Heaven & Hell
My Dear People,
"And that 'peace' will take us straight to hell."
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I hadn't planned on saying it, but... regardless, it was now said...
And while I had a moment, after the fact, of wondering if I had let my emotions throw me off kilter (i.e., did I speak in a way that wasn't really a true reflection of what I believe?), the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had in fact spoken what I do indeed believe.
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In the Episcopal Church (as in "mainline churches" in general), we don't spend a lot of time talking about hell. And that's probably, for the most part, a good thing. However, I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing.
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Why don't we talk about hell?
I think it's above all because we don't know what we believe about it.
Secondly, we're embarrassed by it, by hell. (Which, incidentally, is, it seems to me, closely related to our not knowing what we believe about it. Embarrassment doesn't tend to promote curiosity or clarity of thought.) The idea of hell just seems so crude, so primitive, so pre-modern, so unenlightened. And a part of that is all those fundamentalists who preach damnation, hellfire, judgment etc., often in tandem with a seeming stark lack of self-reflection, humility, and compassion: thus hell embarrasses us, to some degree anyway, because we don't want to be associated with the sort of people who seem so interested in talking about it.
Thirdly, in a word, it's just so much more pleasant to talk about heaven. Of course. (I mean, who doesn't like cherubs?)
Fourthly, in some respects at least, judgment makes us uncomfortable. This is natural, to a certain extent anyway.
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All of that said, what about hell?
The word itself comes from an Old English word (which, in turn, is rooted in German, and before that Latin, and before that Greek) for "conceal." Hell is the place of concealment, the place where things are hidden away. Some traditions depict hell as dark and cold.
Augustine said that there is no such thing as evil per se. Evil is only the absence of good, he said, as cold is the absence of heat. Likewise, hell is the absence of heaven. Hell is about absence, emptiness, loss.
In the Lord's Prayer, we pray that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Where God's will is done, there is heaven. Where God's will is not done, there is hell.
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"The peace that would take us straight to hell" (see above) is the false peace that would have us avoid "difficult" subjects, be it sexism, poverty, or the plague of gun violence in our country, and in our city.
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Heaven is where peace reigns. Hell is where we settle for violence or for the false peace of avoidance and denial.
Heaven is where moral courage is. Hell is where moral cowardice is.
Heaven is where kindness is. Hell is where unkindness is.
Heaven is where compassion is. Hell is where hard-heartedness is.
Heaven is where generosity is. Hell is where greed is.
Heaven is where joy is. Hell is where despair is.
Heaven is where God is. Hell is wherever God's children have turned their backs on one another.
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And wherever Hell is, Heaven, like a dense and bright cloud bank, hovers and builds and gusts, waiting to blow right in, sweeping away the darkness and the cold.
And God waits for us, for you and for me, to throw the doors wide open.
Your
brother in Christ,
Wallace+
