"You Asked for It" Week 4: "How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell?"

More notes for the next sermon (these are a bit rougher than last time since I was a bit rushed in getting it out):

Here are some thoughts I put together! Hopefully some of these prove useful:

“How could a loving God send people to hell?” When people ask this question I think they often have a couple worries in mind:

1. It seems unloving to deprive people of heaven forever as punishment for a finite amount of sin.

2. It seems unloving to have people tortured forever as punishment for a finite amount of sin.

That is, the problem is both with what the damned don’t get as well as with what they do (and the amount of it too).

Underlying worry 2 is an idea of hell as involving literal torture applied to the damned. While this is a popular picture of hell, the biblical images of damnation are a bit more nuanced. In the Bible, damnation is described in terms of fire, darkness, shame, rubbish, destruction, and death. These pictures are ways of depicting judgment and separation from God and his kingdom. In other words, hell or damnation involves a split between the person and God and between the person and God’s rule on earth. That’s the center of the concept, not hell-as-torture-chamber with God-as-head-torturer.

So just as we can think of heaven as the place of God’s presence and will - and hence of Christians as already in heaven and bringing heaven with them to the earth (Ephesians) - so we can also think of hell as the place of God’s absence and deviance from his will - and hence of people as already in hell in their separation from God and bringing hell with them to the earth. “War is hell”, “I went through hell”, and similar sayings, then, aren’t so far from the truth!

This helps us not only understand worry 2 but worry 1 as well. The damned fundamentally, at the core of their being, do not want God’s kingdom - they don’t want themselves or how they live or think conformed to God’s will nor do they want to live in a world that does so; they simply don’t want the kind of relationship God offers nor do they want to value things the way God values them. Some may want some kind of heaven or paradise or a divinity - just not the actual one on offer!

Not only do the damned not want God’s kingdom, they would not be able to enjoy it even if they were somehow to find themselves there. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.’s paraphrase of John Henry Newman: “Heaven is not for everyone: it is an acquired taste, and hard to acquire while our taste buds still resemble a crocodile’s back. An unholy person would be restless and unhappy in heaven.”

In sum, the damned are not fit for the kingdom of God nor do they want to be. The kingdom and the damned simply cannot work together. The damned are unfit for the kingdom like a fish is unfit for dry land and would suffer there. Placing the damned into God’s restored creation would be like shoving a rusty tool into the moving gears of a working engine - both will be ruined.

In the kingdom of God, in God’s restored creation, God’s will is done. By definition, the damned are outside this - they do not conform to God’s will nor do they want to. So when the kingdom fully comes to earth and God’s will is fully done and earth and heaven are made one, the damned cannot, will not, and would not take part in that. In character, in deed, and in will, they place themselves outside the kingdom and outside what is to them God’s intolerable presence.

This ability to place ourselves outside God’s will - to place ourselves into a state of hell! - is part of our original design. We were designed to be God’s helpers in shaping creation - and part of that creation is ourselves - and are given the freedom to conform to God’s will or not. Hence, we can shape ourselves in a way in conformity with that will or not. In other words, we can make ourselves through our actions into who we will become – we decide in the present our future character. We become our choices.

In a sense, then, God does not send people to Hell, we choose to become it.  Romans 1:28-32.

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others…but you are still distinct from it.  You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it.  But there may come a day when you can no longer.  Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine.  It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell.  In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.” C. S. Lewis

Being condemned to Hell is nothing other than being condemned to self.  Hell is our chosen “freedom” from God. “There are only two kinds of people – those who say ‘Thy will be done’ to God or those to whom God in the end says, ‘Thy will be done.’  All that are in Hell choose it.  Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.” – C. S. Lewis

As others have said, the gates of hell, therefore, are locked from within. God doesn’t want to exclude anyone from his restored creation but some people voluntarily exclude themselves. This is why responding to the gospel and turning to Christ is so important - it is a turning to the kingdom, to God’s will and his future restored creation. Those in Christ are ultimately conformed to his will - they embrace it, they want it, they live in harmony with it around them.

