A Curious Girl: Eternal punishment, eternal life?

Sometimes I figure that I really have taken the right degree. Moments when Katie, for instance, who's in my tutorial group, points out that in Dr. P's lecture today she didn't even attempt to make it interesting, and my immediate reaction is something along the lines of 'Well, it's not like she needs to...'. Although to be honest I think maybe I should have taken genetics rather than biochemistry, but hey, I'll live. Jay, also in my tutorial group, incidentally thought Dr. P was great, for such remarks as 'You can't hang around in the nucleus all day or you'll never get translated.'

Where is my faith going at the moment? I've found myself caught up in all kinds of fears, a kind of stagnation between wanting to be a 'proper' Christian and giving up and being resolutely 'lukewarm' about my faith. Partly the problem is that I've come to something of a sticking-point with a few issues. I can manage, usually rather well, to carefully ignore mildly annoying parts of my faith and to focus on the 'good bits' as it were. Written down, this looks like gross hypocrisy, which it probably is, but it tends to prevail in an awful lot of places...

Anyways, for some bizarre reason I decided to look at some Chick tracts lately. The old 'believe and be saved, don't believe and be sent to the firey place for all eternity.' Hell is a subject I tend to skirt around because for a start it's very negative. 'Sorry guys, eternal peril awaits you... unless you take three doses of 'God' daily and tell other people to as well.' Surely our faith is more than a mere alternative to the ultimate terror. The thing is, confronted with Jack Chick's vivid pictures of hell, I have to confront my attitude, which I don't usually analyse. 'Hell is like a second death. Total oblivion. Dunno how it works. The end...'

It does actually startle me how blasé some Christians are about the whole thing. 'You don't have to go to Hell. You have a choice. Repent and be saved. With Jesus Life Assurance, you too can have eternal life even after death! Don't believe? Aw, too bad, eternal punishment for you then...' They seem to make out that the system is perfect and just, as if it's perfectly fine for God to torture everyone who didn't 'get saved' for infinite millennia.

But I don't think it's perfect and just and fine. I don't even think you can say, 'Well God created us, he can do what he likes' because he can but that doesn't mean it's right. And then you can say 'Well you can't impose morals on God', because even though he's great and almighty, his imposing morals on us becomes a great hypocrisy, and sure he might be almighty but he's not loving then, is he? What kind of sadist would create people just to spend the rest of eternity torturing them?

If God's really like that, I don't want to believe in him. But now I'm somewhat confused about what I should believe...

Something that's interesting (although sadly often ignored) about Jesus's teachings was that they weren't all 'be prepared for the end of the world', 'where would you like to spend eternity?' but very much 'in the moment' teaching. The 'Kingdom of Heaven' referred to is not a distant place we go to when we die if we've been good, it's a community under God right here. We love God and love others. We value love, joy, peace, faithfulness, godliness, gentleness, patience, humility, self-control... not hate, misery, conflict, wickedness, cruelty, superiority and all the things that go on in the world around us, the sort of things that we can buy into wihout even thinking about it. As 'citizens of Heaven' we are to bring Heaven's 'culture' as it were, to Earth. Alice pointed out on my second Christianity survey that it's not actually a matter of 'getting into Heaven', rather eternity with Jesus! Which is true. We are still God's children on earth - and I think this is the thing that must be the crucial factor in determining whether our faith is true and living and good or whether it is a death cult, a social club or a mere superstition. If our faith is more than rules, more than something to do on Sundays, more than just a way to make people feel better about death - but the embodiment of love, the movement to make the world more like Heaven, starting with ourselves, then we can truly say that our faith is living and worthwhile.

If, however, it's merely an afterlife insurance policy, there really doesn't seem to be a point.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this. You see, I'm afraid to follow the God who wants Heaven on Earth, just in case he's the same God who wants to torture all unbelievers for all eternity. I just feel so... torn.

(Thanks Chrissie and Mary Fazio for your lovely guestbook entries! :) )

Random word for today: jubilant

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