What the Hell is Hell?

Jane of the United States (JOTUS--which is LOL funny) had a great post today about hell. Jane, a red state protestant gave a very Catholic definition of hell. It just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the Catholic Church but ya can't take the Catholic out of the girl.

Many people lampoon the hell out of hell. It’s a place with limitless chocolate chip cookies, but no milk. For the smoker hell is cartons upon cartons of free Marlboros, but no matches. For the suicide bomber hell might be 72 virgins wearing chastity belts, or for the Hare Krishna it might be a place void of boardwalks and airports. For the wine enthusiast hell would be a wine cellar full of the finest Bordeaux but no corkscrews. You get the idea.

The stark truth is that hell is much more frightening than we’d like to believe and infinitely more unpleasant than any satire, but ironically understanding hell is one of the best ways to understand God’s love for each one of us....

The choice between an eternity with God and an eternity separated from him is ours to make, and it lies in Christ alone – not in our church attendance, nor our community service, nor our charitable contributions, those these are worthy things that the Word encourages. In truth, we all live lives worthy of hell and it is only through our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our redeemer that we are saved from an eternity there.

Consider our transgressions as debt that we owe to our Creator. Christ paid this debt in full at Calvary so that when we die, God sees us as sinless and blameless and we are welcome in his kingdom forever. Our debt is gone.

But if we reject Christ and his ultimate act of sacrificial love, then we’ve made the choice to spend eternity in hell separated from God, our sins and unbelief the anchor to our doom.

I think she's right on the money here. But to further Jane's point...there is always something that we choose rather than choosing Christ. We might choose cheap sex over fully relating to someone else. We might choose comfort over working for the needs of the poor. We might choose hatred over loving all people...

And when we do--we distance ourselves from God and choose HELL.

A life of choosing to separate ourselves from God's love, from building the kingdom. For our loving creator always wants and needs and loves us.

What do you choose? And what keeps you from choosing God?

H/t to Jane who was the greatest guard in Fordham basketball history.

Am I Going to Hell?

So I led a retreat about a year ago and was reminded of a moment on the weekend when we talked in a Question Box session about purgatory. I took a survey of the room.

"How many people here think that they are going to heaven?"

Not one hand went up and then sheepishly one person dared to say that she merited heaven.

"OK, how many people think that they're going to hell?"

Immediately about 6 hands went up without hesitation.

I slumped in my chair. Do we all think we're doomed? Is this how little we think of God's love?

Now I suppose, I don't think I merit heaven either--at least not immediately, which I think gives a lot of credence to the church's teaching on purgatory. Innately, perhaps we all don't think that we are perfect, but I also don't think that many of us reallythink that God is going to dump us off to eternal damnation either (although I don't doubt that some of us can indeed choose to ignore God's mercy and refuse to change our own ways in response to that and end up there).

So I'd like to throw this out there to y'all...

What do you think about heaven and hell? Purgatory? Where do you think you'll end up?