"If you died today, are you sure that you would go to Heaven?" Growing up Evangelical that was the ultimate question. Perhaps the defining mark of Evangelicalism, of all religion, is the reducing of all of life to an answer to a question, to some final thumbs-up or thumbs-down which makes everything else insignificant. And that is kind of my problem. I don't want everything else to be insignificant. I don't want the beauty and the poetry and the love and the pain, the dreams and the sacrifices to be reduced to a calculation of an almighty bookkeeper.
When Jesus walked this earth, He talked more than probably anyone else ever has about the Judgment and about damnation. He painted graphic pictures of acceptance and rejection. I think that all of the rest of us are rather uncomfortable with these ideas. He may well have been the only man of us to be completely comfortable with the facts of salvation and damnation. It is incumbent on the religious to stigmatize anyone who views these subjects differently than we do. Arminians condemn Calvinists and vice versa. Catholics condemn sola fide, and we condemn the idea of adding works to what Christ has done. And of course, every one of us condemn Universalists.
Many people don't believe that there is anyone who will be saved, for convenience sake let's call them Buddhists, because it seems to me that making the annihilation of the self the ultimate hope is essentially admitting that every existence is damnation. Some don't believe that there is anyone who will not be saved, Universalists. Christianity sides with the majority of human beings in rejecting both of these positions, with the idea that some will be saved and some damned. I say the majority of human beings because almost every one of us is certain that there will be a cut and that we need to make the cut. There are of course as many theories on how this cut will be made as there are human beings. The ubiquity of this position, to me, suggests that Universalists and Buddhists are entitled to a high level of respect simply for having the integrity to maintain such unpopular positions.
The Question; "If you died today, are you sure that you would go to Heaven?"
The Formulas:
"I won't and neither will anyone else"-Buddhism
"People who believe in Jesus will. I believe in Jesus therefore I made the cut." -Evangelicalism
"People who believe in Jesus and live right will. I believe in Jesus and I think with good works, penance, forgiveness, and prayer I will make it." -Catholicism
"I will because everyone will." -Universalism
All of us believe in one of these formulas, or one essentially like them. We may change between them, but I believe that these positions represent pretty well all of humanity. I vacillate between the evangelical and universalist positions. Many go between evangelical and catholic understandings. But we all eat, sleep, and breathe our formulas. I condemn all of these formulas, and those, including me, who hold to them. Because every single one is an addition to the great principle of Scripture, Christ Alone, and a reduction of life to something less than life, a substitution of our creation for His Creation.
God, whatever we believe, did not make this great pageant and panoply of life just to reduce it to a sum of credits and debits. Whatever is to judge life, must itself be greater than life, and no formula, no law, is greater than life. "Man was not made for the Sabbath(the representative of all laws and formulas), but the Sabbath for man" Man was not made for the judgment. But there is a judgment and it was made for man. Just as God made a law for our benefit, He makes a judgment for our benefit. For this reason, all judgment is committed to the Son of Man, the only One who is fully alive and greater than life itself. We can't know who will make the cut, but we can trust that the One who does the cutting does it not as a butcher but as a gardener pruning for the benefit not just of the totality but for the benefit of the one pruned. I know that some men will go to Hell, and that I am probably in their number, and I am convinced that that is where we belong.
We treat everyone and everything around us as an object, that is we believe that the good of the things and people that we objectify can be sacrificed for some greater good, whatever that may be. But this is an artificial scarcity. There is really enough goodness in Christ for everyone to have what is best for them individually and collectively. To Him nothing is an object that can be sacrificed for the benefit of others. Anything He burns, He burns only to bring it to the fullness of itself, to perfect each existence.
To anyone who will not accept this, my answer is that damnation is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. It is justice, and holy and just and good like the Law. The only thing better than Law is Grace. Law, and Hell, beats the pants off of anything else. Especially most of what we have experienced in this life. To be left as we are, to never experience the gracious judgment which is His presence would be far worse than Hell. So, I want to leave us without any answers, but not without certainty and not without comfort. Our certainty is not based on some bargain, some formula, for that would be mere law, but on the faith that He will give to everyone what is best for them. Not faith that He will decide the way we want Him to, but that the decision is entirely in His hands and that that is the ultimate cause for celebration.
In Christ Alone
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