Isn't the Idea of Hell Just Plain Mean? "Rotten Tomatoes" Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 11/22/2009

all right hey guys hey don't you envy my job today uh we're in the last week of our rotten tomatoes series we have been this whole fall the last three months now exploring the story of the gospel and this month of november so far we have been encountering these rotten tomatoes hot topics when we when we think about the story of the gospel when we share or talk about it with other people difficult issues come up and we've been tackling four of them this month and i'm tackling the last one that we're doing here today hell hell isn't the idea of hell just plain mean as with every week of the series grab your phones we want to be hearing your questions on the topic throughout the day so remember if you're going to send text text in a question text to this number and begin your question with a little phrase i ask and then uh submit your question if you don't have your phone with you you can submit questions via paper and pen there's a little box for you to do that out in the atrium there at the sign up area but we want to be hearing your questions we'll have a panel as we've had every week 7 30 tonight here in the east side and we're going to discuss your questions with a group up here and it's going to be great so send in questions or else again it'll be it'll be boring and i'm i have all of the confidence that you guys are gonna ask good questions from the stuff we're exploring today uh maybe a quick preliminary comment i've not really enjoyed thinking about this message or preparing for it or really thinking about giving it you can probably imagine this is a difficult difficult topic and i've struggled and wrestled through preparing for this message so basically you know we're a community of grace here and so i just asked for some grace here today you know i can't say everything that should or could be said about this matter i might not say things that some of you want me to say but what i'm going to do is just pursue a line of thought has been extremely helpful for me in navigating through this issue and uh if you want to kind of hear us as a teaching team or different people on the panel cover other issues related to it you know texting your questions or whatever and we'll uh we'll get to those tonight but uh we're gonna we're gonna tackle this idea isn't the idea of hell just plain mean you guys ready for action okay all right i have found personally and when i'm talking with other people when we're talking about the idea of hell isn't it just plain mean the most most important thing the most important place to start is to clarify what idea of hell are we talking about what idea of hell are we talking about see the reality is our english word hell when you say that word in our culture all sorts of images begin to come to our minds images that most of which do not actually come from the scriptures and that's precisely the problem uh the images that come to most people's minds uh can be depicted in an image you'll see here this is actually a a painting taken from one of the most famous chapels in the world vatican city rome the sistine chapel indeed indeed this uh this painting here it's almost 500 years old painted by the famous michelangelo in the sistine chapel yes it's called the last judgment and at the center of this huge huge big tall painting at the center is christ this is depicting the return of christ and he's gathering the saints unto himself at the bottom of the painting the whole final kind of layer there is the fate of the damned now i'm not going to give you close-up images you know go search for it on google images you can see it for yourself horrific horrific images of ghouls and demons dragging naked people into pits of darkness flaying their skin ice is horrible utterly horrific and see what when we think about this this is the kinds of images that come into people's minds when we say the word hell and so most people we think about this it's just like oh this is horrifying and so most people in our churches are just in our culture we just reject that it's ridiculous it's barbaric it's any god who would send people to such a fate must be unjust unloving and so on but see here's the problem this is the problem when people reject this idea of hell the subterranean chamber of horrors you know what they are rejecting is not what the scriptures are actually trying to get at they think they are rejecting what scripture says but actually most of the images in that painting do not come from the bible they come from greek mythology that's been mediated to medieval european culture through a famous italian poet his famous work dante he wrote the inferno and he merged biblical imagery with greek mythology to produce the images that fill our cultural imagination today most of the images that comes to our mind when we think about hell are not rooted anywhere in the scriptures so what we need to do as christ followers and just as people thinking through this issue is kind of rediscover what it is the scriptures are actually teaching about these matters of final justice and human destiny and we need to find ways to reframe this whole issue for ourselves and for other people we need new language to talk about these matters and that's what i'm going to kind of explore today so what i'm going to do is kind of lay out just a series of thoughts offer a series of thoughts that have been helpful for me uh in navigating through this uh this issue so on onward ho here we go uh a first thought the story of the gospel that we have been exploring this fall it culminates with god bringing final justice to his world the story of the gospel culminates with god bringing final justice to his world back in september october we explored the story of the gospel in five main parts do you guys remember this when does it begin in the beginning okay indeed everything's great and then all of a sudden the plot thickens humans mess everything up as we tend to do creating uh the platform for the hero to get personally involved to accomplish the rescue how does the story end well it doesn't really end does it it ends with a new beginning a restored creation with the creator redeeming and renewing this world now if you think about that stop and think about that what that has to involve is the creator fixing and setting right everything