{"id":103,"date":"2012-09-18T22:15:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T04:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/?p=103"},"modified":"2012-09-18T22:15:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T04:15:18","slug":"hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"Hell is far from an abstract theological discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A couple of years ago you would have had a hard time convincing me to head out to the theater to watch a documentary featuring a number of Muslim leaders debating the finer points of Islamic theology. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t care about Islam or that I wouldn\u2019t find it interesting. It\u2019s just that I\u2019m not a Muslim. It\u2019s hard enough keeping track of Christianity\u2019s many in-house disputes, never mind those going on in other religions. So while I would appreciate the educational opportunity, I\u2019d have a difficult time seeing it as anything more than an abstract theological discussion. How could it possibly be relevant to my life?<\/p>\n

These days I see things quite differently. I may not be a Muslim, but I live in a world where Muslims make up 1\/6 of the world\u2019s population. And as we are currently witnessing in Libya, Egypt, Sudan and elsewhere, what Muslims believe is hardly an abstract or irrelevant phenomenon. The consequences of their beliefs are all too real. In fact, if we non-Muslims had known better, the violence we are seeing right now\u2014not to mention over the last few decades or centuries\u2014could have largely been avoided. Lives are literally being lost as a direct result of our ignorance.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my upcoming movie Hellbound?, <\/em>a feature-length documentary that looks at the debate Christians are having about hell. At first glance, I\u2019m sure it\u2019s quite easy for many people\u2014including many Christians\u2014to write off the film the same way I would have written off the hypothetical Muslim documentary two years ago. If you\u2019re not on the front lines of this fight, which is occurring mainly amongst Protestant evangelicals, how could it possibly be relevant to you?<\/p>\n

The answer to that question is quite simple: If you live in this world, you live alongside millions of evangelical Christians who believe that one day their God will dispatch everyone who doesn\u2019t share their beliefs to a place of eternal, fiery torment. Think about that for a moment.<\/p>\n

As individuals, these people do not normally resemble the wrathful, violent God in which they believe. Paradoxically, the majority of them are quite kind, loving and generous. I should know; I became a Christian largely because of the love shown to me by such folks when I was a child. I spent decades living within that subculture, and many of my current friends would self-identify as evangelicals. But as Brian McLaren says in his excellent new book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?<\/a>,<\/a> <\/em>the standard evangelical approach to non-Christians is clear: \u201cbe nice to them when necessary in order to convert them to Christianity; otherwise see them as spiritual competitors and potential enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Add to this spiritual competitiveness the fact that they represent some of the wealthiest and most politically powerful people in the nation. Their money, their votes and their theology<\/em> play a key role in shaping America\u2019s policies both at home and abroad. Like the NRA, they are such a powerful group that anyone running for office must genuflect before them if they are to have any hope of survival. Whether you realize it or not, these people and their beliefs about hell, the Second Coming of Christ and so on are having a huge effect on your life. So I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a stretch to say you ignore them\u2014and their theological disputes\u2014at your peril.<\/p>\n

The good news is; the \u201cInfernalists,\u201d as I call those who believe in a hell of eternal torment, aren\u2019t the only game in town\u2014nor have they ever been. As I document in my film, a growing number of Christians from across the theological spectrum are waking up to the excesses of their hell-bound brethren and re-discovering streams within their tradition that lead to an entirely different view of God and our post-mortem fate. They realize that a God who commands us to love our enemies but who then promises to vanquish his enemies in hell isn\u2019t merely a paradox; it\u2019s an outright contradiction. And as A. W. Tozer (who, ironically, was himself an Infernalist) observed, the consequences of this view are far from abstract:<\/p>\n

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.\u00a0The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man\u2019s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God\u2026<\/p>\n

We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not surprisingly, the Infernalists portray those who challenge their beliefs as heretics. Worse, they\u2019ve convinced their followers that to reject the fire and brimstone view of hell is to reject Christianity. However, more and more Christians are starting to conclude that rejecting such a view of hell\u2014and the violence that goes along with worshiping a wrathful God\u2014isn\u2019t to reject Christianity at all. In fact, it may be the only way to truly embrace the teachings of Christ. More importantly, it might just save the world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago you would have had a hard time convincing me to head out to the theater to watch a documentary featuring a number of Muslim leaders debating the finer points of Islamic theology. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t care about Islam or that I wouldn\u2019t find it interesting. It\u2019s just that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[44,4,5,29],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hell-2","tag-documentary","tag-hell","tag-hellbound","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"\nHell is far from an abstract theological discussion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A couple of years ago you would have had a hard time convincing me to head out to the theater to watch a documentary featuring a number of Muslim leaders\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hell is far from an abstract theological discussion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of years ago you would have had a hard time convincing me to head out to the theater to watch a documentary featuring a number of Muslim leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Hellbound\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-19T04:15:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevin Miller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kevin Miller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/\",\"name\":\"Hell is far from an abstract theological discussion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-19T04:15:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-09-19T04:15:18+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/#\/schema\/person\/db30868033d115f8e9437ff0a41917b4\"},\"description\":\"A couple of years ago you would have had a hard time convincing me to head out to the theater to watch a documentary featuring a number of Muslim leaders\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/2012\/09\/hell-is-far-from-an-abstract-theological-discussion\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Hell is far from an abstract theological discussion\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/\",\"name\":\"Hellbound\",\"description\":\"Exploring faith and film, good and evil.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/#\/schema\/person\/db30868033d115f8e9437ff0a41917b4\",\"name\":\"Kevin Miller\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hellbound\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57c261d2c399221c41e4a66d531bd602?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57c261d2c399221c41e4a66d531bd602?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kevin Miller\"},\"description\":\"Kevin Miller is an award-winning screenwriter, director and producer who has applied his craft to numerous documentaries, feature films and shorts. 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