Jesus and Hell--Thinking through the Issues--Part 4

Nobody talked more about hell than Jesus. Nobody in all of Scripture.

People often talk about how Paul puts a hard edge on Jesus, but the apostle Paul's mention of hell is miniscule next to the amount that Jesus talks about it. The Old Testament has less of a sense of eternal damnation than the gospels do.

Why is that?

This is in part because of the historical context in which Jesus lived. A context which has similarities to our own.

When Jesus comes around, he spends a lot of time conversing with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious liberals and moral conservatives. They believed in a resurrection, which was a liberal Jewish idea. They believed in heaven and hell. Another more progressive idea. Many believed they borrowed this idea from the Babylonians. Thus, many people think the word Pharisee is derivitive of the word Farsi--or Persian. Thus, some scholars believe that the Pharisee's theology of hell was borrowed from Greco-Persian influences.

Having come from exile in Babylon, they longed for freedom. And saw their oppressed situation as a direct result of moral impurity. So they begin to talk more about following the law, and talking about what the eternal results of what certain behavior was. They came to the belief that certain behaviors that went against the family values of their day would damn people to hell.

This is where Jesus comes on the scene with his message of grace and forgiveness. And while sharing this message, he deconstructs some of the Pharisee's views of hell.

Jesus challenges their attempts to create a religious elite, and shows them that their grab for power and their attempts to pigeon hole people and judge them runs counter to God's whole plan for them.

This happens throughout the New Testament. Jesus turns the tools that the Pharisees use to oppress those in their community around so that he can use their language, especially the language of hell, to get to the heart.

Perhaps it might be easy to understand what Jesus is doing by discussing the word righteousness. The word is derivitive in a lot of ways of the word SHALOM in Hebrew. And the Greek word for righteousness is also often translated as justice. The word for righteousness and justice in Hebrew thought are one and the same.

The Pharisees get to the point where righteousness means being sure of what is right. Knowing right from wrong, which according to Genesis, is the essence of sin--the desire to know right and wrong. Jesus calls them back to righteousness as justice and mercy instead of just being right. Righteousness becomes doing God's will by loving your neighbor and your enemy. It becomes what it always has been about "doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God."

Jesus continues his conversation about heaven and hell with the Pharisees. And what he continues to point out is that the Pharisees are destroying community and subverting justice with their crusade for moral purity. Thus, they are doing the work of hell instead of the work of heaven. If they wanted their faith to be what God wanted, their faith would be more about loving God and loving neighbor. So, Jesus explains that hell is for those who dont give thirsty people they meet food (Matt. 25). Jesus talks about the kindgdom of God as the goal instead of avoiding hell.

Now, I dont have this all figured out, but this is what I see. The Pharisees define themselves by what they are against. And because they are against everything, they miss the boat. Jesus offers an invitation to be a part of the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom of grace and love. A kingdom that reconciles with neighbors instead of judging them. People that choose to trust Jesus enough to pledge their unwavering allegiance to trustign and following him become a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. And they gain eternal life. People who reject the Kingdom of Heaven get what the result of what choose. Eternity with their lonesome, sinful, neurotic selves, without any of the grace and love of God. What could be worse than that?