that we have done wrong to his world all the ways that we ruin god's world and each other and ourselves that has to be set right and that is the biblical vision of final justice the creator setting all things right once again that's the necessary parts the culmination of of the story of the gospel if you think about it the biblical poets and prophets love to explore and celebrate this hope for this final setting right of all things for example just one really random example even pulled from the book of psalms psalm 98 shout to yahweh all the earth break out and praise and sing for joy let the sea and everything in it shout his praise let the earth and all living things join in let the rivers clap their hands in glee let the hills sing out their songs of joy before yahweh why for yahweh is coming to bring justice to the earth he will judge the world with justice and the nations with fairness within the story of the gospel this is a core core part of a christian worldview this hope for final justice a final setting right of everything we have done wrong to each other and ourselves into into god's world most human beings long for justice whether you're religious or not christ follower or not most human beings long for this hope this final setting right of all things and this it's in this this part of the story the setting right of all things that the biblical vision of hell needs to be located it's not some arbitrary thing about oh if you do some bad things that's where you go no no this has to do with the culmination of the story hell is a part of god setting right all things and most human beings long for things to be set right for there to be justice at least as it involves other people getting justice right that's the okay building on building on that thought another thought then the scriptures that speak about this final justice tend to use almost always metaphor and imagery a huge huge portion of the bible is stories and poems we should expect this so for example when uh the biblical prophets the ancient hebrew prophets speak about the coming day of final justice the prophet malachi for example track with the with the metaphor here in uh in in this in this piece yahweh almighty says the day of justice is coming burning like a furnace on that day the arrogant and those who do evil will be burned up like straw they will be consumed roots branches and all what's the dominant metaphor fire fire and what what what is the fire accomplishing in the metaphor it consumes it disintegrates right it takes the things that ruin god's good world and it consumes them as fire jesus of nazareth his whole vocabulary of talking about the day of final justice is based on these images in the hebrew bible the two most common images that jesus uses to describe this day of final justice is one like we saw in malachi the image of fire but also the image of darkness and there's two passages there you can jot them down if you like you just read through the gospels these are the two most common images that jesus uses when he speaks about final justice okay let's just pause for a second here right these two images alone uh if we stop and think about them for like three seconds you see they have to be metaphors check it with me if jesus is describing an actual subterranean chamber of horrors it cannot be full of fire and completely dark at the same time right can we just grant that okay do you keep track of it they're metaphors so metaphors are used when there's this reality metaphors just doesn't mean this is all fairy tale no no it means there's a reality there it's beyond words how do you get at a reality that you can't describe you use things that are familiar images that are familiar metaphors fire consuming disintegration darkness isolation you use what's familiar to describe the unfamiliar the fact that the biblical authors use metaphors should not make us feel more comfortable with the idea just the opposite in fact the the english word itself hell is a metaphor uh kind of metaphor we don't pick this up in english in the original language uh it's very clear our english word hell is the translation of a greek word gehenna gehenna and actually gehenna is not a greek word at all it's a hebrew and aramaic phrase that's been spelled with greek letters and that phrase in aramaic is an actual place the valley of hinom it's a valley on the southwestern slope of the city of jerusalem in fact you can go there today you should see a picture of it here when jessica and i lived in jerusalem for about a year our apartment was actually not far from from hell we we walked by it not infrequently and uh uh this day it's actually a beautiful park down uh in in um now and uh it's not one of the only places you can go rock climbing in the city of jerusalem actually because it's got steep steep walls on the valley floor so here's a picture of jessica descending into uh into hell i can make a lot of bad jokes right now but i'm just gonna i'm gonna refrain uh it's it's a valley it's a place actual place now why why is this valley get translated as hell in our english bibles well this valley has an infamous history in israelite and jewish history the ancient israelites as talked about in the hebrew bible on a number of occasions their leaders and kings used to sacrifice children on large altars in this valley to a canaanite god named molech and the hebrew prophets just railed against the israelites for doing this it was sort of like the infamous valley of hinom later on uh in jewish history uh the tradition has it that the valley became like the trash heap the smoldering dump where you would you know toss your refuse and so on and in the jewish imagination the valley of hinom became like a symbol a metaphor of the day of final justice when when things that ruin god's good world are removed they go where ruined things go gehenna so what these metaphors are getting at this is this ultimate reality it's beyond words i i have found most helpful a metaphor that paul the apostle uses it's a short little phrase that he throws out there in his letter to the thessalonians and he speaks of eternal ruin away from the presence of the lord and his majestic power and i think paul has his thumb on a core core idea of what the biblical vision of hell is all about it's not a subterranean chamber of horrors it is at its core separation from god separation from god's presence separation