How Could a Loving God Send Anyone to Hell?

Hell turns people off. "How could a God of love allow Hell to exist? How come God just does not forgive everyone? A forgiving and loving God would surely never condemn someone for his/her sincerely held beliefs." For many Hell makes God seem petty, vindictive and cruel. It is interesting how opposed we are to God's judgment. Our "live and let live" culture today says, "I will not judge you, so don't judge me." Final and ultimate accountability is offensive to many.

Maybe this is because we do not understand love in our culture. When we love someone we hate what ruins their lives. We hate the cancer that ravages our loved ones bodies. We do not tolerate it, we desperately try to eliminate it. Its presence is absolutely unacceptable. We pump them full of the harshest chemicals, burn it with radiation and cut it out in surgery because its presence is detestable in the one we love. Love is like that. Love judges harshly anything that threatens the one loved. Hate, wrath and anger often have their roots in love. Love actually necessitates anger. It is because I love, I will oppose anything that hurts the object of my love.

God is like that. He loves everyone, but hates what threatens us. Sin is the cancer. He knows that sin is what is ruining our lives, robbing us of joy, peace, love, purpose and yes, a relationship with our maker. He has acted in extraordinary ways to wipe it out of our lives and give us the necessary treatment, to give us new life and restore what is broken. He hates sin, it disgusts Him, because it threaten us.

Cancer is nothing to toy with, it is serous business. God takes it seriously, He sent His son to die to offer us the cure. Yet amazingly there are many who even deny they are sick. "That mass on my neck, don't judge me. I am just fine. I don't want your treatment, I like this tumor. It makes me happy." God pleads and begs them to let go of the disease but many refuse, opting for death rather than life. God, in His love, honors free will so highly, He never forces the cure on those who reject it. It pains Him to see His loved one so cursed with disease but is honor-bound not to make them do anything they do not wish to do. Eventually, He reluctantly gives them their way. It pains Him, but it is their choice.

The rejection is actually a rejection of Him. He, in the form of His Son, is the cure. So when we deny that we are sick, embrace the disease and turn from the treatment, we are in fact turning away from God. We are in a sense saying, "I do not want you telling me how to live my life. Leave me alone. Stopping trying to tell me what to do." Hell is just a continuation of our choice on Earth. Hell is where we finally get our way. It is the absence of His presence, where we can finally be free of Him. He made it for the Devil, but when we are so desperate to live our lives without God, He eventually and reluctantly says, "Okay. Have it you way."

Love necessitates Hell. It is our choice.


Share your thoughts,

Mike





If you would like to hear more about this subject, check out this podcast.

How can Christianity claim to be the only way to God?

This a thorny one. There is no politically correct way to answer this question. It is true, Jesus claimed to be the only way to God (John 14:6) and later Peter the new appointed leader of the Church echoed the idea (Acts 4:12). Yet people struggle with the claim. Many think it is arrogant, divisive and cruel.

As I think through these concerns I find it interesting that people accuse Jesus of being arrogant, usually people speak positively about Him. As I said, it is not us Christians that came up with the principle of exclusivity, but Jesus did. He made the claim and we Christians actually do the opposite thing from arrogance when we humbly submit to the One who taught and did all those amazing things. We just realize that we cannot claim to see how things really are in the spiritual realm on our own. But the Guy who raises Himself from the grave and proves Himself to be God, well that's a different story. When He speaks, we humbly listen. So really, the detractors need to take the complaint of arrogance up with Him. Good luck!

The claim that Jesus was being divisive is absolutely true. Jesus told us He would divide (Luke 12:51-53). So, it is not now surprising to find that He actually does. But let me also point out that truth divides, truth is exclusive truth. For example if we say two plus two equals four. We have now excluded all other possible answers and they are infinite. We are saying the answer is not five or three and so on. Many claims are exclusive... "We are eating at Moes." Moes excludes all other restaurantes and those who do not want to go to Moes (It is hard to believe but they are out there!). This means everyone is exclusive to a degree. Those who claim that all roads lead to heaven actually exclude Bible believing Christians who cannot embrace the concept. So we could make the same counter claim, that they are divisive, they will not let us, who believe the Bible, join their club. The great thing about Jesus though is all are welcome. The actual division is not of His choosing but ours. He has invited everyone to come and find forgiveness in Him. What is interesting is when people choose not to come to Him, they then turn around and act like it was not their choice to begin with, and accuse Him of being exclusive.

