new idea into the mix which flips one of those ideas on its head. The more we embrace these ideas of Jesus' "upside-down kingdom," the more we will have trouble with the worldly assumptions that these very parables are situated in. That's not because we are disagreeing with Jesus here, but because we have fully embraced his new way of thinking. So the more we follow Jesus, the more we'll question the worldly values the parables are set in. That is, we can embrace the idea of forgiving a great debt (which is the point Jesus is making), but reject the idea that God is a torturing dictator (which reflect the worldview assumptions of his first century audience -- assumptions Jesus is repeatedly challenging).

That means that when we read statements about Hell and "torture," we need to ask whether these are the main point Jesus was trying to teach, or whether it is in fact part of the worldview that the people had already accepted -- like they had slavery and dictatorship -- which Jesus is dismantling bit by bit.

Consider the parable of the sheep and goats just a few chapters later in Matthew (Mt 25:31-46). Here we hear Jesus make some very harsh statements about Hell, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (v. 41). But again, what is the central point that Jesus is illustrating here? It is not a description of how the last judgement will look. That is the assumed setting, just as the first parable we looked at assumed a king and servants. Here Jesus is drawing on the familiar apocalyptic imagery of his Jewish audience, and once again he is turning the tables: The righteous will not be determined because they are part of the right race or religion (as his audience thought), but rather by how they love the least. Jesus redefines what makes a person "in" or "out" -- you are in if you care for those who are out. In doing this, he tears down the very barrier separating insiders from outsiders. Once again, he begins with a common assumption (the image of the final judgement) and turns it on its head: you show your allegiance to God by how you love those who are condemned.

If you study all the passages that allude to hell in the Gospels, you will see this pattern over and over: Jesus is not in fact teaching "this is the way hell is" any more than he is teaching "God is like a emotional dictator." Rather, these are the people's assumptions that he begins with in order to introduce a radical new idea focused on grace. That's how we need to read Jesus, and that's a point that even many biblical scholars miss. Because in order to really get it, you need to follow. You need to adopt the way of Jesus, and let his heart become your own. The more I do that, the less I think God looks like a king or a judge, and the more I think God looks like Jesus who redefines all those terms, and indeed redefines how we conceive of God.