Beyond the Abyss 6

What does the image of God look like when we begin afresh from Jesus?

In Sharon Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment, that question is asked. Here’s how she puts it: “And as we we construct an alternate view of hell and read the Bible through one specific lens [the Jesus Lens], we will choose to pay more attention to verses that more consistently harmonize with the life and teachings of Jesus” (76).

We all pick and choose, she says, and I agree with her. The question is “how do we learn to pick and choose so that we read the Bible/history the way the Bible writers/persons read?”

How do we avoid being arbitrary in this conscious “picking and choosing”? What are the alternatives?

She opens this chp with a clear and compelling sketch of the compassionate God of the Old Testament. Then she turns to Jesus, where we see God most clearly in all of the Bible.

Sermon on the Mount — beatitudes, etc — to the peace of God in Christ (Luke 2:14) to the gentle and lowly (Matthew 11:28-29) … and Jesus’ healing of the sick etc and his teachings on forgiveness and turning the other cheek where Jesus clearly recategorizes — sabotages? — the law of retaliation … to the kingdom has come.

These, she is saying, are the themes we are to use in constructing our understanding/image of God. These images of compassion, peace, love, justice, and kingdom tell us what God is like.

She asks a question, and I ask you the same question for today:

“Do we ever see Jesus — or Paul, for that matter — advocating violence or retribution in the Gospels? No! Violence and retribution do not fit into the gospel message or into the ethics of God’s kingdom. How can the violence and evil of an eternal hell be part of God’s plan for anyone?” (79)

Agree or not? Why or why not?