Of a Bridge and a Bell and Ashes Above Your Eyes
My daughter Else and I have settled in these last several nights to read Bridge to Terabithia.
We’re approaching the end of the tale, and knowing what will happen in just a few page flips, I have my kleenex box at the ready.
Last night, we read the chapter “Easter.” Leslie, the doomed girl who has no church background, was invited to go to church with Jess and his family on Easter.
After the service, while waiting for the rest of his family in the back of the pick-up, Jess, his six-year old sister May Belle, and Leslie debriefed the experience. Leslie begins:
“That whole Jesus thing is really interesting, isn’t it?”
“What d’you mean?”
“All those people wanting to kill him when he hadn’t done anything to hurt them.” She hesitated. “It’s really kind of beautiful story–like Abraham Lincoln or Socrates–or Aslan.”
“It ain’t beautiful,” May Belle broke in. “It’s scary. Nailing holes right through somebody’s hand.”
“May Belle’s right.” Jess reached down into the deepest pit of his mind. “It’s because we’re all vile sinners God made Jesus die.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
He was shocked. “It’s in the Bible, Leslie.”
She looked at him as if she were going to argue, then seemed to change her mind. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.” She shook her head again. “It’s crazy.”
May Belle had her eyes all squinched as though Leslie was some strange creature in a zoo. “You gotta believe the Bible, Leslie.”
“Why?” It was a genuine question. Leslie wasn’t being smarty.
“Cause if you don’t believe the Bible”–May Belle’s eyes were huge–“God’ll damn you to hell when you die.”
“Where’d she ever hear a thing like that?” Leslie turned on Jess as though she were about to accuse him of some wrong he had committed against his sister. He felt hot and caught by her voice and words.
He dropped his gaze to the gunnysack and began to fiddle with the raveled edge.
“That’s right, ain’t it Jess?” May Belle’s shrill voice demanded. “Don’t God damn you to hell if you don’t believe the Bible?”
Jess pushed his hair out of his face. “I reckon,” he muttered.
“I don’t believe it,” Leslie said. “I don’t even think you’ve read the Bible.”
“I read most of it.” Jess said, still fingering the sack. “S’bout the only book we got around our place.” He looked up at Leslie and half-grinned.
She smiled. “OK,” she said. “But I still don’t think God goes around damning people to hell.”
They smiled at each other trying to ignore May Belle’s anxious little voice. “But Leslie,” she insisted. “What if you die? What’s going to happen to you if you die?”
And, of course, she does. And, of course Jess fears that she will go to hell.
Hell has been in the news quite a lot in recent days, what with the conversation drumming around this “gadfly” or “heretic” or “new leader” or “fresh air” (depending on your theological flavor and fervor) Rob Bell.
I confess that hell is a theological hurdle for me, and let me assure you, I have always been terrible at athletics, especially sports that demand coordination, so hurdles are particularly daunting. But I keep backing up and taking another run at it, and last week Bell and Bridge gave me another reason to give it another go.
So May Belle is right–at least in part–that the Bible does speak about hell.
And the next move made by this little six-year-old and her big brother Jess is not a surprise, though at the same time shocking: if you don’t “believe in the Bible” God will damn you there.
Leslie smells something a bit “off” here. “‘I don’t believe it,” Leslie said. “I don’t even think you’ve read the Bible.'”
With this swift rejection, Leslie raises some interesting points:
How many people who say that they believe the Bible have read it? What about the people who haven’t ever or at all? And what to do with a) the parts in the Bible (that they have presumably then read) that suggest universal welcome; b) the parts in the Bible (that they have presumably then read) that speak about such things as concubines and giving away everything and forgiving; c) Easter?
Part of my role as a systematic theologian is help people discern whether what they say about God over here is what they say about God over there and what they believe to be true about God over here is what can be substantiated about God over there.
And I can’t wrap my head around what hell has to say about God, ultimately. What sort of God condemns people to eternal punishment, on what basis, and to what end?
And is hell reconcilable at all with the God revealed on Easter? Are the references to hell congruent with the story of Easter? Is the promise of hell more powerful than the promise of Easter?
See, it is interesting to me that in the story Bridge to Terabithia the conversation about hell takes place on Easter. If one believes in hell, wouldn’t Easter have some effect on it, or on who is slated for arrival there? Does a preacher who believes in hell preach differently on Easter than one who doesn’t? Why did May Belle leave the service terrified? Why did the dialogue have more to do with sinfulness and death (as if they had just left a Good Friday service) than grace and life?
It’s a key question, it seems to me, since we who are Christian call ourselves such precisely because of Easter, because we believe that Jesus is risen from the dead we believe that he was the Christ.
Perhaps there’s more to believe than just the Bible.
At the very least, perhaps there’s more to it than just believing the Bible.
Today is the first day of the season of Lent, Ash Wednesday. I have seen numerous facebook “status” updates with a simple +:-), and saw a man at the store today with a smeared cross between his widow’s peak and his eyes.
Many of us are familiar with the phrase “We are dust, and to dust we shall return,” a phrase echoing about in churches and behind smudged foreheads many times today.
