The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Help! feeling glum!

Evangelical Universalism
#1

Hey everyone - Ive just read the Inescapable Love of God, and much of Evangelical Universalism, and I’m trying to absorb them both, and I know I will go back to them many times…thank you to the wonderful writers of those books…

For some reason the past few days Ive felt very challenged and pretty distressed: Heres why:

1)For all of the wonderful ways of looking at the gospels, interpretations, whether words mean “eternity” or “age old” etc - there is no question that Hades and Shoel, and nashing of teeth and wailing, etc are mentioned again and again…I look it straight in the face, and there it is…of course we can look at definitions, translations, interpretations, but one interpretation “might” be simply that it says what it means.
2)However - I simply cannot believe that God - who IS love - would have created us if many of us, or any of us, would be in torment forever (or without Him forever)…we would all move heaven and earth for our own children right? And His parental love is beyond anything we understand…
3)There are so many wonderful universalist passages in the Bible…(in adam all died, in jesus, all are saved, etc) Yet - in honesty - they are balanced with the other horrible passages…
4)So many great thinkers out there have embraced the notion of Hell, through the ages…seemingly un-bothered???

I just feel in a great big horrible mess about this…its really making me consider my faith…either God IS love and worthy of worship…or He is not there…and we have the whole thing wrong…

just rambling! :slight_smile:

#2

#4 reminds me of a joke…

“Eat here…a million flies can’t be wrong”

At the end of the day you need to allow God to work on you and reveal his truth to you personally. Hold your own counsel.

:mrgreen:

#3

zaidagal,

your not the first to go through these kinds of challenges - changing what you have understood to be true for years is likely to take time. It did for me. About 18 months IIRC.

One of the issues I faced was one of whether God is worthy of our worship if He doesn’t act like a good person would, let alone a good God.

I found the following short series of blog posts by Richard Beck to be helpful on my journey:

experimentaltheology.blogspot.co … botts.html

Maybe you will, too.

Kind regards,

Mike

#4

Thank you guys for both your posts - the flies comment is funny…and I will def check out the Richard Beck link! Thank you as well for confirming Im not alone in my distress.

The funny thing about me is I probably come to this in a round about way…I grew up secular, and issues of salvation were simply just never a part of my childhood…I am the product of liberal new yorkers, lol ( I have wonderful parents, and they are liberal new yorkers!)

So I became a christian as an adult - but when I first started exploring it all - I was a VERY liberal christian, I could totally accept universalism, indeed I insisted on it …I have slowly become a more conservative christian…that might be the wrong word…Ive become less inclined to just “think what I want to think”, and more inclined to look at history, tradition, read the Bible, and be honest about it all…and Ive become roman catholic, with that whole rich tradition…

soooo…I’m not really giving up years of believing in Hell…if anything I’m trying to reclaim my universalist beliefs, but in a way that is biblical and respects the truth…and I’m finding that a whole lot harder than my previous “believe universalism because I want to” stance, lol…

#5

Zaidigal,

I have friends who try to justify hell by saying that it’s “locked on the inside” (ala CS Lewis), or that being in the presence of God would be more painful for people who hat Him, etc. As though hell is somehow “not that bad.” My view of that is just that hell IS painful. For some, I expect fully that hell IS God’s presence as experienced by those who cling to their sins. (That’s probably metaphorical in ways I’m not equipped to understand, but it works for me.) Scripture tells us that “our God is a consuming fire.” What would He consume, as this fire, but corruption? Is that gonna hurt? You bet. Is its purpose ‘to hurt’? Only insofar as the hurting is a process of refinement, purification, healing.

When a child is rejected by her friends because of her hatefulness, that hurts. In time, it will also heal. If she’s receptive it will heal quickly–she’ll learn to treat others with kindness and will receive kindness in turn. (We’re talking about a ‘perfect’ world here, in which everyone does what everyone should–but then God can be counted on to do that even if no one else can be.) I do believe that ‘hell’ is real–I have rather different ideas about the purpose of ‘hell’ than the “mainstream.” First, all this stuff is metaphor. God is spirit, not a chemical reaction we call fire, for one thing. Pain is spiritual too, rather than a stream of neurological impulses sent to the brain from skin being incinerated from a fleshly body. The purpose of pain? In our bodies, the purpose is never to torture us. Evolutionarily speaking, pain is important to let us know, for instance, that we’ve got our hand on a hot stove and ought to remove it before further damage occurs. We avoid pain, and for the most part that’s a good thing, but pain can also be part of healing. Ask anyone who’s successfully come through chemo and radiation–or had a bone set–or a laceration stitched up. Sin causes the damage and grace heals. There is often some unavoidable (or even healing) pain involved in the process of repairing the damage.

Or perhaps it’s punishment. If it is, the punishment has a goal; to correct not only the behavior, but the heart as well. The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking–warning–needed to know that they could lose out on the millennial kingdom they so looked forward to. Not only that, but that if they kept going the way they were headed, focusing on a fleshly kingdom and a fleshly conquest and a fleshly conquering king, they would inevitably provoke the Romans and AD 70 would happen to them along with all the stuff that followed on its heels.

But if people are suffering for (or because of) their sins, doesn’t that negate the need for Jesus’ sacrifice? Only if you hold to penal substitution atonement. They are not in fact paying for their sins though–they are being cured of their sins. Jesus died as our scapegoat to free us from sin more than to pay for it. Part of the process of doing that might involve some burning out of disease/hatred/fear/selfishness–we can hardly be free from sin unless and until that happens, though. The weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is always going on. Just tell you kids they can’t have something they feel they ought to be entitled to. :laughing: When we are all mature, there will be no more tears.

