What My Granddaughter Taught Me About Hell

I have three grandchildren.  To save some time, today I will just tell you about our oldest.  She is 4 years old, quite tiny, and often shy around strangers and, especially men.  She reminds me of what my parents told me about myself when I was a little boy.  They said that I would hide under the table when people came over to visit.  Hollyn is like that that – even with me.  She occasionally does things with me, but mostly she interacts with my wife, her Mimi.

She hasn’t ever fully engaged with me — which, in a sense, feels like rejection.  If I chose to, I could classify it as rejection and react strongly to it.  I choose to accept it for what it is because I love her and my daughter and spouse counsel me to be patient and not take it too personally.

I mention this because the typical belief in Western Christianity is that there are serious consequences for rejecting God.  God is portrayed as Father, but if we reject him, the punishment is hell, which usually means that we will be tortured forever (eternal conscious torment).  We could have a big ole conversation about this, but I’ll leave that to people like Keith Giles and the other theologians.  I just mainly want to express that my views have changed.

They began to change when I watched the Sophia scene in the movie, The Shack.  When the main character tries to decide which of his children will be tortured forever, he can’t make that decision.  That changed my view as well.  I can’t even imagine torturing my children for 5 minutes, much less for eternity.

In a sense, Hollyn has rejected me.  She still loves coming to our house.  She lets me buy her stuff and occasionally she wants to do a project with me.  But right now she doesn’t want the same relationship with me that she does with Laura (Mimi).  Like her mother, eventually she might also say “I hate you” as most teenagers do.  Then, she may or might not want me to participate in various parts of her life.

But, for me to even get angry or jealous would be an immature thing to do.  To retaliate or become retributive would be even more dysfunctional and destructive.  Do you see where I’m going?

Even if Hollyn full out rejected me and didn’t want anything to do with me, I still would not hurt her or let anyone else hurt her because I love her. I no longer can imagine God torturing us forever just because we reject him or don’t believe in him.  If God tortures people forever for rejecting him, then He is not holy, He’s deranged and psychotic.  I don’t believe in hell because I think God loves us, sort of like I love my granddaughter.

Laura says that Hollyn taught her unconditional love just by being born — For different reasons, I feel the same way.

By the way, Hollyn calls me Papa (the same name for God in The Shack).  I just realized that.

It’s a shame that our view of hell is very foundational for most of us, and I understand that changing this view is difficult and sometime traumatic.  It was for me, because so many things were attached to it.  Even though it wasn’t easy to work through this, it was worth it — and probably one of the best things to ever happen to me because it took away much of the fear and helped me pursue what was of love’s kind.  In the long run, it’s going to help me love Hollyn better and accept her just the way that she is!

Be where you are, Be who you are,

Karl Forehand