In his book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist, draws a stark picture of hell. Hell is like a great, vast city, Lewis says, a city inhabited only at its outer edges, with rows and rows of empty houses in the middle. These houses in the middle are empty because
everyone who once lived there has quarreled with the neighbors and moved. Then, they quarreled with the new neighbors and moved again, leaving the streets and the houses of their old neighborhoods empty and barren.
That, Lewis says, is how hell has gotten so large. It is empty at its center and inhabited only at the outer edges, because everyone chose distance instead of honest confrontation when it came to dealing with their relationships.
"Look, she's the one who said that about me. Let her come and apologize!"
"We may go to the same church, but that doesn't mean I've got to share a pew with that so-and-so!"
"It'll be a cold day in July before I accept his apology."
That's all well and good, I suppose... if you don't mind living in hell.
Are we really so willing to give up our relationships with others – relationships that have come about and been forged by our desire to follow Jesus? Nowhere, and I do mean nowhere, in the New Testament gospels will you find Jesus saying that the first order of things is always to be right. But he does have a great deal to say about forgiveness, about relationship, about reconciliation, about service and humility and vulnerability.
He makes it sounds like family, doesn't he? (Randy L. Hyde, Two or Three)
How easy it is, I believe, to think of hell as being a “place down-under in which the devil dressed in red with a pitchfork in-hand, at all times, stokes the fires that lap-up around the feet and legs of those tied to a stake against which they will stand for all eternity.”
How easy it is, I believe, if you are not blessed to have a pastor like mine and/or read creditable authors such as C. S. Lewis and Timothy Keller, all of whom have read “between-the-lines” of Scripture and are able to perceive and discern differently than most, that hell is not about “fire and brimstone” but about an absence, an eternal absence of God, an eternal absence of God in relationship with us, in a love and grace-filled relationship with each of us, each of His children.
Consider Christ in the Garden, praying sweat-dropplets of blood. Why? He knew. He knew what was to happen. He knew that He would be scourged and crucified as well as humiliated and spit upon. But that wasn’t it. That’s not what caused the blood dropplets to form on His face and drop to the ground. What He knew was that, as He assumed our sins, God, His Father, His loving Father, would, for awhile, be absent from Him; and that was more than He could bear; and it was that, when the absence of His Father’s relational presence with Him became a reality, that He cried out, “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
He comes to each of us differently but also the same. If you have had an encounter with God in which you knew, unequivocally, that His Presence was, most assuredly, with you and filling you, you know that there is nothing on earth like it; and you realize that, not only will there never be anything on earth to equal the feeling of His Presence with you but that, at all costs, you don’t want to live a second on earth with the absence of His Presence in your life, let alone, consider as did Christ, the prospect of an eternity spent in the absence of God. I know I don’t. And thanks to my pastor and his two sermons on the topic of “hell,” there is nothing more important to me now than avoiding the committing of sins and the asking for forgiveness of my sins, especially through the Lord’s Supper, in order to avoid my eternity being spent out of relationship with God.
But, what is interesting is that we don’t have to wait until we die to experience “hell.” There is much truth in the phrase, “Hell on earth.” Life on earth can be a hell if the center of our universe is ourselves. If we are so self-centered that everything is about us; if we choose to live in “meland” rather than “Heland.” If we love only ourselves and not “…our neighbor as ourselves.” If we believe and, therefore, live our lives assuming that we are in control of everything that touches us personally and, therefore, fail, so tragically with such dire consequences, to not only not be grateful to God for all His blessings but also fail to “love God with all our hearts and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength.”
According to the Bible, “man was made in God’s image.” That means that what we do to one another, as Jesus says in Matthew, we are doing to Him; and since Jesus is God incarnate, if we hate others, we hate Jesus; and, thus, we hate God. If we murder another human being, we murder Jesus; and, thus, we murder God. If we slander and/or lie about another person, we are slanding and/or lying about Jesus; and, thus, we slander and/or lie about God.
If we cannot and/or choose to not live in relationship with others here on earth, then we cannot and/or have chosen not to live in relationship with Christ; and, thus, we are telling God that we cannot and/or choose not to live in relationship with Him.
Oh, how easy it is to be so holier-than-thou and be so full of self-righteous indignation as was the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son. As he did not see himself for what he was and for how sinful he was in his righteousness, neither do we.
Oh, how easy it is to not only say but to live, “Look, she’s the one who said that about me. Let her come and apologize!” or to say and live, “It’ll be a cold day in July before I accept his apology.”
The devil makes it easy for us to commit such a sin, for truly this is a sin, by activating our destructive pride through deception.
How tough it is to “humble ourselves and turn the other cheek.”
How blessed it is, however, to be encouraged by and supported during such a counter-cultural behavior by someone or someones whom you trust and with whom you have entered into a relationship.
On several occasions, before I chose to live it; but when I thought it, I asked a friend, “Why do I have to be the one who apologizes?” His answer has always been the same, “Because someone has to.”
Although I dislike the usage of the word “confrontation” in the quote: “…everyone chose distance instead of honest confrontation when it came to dealing with their relationships” and would prefer the words “discussion” or “conversation,” I heartily agree with the premise of the statement, believing as the Bible says, “… that honesty is the best policy” and that so much hurt and pain, questions and doubts, and unnecessary alienation and misunderstandings could be eliminated if someone or someones would “take the first step” in saying, “I’m sorry! I was wrong! I shouldn’t have said what I did! Can we sit down and talk about this?” and/or “I apologize. Will you forgive me?”
You can’t have a tug-of-war if you don’t pick up the other end of the rope.
Oh, if more times than not, we would swallow our pride and “not pick up the end of the rope.”
If maintaining relationships here on earth according to God’s standards and teachings can prevent me from “sweating blood dropplets as did Christ” prior to His crucifixion when He considered existing in hell in the absence of a relationship with God and in the absence of His Father, then I choose to, first, amend and, then, live by the famous line uttered in the movie “Love Story”: “An eternity in relationship with God and the Trinity means always having to say, ‘I’m sorry.'”