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God Is Dead
False Images of God
Ronald Stanley, O.P.
False Images
God is dead. God is dead in the lives of so many people. Not
necessarily bad people. People who have been turned off by a God eager to
cast them into eternal hellfire for failing to visit Him on Sunday, or for
an act of masturbation.
God is dead in the hearts of so many. Not evil people. People disgusted
by a God of "love" who encourages crusades, inquisitions, religious wars,
and nuclear warfare to crush infidels, heretics, and atheists. How can you
love a God like that? God is dead. And He was killed, not by His enemies,
not by publicans and sinners, but by His friends, by self-righteous
Pharisees and religious people.
To be sure, there are people who kill God in order to dethrone Him, to
become their own gods, to decide for themselves what is good and what is
bad (Gen 3:5). But often the god they are killing is no god at all, but
rather a false idol. It is a grisly caricature of God created by His
friends, by misguided preachers of hellfire and holy wars, and by well
meaning parents who threaten: "God is going to punish you if you do that!"
That false god does not exist, never has, except in troubled minds.
That false idea of God needs to die. First, because it is an idol, a
blasphemy that turns people away from the living God. Second, because we
tend to become like the God we adore. When we imagine a vindictive god
righteously damning his enemies to a hell inferno, we can very easily
imagine that we too are no longer bound by the command to "love your
enemies." We can self-righteously condemn our enemies to the death penalty
or to weapons of mass destruction. It's vitally important for us to have a
correct image of God.
Re-Imaging God
If God is love (1 Jn 4:8), how can God damn sinners to hell? The
answer: God doesn't! God can't damn anyone to hell. Love keeps no record
of wrongs (1 Cor 13:5, Heb 8:12).
Jesus was always trying to change people's vengeful image of God. He
refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:1-11). He repeatedly
preached about a forgiving, father-like God Who never gives up on His
sinful son (Lk 15). In His death agony, Jesus forgave His enemies who were
crucifying Him, and a criminal at the moment of his death (Lk 23:34, 43).
Could a loving mother forget the child of her womb? Our Judeo-Christian
tradition teaches us that even if she could, our mother-like God would
never forget us (Is 49:15). Would a loving family or friends leave a
suicidal person to his or her worst self? Would they not do everything
possible to enter into that person's hell to save him or her from
self-destruction? How could the God of infinite love do any less? The
Bible (1 Pet 3:19f) and the Creed teach us that not only was Jesus one
with us in death, but that He even descended into hell, Peter tells us, to
preach to sinners there! God is adamantly unwilling to leave us to
our own worst selves.
Some Christians find it hard to imagine a loving God permitting anyone
to self-destruct forever in hell. They note all the Scriptures that reveal
God's desire to ultimately save us all (Rm 5:18; 11:32; 1 Cor 15:22; 1 Tim
2:4; 4:10; Col 1:20; Tit 2:11; Rev 5:13). They see the texts which refer
to eternal punishment as examples of Semitic hyperbole, not meant to be
taken literally, but rather to emphasize the supreme importance of become
aware of our destructive behavior.
The Greek word for punishment used in the Bible originally meant the
pruning of trees to make them grow better. God cannot permit vengeful
punishment, but God does allow the corrective punishment necessary to
purify our capacity to grow in love. God is not a softy. God does permit
some of the negative consequences of our evil actions to come back to us.
We are such hardheaded creatures that oftentimes this is the only way we
learn. What goes around, does come around.
Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a
person will reap only what he sows, because the one who sows for his
flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the
spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit. (Gal 6:7f )
To the degree that we refuse to learn in this life, then in the next
life God's just judgement will shine the brilliant light of truth upon us,
stripping us of our masks and denials, exposing our true selves. We will
then know, without having to be told, whether or not God's love lives
within us. God will not damn anyone to hell. If people do go to hell it is
only because they have knowingly and willingly chosen to separate
themselves from God's love. Hell is like a room with the lock on the
inside. Given our self-destructive weakness, hell is certainly a
possibility for us. But given the power of God's love, heaven is a far
greater probability.
Long Live God!
We need to take great care not to project our human cruelty and
vindictiveness onto God. The god who damns, or who condones vengeful
punishment of enemies, is dead. That god is dead.
We need to let Jesus' living God love us. Jesus' atonement on the
cross, His at-one-ment with our weakness and suffering, reveals that His
God's compassion has no limits, nor should ours. Long live our loving,
living God!
Ronald Stanley, O.P., is a chaplain at The Catholic Center at
Rutgers University. We appreciate him granting permission to use
this article on the CRI/Voice web site.
-Ronald Stanley, Copyright ©
2018 , Ronald
Stanley, All Rights Reserved
This page and its contents Copyright ©
2018 , Christian Resource Institute
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On
the reference in 1 Peter to "preaching to the spirits in prison," see
Sheol, Hell, and the Dead
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