We think of heaven and hell as realms outside our current existence. We spiritualize them and think of them as end of age things. But scripture shows us a more complex understanding of heaven and hell. In fact, there is good evidence that many times the words translated for heaven or hell mean things in the here and now. It is more comfortable to consider heaven and hell as things outside our experience because we can ignore them. Of course, we can also abuse heaven and hell by using them for manipulation and control. Heaven and hell are way more imminent than we may think. Christians are tasked with bringing heaven on earth with the implication that heaven pushes out hell. This is part of the Lord’s Prayer;
“Pray, then, in this way: Our Father in heaven, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. (Mt 6:9–13 NRSVue)
May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
God doesn’t bring the Kingdom with a word, but with a people. We are to work at bringing heaven to earth as new creation. Our carrying the image of God is to reflect that image into the world and seek to make the world a better place for all. We are co-creators with God in new creation in revealing goodness.
Bringing Hell
All too often, we bring hell rather than heaven. Jesus gives a warning to the Pharisees and others in Luke 13. In this passage, Jesus mentions Galileans being killed by Pilate in a riot and then deaths caused by the tower of Siloam falling and then says the same fate will befall those who do not repent. But the point is more about how they were engaging in bringing hell. Brian Zahnd has an excellent paragraph about this in his book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God. In chapter six, Zahnd discusses the Luke passage:
For a host of reasons many people have been trained to read references to an afterlife hell into this passage. They assume Jesus is saying something like, “Yes, some people were killed by Pilate and others were killed in a building collapse, but I tell you, unless you repent you’re all going to hell when you die.” But that’s not what Jesus says at all. Jesus is not talking about hell, or at least not an afterlife hell. Jesus isn’t talking about what happens to people when they die. Jesus is talking about an avoidable threat in this life. In effect Jesus is saying, “Unless you rethink everything, embrace the way of peace that I am teaching, and abandon your hell-bent flight toward violent revolution, you’re all going to die by Roman swords and collapsing buildings.” This is exactly what happened forty years later when the city collapsed under the bombardment of Roman catapult balls (hundred-pound hailstones) and more than half a million people were killed by Roman swords. Jerusalem had become hell — a horridly real and literal hell! (Zahnd ch 6)
This warning is good to keep in mind in passages about obeying governments because it is more about the ways we plunge hell-bent into violence than saying we should obedient in all things. Peaceful and non-violent resistance is completely within the realm of new creation thinking. What happens when Christians ignore the suffering or bring hell to earth rather than heaven? We lose our saltiness. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” (Mt 5:13 NRSVue) We enter into hell ourselves when our saltiness is lost - pun intended.
If we continue in this context of Luke 13 being about bringing hellish acts upon ourselves and others, how differently do we see Matthew 7? Following the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus shows how the world is upside down and to turn it right again requires a different attitude and a complete rethinking of power, he discusses the path to destruction. Zahnd looks at this in chapter six as well.
“Jesus taught that the Golden Rule is the narrow gate that leads to life. The narrow gate is not a sinner’s prayer but a life of love and mercy. The way of self-interest that exploits the weak is the wide road to destruction; the way of co-suffering love that cares for the weak is the narrow road that leads to life. At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said it like this:”
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.… Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:12–14, 21) (ibid)
In this greater context, Andrew Root’s claim about evangelism is perfect: “Evangelism in these sad times is ultimately the confession that God meets us in our human sorrow and through our sorrow takes our person into Jesus’s own person. This is good news! Through the art of shared sorrow we participate in the being of God and bring the good news to the world.” (Andrew Root, Evangelism in an Age of Despair)
What does it look like to exist in a hell right now? We can look to genocides, starvation, wars, and oppression. But we can also look at how literature speaks into this. Specifically the Professor writing in the Lord of the Rings. The description of Mordor shows what bringing hell does to the land.
Frodo looked round in horror. Dreadful as the Dead Marshes had been, and the arid moors of the Noman-lands, more loathsome far was the country that the crawling day now slowly unveiled to his shrinking eyes. Even to the Mere of Dead Faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come; but here neither spring nor summer would ever come again. Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light. They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor: the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing – unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion. ‘I feel sick,’ said Sam. Frodo did not speak. (LOTR 631–632)
Or to Saruman’s remaking Isengard in the image of Mordor:
It is the orc-work, the wanton hewing – rárum – without even the bad excuse of feeding the fires, that has so angered us; and the treachery of a neighbour, who should have helped us. Wizards ought to know better: they do know better. There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men bad enough for such treachery. Down with Saruman!’ (LOTR 485–486)
Bringing Heaven?
Wanton destruction and using the land as a resource to be plundered leads to hell. But what about bringing heaven? Bringing heaven is being with people in their sorrow and working to push hell back from their doorsteps. What does that look like? We can look at Matthew 25 for a clue.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’
Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’
Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.” (Mt 25:31–46 NRSVue)
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ “
It is tempting to read Matthew 25 individually as pertaining to me rather than us. But, the first century Jewish context and the text are speaking to plural groups. The nations is all peoples. That includes literal nation states. If we truly pray “your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” how can we sit idly by when people are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, or detained? How can we sit silently or worse when the government is allowing a food safety net to be ripped out from under already struggling Americans?
It is hard not to see the looming hell rolling down upon us. The United States Congress explicitly set aside dollars for SNAP and other programs in case of a government shutdown or other emergency. There is no need for SNAP to stop because the government is not “open.” So when Rep. Mike Johnson stands at a podium and claims there is nothing he can do to keep SNAP funded and it is out of his hands, he is lying. Rep. Johnson may as well have the Eye of Sauron blazing from behind him as he claims there are no “dials” to be turned. There is a dial just for this already authorized by the legislative branch of the U.S government. It is hard not to assume that pain is the point. Christ followers should look deep inside our collective consciences for empathy and compassion regardless of who we voted for. If we can give billions of dollars to foreign governments, we can damn well keep money flowing to hungry Americans.
Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry? I was hungry and you called me lazy I was hungry and you called me vermin I was hungry and you said, but the left I was hungry and you saw me as other and unworthy
I worked in the non profit feeding sector and know a few things about hunger. One is that SNAP beneficiaries are predominantly working adults or children. The jobs, sometimes multiple, are not sufficient to feed families. Food banks and churches can really only step in for so long and then only as emergency assistance. The federal government has economies of scale and the obligation to fund programs per laws passed by Congress. We the people do have influence and can speak to our members of Congress. Sadly, I already see Christian influencers working tirelessly to demonize SNAP and the image bearers who receive SNAP benefits. God help us all.
Are we bringing heaven or are we bringing hell?
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. Illustrated edition. Houghton Mifflin, 2021.
Zahnd, Brian. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News. First edition. WaterBrook, 2017.