This all comes from the book A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. If you have not read this book I strongly encourage you to do so.
BUT, anyways, in chapter 10 the two main characters of the book are discussing heaven and hell. One character is talking from a postmodern viewpoint says that maybe Heaven and Hell are not two different locations. They quite possibly are mindsets and were talked about as places so that we could better understand the concepts.
The character says that he believes that the God he knows loves the human race too much to believe that God would send the "unsaved" to Hell. Therefore he proposes that everyone goes to one place after this life (He doesn't talk on how they get there so I wont guess on that). However, the Heaven and Hell concept come in here. If a person has used their life on earth to experience God and been open to loving and pursuing Gods mercy and justice and goodness then this place will be "Heaven" to them. They will be able to experience God in such a capacity and see love and goodness all the time. On the other hand the people who have spent their life against God and fighting love and goodness will be tormented throughout eternity even though God will be present. Because they will be opposed to the holiness of God it will be "Hell" for them to be present...
Thoughts?
please don't only take my view for this idea. Please read A new kind of christian.
But I really do want to hear your thoughts.
This concept makes a lot of sense to me. We always say that God is omnipresent...and yet we think that Hell is a place where He is vacant? I dont know.
ok, that's all that I can say on the topic. I apologize if this is confusing. i, myself am still exploring these ideas....
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2 years ago
You know I love these questions that you are exploring. I always wonder...what are my assumptions and the assumptions (as a Western culture and the modern Church) we have about Heaven/Hell, justice, judgment, etc. I love Brian’s invitations to test assumptions, to engage Scripture in its narrative form, and ask ourselves some authentic questions about our view of God. I found this article a while back and it may shed light on Brian’s view. He never seems to force agreement but invites engagement, which you are inviting here also. Way to go Chelsea! This is a link to an interesting interview with McLaren and Campolo….
ReplyDeletehttp://www.outofur.com/archives/2006/05/brian_mclarens.html