By David Ryser
The
fear of hell is the beginning of religion.
(Wayne Jacobsen)
So, I was driving along, minding my
own business, and I drove past a church marquee. I read the sign…even though I
knew better. The sign read: JESUS: YOUR GET OUT OF HELL FREE CARD. I
couldn’t decide whether to laugh, scream, or cry. Laugh, because I grew up
watching Warner Brothers cartoons and the Three Stooges, and I find innocent
stupidity highly amusing. Scream, because this sort of foolishness dishonors
God by misrepresenting Him to people who desperately need Him. Cry, because my
heart aches for the people who attend that church.
Many years ago, I wrote concerning
the fact that Jesus never used the threat of hell to scare people into
heaven. Some of the reaction to my
little article was heated…and predictable. If I have learned anything since
becoming a lover of Jesus, I have come to realize there are two things a
religious person possesses that one should never mess with: his Rapture and his
hell; or, more accurately, his interpretation of the Rapture or hell.
And I must confess that I do
occasionally enjoy stirring up religious people on these subjects because, to
be honest, I don’t think very often about either one of them.
I don’t object to the doctrines of
the Rapture or hell so much as I do their application, although I find most
teachings concerning the former to be absurd and those concerning the latter to
be counterproductive.
Ever since the invention of the
man-made organized Christian religion…also known as post-Jesus
Christianity…this religion has used the fear of hell to manipulate people to
take refuge in the rituals and/or teachings of the so-called “Church” in order
to escape the torments of hell and gain the blessings of heaven. This
carrot-and-stick approach to spreading the gospel of Jesus has done much to
fill church buildings but has done relatively little to populate the kingdom of
God. And it ignores the plain fact that Jesus did not use the fear of hell to
issue an invitation to inhabit heaven; in fact, no such invitation to heaven
exists in the preaching and teaching of Jesus.
He did, however, invite each of us into a loving and intimate
relationship with the Father.
And the presence and person of God
is what makes heaven the wonderful place it is.
Without God, heaven is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to
live there.
To be fair, I must admit that both
Jesus and John the Baptist did threaten some people with hell. They threatened
self-righteous religious people, and only self-righteous religious people, with
hell. This should be of concern to self-righteous
religious “Christian” people.
It typically isn’t, but it should
be.
The fear of hell has no place in
the life of a Christian. Paul never
threatened Christians with hell to keep them in line. Not even the bad
Christians. Not even the bad Christian who was having sexual relations with his
stepmother. And yet, I’ve heard church leaders threaten their members…whose
only sin was missing one of their church's mind-numbing, soul-sapping religious
services...with eternal perdition. And then claimed their preaching was
biblical.
Stupid is as stupid does.
So now might be a good time to take
a short religious test. The results of this little test are important because
only religious people were threatened with hell in the Bible. And hell is
serious business. Hell is a place of separation from the presence of God
created for the devil and his angels, and believed by many to be inhabited
forever by both them and those who choose to join them.
The religious test consists of just
one question: If there were no hell, would you be a Christian?
Imagine with me…and John Lennon…for
a moment that there is no hell. Would you love, honor, and obey Jesus if there
is no hell? Do you need the threat of hell to be a Christian?
If you need the threat of hell to
love God, you are religious. For your own sake, please do not lose your fear of
hell.
For those of you who do not need
the fear of hell to love Jesus, congratulations…you are not religious, and
neither were the apostles and early believers. Paul taught us that we are
constrained by the love of God (2Corinthians 5:14), and not by the fear of
hell. John was freed from all fear by the love of God (1John 4:18 in context);
“all fear” would include the fear of hell.
In my experience, if one utilizes
the tactic of scaring people into church with the threat of hell, then one must
continue scaring them with the threat of hell to keep them in church. And it works. But it comes with a price.
Because true intimacy in a relationship cannot coexist with fear. So, these
wonderful people who have been scared into church wallow in fear and experience
a dysfunctional relationship with a God whom they perceive to be an abusive
father.
How sad. And more than a little
pathetic.
But you may ask, “What about the
fear of God?” It’s in the Bible, and many sincere believers refer to themselves
as God-fearing. This is a valid question, and it’s a subject too expansive for
this little article. But suffice it to say that whatever the fear of God (or
the fear of the Lord, if this is your preferred terminology) is, it certainly
does not refer to cowering in terror in the presence of a violent, abusive, and
tyrannical deity.
And then those who present this
kind of God to us, in the next breath they tell us about the love of their
Father God. It makes me wonder what kind of family these people grew up in.
Early in my Christian walk I
realized one day that I could not imagine being a Christian without a devil;
or, more specifically, a fight/war against the devil. My Christianity was all
about defeating the devil and advancing God’s kingdom. I was troubled by this
realization, but I didn’t know what to do about it because I was too young in
my faith.
But I never forgot this incident.
And as I progressed in my faith walk and fell more deeply in love with Jesus, I
found I no longer needed the devil or the devil’s hell to follow Jesus. I have
come to view my battle with the kingdom of darkness as much a rescue operation as
an invasion…another story for another time.
Hell? Who needs it? I’m in love
with Jesus.
Responses to this article are
welcomed. You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com
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