Questions and Responses

Today was Question and Response Sunday. The responses included here are a little more detailed than we had time for in the service. We'll be having another Question and Response Sunday within the next year or so, and I'd love to have your questions!

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Heaven, hell, and the Bible
Jesus' life before his ministry
Doubt
Folly
Community connections

There are a lot of things out there about the nature of life after death. What does the Bible really say about it, about heaven and hell and what gets you into one or the other?

First of all, this is a huge question, and entire books have been written about it. I highly recommend Love Wins, by Rob Bell, which looks closely at what the Bible actually says, is easy to read, and brings up a lot of the questions that all of us naturally ask. You may not agree with Rob Bell’s conclusions, and that’s okay – it’s still a great overview. I also want to say that I have had to make choices here about what to include and what to leave out. I have my own beliefs about this, which inevitably color my response. I am not right about everything, and I am still learning. You are welcome to disagree or to come to different conclusions. I also recommend reading the Bible on your own to come to your own answers. A good place to start for this question is by reading Luke and Romans.

First: what does the Bible really say about heaven and hell? A great deal of our imagery about heaven and hell doesn’t come from the Bible – a lot of it comes from poetry and other literature like Dante’s Inferno and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Bible is much more concerned with life here and now than anything else.

Throughout the entire Old Testament, there is basically no reference to what we would think of as life after death. There are references to “sheol,” which is usually translated “the grave.” This seems to have been a sort of shadowy half-existence that continued after death. Resurrection became a part of Jewish belief during the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

In the New Testament, there is much more about heaven and hell, though the focus is still on this life. On occasion, Jesus says that somebody will be “thrown into the fires of hell, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched” (Mark 9:48). There are also references to “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Luke 13:28).

Most of what Jesus says about heaven and hell is in parables. Speaking of heaven, he refers to a great feast, a wedding banquet, and similar scenes. Hell is exclusion from the party. For instance, in the parable of the ten bridesmaids, Jesus says that five of them brought enough oil to wait for the bridegroom, and the other five ran out of oil and had to go get more. While they were gone, the bridegroom came and went into the feast with the five bridesmaids who were prepared. The five who didn’t have enough oil came back and knocked on the door to be let in, but they were left outside, with Jesus saying, “I do not know you” (Matthew 25:1-13). The usual interpretation is that Jesus is the bridegroom, and the bridesmaids are waiting for the second coming of Jesus, at which time they are either welcomed into the wedding banquet (heaven) or left outside (hell). It’s important to remember that parables almost always have more than one interpretation.

Coming at this from another angle, our ideas about heaven and hell are closely tied in with our ideas of the end times. In fancy church speak this is called eschatology – the study of the end, and in particular, how God will work out this beautiful mess of a world in ways that are loving, just, and good. Eschatology is featured much more often in the Bible than heaven and hell: Jesus gives mini-sermons about when he will come again, the end times come up in multiple letters throughout the New Testament, the whole book of Revelation is somehow about the end times, and it even comes up in the Old Testament.

The difficulty here is that much of this is metaphorical. We see that very clearly in Daniel, where different stages of the end times are all but explicitly linked with various horrible rulers who lived near Daniel’s own time. Many scholars believe that the book of Revelation was a book of resistance against the Roman empire – a way for people to share hope with one another that someday the Roman empire would be overthrown and they would have freedom. They couldn’t come out and say that they hated Rome, but they could describe these poetic (and sometimes bizarre) images about God overthrowing the devil, and they could share these images of hope with each other as a form of encouragement in the face of Roman oppression.

I personally have trouble taking Revelation literally – when you read it, it just doesn’t seem to be written literally. There are symbols within symbols, and some of them we know or can guess at what they symbolize, but for others, we have no clue. It makes sense to me to read Revelation as a beautiful vision of God winning out over evil in a cosmic way – and Revelation truly is beautiful and moving (I recommend reading it all the way through in one sitting – it’s very powerful). Just like Jesus told parables that had truth even if they were made-up stories, Revelation and other visions of eschatology have truth even if they are not literal descriptions of heaven.

I find this metaphorical view especially convincing because Jesus talks about the “kingdom of God” as though it’s already here, at least partly. Talking about the kingdom of God was a way of talking about the end times, when God would rule completely – but Jesus brings it right here and now. He says, “the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:21), and we often hear that he was going around, proclaiming that the kingdom of God had come. Revelation and other end-times visions give me hope that God is winning now, and God will win forever, even when it seems hopeless.