The claim of cruelty is truly a perspective issue. If Jesus is not the only way, then it is cruel to act like He is, and tell everyone else that they are doomed. If, however, Jesus is the only way, then it is not cruel to proclaim it and do so passionately because everyone's eternity is at stake. In the same way, if I had the cure for cancer the cruelty would be in holding it back rather than giving it away. When we look at it this way, proclaiming Jesus is anything but cruel, it is actually the loving thing to do.

But let me also point out that when people claim Jesus is not the only way they are unwittingly disparaging God, the cross and Jesus. Remember, Jesus begged God to take the cross away, if there was any other possible way of getting the job done (Matthew 26:42). So, if there really are other ways, and God still made Jesus go through with the cross, then He is not a good God and father. And likewise, the cross becomes unnecessary. We cannot even claim that it was a demonstration of love, because what kind of person throws oneself in front of bus right there in front of their loved ones to demonstrate love? "Hey kids watch this, see how much Daddy loves you!" SMACK! The only way this kind of act could ever be construed as loving would be if the loved one's lives were at stake. Which, in fact, mine was.

Share your thoughts,

Mike




If you want to learn more about this topic check out this podcast.

Hasn't Science Disproved Everything Christians Believe?

I love science. It has been the door to wondrous and amazing things... the cell, the human genome, the atom, subatomic particles, galaxies, nebulae and medicine just to name a few. I have made my living as a scientist first as a research chemist for Pfizer (Viagra) then Glaxo (Zantac) and then my own start up company, Sarco. I love science and the systematic method it offers for getting at the truth in an objective way. My love for science has not been a problem for my faith. In fact it has been an asset to it.

Science offers us a way of testing, gathering data and evaluating that data in order to reach conclusions. This is exactly what is needed when it comes to choosing between all the spiritual options we have. How can we know if anyone of them is reasonable or makes sense? Can any of these faith paths really offer us hope? I believe one can and does offer us the evidence and data that objective people can evaluate. Christianity held up to the scrutiny that I brought to bear on it.

For me and many others it was the evidence for the resurrection that made the biggest difference. Christianity has it roots in this single event, and on this it either stands or falls. Once I stood back and removed my biases, the evidence was overwhelming, and then faith just seemed reasonable. I am not alone. Simon Geenleaf was a Jewish Scholar who built the Harvard Law School into the dominate force it is today. He literally wrote the book about the laws of evidence. He was challenged by some of his students to examine the evidence for the resurrection. He approached it skeptically, but after a thorough investigation he became a believer in Jesus Christ. His story can be repeated over and over. A desire for truth, followed up by serious objective and unbiased research leads to faith.

Today more than ever it is reasonable to believe. The advances of Science in the areas of genetics and physics point strongly toward God. As Patrick Glynn (Former Atheist) has said, "As recently as twenty-five years ago a reasonable person weighing the purely scientific evidence on the issue would likely come down on the side of skepticism. That is no longer the case. Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. It is the simplest and most obvious solution."

In fact, Dean Kenyon, a biophysicist from San Francisco State University coauthored a book explaining the emergence of life apart form God. Later when faced with the advances in molecular genetics he repudiated the conclusions of his own book. He said, “This new realm of molecular genetics is where we see the most compelling evidence for design (creation).” Science is not anti-faith, in fact the work of the Human Genome Project that Dean Kenyon referred to in the quote was led by Francis Collins, a Christian. The anti-faith issues associated with science are really unjustified and in my experience perpetrated by a small number of zealous anti-religious individuals with and anti-God bias. They are not know for objectivity.

My challenge is check it our for yourself. Do the research, keep an open mind. Truth has nothing to fear, it will still be the truth and you may just discover a door to a wondrous and amazing new way of life.

Share your thoughts,

Mike




If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.

How can there be good God and suffering at the same time?

Suffering is so universal, everyone experiences it. No one escapes it because everyone must go through the trauma of birth and the heartache of death. And then if our lives go beyond just these two experiences we are faced with a host of others that pierce us to the core... rejection, loss, sickness, betrayal, abandonment, divorce, etc.. These are just some of the personal experiences we might have with it, but what about the other forms of suffering that effects so many in the world as well... famine, disease, genocide, war? Sorry, I am not trying to get you to slit your wrists but simply point out that suffering is a real profound issue for everyone. Is it any wonder that many have concluded that God must not exist in a world so dramatically marked by suffering?

