Beyond the Abyss 3

Sharon Baker’s approach to the problems with hell is the “image” of God at work in hell. The essence of her argument then is this: the image of God conveyed in the traditional view of hell is inconsistent with the Bible’s emphasis on God as a God of love and forgiveness and grace. Don’t be tempted to dismiss this simply as an old argument; the issues remain vital.

In chp 2 of Sharon Baker’s Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment, we encounter these texts and I want to mention them and then ask a question:

2 Sam 6: poor old Uzzah is struck down for touching the ark.

Exod 12: God — through the avenging angel — kills all the firstborn of the Egyptians.

2 Sam 24: God sends a pestilence in which 70,000 die just because David took a census.

1 Sam 15: God tells Saul to kill all the Amelekites, including women and children.

1 Kings 22: God sends a lying spirit to entice Ahab.

Numbers 16: God kills Korah and his descendants.

Deut 7:2: God promises to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan.

And who can forget Noah’s ark.

Now the questions: How do you explain these? Are these “right”? What is your best explanation for such events? Do you think God brought death in these events?Sharon Baker gives four typical Christian explanations, and now we ask which of these do you prefer?

1. Divine immunity: What God does is good, regardless of how it looks to us.

2. Higher reasons: God has good reasons even if we don’t know what they are. (Thus, we are all sinners anyway so we all deserve to die.)

3. Greater good: God sometimes commands “bad” things because God has a greater good in mind. Look at the bigger picture.

4. Progressive revelation: God worked like that in the OT times because that is how those folks thought and did things. Eventually, over time, God unfolds a clearer picture of who he is.

She then turns to the New Testament where she contends the image of God punishing his Son evokes a vengeful, violent God. She sees here the “myth of redemptive violence,” which is a myth because violence doesn’t redeem; it creates more violence.