from the only thing that can give us life when you're cut off from that it's like fire we disintegrate it's like darkness we become isolated it's where ruined things go cut off and separate from our creator and whose image we are made that's that's the core of the biblical vision of what hell is all about not fire and torture separation isolation this really doesn't help things does it right right this should not encourage us this is a terrifying and tragic reality and so it raises the question for us why would god allow anyone to experience such a fate eternal separation from the only relationship that can give humans life why would he allow this and this is where we're going to look at a passage where jesus is going to subvert and overturn all the normal ways that we think about these things because in the scriptural vision of hell and what jesus is going to get at in this passage is hell is is not somewhere where humans go kicking and screaming hell is actually something that we want we want it and we choose it once you grab your bibles and uh turn with me to the gospel of luke gospel of luke if you're using uh the brown bibles here it's on page 741 that we're going to be looking here the gospel of luke i'm going to start in chapter 16 of verse 19 chapter 16 verse 19. and as we go there let me kind of throw out another thought to help us kind of get our way into the story that jesus is going to tell hell the scriptural notion of hell of this separation it's about god honoring our decision for a life and identity apart from him it's about god honoring what we want let's jump in jesus is uh dialoguing with a number of pharisees here in this uh narrative setting here and he's going to tell a story starting in verse 19. let's jump in there was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day okay let's stop for a second here when jesus begins a story with the phrase uh you know there was this guy there was this guy walking down a road there was this uh vineyard owner who had a vineyard he's clueing us in to what kind of story he's about to tell what kind of stories is this it's a parable it's a parable yeah there's a certain rich guy this is a parable so parable jesus use these all the time they're short fictional tales almost like folk tales as they are and use metaphor and imagery to just pack a punch to his listeners jesus is actually picking up a common jewish folk tale and he's going to give it a little twist here but just remember this is a parable as we read on a lot of readers tend to forget that as we get into the parable here let's keep going so we have this rich man dressed in purple at his gate was laid a beggar named lazarus covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table and instead of getting scraps from the table what did he get he gets dogs coming to lick at his sores two characters in the parable we have this beggar he's he's laid at the door of the wealthy man's house if he's laid at the door what is what's the implication he's crippled he can't walk he's a crippled beggar who's placed every day at the door of the wealthy man's estate and this wealthy man he lives in abundance excess and so on and lazarus is just longing to get a few scraps but what does he get he gets he gets dogs now pay attention to what jesus is doing here do you notice something funny at the beginning of the story here there's two characters one of them has a name yes right the beggar has a name lazarus the wealthy man gets no name this is very very clever and subtle on jesus's part i think it's brilliantly intentional you see having a name means having an identity right i'm tim and no matter what happens to me years go on i'm that's that's who i am and tim and name especially in jewish tradition describe identity it's who you are but this wealthy man apparently has no identity apart from the fact that he is wealthy so jesus is depicting this this person who has no identity apart from his wealth and his status it's what makes him who he is and as we're going to see it's destroyed him as a human being let's keep reading the time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to abraham's side remember this is parable jewish folk tale abraham is called the friend of god in the hebrew bible so to be with abraham in this parable in an afterlife you know it's like to be in god's god's presence angels carried him to abraham's side the rich man also died and was buried in hell he where he was in torment he looked up and saw abraham far away with lazarus by his side so he called to him father abraham have pity on me and send lazarus to dip the ting dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue i'm in agony in this fire okay let's stop for a second here what kind of story is this it's a parable so we need to be asking what's the meaning of the images here we have fire it's the same image we found in in malachi the prophet and image jesus uses often it's about disintegration consuming you uh you get a big thick log you throw it on the fire and what happens raging fire it it disintegrates it crumbles it ceases to become what it was it once was connected to a tree connected to a life source it was healthy but once separated and thrown into the fire it begins to disintegrate now notice notice the first time someone pointed this out to me it just leapt off the page and i never read the story the same way again notice what this wealthy man does not ask for what does he not ask for to get out he does not ask to get out he shows no remorse absolutely no remorse or sorrow this is the first time he's called lazarus by his name he knows who lazarus is what's the implication he's been ignoring lazarus as he sat in front of his house all those who knows how he does not ask to get out no remorse in fact he starts ordering lazarus around like lazarus says his lackey he's a little errand boy right send that lazar he instead of asking to get out he's trying to get lazarus in you know what i'm saying jesus is very clever in how he's telling the story let's keep reading but abraham replied son remember that in your lifetime you received your good things lazarus received bad things but now he's comforted here and you were in agony and besides all this between us and you there's this great chasm that's been fixed so that those who want to go from here to you cannot nor can anyone cross over from there to here he answered well