After you've got your converts you make them ... (2)

Twice as fit for hell! 
As you are yourselves!  

Yesterday we had a simple look at salvation and the question of universalism (meaning, where everyone gets in to heaven - i.e. eternity in the presence of God - and the way some are teaching this as if it were part of what the C of E believes (and believe me, it doesn't) portraying it as if it was any way anything but wrong.

But the problem is that these folk with their erroneous teaching don't stop with yesterday's teaching but they continue by adding in a 'second chance' whereby people can effectively, after death, rethink their decision not to have acknowledged or accepted reconciliation with God through the salvific act (great word that, isn't it?) of Jesus, the Christ, on the Cross.

Even though they have denied Jesus, the Christ, and lived their lives for themselves rather than in pursuit of doing what is right and pleasing to God (as described in the Bible, in case you wondered where to find these requisite things) and serve those around them - those who teach this bring into being a God who is so desperate to populate heaven (meaning  that place where eternity with God is a reality) that He (some would rather another word was used here too, sorry about that) will resort to something extra-Jesus to make it happen.

I do quite honestly struggle here because Hebrews 9.27 tells me that it is all set up such that we live (Once) and then die (once) and then are judged (once). To deliver what these folk deliver is to teach something that is not orthodox theology (well not as I understand it) and, should it be right, surely removes any need for us to engage in evangelism, after all - everyone was already getting in with their teaching and now the cheery that there's even a second chance for those who weren't. A real struggle here because if everyone was getting in, why does the salvation/heaven thing need a belt added to those braces already described?

Let's turn to the Old Testament and Daniel 12, which is a real rocker, telling us:

"But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.'

Now, even those Old Testament folk knew that there was going to be a resurrection and that some would go through the turnstile on the left and the others to the right. BUT, these 'teachers', when challenged, tell me that this is not the sort of God they want to portray and how hard and harsh people find such teaching and so they merely preach and teach what they think is a more acceptable and gentle and generous God.

'Goodness gracious me,' I cry, 'Jesus comes to earth, puts off being God, and dies for me - can there be anything more generous than that?'

But, when challenged, these folk tell me of parents who have died without perhaps having made the decision to accept the reconciliation with God that comes through the cross of Christ (yeah, I've got them too) and how preaching what they do is attractive to those outside the Church (so why aren't their churches full and overflowing?) and how the 'second chance' demonstrates a loving and forgiving God who ignores how people have lived and looks the other way at the choices they have made and sees Jesus having one last go at fulfilling His mission by turning up and offering eternity as a post-mortem gift (so Jesus and the cross are not all-sufficient after all then?)

By adopting this stance I am being told that I need more than Jesus and that He was never enough - isn't this heretical?

But these people are resolute and sure in their heresies (but aren;t they always?) - they brings them comfort to have created a God who will not only fill their own desires but they make matters worse by teaching those around them that life can be lived as you wish to live and that you can relax in the comfort of the hope that everyone gets in at the very end (one who holds these views struggled a little when I asked about the Paris bombers - but of course Romans 8 does tell us that nothing separates us from God's love, definitely something to be discussing soon I think). 

So here we are, a couple of facets from the gem that is the theology and teaching of some who give us Anglicans a bad name. The problem is that there are some things you cannot polish and their teaching is surely in the same mould as that.

Annihilation - Love that ends?

I cannot move away from concept of eternal punishment and this punishment being separation. I understand the position of the universalists (more about them later) who have a Father Christmas like character who permits all to enter because they can’t bear the thought of a God who deals justly with His creation and who extrapolate this to enjoy the accommodation of a God who, if there must be some sort of punishment, gives the sinner 250mls of Euthatol and drops them in the bin (“Don’t worry madam, we gave Tiddles a dignified send-off!”).

I’m sorry people, but it seems that hell, Gehenna - the rubbish tip where the filth and the fires never cease to be, is pretty much something that is in the script. Not as some form of evening the scores or ‘getting pay back’ (as one really dodgy Christian put it), but because that’s what justice is about. Now, I hear some cry, what about grace?

Well grace exists and is there from the moment of cognisance to the moment just before the very last breath (looks like I don’t do predestination either, doesn’t it?) it is there before us. Jesus dies on a cross and sin, losing its power because death no longer works, is defeated – step right up and take a ticket, free and gratis won for you and yours by faith and through grace! If not you don’t just get what you deserve to have (which could still be considered cruel and wicked) but you get what you have made the conscious decision to have. So many people tell me that they have chosen not to ‘do the Christian thing’ but when the final bit comes I bet they wish they hadn’t (and I exclude secondary probabtion too, so there’s no hope once you’ve pegged it) when they get everything they said they wanted! Being zapped would be preferable to living separate, wouldn’t it?

So we have separation and punishment, which I see conveniently coalesce, and one further element which is the hope the annihilationists pin their hopes on, destruction. If hell is about justice and retribution rather than vengeance and revenge then the destruction that I read of from Paul is destruction of the God bit within us – the soul rather than the flesh bit and so this would cause annihilationists to have fallen short. But they continue because they can’t comprehend a God of love being a God of justice, perhaps those who vote for annihilationism should join the many other ersatz faiths that engage in such thinking and become universalist too?

Of course we can explain away eternal punishment by looking at the word ‘eternal’ and defining it as ‘in a future time’ which means that judgment is not for now but for some other time. The implication being that the punishment is not forever which satisfies the now and the imprecatory nature of things when it is assumed that this is what you get and getting to the end without being dealt with signifies victory. If I am to believe a lecture on this from way back, aionios could be used in this manner with pretty persuasive (and perhaps accommodating) results but it doesn’t remove the ‘eterna;’ element from everything else, does it, and if it doesn’t then why should the accommodation exist other than to support temporal (and temporary) caveats? A single act of judgment, punishment and then an eternity of continued presence or being as if you never were – all sounds a bit limp on one side and triumphal on the other, not balanced at all.

I have to apologise, but the quickly scribbled thinking from the top of my bonce and the depths of my heart coupled with the thin theological understanding I possess lead me to a place where I cannot see past what I believe in to a position where we make God frilly and sweet by avoiding giving the people what they want – life serving themselves and eternity separated from Him!

You pays your money and makes your choice – don’t say no one told you ;)

Pax