Regardless of whether one is a Christian or not, these words are true.
The question, as it relates to hell, is whether we are burned to ashes into perpetuity.
It is absolutely possible to make such a case.
It is not enough just to state it, though. It is worth raising questions, like, on what basis? for what purpose? and by what sort of God?
The same sort of questions can be asked, of course, of those who hold a more universalistic view.
But depending on how you answer these questions, you will read Bridge differently, you will read Bell differently, and you will look at the ashes on your forehead differently, as either threat or promise; smeared despair or spread hope; cause of condemnation or basis for redemption, separation (even from oneself) or reconciliation (ditto), end of story or beginning of the new beginning.
And so to May Belle’s frightened question, “What if you die?” perhaps Leslie’s onto something.
“But I still don’t think God goes around damning people to hell.”
Because perhaps there’s more to it than just believing the Bible.
I got in trouble once for saying Christians don’t “believe in” the Bible, but in Jesus Christ. Can we imagine Jesus sending people he loves to hell? I have to imagine them as so evil as to be unlovable even by God in order to imagine that. By the time I get there, I’m pretty far from “The one who loves is born of God and knows God, because God IS love.”
Sorry, I’m just catching up on all that I’ve missed this past month. I’m with you,, what does it mean for a preacher who believes in hell to preach on Easter. I believe in hell, maybe not as a spacial place of torment, but rather as an experience of alienation from God.
What could it mean if we include hell in Colossians 1:15-20 where it says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
When we look at our creeds, (which are not scripture), and confess that Jesus descended to the dead, or hell, or however one reads it, are we not saying the same thing? It is very real that we alienate ourselves from God by turning away or find ourselves alienated by whatever circumstance makes our perceived absence of God a reality. Isn’t it true that amidst that God Incarnate meets us in those times, reconciles us to himself, makes peace with us?
I’d sure like to think so.
Hell is interesting. Capon does a great job with it, making a case both for its incongruence with God’s agenda, and yet also for God’s non-coercive essence. If somebody doesn’t want to come to the party, God’s not going to force them. On the other hand, what could be more hellish than to be surrounded by God’s love?
One way I can think of it is when I’ve been faced with undeserved forgiveness. Even the freely-given forgiveness makes me feel guilty! I can’t revel in it! But that’s my doing, not the doing of the one offering the forgiveness.
Is there any place God is not? Col. suggests no. That is, God is even in hell, if there is one. And what would God be doing there? Gleefully stoking the fires? Or even mournfully stoking the fires? Or searching out even then reconciliation?
And so the alienation we might feel from God could be said to be self-chosen. But that even there, God is ready to be called upon, ready to welcome us out of our own hell of isolation and feelings of abandonment.
Thanks for your thoughts. You started new ones of mine!
I like Capon’s (or yours) thought on what could be more hellish than to be surrounded by God’s love.
We talked about this topic extensively at last week’s beer and theology and its really amazing how little the Bible actually mentions hell or even heaven for that matter.
Alan
Depends, I suppose, on how much beer you’ve had….
I’ve heard about Bell but haven’t read his book yet. Now it’s on the list with all of the other books! I don’t know how to describe this question of ‘believing in’ the Bible for myself. In my limited reading of the Bible, I don’t know what hell God would damn people to and don’t see that he will certainly, without a doubt, leave people there, aside from the separation that’s mentioned.
But I don’t know what other common apparatus about God there is to base a discussion on. I agree there’s more to it than just believing the Bible, but on what will you base your discussion? Or what else references God in the way that the Bible references God? I think the concept of the God most of us talk about comes from the Bible. The more, to me, comes from the questions we have about the Bible, the whys and hows of the Bible we have, and what it says about God, and that seeming desire of some to equate the Bible with God instead of God being outside over all, as I think the Bible itself talks about.
Your question is exactly why there are some strange ones amongst us, like myself, who wake up as systematic theologians, people who ask “on what basis do you believe this?”
There are reasons for a number of cases to be made, but not all reasons are equally valid.
Reviewing the reasons and the reasons for the reasons begins to aid in the task of clarification, refining, and owning that which has been absorbed only by osmosis.
You don’t even need my low-fun threshold to think it’s a kick.
I think I’ve been trying to understand some of the apparent reasons, including my own, and they all seem to be subjective even if the main commonality is the Bible (I’ve been thinking of the ‘protestant’ Bible without the apocrypha).
I’m wondering what reasons there are that you would view as valid reasons.
My own reasons might be too complex for me to really put into words on a screen, and I would have to many corollary questions alongside. I guess i’ve been in the process of clarification, refining, owning and embracing the Bible as it has come to us (I know, hundreds of languages and types of translation) while trying to avoid the overly insistent extremes about the nature of the Bible.
I have subjective reasons for not wanting to side, but one assumption I make in reading the Bible, even with his seeming condemnation of the pharisee, is that Jesus was not about confirming or denying sides, but revealing the nature of God and his hopes for his creation.
Wait, you mean there’s a book about all of this?