i beg your father sen here is ordering lazarus around again send that lazarus to my father's house i have five brothers let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment abraham replied they have moses and and the prophets what what's that moses in the prophet this is the jewish way of referring to the scriptures to the hebrew scriptures they have the scriptures let them listen to them no you don't get it father abraham he said if someone from the dead goes to them they will repent he said to him if they don't listen to the scriptures they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead do you see what's going on as jesus depicts this wealthy man here his lack of self-awareness is just mind-boggling no remorse no remorse no no like recognition that like he's wrong or that he is where he is because of his decisions and notice what he basically is insinuating here with the send lazarus to my father's house he's basically insinuating i didn't i didn't know enough i wasn't given enough information to know that i was accountable for my moral decisions so go tell my brothers so that they know they're accountable for their moral decisions see what he's doing here he's blame shifting that's what he's doing no remorse he doesn't ask to get out he's blame-shifting something has happened to this wealthy man something has deteriorated and disintegrated inside of him he's just unable to recognize that he's wrong and he's made horrible decisions eternal blame shifting the irony of the story is that this is what this is what he wanted this is the end result of his choices it's what he wanted hell is not some arbitrary like oh you did a few bad things you go to this place where you go after you die no it's the end of a long life trajectory of his humanness dis disintegrating jesus is trying to depict here i think the heart of the human condition and it's at the core idea of a scriptural vision of sin and also of hell it's this drive this drive that we have to build our lives and our identities apart from god we take we take good in this case of the wealthy man it was his wealth and his status and and this was so core to who he was that once that's removed from him obvious there's no hymn left you know what i'm saying it's this drive that we have as humans to take good things in our lives great things wealth is not inherently a bad thing but it's the substitution that we've seen so many times in the story when we take good things and turn them into our ultimate things it's it's that person or that thing in our life that if it were taken away there would be no you left you know this man it was his wealth and status it could be it could be a relationship it could be a spouse or or your kids it could be your drive for career success right clinging to your youth and good luck something like that clinging to your moral performance convincing yourself and others i'm really a decent good moral person and the human heart man we take those things and we make those the things that shape and determine who we are and our identity without them we are it's like we're nothing and we're no one and when we take those things in our lives and put them in that position i'm either a mother or i'm no one or nothing i'm either successful at my career or i'm nothing i'm no one those they're like addictions and they slowly disintegrate the human soul they slowly destroy us why because there is not one person and there is not one thing that will last forever in our lives right when we're on our deathbed it's us and it's god if you believe in him it's you and god that's it everything else everything else and if your very identity your sense of who you are as a human being is built on these kinds of things that will slowly eat away at you and not just in the end right i mean with if these things in our lives that become our ultimate things when they become endangered when my kids aren't turning out the way i wanted to when my marriage or my career when things are failing when i get criticized by other people if those things have become my gods we just fall apart we can't handle it and it brings out anger and insecurity and rage and bitterness and jealousy it's like the wealthy man it slowly consumes us and the terrifying reality of hell that jesus is depicting is that it's not some sudden turn of the tables at the end of the game it's actually what we wanted it's what we've been building our whole lives towards beyond hope beyond pity a human life completely turned inward on itself eternally disintegrating it's tragic horrifying reality c.s lewis in his brilliant little uh novel explores this idea of hell an excerpt here christianity asserts that we are going to go on living forever and that must either be true or false now there are good many things which would not be worth bothering about if i'm only going to live 80 years or so but which i had better bother about if i'm going to go on living forever perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are getting so uh getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable but it might be absolute hell in a million years if in fact christianity is true then hell is precisely the correct technical term for it hell begins with a grumbling mood always complaining always blaming others but you're 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 do so 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 do you see what lewis is getting at here this is the wealthy man in the parable eternally turning inward on ourselves because the things that we build our lives on have failed eternal resentment eternal bitterness eternal disintegration and the tragedy of it all is that it's actually what we want it's the end result of a whole life trajectory of choices of this wealthy man made and choices that we make every day you might think it's ridiculous no one would choose hell but but really really really let's take a field trip to darfur right now where people worship the gods of religious domination and violence and we will see humans choosing and creating hell for themselves let's go to a brothel in bangalore india or las vegas anywhere where people worship exploitative sex and women whose bodies are made in the image of god are turned into products for consumption and disposal living hell as far as back as we can tell humans have been choosing and creating hell here on planet earth that's just