Once more into the abyss

It is not news to any of you who know me or read this blog that I tend to wrestle with many of the pillars of Christian Orthodoxy, or more accurately, many of the hang-ups of North American Evangelicalism. I tend to take nothing for granted, enjoy questioning the establishment, and love to disassemble theological systems. It is a kind of cathartic vandalism for me.

A while back I wrote about some of my concerns with the doctrine of hell, or at least how the doctrine has been formulated and applied in the context of North American Evangelicalism. If you look at it in terms of how much we talk about hell and how much we have taken our Modern incarnation of the concept and made it an integral part of our gospel message, you would have to conclude that it is one of our favorite doctrines. We simply love the idea of hell.

When I was growing up most of my Christian experience was in a fairly conservative, traditional, and theologically even-keeled church. We believed in hell, no doubt about it. We had a somewhat friendly relationship with a like minded church in town who was into hell even more than we were. They had this big mansion on their church property, an old house that would fit the part in just about every haunted house story I had ever heard. Every Halloween they would transform this mansion into a kind of Christianized haunted house.

The theme was usually the apocalyptic judgment and eternal punishment of sinners, those who didn’t love Jesus like we did. It was scary stuff. Rooms would be dedicated to portraying the hellish reality of abortion clinics, drug users, porn watchers, rapists, and alcoholics and how they were all bound for the undying flames of hell. The end result was a brutal assault on the psyche of every teenager who walked through the halls of that house every Halloween, an all out barrage of hellfire and brimstone that motivated even the most pagan of us to turn away from our evil ways and embrace the Jesus who promised not to torture us as long as we loved him enough.

It seems a bizarre tactic when you consider the message and mission of Jesus Christ. “Go out and make disciples,” he said, “ teach them to live the way I taught you to live.” The part about scaring the bejebus outta people must be a text variant that was lost in transmission.