(None of this, of course, answers questions like “What about babies” or “What about people who never hear or understand the gospel?” While these are great questions, they are separate from the question considered here, whether a loving God could send anyone to hell - the question here is could not who!)

(There is also the further question of whether God will allow the damned to continue in their ever-deteriorating state or instead will ultimately purge them from creation - traditionalists say yes to the former, annihilationists like John Stott say yes to the latter. That obviously goes beyond the current question!)

"You Asked for It" Week 3: "How Does Prayer Work? Why Do Some Prayers Get Answered and Others Don't?"

Some notes to help with the sermon:

I wrote these notes along the lines of how I’d approach most topics - by looking at the big picture and zeroing in on the issue from that perspective. Whether that’s necessarily the best approach for the sermon is a separate issue, but hopefully some of this might be helpful! So here is a basic framework someone could use for understanding prayer:

Humans were created to be God’s representatives to the rest of creation, bringing his will, his plans, and his goals into effect. We were made to be God’s intermediaries to the rest of creation.

Sin and rebellion have set creation off track, diverting it from God’s will, his plans, and his goals.

Jesus won ultimate victory over sin and rebellion.

Jesus has therefore brought to creation God’s kingdom (God’s rule) - his will, the fulfillment of his plans and goals for creation.

The coming of God’s kingdom - the full compliance with God’s will and fulfillment of his plans and goals - is not yet fully complete until Jesus returns, so sin, rebellion, death, and disease still occur despite Jesus’ victory over them.

In prayer, we fulfill our original purpose - we participate in God’s rule and in bringing more fully his kingdom to earth. God wants his will done but part of that will is that that will be done through human beings. God gives us a say in how things go and listens to what we request, which is how things were always meant to work. In prayer, we can have access to some of that kingdom authority and power we were always meant to have.

We fulfill God’s will not only by praying for things but also by, often, enacting God’s answer to prayers! (This might seem to many of us to be a pretty risky thing - why use unreliable human beings to get your will done? But that’s part of our calling!) Consider: The person who prays to God to heal a treatable disease and refuses to see the doctor may be the one at fault when the disease isn’t healed since it may have been the doctor that God intended to use to heal the disease in the first place. That’s not a case of having faith in God, that’s a case of not having enough faith in him, that he can and does and intended all along to use human beings to get things done in this world. Or consider: instead of simply asking “Why hasn’t God given my neighbor the food I prayed for?”, maybe we should also ask “How can I be used by God to get my neighbor the food I prayed for?” Prayer can and often will change not only the world outside the one praying but also the world inside them (and sometimes do the former precisely by doing the latter).

The Bible has a lot of verses that look like they promise that anything anyone prays for will be given to them every single time without exception. When we look more closely, however, there is always some kind of qualification or some sort of restriction given by the context. We have to look at these qualifications and these contexts - and the wider context of Scripture - to get a better idea of exactly how such a “prayer promise” supposed to be understood. The following points are what we find.

“Whatever you ask for, you’ll get” is true of the kingdom of God. It is what happens when the kingdom of God is there - when God reigns, when God’s will is being done.

Since the kingdom of God is present in principle but not yet fully come, this promise is true in principle but not always in application - the old system of sin and death is still around to cause trouble. There is still opposition and sometimes it can achieve apparent victories, at least in the short term. Satan, death, sin, evil, and illness are still around until Christ returns. (For similar promises, true in principle in the kingdom but not always in application since God’s rule isn’t fully come yet, see many of the statements in John’s writings (i.e., that believers do not sin, will not die - but they do sin and do die!).)

In faith, in love, in following Christ, in being led by the Holy Spirit, we participate in God’s kingdom - his rule is operative in us and through us - and thus our prayers are also going to participate in the kingdom - they will conform to his will and be vehicles through which his will is done in the world. See James 5 on Elijah and the powerful prayers of the righteous person. Prayers not from faith, prayers that are unloving, that are outside God’s will - these fall outside the prayer promises almost by definition. Even prayers from faith can fail since even these prayers are subordinate to God’s will. See Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane!

