This is a re-post (with permission) from André-van-der-Merwe’s Face Book page. Often we run across people who have captured the very essence of what we ourselves have been trying to say all along. In this post on why Andre has stopped believing in hell, he himself has summed up my own evolutionary journey. Enjoy.
This is a feeble attempt to explain why my views on this sensitive issue has changed so drastically over the recent weeks. I apologized previously to those who preach this same message and whom I opposed, but I now also want to apologize to those who still believe in “Hell” as a literal place, who feel I have “abandoned” them. I still love you and with this note I will NOT be trying to convince you that I am right. I will simply be sharing what I believe now in the hope that you will understand why I believe what I do. I am still happy to be your friend even if we don’t agree about Hell…
Most people’s view on “Hell” is based on what they read from the Bible. Yes I agree, reading a modern day copy of this “Holy Book” a person can definitely make a strong case that there exists such a place, a literal location of eternal torture. I used to be able to whip out a Bible verse to counter each and every single argument these “anti-Hell people” could bring. I had another question for every answer that they could give. I was a master defender of the Biblical Hell doctrine.
The Bible
It all started a few months ago when I first began asking myself why I so firmly believed the Bible to be the 100% infallible, error-free, God breathed “Word of God”. I also realized that everything I claimed to know about God I had learned from the Bible! Someone, somewhere had taught me that my every single thought about Him has to perfectly align with what is written in that irrefutable Book. Anything I knew about Him that doesn’t align with Scripture needs to be discarded because the Holy Spirit will never show me anything that contradicts the Bible. Really??? A book that has been tampered with, translated, manipulated, translated, interpreted, and “tuned” to fit in with current world views several times??
Anybody who has the courage to do some digging and is not afraid of what they will find, will quickly discover the remarkable lack of evidence that the Bible is totally infallible. Biblical inerrancy is a belief that sprung up after the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers transferred the authority from a man (the pope and the Roman Catholic Priests, Bishops and Cardinals) to a book. The very existence of the Bible in English was something that started with controversy. King Henry VIII who kicked the Pope out of England in the 1520’s for refusing him to divorce from his wife (because she couldn’t bear him a male heir), appointed himself as the head over the church in England and had the Bible translated into English so that he could continue to dominate in the manner the Catholics did, albeit in English. By the time King James I of England had his “authorized version” translated and published in 1611, the church was so full of man-made traditions, beliefs and doctrines inherited from the Catholics, that most people would be horrified if they knew just how tainted their beloved KJV is. And scariest of all, this is the version which is regarded by most people today as the “purest” Bible translation available. The new, conceptual translations are even worse.
Read more about this here:
http://newcovenantgrace.com/organic-church/how-did-the-word-church-make-its-way-into-the-bible-pt2/
So my question to adherents of Biblical inerrancy is this: Which of the following types of Scripture do you prefer? Scripture that is translated, interpreted, conceptualized, literalized, modernized or expounded?
I laughed at this post from a Facebook friend the other day:
Person: “I’m curious, are you a Bible believer?”
Me: “In what sense? I’m not sure exactly what you are asking.”
Person: “Are you a Bible believing follower of the way aka Yeshua? (sola scriptura?)”
Me: “So when you say, “sola scriptura,” do you mean the Greek Scriptures or the Hebrew Scriptures? The Egyptian Hebrew or the Babylonian Hebrew? The Textus Receptus or the Alexandrian or Majority Text? The Septuagint Greek or the Erasmus Greek? The traditional canon or all of the Writings? The original Scriptures or the Scriptures we have today? The NASB or the KJV (or Young’s Literal)? The metaphorical interpretation or the literal interpretation? Or both? The written word or the Living Word? Could you narrow it down for me in exactly what you want to know I believe in?”
So do I still see the Bible as “inspired”? Yes. But so are many other books in my book shelf. God “inspires” today JUST AS WELL as He inspired the original Bible authors. They had no advantage over us (except walking with Jesus in the flesh) and to believe they we more“inspired” is to elevate them like the Catholics do. They were fallible humans who missed it plenty of times. A shining example (just one) is when the Apostles appointed people to “serve tables” because they regarded themselves too important for this (Acts 6). And yet Jesus washed feet…
“But is the problem not only with the translations?” I hear you ask. Can’t we still view the ORIGINAL manuscripts as being FULLY inspired and error-free? No, it can only be as “error-free” as a HUMAN BEING can write down his views, inspired by the Holy Spirit. It’s a fact that the gospels were all recorded more than 2 or 3 decades after the death of Christ. How well can you remember the sermon that was preached at your wedding? I also don’t even think those people ever imagined that their writings would become the corner stone of the Christian faith. I believe Christ always wanted the Holy Spirit to take the lead, a position that I’m afraid is currently occupied by the Bible…
What if the Bible never existed? Imagine if the testimony of Jesus was delivered verbally from generation to generation and we actually walked the earth as God’s LIVING Epistles (yes I got that from the Bible lol). Imagine if the expansion of the Kingdom of God didn’t depend on the communication and interpretation skills of Bible Professionals inside church buildings on Sundays, but actually depended on how effectively the testimony of Christ waslived out in the world. Man, wouldn’t that be something…?