what we do in a million big ways and in a million small choices just like this this wealthy man it's what we want again lewis in the long run the answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question what is it that they are asking god to do to wipe out past sins and at all costs give them a fresh start he did that on the cross to forgive them they don't ask for forgiveness to leave them alone that's what hell is there are only two kinds of people in the end those who say to god thy will be done and those to whom god says in the end thy will be done all that are in hell choose it without that self-choice it wouldn't be hell in this parable jesus is subverting and overturning all the traditional ways the sistine chapel ways of thinking about hell that have ingrained themselves in our mind the reality is much more terrifying and tragic because it's what we want and apart from god's grace and apart from god rescuing us it's what we want now you may be thinking to yourself okay i'm tracking with where you're going here but really i mean we think about the people in our lives family members uh uh co-workers neighbors people who aren't christ followers or maybe they are or religious or not we look at many people around us and we say just you know i look i know these people they just don't seem to be choosing hell to me they don't seem to be creating hell in their lives and i think that's where the nub of the issue is for so many of us we just don't see how the people around us are actually choosing this and for me well you know pastor or whatever i'm just tim i just have to recognize there there's a point when we're addressing this question we just have to recognize the limits of our knowledge but what we can say is this the scriptural vision of hell is not this medieval european distortion of people who do more good things and bad things go to heaven and people who do more bad things and good things go to this subterranean chamber of horrors it's just not not what's going on here that's a distortion behavior is not the issue right behavior is what we see each other doing but we don't know where the core motivations for behavior come from you know what i'm saying behavior is motivated by extremely complex things in our hearts okay and i am just not in a position to start making declarations about what's going on in other people's hearts right i have a hard enough time understanding what's going on inside my own heart you know i'm just not in a position to do that and so here's what this comes down to for so many of us when we think about our friends and our family we have to trust that god is just and that he's good hell is not this surprise at the end of the game oh you didn't know the password down kicking and screaming you go into the pit you know what i'm saying it's ridiculous it's way more profound than that and it's way more tragic god is the only one who knows what's going on in the depths of a human soul and we have to trust that he's good and that he will deal with every person according to what they really want what they've always wanted and what they have been building their life and their heart towards and that god will honor the human decision for a life and identity apart from him we need to trust that god will do what's right with every person which means and this is where christians have been so guilty of using hell like a weapon making declarations about who's in and and who's out that is just not our prerogative because we don't know what's going on in people's hearts it's not our right or responsibility to predict the temperature of hell or the attendance list of heaven as the saying goes it's just not our right what our responsibility is is first and foremost is to make sure every day our hearts are on the table before god that my heart is right and that i'm clinging to god's grace extended me through christ making sure that what i want i'm continually turning repenting to use the old religious phrase clinging to god for my identity and my life and my responsibility is to share the story of grace through jesus with my words and with my life and to make it as compelling as i can to the people that i'm in relationship with and to be raw and honest and real about my own heart honed in on this always the people remember the people he nailed as being the most separated from god were who the most religious moral people around right that itself should supply us with a huge clue that we just are not in the place to start making declarations it's it's about humbling ourselves and telling the story and living the story with the people that we're around leaving leaving justice in god's hands amen so really at the end of the day where we need to be focusing is not predicting where people are going after they die we need to be focusing on the story and that's what we've been trying to do for these last three months now is just camp out on the story of god's grace his mission to redeem and to restore his world through jesus and at the center of this story we should be focusing on this marvelous and beautiful person this grace-filled person jesus of nazareth and just commend him highlight him emphasize how awesome he is to as many people that we're in relationship with that's the point yes yes don't get lost in the distractions keep the main thing the main thing and that's what we've been attempting to do this fall would you guys join me in prayer well we just we recognize that apart from your grace apart from you coming to experience hell on the cross on our behalf apart from your intervening to rescue and restore our world that we would all get what we want and it's a horrifying and tragic reality god we just pray for our own hearts here as christ followers or for anybody who's here they're maybe not sure where they're at with you what i pray that the tragic reality of a human destiny apart from you would motivate us towards compassion to share and to live the story with as many people who are around us god we pray that you would shape us into a community of the story of your grace of your redemption rescuing us from ourselves we can pray in the name of jesus amen

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

Views: 45,251

Rating: 4.7837839 out of 5

Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

Id: PLAhk0Cvqa4

Length: 40min 43sec (2443 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020