I believe the Bible has answers, and in fact the Bible tells us that what we do see is what we would expect to see. If the Bible is right, and it sure seems to match up with reality, then we should see death, disease, war and cruelty of all kinds. If there really was a "fall" and sin entered and tainted all of us with things like pride and selfishness and corrupted nature with a curse, then what we would expect to see is exactly what we find. This is one of the great things about the Bible...it matches reality. The Bible warns us to expect suffering and that is what we see.

This may seem like a cruel way of saying "I told you so," but that is not the way I mean it. Many think that God and suffering are incompatible...but the Bible does not have a problem with them...in fact it teaches that God so values every person's freewill that God allows us to make a mess of things. Plus, if God intervened and fixed it all and thus ended suffering it would undermine our ability to see the real problem...we need to be remade and restored by Jesus. If there were no consequences for our mistakes or no obvious problems with the world we would never be motivated to come to God and ask for help. In a sense we would getting a clean bill of health when we really needed emergency surgery for a life threatening aneurysm. Suffering then is the scratch that needs to be itched...it is what shows us that there is a deep seated problem in the world and it is here to help lead us to God.

So suffering actually ends up being a bigger problem for those who do not believe in God then for those who do. This is because without God they cannot explain the sense of injustice they feel about suffering. If there is no God then there is only "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right." Injustice would be the accepted norm all over the world rather than being so rejected by it. Why do we all instinctively have the opposite reaction about it? Instead of embracing suffering as the normal course of things, we reject it and know that this is not the way things should be. Where does that knowledge and sense of morality come from? This question then leads us right back to... God!

What do you think,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.

How can anyone trust the Bible?

It is amazing how we are so divided on the Bible. For some the Bible is all that and a bag of chips and for others it is the strangest book ever written. It is still by far the best selling book of all time. Yet it creates immense controversy.

I admit to having my struggles with the Bible. I have wondered how it could really be true and accurate, how it could be God's Word, or how it still could be God's Word after all these years with so many people messing with it. I think, or at least I hope this is normal behavior, that thinking people do not just willy nilly jump in and and say, "This book is God's Word." I would hope everyone would see the seriousness of such a claim and see the need for validating the claims the Bible makes. After all every religious book makes claims for itself.

One of the things that has help me was getting an accurate time perspective on the New Testament. So many seem to believe that the history of these books is like the game of "telephone," the game where one person whispers a message into a person's ear, and they whisper it to the next, and by the time it gets to the last person the message is gibberish. There seems to be an urban legend that the Bible is some how like this. "It is all these oral traditions handed down through generations and written down much later." My research showed me that this idea is as far from reality as possible. These books were written only 20-60 years after Jesus! They are eye-witness testimonies written during the lifetimes of those claiming to be there. This shattered any concept of it being myth or legend. Plus the thousands of manuscripts we have of parts of the New Testament verify not only how old the originals were, but also that these written records were actually not tampered with later on (After we get rid of variations among the manuscripts that are typos, word order issues and such there are only truly 40 or so variations among the thousands of texts that we have from the first few centuries and these minor variants do not affect any of our Christian beliefs. If tampering took place like some believe the number of true variants would have increased over time and been of significant effect. Sorry, no conspiracy to change the Bible here!).

This means the books of the New Testament were written in an atmosphere where people could hold the writers accountable. The people who were there could say, "Hold it, that's not true! I was there and Jesus did not claim to be God, He did not do miracles, did not raise from the dead." Paul tells us that 500 people saw Jesus at just one of His appearance after He was raised from the dead (1Corinthians 15:6). I find it inconceivable that they could write this stuff about Jesus and have this new system of belief explode in popularity like it did at the location of the events in question in an atmosphere where so many people could simply say it was all a lie. The only reasonable conclusion I have that fits the evidence is that thousands of people saw these things happen and were so passionate about preserving and communicating these wonderful things that they wrote them down right a way. How else can we explain the rise of Christianity?