#6

For years, I have been a student of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant theology, Eastern and Western philosophy, the visions of contemporary Catholic healer and stigma bearer Tiffany Snow and Red Road (Native American) spiritual teachings. From what I can put together, here is my roadmap. It’s as good as any on heaven and hell.

The first part of the framework is taking the Eastern Orthodox teachings about heaven and hell. Since God is present everywhere - or will be present everywhere (when he becomes all in all), heaven and hell is how we experience the love of God. But the language is metamorphic.

The second comes from the visions of contemporary Catholic mystic and stigmata bearer Tiffany Snow. In my theology section, I have referred to articles on what happens three weeks after death and Armageddon.

In her visions, she doesn’t see God as having a fire and brimstone hell to send people to. And Christ brought us redemption beyond religion. Folks see their guardian angel, along with people they know, who try to get them to go to God after death. If they resist, they remain in a ghostly state. This is where the Catholic purgatory comes in. Those who are pure enough, will make the choice to go directly to God. Others will probably go though a purgatory like existence. Not necessary like the Roman Catholic version, but the movie What dreams may come staring Robin Williams (from what I gather from red road teachings). But there will be other promptings to go to God. This is where the philosophical theology reflections of Rob Bell in the book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, continue to work. And Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayers and/or masses for the dead - have effect.

In the meantime, sometime in the future (how soon, no one really knows) Armageddon will occur. Folks will be given opportunities to go to God, immediately after death (if they are pure enough); if they make the right choice. Otherwise, they will have other opportunities in purgatory.

At the end of time, when God becomes all in all, the devil and the unholy angels (as well as humans who resist all efforts at repatriation - as God has a timetable), will face annihilation. But hopefully, no human will make that choice.

This is the roadmap I follow. Now I could be wrong - as well as most folks can be in their theology and philosophy. But this works for me. And her visions are in harmony with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology (except for the annihilation part, which is consistent with Protestant theology)

#7

I think it is obvious that the Bible teaches universalism. I just don’t see never-ending damnation or annihilationism anywhere. “The Bible says what it means, and it means what it says” = universalism. Universalism is the plain reading of Scripture. Non-universalistic theories are the result of men wresting the Scriptures to their own destruction.

This argument works too well, for it would invalidate every single theological or philosophical position in all of history. In other words, no matter what the assertion, many great thinkers have denied it. No matter what we believe, we unavoidably disagree with many great thinkers in our belief. The fact that many great thinkers were not universalists is therefore not a valid argument against universalism.

Rejoice! :smiley:

#8

Sounds perfectly legitimate to me!

Nobody should believe something just because they want to. Despite some caricatures and straw men people have set up, there are many universalists who came to a belief in the salvation of all in spite of what they wanted to believe - they just found that as they studied and thought more about salvation, universalism seemed not only more coherent than it did before but also more coherent than the other views that they had previously held.

Having said that, I know there are some on here (maybe quite a lot of us to a certain extent) who are quite sceptical of and even resentful to conservative Christianity and we can often miss how much good (and there is a huge amount of good) has come from traditional, evangelical conservatism. Many of us still hold to much, if not most, of what that group (if that’s the right word) believes. I know I personally, especially in regards to doctrine, would much rather you edge on the side of conservatism than liberal Christianity - the latter tends to be highly subjective, which is not a good starting point for theology.

If you have a sense that universalism makes more sense, then I’d advise you to pray about it and, if you’re able to, throw yourself into studying and working through it. A person who believes it because they want to or because it seems nice is not only making a judgement call that is poorly thought out and so could easily be wrong but is also blocking the truth of it to others if it is indeed correct. The more honest, objective and thorough way may take more time and may be harder work but it’s the path that God has set for all of us, regardless of whether universal salvation is true or not. I’m glad you seem to be working more in that direction. You just need to persevere with it :slight_smile:

I know that’s easier said than done…

#9

Thanks for your lovely and supportive post Jonny (and thanks everyone for all the posts!)

I do need to “stick with it” - Im my heart Im so convinced that a God of Love is just that - pure Love who created us to love Him back! And that life is a difficult process, learning how to love…

I just cant believe He would allow His children to perish…I suppose sometimes I do think there can be pure evil that cant be saved - a pure absence of God and light - but Im not sure…

But I still cant help thinking this is simply what I “want” to believe, and I need to study more, and pray more…

Something one of the posters said above - that the wailing and nashing of teeth is already happening (implying, I think,some people are in hell now, as they live) - that resonates with me. the Hell that people create.

Please pray for me - for my understanding - but also, overall, for a strengthening of my faith -

Blessings!

#10

Don’t have much time this morning, but speaking as someone who wasn’t bothered much about hell back when I believed it was hopelessly final: those wailing and gnashing of teeth warnings tend to be aimed at unmerciful servants of God. Like I was.

It makes a big difference, and fills in a big piece of the exegetical puzzle, to realize those warnings are, in effect, against being insistently non-universalistic – not as a matter of accidental doctrinal error, but as an attitude in the heart.

Which obviously isn’t at all your problem. :slight_smile:

#11

I LOVE your understanding of hell, Cindy! To me, it makes perfect sense.