The God Who Kisses Unrepentant Sinners

I’m not asking you to agree.  I’m not asking you to say, “Amen.”  I’m just asking you to wrestle.  Just asking you to think.  Just asking you to wonder.  Just asking you to doubt.  That’s right.  To doubt.  Because something I’ve learned along the journey is that doubt can be one of the mightiest weapons our Warrior God wields in winning our hearts.  I’ve learned that doubt can lead to faith.  Newer faith.  Truer faith.  Certainly a more tried and beautiful faith than I ever had or imagined before. 

Since I was once so different, so prim, proper, and utterly conservative Evangelical, all homo- and Catholicophobic, all frozen by fear and dreadful of diversity and difference, I’ll understand your doubt at what I’m about to say.  But if you keep in mind that I once was there where you are, with all the passion, with all the answers, with all the proof texts and sound interpretations of them, it may help you to at least appreciate the significant steps and even leaps I’ve taken these past several years.  Much has changed, and much has not.  This is some of what has. 

When I think about God, when I theologize, I can only start with Jesus.  As a Christian, it is my deepest conviction that Jesus is the fullness of God, that Christ is the climax of God’s revelation of Himself to humanity and all His creation, God’s revelation of what He does and who He is and what He’s like.  Jesus Christ, in all His divinity and all His humanity, shows us Himself, shows us God; speaks of Himself, speaks of God; acts as Himself, acts as God.  It is my conviction that when we see Jesus, we see God; when we hear Jesus, we hear God; when we follow Jesus, we follow God; and not just a part of God, but the fullness of God.  And this is not to deny the Spirit and the Father, but to embrace them, to affirm them, to love and glorify them as we love and glorify Christ. 

If that’s what inspires and begins, what ever guides, and continually challenges our thinking about God, then all our doctrines, all our convictions, all our presuppositions and foregone conclusions, all our systems of belief and understanding, even our very hermeneutics, bow the knee before the God revealed in Christ.  If there is a standard, it is Him.  If there is a place to wrestle, it is in His footsteps, at the places where He taught and healed, alongside the people to whom he ministered; it is on the earth around the manger, in the bloody dust surrounding the base of the cross, and at the threshold of the empty garden tomb.   

How then have we held all these years and centuries onto the hellish doctrine of hell?  I know there are paradoxes weaving their way throughout the fabric of our belief, but how have we ever reconciled the God who runs to and kisses sinners before they’ve even repented (see Luke 15) with the God who casts unrepentant sinners into fiery, unspeakable, awful, and excruciating torment forever and ever?  Is the God revealed in Jesus Christ so illogical as to punish an unrepentant sinner who dies at age 60 for 60 million million billion billion trillion trillion etc. etc. etc. years?  Where is the “justice” in that?  Where is the reason in that?  Where is the redemption in that?  And since no one can live, can breath, can exist, can be, apart from the grace of God, the presence of God, the very Spirit of God, we can only conclude as part of this hellish doctrine that this same God of love and compassion, this same God of relationship and peace, this same God of holiness and humility, of awe and wonder, this same God who willingly laid down his life and suffered for sinners, sustains these poor souls, gives them just enough grace, grants them just enough Presence to keep them existing in the fires and flames of hell to punish them “justly” for all the wrong they committed and all the ways they affronted His glory in their pathetic lifetimes. 

No.  The same God who out of a bottomless well of compassion runs to and kisses the sinner before the sinner has even repented will not turn and cast the sinner into a bottomless abyss of inconceivable anguish and despair for all eternity.  That He would do so—at least from my perspective now—is the real affront to His glory and majesty, is the real offense in our theology and the spirituality which runs from and flows back to it.  It is much more in accordance with the God we see revealed in Christ—this healing, teaching, preaching, convicting, encouraging, serving, and loving God we see in Christ—to suppose something else happens to them entirely, perhaps annihilation, perhaps the end of existence, for those who cannot ultimately stand the presence of God, the absence of that presence can only mean the end of being.  To this other question I do not really have a working answer at this time.  I only know this.  I no longer believe in the doctrine of hell as the Evangelical Church has taught it and preached it and popularized it.  I believe in the Trinity.  I believe in the Christ.  I believe in the Spirit.  I believe in the Resurrection.  I believe in the Church.  I believe in the Kingdom.  I believe in the Atonement.  I believe in holiness.  I believe in the Word.  I believe He is coming again.  But I do not believe in hell.  If that makes me less than Christian, if that makes me a heretic, then less I will be, and heretical I will be.  The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not the God and Father of an eternal fiery endlessly agonizing place of destruction. 

It is for His mercy I plead.  It is for His thoughts I long.  It is by His love I’m compelled.  It is by His compassion I am captivated.