A charitable and thoughtful discussion about the classic Christian teaching on hell in the context of looking at Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins. I believe in the classic Christian doctrine of hell but have personally wondered if living in the direct presence of God would not be hell to a soul that is inherently and irrevocably hostile toward God. Think of having to spend eternity with your worst enemy. Not exactly my idea of heaven.

From Christianity Today online.

Make no mistake: there is a lot at stake in the discussion of unbelievers’ eternal destiny. But surely we can do better than to prejudge (before reading the book!) or condemn by labeling (“Universalist!” “Liberal!”). The issues raised will not go away by dismissing them as irrational or unfounded or malicious. Love means to believe and hope all things, and that means our first instinct should be to assume good motives by those announcing “new” theological solutions to longstanding conundrums. Maybe they love God as much, if not more, than we do! Maybe they have as much, if not more, passion to win the lost to Jesus!

This is not to suggest that frank, honest, theological exchange should not take place. It should! But traditionalists need to marshal arguments and not ad hominems. The same goes for the innovators. Some gadfly theologians are notorious for tweaking, even mocking, traditional evangelical doctrines; they delight in scoring cheap shots against received orthodoxy. All well and good, for tradition needs to be tweaked for its own good. But when challenged, these critics often refuse to engage their challengers, and instead suggest that they are rationalists trapped in a modernist mindset and not worthy of engaging!

Read it all.

[Jesus said] no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

–Matthew 6.24-34 (NIV)

In today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is reminding us that we must all decide on what will be our main priority and focus in life. Whether we make a conscious decision on whom or what to follow, we will still decide because we inevitably move to worship and serve something or someone. By choosing not to decide, we have made our decision. The question, then, is this: Will the master whom we have decided to follow bring us life or death?

It is a firm biblical principle that we will all serve someone or something. It seems that we were created with the DNA to worship, and sadly all too often who or what we worship isn’t God. Don’t believe me? Just consider, for example, the Academy Awards and look at the reaction of some of the recipients of Oscar.

Furthermore, it is a biblical principle that we cannot serve more than one master. We not only see examples of this in Scripture, but we also see this principle illustrated in our daily lives. Look at the workaholic who neglects everything else for the sake of his work. Or consider that busy schedule of yours that runs you ragged, leaves you exhausted and bedraggled, and prevents you from doing some of the things you would really like to do but cannot because you can’t find the time or energy. We can indeed only serve one master.

In today’s passage, Jesus cites several examples of this, including our pursuit of money, food, drink, and clothing. It isn’t that our Lord is against these things. In fact, he tells us that God knows we need all of these things and indeed provides them for us. No, what Jesus is getting at here is the fact that the things of this world, especially money, can serve to distract us from focusing on our relationship with God and others. When we worry, for example, about having enough money (or what might happen to our money if we do have enough) we are focusing on money and not our relationship with God. We do likewise when we focus on any of the things of this world, e.g., power, security, sex, personal or political agendas, prestige et al.

Implicit in all this is the fact that when we focus on the things of this world we are essentially admitting that these things are more important than God because we are spending our time and effort on these things for their own sake. Worse yet, we are tacitly admitting that we must provide for ourselves, that God cannot or will not provide for us. In biblical language that is called sinful human pride and that will always put up a wall between God and us. When that happens we are stopped dead in our tracks. This doesn’t mean we are to sit back and wait for God to drop everything in our laps. Life doesn’t work that way. We have to roll up our sleeves, get busy, and use the gifts and talents God gives us. But we should be focusing on what God wants us to do and be, not on the material stuff of life.

Why? Because nothing in this world can bring us life or raise us from the dead. We might think money, power, sex, security, prestige, and materialism can bring us meaning and fulfillment but we are desperately mistaken. It is an illusion and if we are honest with ourselves we must admit that this is true. Don’t believe me? See how important any of your stuff is the next time you lose a loved one to death or fall seriously ill yourself. Will you really be thinking about your goodies as you lie on your deathbed? Only a living and vital relationship with God can bring us life, meaning, purpose, and security. Only obedience to God’s will for us will ever make a real difference for us in terms of living a life full of meaning, purpose, and joy.

As always, I am not suggesting that this makes us immune to life’s hurts, heartaches, disappointments, and sufferings. Rather, when we love God, have faith in him, and seek to be obedient to his will (think here Jesus’ Summary of the Law–love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and show that love to him, in part, by loving others as you love yourself), we will find that he gives us strength, wisdom, and grace (or whatever is needed) to deal with all that life throws our way. And when things are going well for us, we will discover a great joy and satisfaction by living our lives in obedient service to God and others.

But here’s the catch. You will never discover the truth in all of this until you take the plunge. You cannot be a passive observe in God’s Kingdom. You cannot talk about being part of the Kingdom. You have to live as though you love God and want to be part of his Kingdom through your obedience to him, and there are some very specific demands made on each of us if we are to do that–personal humility that recognizes God to be Creator, humble service to others, self-denial of all that interferes with our relationship with God, love, obedience to the Lord, mercy, charity, and a host of others.

God created you to have a relationship with him. He wants you to have the kind of relationship that the Creator has with his creatures. He wants you to focus on doing the things necessary to help you grow in your love, knowledge, faith, and trust in him. That means you will have to make the spiritual disciplines a priority in your life. It means you will have to take time each day and spend it humbly with your God. It means you will have to make obeying his laws and following his will for you the main priority in your life.

None of this means you shouldn’t work or have a family or plan for your financial future or enjoy the good things of this life. Following God and obeying him is never an either/or proposition in terms living your life. Rather, this means making the conscious decision to follow God first and then ordering everything else in your life in submission to his will. You let God determine how you prioritize your time, not your boss or your schedule or anything else.

And if you think God wants you to be destitute or in want all the time, you don’t know God at all. Yes, he will ask you to get rid of the things in your life that are harmful or destructive to you, but that is for your own good and to your benefit; you must trust God enough to believe he knows better for you than you do. But God is a generous and wonderfully loving God who wants his creatures to live and enjoy life as he intended, and meaningful and purposeful living is always about quality relationships, not stuff.

Regardless of where you are (or are not) in your relationship with God, consider these things and if you haven’t done so already, take the chance and ask Jesus to help you start living in ways that are pleasing in his sight. You will spend a lifetime doing so and it will be hard more often than not because there are forces of darkness that are arrayed against you and don’t want you to find real life in Christ (Ephesians 6.12).

But the rewards far surpass the hassles and battles you must fight. You will be embarking on Kingdom living that not even your physical death can stop. And when you are doing Kingdom work, you can rest assured that you are living in the very Presence of God, now (indirectly) and for all eternity (directly). You have the very blood of Christ and his Holy Spirit living in you as testimony to this wondrous and jaw-dropping truth.