So, in summary, what does the Bible say about heaven and hell? Not very much. The Bible is overwhelmingly concerned with this life. What it does say is often in parable form or metaphorical. There is something there, but it’s vague and it’s usually not the focus.

Now the second part of the question: how do you get to heaven or hell? The Bible constantly goes back and forth here between two things: your actions are key, or the grace of God is key.

One passage is from Matthew chapter 25. Here, we have Jesus describing a future scene: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” (speaking of himself coming to earth a second time). “All the nations” come before him, and he separates people to his right and left. He turns to those on his right and says, “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.” The people are confused and ask when they did these things for Jesus, and he says, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he turns to the ones on his left, and says, “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” because they had not done these things “for the least of these.” The passage finishes by saying: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Here, and in many other places, it is very clear that actions determine eternal consequences. This view is present in many of Jesus’ teachings and parables, and in many of the letters that make up the New Testament. The problem here is that all of us would be partly on one side and partly on the other side. I seriously doubt that there is anyone who has never done a single good thing “for the least of these.” And even the most faithful people pass up opportunities to do these things. Additionally, how do we know how many good things are enough? Is passing up one opportunity to do good going to cause someone to lose salvation? There are some logical problems with the view that actions determine eternal consequences.

Other Bible passages emphasize that salvation is based on God’s grace, not human actions. Grace is a free gift of God, given without regard for merit. In the book of Romans, we hear, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). Paul, the writer of Romans and many of the other books of the New Testament, held to this view quite consistently, though he also says that a good life is important. The key here is that when we receive grace, we receive eternal life, and we are also transformed so that we can live good lives. Actions count, but good actions are a result of salvation, not the cause of salvation.

This second view is the standard theology of most Christian churches, and of the Methodist church: God’s grace transforms us when we trust that grace, and the transformation causes us to live better. There is still an issue here: it is very clear that people who are not Christian are capable of good actions, and people who are Christian are capable of bad actions. Still, most Christians, including most Christian theologians, find the emphasis on grace to be more convincing than an emphasis on human actions. We do not do the work of salvation – God does the work of salvation, and by trusting that work (in other words, having faith, which means to trust), we are empowered to do good.

Somehow both God’s grace and human action are important. People have found many, many different ways of bringing these two together. I encourage you to think about what makes sense to you. I encourage you to read Luke and Romans, and to read Love Wins. I encourage you to pray about it.

What do we know about Jesus’ life beyond all the savior stuff? The young carpenter, the son of Mary and Joseph, the… wait, was he anyone’s brother? I don’t even know…

We don’t know very much. There is one passage in Luke that describes a twelve-year-old Jesus going to Jerusalem with his family. Imagine the whole town walking to Jerusalem as an annual trip. When they’re on the way home, his parents assume that he’s with the group, but then after they’ve traveled for a day they find that he’s not there. They go back to Jerusalem and look for him for three days before finding him in the temple. He’s been teaching the teachers at the temple, and he has no idea why his parents are so concerned. (Luke 2:41-51)

We also know that Jesus had brothers. At least one of his brothers, James, became a significant leader in the Christian movement after Jesus’ death and resurrection (Acts 15 and following). (There is more than one James; James the brother of Jesus was not James the disciple, brother of John and son of Zebedee.) Other brothers include Joseph, Simon, and Judas – these do not seem to be significant figures in the gospels. It also seems that he had sisters (Mark 6:3).

There is also a tradition that Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins. We know that John’s mother was related to Mary, though it is unclear how exactly they were related (Luke 1:36).

Matthew 13:55 tells us that Jesus was the “carpenter’s son;” the parallel passage in Mark 6:3 says that Jesus was a carpenter. This was not an upper-class profession. The Greek word could also mean “craftsman” or “builder.”

How do you deal with doubt? For instance, regarding: the divinity of Jesus, the existence of unconditional love, translations of the Bible, etc., etc.

The biggest doubt question, to me, is whether God is real and worth worshipping. So I’ll start there and then get to some of these more specific doubts.

When I find myself in doubt, my first instinct is to ignore it and hope that it goes away. That doesn’t really work out, though. Once I stop ignoring it, it tends to get worse at first, and that’s painful. It’s scary. It’s especially scary because if God is not real, then I have made a serious error in career choice!

But then after a while, if I don’t ignore the doubt, I find myself, ironically, praying about it. Which is the single most important thing I can do in that moment.

