Yesterday morning Kevin Miller and his production crew for the documentary Hellbound? visited me at my home to talk.   I won’t share everything we discussed (see the movie in 2012!) but there was one question Kevin asked me that I wanted to write about here.  I think it gets to the heart (at least one of them) of our defense of hell while exposing our misunderstanding of heaven.

Kevin asked me how I would address the cruel torture and stoning of a young Afghan woman whose final dying breath was one filled with sand while being buried alive.    What becomes of her killers?   Is is right that they get the same reward as she?

I can imagine at least three options.

The first one is consistent with the more traditional, evangelical view of the after-life.   In this scenario, all of the above – the young woman and her killers – spend eternity in hell together because presumably, being Muslims in Afghanistan, they don’t know Jesus.   They are all damned.   End of discussion.

Some people have a problem with option 1, however (in the same way they have a problem placing the 6 million Jews Hitler killed in a hell with their oppressor), and argue that God may have mercy on the young woman.   She will have a chance to enter Paradise.   Her ruthless, unrepentant killers, however, will get their just desserts.

We tend to like option #2 because it lines up well with our sense of justice and mercy.   The victim finds peace and comfort while the perpetrators of crimes against her get punished.   It is capital punishment extended beyond this life only better:  Death will not deliver the guilty.   They will be sustained (by God?) for ever and ever to become the tormented.   Granted, there are others who demure on the eternal torture part and argue for annihilation.  Capital punishment is swift and sure.  God is both Judge and Executioner.

Each of the 2 options above appeal to my most carnal desires.   I have to admit that my sinful self would love nothing more than to see either all those different from myself receive far less than myself or for those who wrong me to be punished.   Revenge is the quickest and often most cathartic form of justice I know and want.

It’s all very human of me.    But not at all Christian.

I believe God is up to something more radical than just appeasing my most base desire for revenge.  I believe God desires to see all of Creation reconciled not only with God but with each other.   Forgiving our tormenter, not tormenting those who wrong us, is the way of Jesus.   It is the way towards lasting peace and wholeness.

One day either this will be true…

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.  The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.  The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. (Isa 11:6-8)

….or it will not.

One day the killers of the young Afghan woman, the person who robbed you of your dignity, the bully in your school, the spouse who cheated on you, the rich who exploited you, the poor who took advantage of you, the terrorist who bombed you, the uncle who abused you, the thief who stole from you, the racist who denied you will either suffer for eternity or wash our feet….and we theirs.

One day we will either celebrate their demise or be reconciled around the Throne of Grace.

If Heaven is anything less than this sort of radical reconciliation then it isn’t Heaven.

It’s just more of the same of what we already have.