God is:
Good
Joy
Life
Love
Light
Right
Justice
Creativity
Beauty
Energy
Excitement
....on and on, so on and so forth, maybe even “blah blah blah”...
If God is all of these things, and many many more, then what is the world we live in? As I see it there is not a whole lot of Justice or love or even creativity in the world most of the time. I know there are good things, but they tend to be few and far between.
This is a question I have been doing my best to work out in my life for a while now. I think the answer in many cases is that the world we live in is hell. This is a hard idea for me to grasp, and I’m still working on it so let me clear up what I mean.
I have discovered that I have this idea of hell that I know many people have. It is a picture, I do not know if I have seen it somewhere or what, but it’s engraved in my mind. In this picture hell is a place, I think it looks something like a cave, maybe even what the inside of a mountain looks like if you could get in somehow. It’s hot, not just an uncomfortable hot, but it is a hot that is completely unbearable and indescribable. There is some sort of lava goop dripping from the ceiling, and it doesn’t matter where you go it drips on your head burning your skin. The only light you can see is from the large river of the same lava goop running through the cave. As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is rap music blaring in the background playing so loud you can’t even think! No, I am just kidding about the rap music, but really I have this picture in my mind. Maybe there are some mean little demons running around poking you, taunting you, screaming and laughing in your face, and worst of all telling you what a fool you are for ending up in hell.
I think this picture is somewhat skewed. Now I don’t want you to think that I am saying hell isn’t bad, and by no means am I taking lightly the idea of hell. Also, I am not saying that there isn’t a place called hell, because there is. I am just beginning to think that it does not look much like that picture in my mind.
Over the past few months I have been rethinking my understanding of Hell. The only thing I know for sure about hell is this. Hell is the absents of God. This has monumental implications on how I live my life. Just take a look at the list of what God is, and try to imagine life without just one of them. The sad truth is that this is the reality for thousands of people everyday in our world. This is why I say the world in many cases is hell. What if, when a person who doesn’t love god dies he gets exactly what he wanted all along. He is left alone. Maybe this is hell. What if the picture of hell is a man sitting in a room all alone with piles of stuff he has worked so hard for his whole life. He is sitting there looking at the ground knowing that he missed the point of life. He begged God for years to Just. Leave. Him. Alone. He knows now that finely got exactly what he asked for. He just didn’t realize, the god is everything that is good, and now He is gone life is hell. I think this understanding of hell is far worse then little demons poking you.
In this redefining of hell I have had to rethink Heaven. If hell is the absents of God, then Heaven is the overwhelming presence of God. Now, I have been singing songs for years about streets of gold, a big big yard where I can play football, my crowns I get in heaven for doing good things and most exciting to me, a giant mansion! Now that is what I am talking about, I like big houses and lots of stuff! I mean who doesn’t right?
Once again, I am not trying to say anything bad about old hymns and audio adrenaline songs, I just think they may be distorted. In our pursuit of trying to explain things we simply cant, we have lost track of what heaven really is. I do not think anyone has ever said without a doubt that heaven has gold streets, I just feel that it is sometimes it is presented in a way that we look foreword to the stuff in heaven, and not the God. Heaven in my eyes is life the way God intended it to be. Complete intimacy with The One Who Created Everything. I think Korey told me one time that C.S. Lewis described heaven as being more Real then life here on earth, and I completely agree.
I want to see heaven crashing into earth so bad. I want to storm the gates of hell, because as Rob Bell put it, “God is in the liberation business.” As I have started rediscovering what my life is about, and figuring out what God wants me to do, I am beginning to wonder if all God really wants us to do is bring a little slice of heaven here on earth. These are all just thoughts of mine, and they may be right and may be wrong. All I know is that we have to keep discovering what God is all about.
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