cringeworthy

I just had a thought. An obvious one. No aspect of your faith should make you cringe. There should never be an aspect of your faith which you wish wasn't true. It may well be true, and if true it is therefore beautiful, and you will someday see it for what it is. But while it rings false, or unlovely, to hold it as part of your faith is poison.

To cite a personal experience, a non-Christian once asked me if I thought she was going to hell. She didn't ask it in a mean way or a flippant way, but was really asking if it was my opinion that, should she die unbelieving, she would go to hell. I more-or-less refused to answer, leaving such judgments to God (whose grace and justice are both infinitely wiser and greater than my own), and only asserted that Jesus is the way to heaven.

I might be able to answer slightly better now - or at least I've thought about it a bit beyond just absorbing what I was taught - but that's not the point. The point is, I cringed inside, because, essentially my belief at the time was that yes, she probably would go to hell. Understanding of course that it isn't my call, but under what I'd been taught, that would be the expected result.

Now, I do very much believe that if you reject God, by which I mean with your whole being you refuse the light of His truth and love, then yes, you will be separated from God. If there is any punishment inflicted above and beyond the separation you have created, it is (in my opinion) most likely God conforming the external to the internal, possibly even in an attempt to make you see life without Him for what it is. But again, not my point.

The point is, I believed something I didn't want to believe, and it made me cringe. Because no way in a million years would I ever send someone like her to hell. As far as I could see, she was - at least in the common use of the word "good" - a good person who legitimately cared for others. I couldn't make myself believe that she deserved to be punished for ever, least of all for her opinion on the truth or fiction of an account of what happened thousands of years before, and not for anything that really reached to her heart. Now, through the influence of the Spirit, I believe those two things can become related, that the two become at length intertwined - heart and opinion. But they do not appear to be obviously related, and are obviously not very related at all in some.

Anyway, I basically believed sending her to hell would be unjust, at least from my vantage point. I probably would not have admitted it, though. I more openly believe something like it now. What I mean to say is this: there is a vast gulf between saying you are Christian, and living out the Christian faith. I believe it may well be that someone in complete denial of God's existence, yet loving and gracious and serving his fellow man, is miles farther along on that infinite stair to the holy than the man who rests his hat solely on his opinion about what historical events are and are not factual. No doubt in the fullness of time, the soul that loves and serves will believe and see God; the "godly" unbeliever will ultimately see God for the lovely Father that He is.

Here's what I think: we, blinded by sin and pride, cannot understand the full nature of living faith. Otherwise, why does Jesus commend those who did not think of serving him ("When did we visit you in prison?"), and blast those who drove out demons "in his name?" "Get away from me, I never knew you!" He says. Terrifying words, especially since the knowing of him is eternal life. Knowing about Him, however, is not. Our own opinions may be as superficial as any other lie we tell, if they do not reach down to our hearts. May God give us the grace and strength to set ourselves at His feet, and follow wherever He leads us. Comfort zones and prejudices be damned.