I’ve learned that faith is a gift from God. I really think that the only way to believe in God is to ask for help from God. There is a beautiful story about a man who came to Jesus asking for help for his sick child. Jesus asked him if he believed. He said, “I believe – Lord, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). This is a statement of vulnerability and hope. When we genuinely pray for faith, we open ourselves up to be let down. We are vulnerable. But we open ourselves in the hope that we will not be let down. And as we find God to be faithful, as we find God to be reliable and trustworthy, it becomes easier to trust even in times of doubt.

No matter how strong our faith, there are going to be times when it falls apart. That’s okay. That’s part of why we have church – so that we can carry faith for each other. When you come here and you find yourself singing “This is the day that the Lord has made,” and you just can’t believe it that day, that’s the day when all the rest of us carry faith for you. And in a few weeks, you’ll be carrying it again.

When I find myself doubting a specific piece of Christianity, I try to figure out why I believed it before, or why other people believe it. I talk with people whose faith I respect – people I can trust to have thought it through. I think about whether this piece is truly essential to Christianity. And, again, I pray about it a lot. In many cases, I have found myself starting with doubt about something, doing this research and thinking and praying, and realizing that there are other options that make more sense with the rest of Christianity as a whole. Sometimes one kind of belief has to die to make room for a better, more accurate, more meaningful belief. That death can be hard, but we have a religion of resurrection: the end of one thing makes room for something new and wonderful.

 have also found that things that I previously thought were essential to Christian faith are actually things that faithful Christians have disagreed about for centuries. For instance, there are, and there have been since the very beginnings of Christianity, Christians who do not believe that Jesus is divine.

The key is to trust God. Pray about it a lot, and trust that God would not have given you a brain that asks questions if God did not want you to ask questions. You are not abandoning God by asking questions. You might lose some blind faith, but you will gain a deeper faith. Approach with trust and humility, remembering that you’re not going to ask anything that God hasn’t handled before.

Just for fun, here’s an example:

When I doubt that Jesus is divine:

·         I think about why I believed it before.

o   I believed it before because it’s what I was taught, based on some parts of the Bible. But other parts of the Bible make that questionable.

o   This is a good time to look at the passages that are most relevant – here, John 1 and 17 are two of the main passages.

·         I think about why other people have believed that Jesus is divine. (I know some of the answer to this because I spent years studying it. I also talk with colleagues and others that I respect. If you didn’t go to seminary, ask someone who did, or find someone whose faith you respect –  someone you trust to have thought it through.)

o   Jesus’ divinity is part of our faith tradition because there are indications in the gospels and in very early traditions about Jesus that he had a special relationship with God (the “Father”). In a few places, it even seemed like there was another one there – an “advocate” or “helper” or “holy spirit.” There is no clear indication of the Trinity in the Bible, but people were trying to work out what these relationships might look like. Additionally, people were finding themselves praying to Jesus, but believing that there was only one God – so some of this belief came from how people actually practiced Christianity. Over the next few hundred years, people came at this Trinity business, especially the relationship between Jesus and the Father, from every possible angle. Wars were fought. It was the issue of the day for hundreds of years.

o   Karl Barth, a German theologian of the 20^th century, came up with this idea, based on the Bible and centuries of Christian thought: God creates the world out of love, and out of love, God wants to communicate with the world. But God is on a level that we can’t really understand or imagine. Since we can’t get on God’s level, God comes to ours. The beginning of the gospel of John describes Jesus as “the Word” of God (John 1): Jesus is God in communication with humanity. Jesus isn’t just a messenger, because God actually wants a personal relationship with humanity. Jesus is God’s communication, personified and brought to our level.

§  By the way, in Barth’s theology, this also means that the Bible is not “the word of God” – Jesus is. The Bible tells us about Jesus, but it’s not full of words that God actually spoke. For me, this makes it less essential to know that a Bible translation is exactly right – which is good, because none of them are exactly right. I’m going to get some idea about Jesus, the Word, by reading the Bible, even if the translation is flawed.

·         I pray about it a lot.

·         I think about how essential this belief is to Christianity as a whole.

o   If Jesus is not divine, his words carry less weight. What are the consequences of that?

o   If Jesus is not divine, what does that mean for how we practice religion? When we pray to Jesus, or in Jesus’ name, is that okay?

o   If Jesus is not divine, what does that say about his resurrection, or about eternal life for the rest of us?

o   If Jesus is not divine, does that have ethical consequences? Does it change what I believe about right and wrong?

o   Most things are not essential, or at least not as essential as we first thought. This is where sometimes it is good to let go of one belief to make room for something more accurate and meaningful.

