I just finished this book by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle. It's called "Erasing Hell: What God said about eternity, and the things we made up."
It was beneficial to learn some things about hell from the book, but I think the most powerful portion of the book dealt with a sovereign God whose ways are not our ways, and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.
He does things we might not do.
He thinks in ways we might not think.
His sense of justice might not match up with our understanding of justice.
This video sums up the portion of the book that I was struck by. Enjoy.
Obviously there's a lot of debate about hell thanks to Rob Bell and "Love Wins".
Francis writes the book as an attempt to understand what scripture clearly teaches on the subject. He does a great job. I learned a lot. I'm not going to give away some of his conclusions, but it is very cool how he humbly and openly approaches the Bible and exegetes rather than eisegetes.
It is a very short readable book that is worth the 3-4 hours it probably took to read.
although the book is about hell, I'm largely walking away with a larger view of God.
He's Bigger,
Stronger,
Wiser,
Higher,
More Just,
and more Loving than I can comprehend from my perspective.
His emphasis on Isaiah 55:8, "My ways are not your ways," was a really good reminder. It's so true that God's views of justice, mercy, and what is right are higher and more perfect than ours... and I guess then it's not our right to question Him based on our own "human reasoning." Makes sense, and makes me think...
ReplyDelete"Moreover, it is so far from being the case that you should help God to learn anew that it is rather he who will help you to learn anew, so that you are weaned from the worldly point of view that insists on visible evidence" - Kierkegaard quote from wikipedia.
-> Is this what you were thinking about with Kierkegaard? The emphasis on remembering how limited our human powers of study and observation are when we realize how much higher God is?
- Ben
Hey, I just posted an article on Kierkegaard. You can see how i connect the dots between him and Chan.
ReplyDelete