God Sends Good People to Hell. Really?

This would be utterly laughable if it were not so heartbreakingly sad. Dr. Robert Jeffress of "Pathway to Victory" gives a two part series on "God Sends Good People to Hell." Part one begins with a statement that says, "Why we can say with confidence that God does send good people to hell."

Wow. That's amazing. With Confidence? You mean to tell me that is good news?

Oh yes. Quote the famous atheists and their comments on everlasting torture. Why not quote Paul, " For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all." (Romans 11:32).

How ironic...the "Pathway to Victory" is God sending people to hell. Besides using Jonathan Edwards as the model, it is really sad to take the Gahenna passages in the New Testament out of their context and condemn the vast majority of humanity to an eternal torture chamber. I've never heard of anyone criticizing the Pope on his lax doctrine on hell, but Mr. Jeffress does just that. Then he says that Jesus talks about hell becuase he loves us. Ok, consider what Jesus says in Luke 13. Perhaps it has nothing to do with one's eternal destiny. I wrote a little something on it about three years ago entitled Turn or Burn.

Then he says that Jesus talks about hell because he was so us so concerned about this awful reality that he didn't one a single one of us to spend eternity there. Well, then why didn't he do something about it? Why didn't he take care of it for us? O wait a minute....

Mr. Jeffres says that Jesus warned us to do everything we can to avoid it. How's that for a gospel of works?

Anyway, Mr Jeffres offers a couple of possibilities. One, Jesus's teachings on Gahenna (Jeffress says "hell") equate to his understanding of hell. Two, Jesus deceived us. Obviously Jesus didn't deceive us so Jesus must have understood hell as this religious leader does.

At one point, he is explicating the Greek words translated as hell, he says "I don't have time to go into all that." Hell! If you're going to tell people that they will most likely go there, you ought to find some time. Then he tells me I can't think of a worse place than the literal Valley of the Son of Hinnom. Yes, it was (and is) horrible. Yet is it any worse that sitting through talk in which a man tells you that you will be tortured by God for all eternity? What's worse? A parent killing a baby or a "god" eternally torturing the vast majority of his children? Is God really so "loving" that he has to torture us? That's what Mr Jeffress says. How is that love? It sound like an abused child who believes his father beat him because "he loves me." Thank you, sir, may I have another?

Then in part 2 he dares to say that he hears young people saying that they want to go to hell so they can party with their friends. I challenge you, Mr Jeffress, to tell us any time you heard anyone say this. Don't use empty rhetorical devices to enlist support for your position. Don't use people -- especially teenagers -- to support your theological position. That, sir, is utterly reprehensible.

I don't understand why we are so reluctant to embrace the reality of God being all-in-all. About God being love. About God reconciling all things to himself -- yes that's in the Bible, Acts 3:21, Colossians 1, etc.

Curious, Mr Jeffress wrote a book called Second Chance, Second Act: Turning Your Messes into Successes. So, let me get this straight. You can make a second chance for your life and turn your mess into a success. But God can't? Are you kidding me? You are more powerful and capable than God?

Have you ever noticed that Paul never speaks of hell (Gahenna) to the Gentile audience? Maybe Gahenna had special significance to those who knew about it best.

What's up with the fetish for punishment? God is not into BDSM. God takes no pleasure in the death of one who dies. God gets no glory by torturing people made in the divine image. "O death where is your sting? O hades, where is your victory?"

Sin and its death has no victory. No victory. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory.

If you want to take a good look at the way Jesus speaks of hell, I'd invite you to read Brian McLaren's book The Last Word and The Word After That.

Now, it's time for some Good News. "Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, 'Through you shall all the nations be blessed.'" (Galatians 3:8).

Did you get that? Blessed, not cursed. Loved, not abandoned. Welcomed, not rejected. Al nations, not just a small group. Call it what you will. For me it is simply the Love of the God who is Love being all in all (not all in some, not some in a few, not none in none).