The prayer promises in the Bible, then, are meant to give us confidence, not unrealistic expectations. Christians will still suffer and still die, sometimes precisely because they are Christians and are being attacked by the world or the evil one.

Ultimate victory is God’s. The ultimate answer to all our needs and heartfelt cries are certain even if immediate fulfillment can sometimes seem wanting.

Example “prayer promise” passages:

Matthew 7:7-11 is speaking only of asking for “what is good”, with the context seeming to specify this as specifically the things needed to fulfill the Sermon on the Mount’s kingdom vision. The parallel passage in Luke 11:1-13 gets even more specific and replaces “what is good” with “Holy Spirit”.

Matthew 18:18-20 is, in context, about church decisions/authority/power in the power of the kingdom.

Matthew 21:18-22/Mark 11:12-25 is talking about prayers done in faith and in the context of forgiving others (esp. Mark). This passage is meant to highlight the church as the new spiritual power center/dwelling of God/place of prayer vs. the temple, now under judgment.

John 14:13-16 is talking about empowerment for doing good things by the Holy Spirit - specifically, undertaking God’s mission and loving others.

John 15:7,16 is about prayers in the context of abiding in Christ, producing fruit.

John 16:23-27 concerns knowledge of God. “In that day” is “end times” language, marking this as concerning the coming kingdom.

Many of these also qualify the prayers as happening “in Jesus’ name” - that is, on his mission, in union with him (it doesn’t just mean you use the name “Jesus” in your prayer!).

I John 3:18-22 is in the context of having the Holy Spirit, not sinning, and loving.

I John 5:14-16 requires that it be “according to his will” and is about help not sinning.

James 5:13-18 is about prayers offered in faith by righteous people who confess their sins.

Further notes based on interaction with other people:

Libby's question is really interesting:  "Does prayer really change things? Can the Sovereign Lord, who knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end (see Isaiah 48:3), really be persuaded to change His mind or alter His long and deeply laid plans? If not, what's the point of making our requests known to Him (Philippians 3:6) in the first place?"

Here are my thoughts (trying my best - not necessarily succeeding - to not get too technical):

First, I would note that the first and second questions aren't equivalent - prayer might change things in the world without changing God's plans, just as my dropping a vase on the concrete might change things (the vase breaks) without changing God's plans (maybe God always included in his plans my dropping and breaking the vase). So God could always have intended that I pray for X and X happen as a result. From Scripture, prayer does seem to change things in the world - rain falls, people are healed, etc. - whether or not it changes God's overall plan for all of history. 

As for the second question, I think we can distinguish between God's plan being changed by our prayers and it being affected by them. Suppose God and his plans do not change at all. It still could be the case that certain features of God's plan are the way they are because of our prayers (maybe God's plan from all eternity includes A being healed of cancer in 2020 and it includes this because of the prayer of A in 2019 - so that 2019 prayer affects the eternal plan without changing it since it has always been true that that plan included the healing precisely because of that prayer and it never was any other way). 

Short version: If you pray, God heard that prayer from all eternity and took it into account in making his plans. That's good reason to keep praying! 

(Interesting side note: Suppose you don't know what happened with a certain past situation - this means that you could pray and affect (not change!) what happened with that, even though from your perspective it already happened, whatever it was. You could pray that someone made it to a certain destination safely, for instance, and (maybe) actually make a difference as to whether they in fact did so. That is, if they in fact made it safely that could be precisely because of your later prayer.)

(Another interesting side note: This might be getting too off the beaten track, but, along the same lines of the whole discussion above, in the Bible God often makes provisional plans - proposals, threats, etc. - and directs them to people to get them to discuss and have something to say about them and about what happens (this happens with Moses especially often). I think we can say that the answers people give God took into account in making his plan in eternity.)