I grieve that people are not walking with Jesus because of Christians. I am speaking about something much deeper than political division. I have friends who are atheists or agnostics due to their experience with Christians. Today, again, I met another fine man who is an agnostic. He would like to believe in a God, but because Christians have taught him that all non-Christians will “go to hell,” he does not want anything to do with Jesus. That is what grieves me deeply. That is not good biblical theology. Very briefly and without full explanations, this is what I would like to tell such people, if they were open to listening:
1. The basic biblical message is that God wants to be in a close, eternal relationship with those whom God created. God humbles God-self to effect such relationships.
2. Read literally the key biblical texts, such as John 3:16: and Rom 6:23, tell us that there two spiritual options: people either can accept eternal life with God or they will die, not that they will either live eternally with God or live eternally tormented.
a. The popular teaching that everyone has an eternal soul and can never die comes from ancient Greek thought. It is not biblical. It is read into the Bible.
b. In Gen 3, when Adam and Eve seek to become like God, they do die; they are banned from eating from the Tree of Life. The clear implication is that they were created mortal but had the opportunity of living forever removed because of their sin.
c. The popular-level doctrine of “hell” comes from conflating two different concepts: Gehenna, the depository place of dead bodies, and Hades, the holding place until the resurrection of the dead. (The conflation can be seen in 9th century Anglo-Saxon translations that render both terms by “hel/helle” [underworld].) Revelation calls the final judgement of death, after the resurrection of the dead, the “second death” (20:6,14; 21:8). In the 1st century AD, mortals (vs. angels) being thrown into a lake fire symbolized the complete destruction of the person.
3. God does not limit the option of life to the “informed” (e.g. Jews or Christians). Paul recognizes in Romans 2 that non-Jews who did not have the law and were not circumcised (a sign of being a member of the covenant community) could have the law “in their hearts” and be spiritually “circumcise” (i.e. belong to the community of faith; see 2:11-16, 26-29). God welcomes people from every nation who totally respect God (Luke 1:50; Acts 10:34-35).
4. The main Christ redemption event was to reveal fully the heart of God who is willing lower God-self and then to “lift up” and remove sin, that is to bring people into a state of forgiveness and reconciliation.
5. The salvific language in the Gospels is that people now can participate in the Kingdom of God (eternal life); they can now become participants in Christ, in God; and that God participates now in them through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
When we do not communicate the biblical message of God’s love accurately or well, we hinder people from walking closely with Jesus. It is not their fault. It is ours, Christians.
Note: I understand that my points above do not conform to popular, Christian “orthodoxy.” My efforts as a biblical scholar – recognizing that I am frail and fallible – are to understand to the best of my ability what the biblical terms and concepts meant to the original Jewish and Christian audiences in their time and culture. Here is an example, although it is centuries later than the New Testament. Probably millions of people in the US every Sunday recite from one of the ancient Christian creeds something to the effect of how they “believe in the resurrection of the dead.” I wonder how many of them realize that they are affirming the belief that at the Second Coming of Jesus the dead will then be resurrected? How many understand the biblical teaching of the resurrection of the dead? Much like Jesus’ teaching on participating in the Kingdom of God now, it is generally a lost concept.
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