My son and I at a community service project last Fall.
This morning, while sitting at the kitchen table, the question that I had expected my son to eventually ask me, was finally asked. After taking the self-applied clip-on tie off of his undershirt, buttoning his top button, and correctly reseting the tie, he looked at me and said:
“Daddy, why don’t you go to church with us?”
Kim happened to be walking down the hall, but she heard the question and raised her eyebrows at me as if to say “He’s your son!” She realized that this was going to be a man to man conversation, and continued to the bathroom to prepare herself for the upcoming church service.
I looked into my son’s earnest eyes, and contemplated his even more earnest question. As many parents do, I weighed the merits of a short answer that would stop his questioning (but be less than truthful), against a more truthful answer than might take a series of answers and explanations about things that he might have trouble wrapping his mind around. Today, I chose to give him the more honest answer.
I told him that it was because of my beliefs. Although the church and I share some of the same beliefs about living a moral life, we differ on so much more. The main difference, as I told my son, was the church’s view of the other, the outsider, the adherent of another faith, and/or the unrepentant sinner. This church (like many others) believes that after death, certain people will end up in some sort of hell. For most of my life, I have believed the same. But in the past few years, for a variety of reasons, I no longer do.
Before explaining anything else to him, I let him know that despite his desire to be just like me in so many ways, his beliefs would have to be his own. Whether my words of explanation will have any more influence on him than my actions, only time will tell. But, I wanted to express to him how personal everyone’s beliefs are, and how they should have some measure of respect.
After describing hell as a place where people were sad and crying for ever and ever, and where God could not/would not ever see them or rescue them, my son replied that he did not want to ever go there. I told him that some people believe that the population of hell is made up of people who deserve to be there. I shared with him my belief in a God who would not create someone who would eventually end up in hell. In fact, I read a great quote in a book by Samir Selmanovic just yesterday:
“I have become convinced that a God who favors me over others is not worth worshipping.”
In the end, my son walked away with a couple of new thoughts about God and hell, and an apparently sufficient answer about why daddy wasn’t going to church.
Really, I just can’t wrap my head around the belief that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and at the same time that God is the creator of this mess that falls short of Him. If God is responsible for the situations in our life that lead us to make choices, then He is also somewhat responsible for those choices. If He is not responsible for those situations, then everything is just chance and chaos. God cannot judge our actions justly if we are all playing with different pieces on often vastly different game boards.
I’m sure that I could say more about this, but I’ll save it for another time.
Not believing in hell is just a stone’s throw away from not believing in “sin”. In light of my Christian upbringing, this is a belief that challenges much of what is commonly understood about the purpose and nature of Jesus, the namesake of Christianity. If there is no hell, and there is no sin, then what was Jesus all about? If he was just a great moral teacher, and not God incarnate, then this changes everything. Depending on what criteria you use to classify a Christian, then you may not consider me one anymore. To be honest, I myself often wonder if I should claim that for myself anymore.
I feel like I’m a sort of religious no man’s land. Where I’m going to end up is unclear (pun intended). I just know where I don’t want to be: In a place where God loves me (enough to give me life in heaven) more than he loves other people (so little that He lets them die in hell). If you’ve found some place where I could find myself more at home, please let me know.
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