This then changes the question. Not can I believe the Bible, but am I willing to believe the thousands of people who saw it happen and preserved the story so I could hear it? What is it about these eye witnesses that I tended to disbelieve them while I so readily believed many others? I believed the Titanic sank and that was even before we had under water footage showing us it was there. Why? People said it did...eye witness shared there stories. I believed Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs. I believed George Washington was the first President of the United States, and yet I was not there or at any other event in history that happened before my time. I realized that I was being biased and discriminating against the witnesses that brought me the Bible. I was not being consistant and objective. And this was not even taking into account other convincing issues that validate the Bible like fulfilled prophecy, the unique message, the cohesivness, historical accuracy, or the difference it made in so many lives. By the time I considered it all, I was overwhelmed with one conclusion, this book is the real deal!

Share your thoughts,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more about this subject check out this podcast.

Christianity seems so restrictive, isn’t it all about rules?

I have had people tell me, "Christians are boring, they can't do anything fun!" Others have told me that they have "tried Christianity" but it just wasn't "their thing." There seems to be this general perception that being a Christian is an absolutely miserable state of being because of all the rules. "Do this!" "Don't do that!" And for those who have actually given it a whirl they found it unsatisfying to have to keep all the rules but also give up all the things that they used to enjoy. So many eventually bail saying, "I gave it shot, but it just wasn't for me." I can relate! If I had come at Christianity from that direction my response would have been much the same.

The great thing is that Jesus, did not want us to come to Him or His Father by keeping rules. If that would have been possible He would have commended the Pharisees of his day for doing such a great job, but He did not. Just the opposite is the case, He said, "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:20) It is impossible to get to God by keeping rules! The Bible tells us that was never the purpose of all the rules. The purpose for all the rules was actually to show us that we always would fall short of perfection and deserving God's favor. This is because His favor can never be earned. It is instead given (and given undeservedly) to us through Jesus (Galatians 3:19).

Then, after we experience Jesus, an amazing thing begins to happen, He changes our hearts. The Bible says He "writes His law on our hearts." What we were unable to do or even truly want to do before (obey the rules) we now begin to do. We begin to obey not because of some rigid sense of legalism but because we now genuinely want to and enjoy doing so. He tells us that when we come to Him it is not a burdensome thing but a liberating thing. Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

If we try to approach God through rules we experience inevitable frustration, but if we approach Him through Jesus we find liberation. He said, "If you hold to my teaching (Coming to God through me and not rules), you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32) Christianity is not about rules, it is about Jesus! He sets us free and changes our hearts so we can begin to behave more and more like Him.


Please share your thoughts,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.

Why Would Anyone Become a Christian with the Way Christians Behave?

Why would anybody become a Christian with the way Christians behave? This is a question that has personally haunted me. I went through a serious "I hate Christians" phase and the amazing thing is it happened while I was Christian!

From what I can tell it is not just me, this is a growing concern in our culture. I have seen the bumper stickers that says, "God, delivery me from your people!" I have heard story after story of people being abused and judged by the Christian Community! Philip Pullman, the author of The Golden Compass has said, "…there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.” It seems that we, Christians, have grasped the first part of the verse that says, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." (1Peter 3:15) But we seem to forget the all important ending of the verse that tells us how we are to go about it, "But do this with gentleness and respect." The world is not marveling at our gentleness and respect.

So let me say, I am sorry! As a Christian, I am sorry for it all. We have been messing up a lot lately. But please remember, we are to blame, and Jesus is not! He was and is gracious and loving.

I personally do not think the problem is fanaticism. Some people think that the offensive ones are simple fanatics and if they would just tone it down a little, life would be better for everyone else. But, I think it is more profound than that. Jesus told us that the whole will of God could be summed up in a word...love. He told us to love God fully and love others as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). A critical spirit that finds fault and demeans others does not seem very loving. It does not sound like "love out of control," or a "fanatical love"...it does not sound like love at all. I would say the problem is not that they are too fanatical but not fanatical enough!

As I have grown as a Christian and Pastored many others, I have learned that when the Gospel truly sinks into our hearts (And it takes time!) pride and selfishness diminish and grace and love take their place. Over time we truly start treating others like we would like to be treated and love takes more and more control of all we do. We become more respectful and gentle.

So, getting back to your horrible experience with Christians... can I ask a favor? Remember, Jesus loves you and those Christians who behaved so badly... give them time. They have not yet grasped the full measure of the grace and love they have in Jesus. And please do not let them keep you from seriously considering Jesus. Jesus is worth it even if some of His people are bad representatives.

Please share your thoughts!

Mike