What is wrong with folly? Mark 7:22: “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.”

The word “folly” is actually a technical word, which means that in some contexts, it has a very specific meaning. A similar word today would be “apple.” We all know that apples are fruit. But when you’re talking about computers, “Apple” is a brand name. It has a very specific meaning.

In Jewish culture, the terms “wisdom” and “folly” were technical terms that referred to something called the “wisdom tradition.” The Old Testament books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and several of the Psalms are part of this “wisdom tradition.” Solomon is a key figure in the tradition. The wisdom tradition is concerned with figuring out how to make the right choices – wisdom was about respecting God, taking responsibility, acting fairly, and spending your life in the right way. Teachers in the wisdom tradition would try to figure out how to do these things, and how to pass them on to others.

The list that Jesus uses here are things that were condemned in the wisdom tradition – adultery, slander, and pride in particular were contrary to wisdom. When Jesus says “folly,” he’s referring to this tradition. When I, 2000 years later, hear the word “folly,” I think of silliness or playfulness – but that is not what Jesus would have been talking about. The wisdom tradition didn’t always take itself that seriously, especially in Ecclesiastes, one of my absolute favorite books in the Bible. An example, from Ecclesiastes 11:3: “Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.”

How can the congregation and community coexist more?

The bishop has called us to this attitude: Every church a mission outpost, every member a missionary. This is our mission field. This is our mission outpost. What would you be doing if you were a missionary in a foreign country? I would be getting to know people in the area, building relationships, finding out how people relate to God, and finding ways to help expand and deepen those things. This is the key to integrating the community and the congregation – it’s about each person here taking responsibility for that integration.

You are a part of sub-communities here, whether it’s the senior lunches or the PTA or your family. What’s your job as a missionary? Not to convert them, not to bring God to them, but to remind them that God is with them, to support them as they seek to be fed spiritually, to remind them that they need to be fed spiritually. To be the presence of God unmistakably. The people who know you should know that they can come to you with spiritual questions and needs, and maybe you can’t answer them, but you will help them think and seek. The people who know you should know that you do the things you do – work at the food bank, take care of someone in your family – that you do these things not just because they are nice, not just because you think you should, but because God is love and God’s love is in you.

And we can’t stop with the people we already know. A missionary doesn’t come in and say, “Well, I don’t know anybody here, so I’m just going to do nothing.” A missionary finds ways to get to know the people in a place – again, not to convert them, not to tell them they’re wrong, but to discover God with them, to remind them that God is with them, to support them being fed spiritually. How do we get to know people here? There is a group of folks who hang out at Dave’s together. There’s probably a group at Bud’s too, and one at The Milton. There are dances and spaghetti feeds at the senior center. There is a group of Kiwanis, and probably a Lions, and probably a Rotary Club. There are neighbors to have block parties with, or Fourth of July celebrations. There are dog owners walking their dogs at the same times each day. There are groups putting on events like Milton Days and Relay for Life and Walkathons and parks clean-up events. There are cub scouts and a kids’ choir and a preschool that meet right here in our building. There are AA groups and groups that walk the track together and carpools. That doesn’t mean that everyone here needs to be in all these things; it’s just to encourage you to think about how you can get to know the people who live here. That’s what missionaries do.

How can the congregation and the community coexist more? Corporately, all together, I think we are doing a fantastic job of this already. Do not underestimate Milton Days. This is the single most important community-building tool in Milton, and we are very involved in making that true. We are working on becoming involved with the Edgewood food bank, which does a terrific job and can really use our help. We are providing a place for people to find their sub-community, to be fed spiritually, to feed others. It’s happening. We are coexisting. This is one of the strengths of this church.

And by supporting each other, we are supporting each person’s efforts to make those connections. We have several folks who are involved in PTAs. By supporting them, you support the PTA. We have folks who visit others who need company. By supporting them, you are supporting all the people they visit. We have folks who spend their days trying to connect people with the resources they need. By supporting them, you support the work they do.

Work that makes the world better can quickly become discouraging, because there is so much to do. So let’s encourage each other. Ask each other how it’s going. Ask each other the question that the original Methodist societies asked each other: “How goes it with your soul?” And by asking each other those questions, we learn to talk about God and to talk about real life, and we can take those skills into the rest of the community.