“HELL”
So, if you have managed to read up to here and you are not offended yet, let’s talk about “Hell”.
Most Christians have no issue with the statement that Jesus Christ is the ultimate personification of the nature of God and that He perfectly represented the will of God during His life on earth. So to understand who God the Father is, we simply need to look at the life of Jesus Christ. He healed the sick and delivered the oppressed, loved sinners and opposed the religious crowd. He was always moved by His love for mankind.
That’s who God is. That’s our starting point.
When we encounter anything in the Bible which contradicts this revelation, we have the fullest right to question it and even discard it if we need to. The Bible was written for us, we were never meant to be its slaves! Chances are good that these verses have been misinterpreted or inserted by the translators, many of whom worked under strict orders to translate the Scriptures with a certain “agenda” in mind. But how do we know which verses to trust then and which ones not? Simple: go with the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is the reference point for our faith, not the Bible.
So, with this in mind…
Is it not possible that, along with being taught that the Bible was infallible, we had been taught to read the Bible incorrectly as well? What if Jesus, in the backdrop of first century Jerusalem, was referring to the destruction of Jerusalem (which happened in 70 AD when the city was devastated by the Romans) and not to supposed “end times” when He spoke of “gnashing of teeth” and shared His thoughts about the suffering that was soon to come? We have been waiting for these supposed “end times” for over 2,000 years now, so either Jesus was lying or either somebody has played the greatest hoax on Christians in history!
It also becomes interesting if we challenge the romantic Christian notion that we will be “going to heaven” after we die. What if heaven were actually going to come to earth? What if heaven is a place we are actually already seated in (Eph 2:6) and some people just don’t know it yet?
I now believe that when Jesus spoke of GEHENNA (which has been translated as “Hell”) He was speaking of the burning rubbish dump outside Jerusalem. This “Hell” He was speaking of is a place we can actually go to RIGHT NOW! Here’s an article I wrote on this recently:
So What Happens To People Who Don’t Believe When They Die?
Well, when you take a literal “Hell” out of the equation and you are left with only a loving God who has united the whole world to Himself, you have a bunch of stubborn, forgiven people in the afterlife who will face God in His glory (away from what “Christians” have made Him out to be) and who will see for the first time how much He loves them, and that in Him they have their being. They can then probably still refuse to enter into a relationship with Him if they choose to, but standing in the presence of someone who loves you that much and with nothing to lose other than your pride, I suspect sooner or later you might come to your senses. And for as long as you continue to refuse God’s love for you, you will probably be responsible for your own “suffering” – being haunted by a love you refuse to accept.
Here’s an awesome article about The Rich Man and Lazarus (and Abraham’s bosom) which also initially helped my eyes to open about this whole “Hell” thing:
http://www.mercifultruth.com/lazarus.html
So Why Preach the Gospel Then, if All Are Saved?
Are you serious? So if somebody doesn’t burn in hell, does that mean Christ died for nothing? Did God send Jesus to save us from Himself?
Some of us have never considered any other motive for God wanting to come to the earth in human form, other than needing to “save us from Hell”. What about these:
1) What if He loved mankind so much, that He came in human form to experience what it felt like to be one of us?
2) What if the cross was a display of the length that God would go to, to show us how much He loves us?
3) What if Jesus was killed by the angry, religious mob for coming to show the world what love really looks like?
Does escaping “Hell” really have to be a driving factor for someone to want to enter into a relationship with God? Is our message that void of God’s love that we need to remind people of the alternative if they don’t enter into a relationship with Him?
JUST A THOUGHT: It is recorded that God did not make Hell for Humans beings but rather for fallen angels. Yet we are told God knew all things before time began including the eternal destiny of all humanity. This makes the first statement untrue and dishonest, because to foreknow that a Hell you would create would eventually be for human beings is the same as making it for them. (William T. Langill Jr.)
I hoped this article helped you to understand where I am currently at in this journey. Again, if you didn’t agree with my sentiments, I am not trying to convince you. This was merely an article to help people understand who asked me to explain how I came to change my views so radically.
May I kindly request that you don’t try and convince me of your opposing views by quoting from the Bible, as that would utterly defeat the object of this article?
In Him
Andre
The Unforced Rhythms of God's Grace 