For the Hurt, the Blessed, and the Damned (eBook)

Chapter 1

For the Hurt, the Blessed,
and the Damned

Run to the exit, jump again into the fray,
Fighting every battle, every blessing on the way,
The warrior rides on today.

—“Fight or Flight”

So, rather than start at the beginning of my story—what I believed growing up, why I came to be terribly disenchanted with Christianity, and how I came to believe in Christianity as a religion of love rather than fear (we’ll get to all that)—I figured I’d start at the end, with how and why I believe all that “believe in Jesus or go to Hell” stuff is a bunch of hooey (technical term).

By the time I was in college, I couldn’t stomach any variation on “believe in Jesus or go to Hell.” I hadn’t been raised to believe in that, but I had grown up to believe in Heaven and Hell as places we go when we die. I had also grown up to believe that Jesus saves us from Hell. So, while I didn’t believe in “believe in Jesus or go to Hell,” I wondered if I could escape such systems/theologies and still be a Christian. Many people seemed to have done so, but I still had to wrestle with it, to wrestle with the text of scripture. I couldn’t just ignore scripture and believe what I wanted to in spite of it. So, I thought, what is one of the big proof texts of the “Christians only go to Heaven, all others go to Hell” movement? An obvious choice quickly emerged: John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

First off, a bit of background for those unfamiliar with the Christian Bible. For most of Christianity, the Bible is split into two sections: The Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, commonly called the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Hebrew Scriptures are the Jewish Bible, the stories of creation, of God’s covenants with Abraham and Moses, of the formation of the nation of Israel, of the prophets, etc. The Christian Scriptures are all about Jesus, with four Gospels (books about the life of Jesus), and twenty-three other books, mostly letters written to congregations by leaders in the early church. Of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), John writes of Jesus in the most divine language. John clearly calls Jesus “God.”

So, in John chapter 14 verse 6, Jesus is talking about the fact that he is going to die soon and go to the Father (God), and his disciples say they don’t know the way to the place where Jesus is going. Jesus replies, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

From that sentence, many claim that only Christians (or folks who believe in Jesus) get to go to Heaven, and all others go to Hell. Add to that passages where Jesus talks about judgment and some passages of New Testament letters to the churches which are misunderstood, and you get whole systems which determine who is in and who is out. Well, as my dad used to say, “That dog just won’t hunt.” Such systems turn God into a monster.

So then, accepting that Jesus’ first sentence is true, that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life (otherwise, why believe in Jesus at all?), how could I believe that the second sentence, “no one goes to the Father except though Jesus,” was also true and not believe that all non-Christians were going to hell?

Let’s take a look: “No one comes to the Father expect through me.”

Through: It’s a pretty innocuous word as prepositions go, and yet various Christian groups have packed an awful lot of specific meaning into that one little word.

• “No one comes to the Father except by being baptized at an appropriate age, having given a full confession of faith and turned one’s life over to me.”
• “No one comes to the Father except by being among those fortunates whom God has arbitrarily and capriciously elected to give the gift of grace to have faith in me.”
• “No one comes to the Father except by having a conversion experience at some point in life, a rebirth from above, leading to a new life of faith and purity in me.”
• “No one comes to the Father except by dying unbaptized or unsaved at a young enough age that, though full of sin, they are still in some unexplained but palatable way alright with me.”

Note how specific various groups have to be with that little preposition, through, in order to make it apply to their rules of “salvation.” What if “through” was slightly less well defined? What if we looked not at how salvation was exactly conferred upon people, but instead at what salvation actually is (see Chapter 3) and who this Jesus fella is, through whom we come to the Father?

John 1:1, 14a

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and lived among us . . .”

Ok, so according to this, God is the Word, i.e., the Word of God which spoke creation into existence (“In the beginning” of the Bible, the first book, Genesis). The Word became the human person, Jesus, and Jesus calls God “Father.” So:

• The Father is God
• The Word, i.e., Jesus, is also God
  • I know, it is terribly confusing—we believe that God is three persons and yet one God. This idea is called “The Trinity,” and there is a lengthier discourse on that in Chapter 11.

Now we get to read John 14:6 as follows:

• “I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through the Word of God, which is God.” I.e., the only way to God is through God. I.e., Jesus is claiming to be God.
• John 14:6 is less expressing a requirement for how one is to come to the Father as it is a statement expressing Jesus’ identity.

Add to this . . .

Genesis 1:3

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

God spoke creation into existence through God’s Word. God’s Word is eternal, and I believe, still present and active in creation.

And . . .

Genesis 15:1, Exodus 20:1, and Isaiah 39:5, etc.

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’”

“Then God spoke all these words.” (The 10 Commandments)

“Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord of Hosts: The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever.’”

The Word of God which spoke creation into existence, spoke to God’s people and was spoken through the law of Israel and the prophets.

Also . . .

Romans 1:20

“Ever since the creation of the world, [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things which he has made.”

God’s Word, which spoke creation into existence, is still present and active in creation, and God can be seen and understood through nature, through all of creation.

Finally, we add Matthew 25:31–46 (summed up below):

“ . . . Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me . . .”

This passage is Jesus telling about the eventual judgment of the nations, i.e., the Gentiles, the folks who aren’t Jewish, who don’t necessarily believe in any kind of deity, and who certainly don’t believe in Jesus or in the God of Israel. Jesus welcomes them into the Kingdom of his Father because they treated others with compassion, mercy, kindness, and love. They are still coming to the Father through Jesus.

From the above, we can conclude a few things:

• Coming to God through the law and the prophets is coming to God through the Word of God, i.e., Jesus.
• Coming to God through somehow recognizing God in nature or anything at all in creation is coming to God through the Word of God still present and active in creation, i.e., Jesus.
• Those who are merciful, compassionate, kind, and loving are welcomed into the Kingdom of the Father by the Son, still coming to the Father through the Word of God, i.e., Jesus.

Believing Jesus to be the Word of God which spoke creation into existence and which spoke through the law and the prophets, we believe Jesus to be much more than a historic man who lived in Israel a couple thousand years ago. We believe Jesus to be God and therefore to be in and through all of creation, while also being human and living a human life for thirty or so years. Coming to the Father through Jesus, therefore, can happen in a multitude of ways, some of which have nothing to do with belief in Jesus, or necessarily belief in anything at all.

In other words, the...