Thought of the Day 08.07.09

My boys usually take a two hour nap every evening, waking up to go for our nightly walk. Unfortunately for them, they don’t always go right to sleep when they should, so they’re still very tired when it’s time to get up. Sometimes, even after several efforts to rouse them, they just stay asleep.

Our tactic for handling this is to simply turn the fan back on, turn off the lights, and close their bedroom door, as if to let them sleep through the night. They respond by howling and screaming and immediately emerge to crabbily demand going for a walk.

What’s funny about their reaction is that all we’ve done is give them the fullest version of what they were already choosing. But for whatever reason, that end result was viewed by them as an unbearable punishment, and it elicited the behavior we desired all along.

Unless I am mistaken, this is the proper understanding of the doctrine of hell. And if repentance for any of our seemingly minor sins eludes us, it could be that we’ve simply never been shown their true and ultimate trajectory played out on an eternal time scale.
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4 comments:

Rick Lannoye said...

So the design of the threat of Hell is to get us to behave?

If that's not what you meant, please elaborate further, but if so, I beg to differ.

I talk a lot about this in a chapter on why the doctrine of Hell retards morality in my book--Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There's No Such Place As Hell (you can download a free Ecopy, if you'd like, from my website www.ricklannoye.com).

But briefly, the problem with this idea is that the type of morality you end up with is very, very shallow. At best, it's maybe one rung above the lowest step on the ladder of morality, the one where we find the criminal mind.

In a nutshell, "morality" comes down to, "I'd really like to do bad things, but I'm not going to because someone might catch me and hurt me." There's no inner morality, in other words. Take away the threat of punishment and there's nothing left to keep someone from doing evil.

Far better is an internalized morality, the kind we get when a person comes to understand that, by agreeing to some limits on what we do to one another, we are ALL better off. Once a person takes morality to heart as the best way to live, there's no need for threats.

But the person abused by the fear of Hell never gets to that moral stage and, indeed, the minute they lapse in their belief that God is watching their every move, they do tend to commit many an evil.

August 7, 2009 at 9:46 AM
Andrew Tallman said...

No. But I can certainly understand how you would take that interpretation from what I wrote. I actually worried that someone might mistakenly take this particular lesson from the thought. Clearly, my suspicion was well-grounded.

The point of the thought was that hell is where everything true of us without God comes truer and truer for all of eternity. The reason we put up with seemingly small sins is because we don't see the connection between how that looks right now and how that would look, given a million years to fully grow and develop.

My boys wanted to sleep just enough to not get up but not enough to be deprived of the entire night's activities. Being faced with the end rather than the middle of this path was enough to make them want to act differently. That was (part of) the point.

The other was the simple nature of hell itself. Hell is not a threat meant to get us to behave, but pondering what a small thing in me right now might look given a million years to grow will force me to deal with that small thing immediately and let Jesus eradicate it in me any way He wants to.

I fully agree with you that "you'd better behave or else you'll go to hell" is a pretty lousy basis for developing real virtue. But this is a false notion of what hell really is, albeit an extremely common one.

Hell isn't some externally imposed thing that God adds to us as punishment like a spanking if He happens to catch us doing something verboten. Hell is God finally and permantely allowing us to have everything we want, but without any further help from Him, particularly in restraining the evil things inside of us. And the motivational value of hell comes in finally recognizing just how much of it I already have growing inside of me and being disgusted by that fact enough to feel the need for Christ's sacrifice and to seek His grace in actively curing me.

Seen in that way, hell does have great moral value, not because it threatens us with some extrinsic punsihment, but because it reveals to us an intrinsic potential of ourselves before it becomes full blown and horrifically ugly.

The real question is this: why does God tell us about hell? The answer must be either because it will help us change or because it will more accurately reveal His own nature and beauty to us (or both). I think the two are so intimately connected that I don't have much interest in separating them. So although I would balk at the phrasing "the design of the threat of hell is to get us to behave better" because that seems to affirm the fear-of-punishment-from-outside concept, I think there's at least some merit in the notion of hell as behavior modification, so long as the nature of hell is properly understood. Again, if there is no element of truth in that, there doesn't seem to be as much point in God warning us about it.

August 7, 2009 at 1:36 PM
Chad Borges said...

Hey Andrew,
I enjoy your show most days on the way home from work (Tempe to Avondale). I heard this Thought of the Day today and wanted to ask you a question about it.

But before I ask my question, your comments above reminded me that I wanted to let you know that I took your recommendation of Tim Keller as a good preacher and downloaded about 10 of the free sermons at redeemer.com. I agree with you! His preaching is fantastic and more like him are needed in our culture. Thanks much for the recommendation. (As a side note, a while back I took C.S. Lewis' advice on George MacDonald and was overwhelmingly richly rewarded.)

Anyway, to my question (which is actually MacDonald-like in nature): When your boys wake up crabbily demanding their walk, do you take them on it? Since you describe you actions as a "tactic" for handling them staying in bed, I'm guessing you do.

Is God not a better Father than any of us? Will He not take his children for a walk in the high country once His consuming fire has made them realize the error of them finding their identity in anything but Him?

It seems to me that an affirmative answer to these questions is where your analogy really ought to lead.

I suspect that few conservative Christians agree with you, Pastor Keller and me that hellfire is "natural and not imposed upon us by violence". And I know that very few Christians can agree with me that hellfire is a tool that God uses which He Himself will one day cast into the lake of fire because it will no longer be necessary. But what do you make of the suggestion that this is where your analogy seems to lead?

Best Regards,
Chad

August 7, 2009 at 9:00 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

I'm so glad you are enjoying Tim Keller. I certainly know I have.

As far as hell being a temporary exposure tactic designed to get people to come back to God, you're right in saying that I can't go there with you. However, I will say this, universal salvation (That Jesus will eventually get everybody, freely, sovereignly) is surely the most tempting thing in the world to consider believing. The problem is that the language of permanence is so consistent when the Bible talks about hell, especially when Jesus talks about it, that I can't accept universalism without jettisoning too much of what I see the Bible saying.

I do agree with you that the analogy could be taken to (ultimately) lean in that direction. And if I come to find out that hell is simply God's final shot at showing people who they really are without Him, I would love it to be true. I certainly want no one to go to hell for all of eternity if there is any way to get them to love God for all of eternity instead.

August 18, 2009 at 2:17 PM

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