Questions From Without: Hell and Reading the Bible

Anytime someone reads the Bible they come to it with a set of expectations. Every single person brings prejudices, insights, wisdom, ignorance, good methods and bad to reading the Bible. Many times in our 21st century existence we forget that there are 20 centuries between us and those who wrote the texts we read. Often we simply lift the texts out, transporting them over the centuries into our modern existence without any translation or context. This can cause us to go horribly wrong in our interpretations. We all want it to speak to us. Often all of these expectations and methodologies end up keeping us from understanding. Every approach has its limits. There is no "right way" to read the scriptures. But there are better ways to read it than ohters. This requires great discernment and good mentors and a lot of honesty.

We are going to look at a way of reading the passages on Hell, suggested by Brian McLaren in chapter 19 "Homework Assignment" in The Last Word and the Word After That. It's a method that I believe allows us to let the passages to speak for themselves. This is Lewis's point, let the text speak and learn from it without imposing your expectations and needs on it. We can't do this perfectly but we can approximate it. Here is McLaren's method:

"Make a table with four columns, headed 'Passage,' 'Behavior,' 'Consequence,' and 'Point.' Read through Matthew, and note each passage that deals wit the subject of judgment (not just the passages that explicitly mention hell of Gehenna or Hades). Then note the behavior that will be judged, along with the consequence that follows that behavior. Then try to identify the point: what is the rhetorical purpose of the passage?
Here's what I think you'll find.
1. Our contemporary modern Western conservative Protestant gospel would say this:
Behavior: Not accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior, not being saved or born again, not asking Jesus
into your heart so your sins can be forgiven, etc.
Consequence: Being sent to hell.
Point: Accept Jesus as your personal Savior.
2. Not one passage from the Gospels says anything remotely like this."

We're going to use this method. If you would like to try it on your own that would be exceptional, but if you trust McLaren not to misquote the scripture, then we'll simply use his table from the above chapter.

The next few blogs will look at how this works. One of the things to know is how the people of Jesus' day viewed hell. Each of the principle religious groups of Jesus' time had a different way of approaching this concept. Hell was in no way accepted by all the religious people of that time. It took centuries for it to become something like what we have today. Remember we can't simply understand a text in our own time without understanding it first in Jesus' time. We will need to know how the Sadducees look at a text and how the Pharisees would view it. There are other groups like the Herodians and more. So I will comment on them as their views are addressed in different texts.

The hard thing for us is to set aside our agendas so we can listen to the biblical agenda. Wouldn't it be best to get close to what God wants of us, rather than to make God get close to what we want?

Comments

[Scott Truman]

Craig,

Ok, I'll bite, please apply McLaren's four columns, (Passage, Behavior, Consequence, and Point) to Mathew 13:37-43, Matthew 25:31-46, and John 3:10-21

Scott