H-E-double hockey stick

"What do you think about heaven and hell?"

Certainly not a fun conversation starter.

And, for me, certainly not something that I would talk about with anyone other than my closest friends. In light of that, writing about it in a place where everyone can read my thoughts on the subject feels uncomfortable at best.

What I believe about heaven is that it is a place where the bride of Christ, his church, will finally be reunited with her bridegroom.

What I believe about hell is that it is a place that is devoid of the presence of God.

Now, as to whether these places are literal, I don’t know. If by literal, we are asking if it they are places that can be physically experienced, I don’t know. What I do know is that we will experience them in the body that we have at that time. We don’t know what we will be like at that point, but whatever we are, whether spirit or body, will experience these things that we only know of in the objective currently.

For another, somewhat related question: what will happen to people who die without a saving knowledge of Christ? Will they go to heaven or hell?

I believe that if I, as a fallen human being made in the image of God feel injustice in the damnation of an individual who has not heard or understood the gospel, that God, who has complete knowledge will make a decision that is perfectly just. He knows the thoughts and motives of every individual. He knows if someone has not heard the gospel or why another person has rejected the gospel. He will make a decision based upon his perfect knowledge of the internal processes that brought that person to where they are.

In the same way that there will be people at judgment who are surprised when God tells them to depart because he “never knew them,” I believe that there will be people who are saved that we may not have expected.

We don’t know what it will be like when we are there, and we don’t know who will be there. We know that God is sovereign and just and he will judge the living and the dead. The rest is up to him.

Baking and Sanctification

Have you ever had the feeling that the answer you are giving is too simple? That maybe you don’t understand all of the factors or that you don’t have all of the information? That’s how I feel about the issue of sanctification. I just don’t know. There’s not enough information for me to make my decision.

This time, rather than debate if it is God or man does the work, I have been thinking about a couple other questions that stem from that—depending upon which way you answer.

If you believe that sanctification is God’s responsibility, how is it possible that there are people who have been Christians their whole lives who seem very far from sanctification? I think that the easiest answer to this question is that the process of sanctification is not the same as baking a cake: you don’t have a certain number of ingredients in certain amounts that take a specific amount of time. Sanctification can be achieved through many different circumstances in many ways and over many different amounts of time. As humans, we cannot truly understand the processes that another individual is going through as a part of their sanctification. Nor can we judge how long they must be “baked” or sanctified.

On the other hand, maybe, if sanctification is the responsibility of the person, and not God, maybe that is why there are so many people who seem that they ought to be sanctified by now who are not. As with any circumstance, a person is not going to complete a task if they do not even know that it is their responsibility. If people do not know that sanctification is their own responsibility, there is very little chance that they will actively be working on their own sanctification.

So, what is to be done? Perhaps, rather than expending energy on trying to decide the issue, we ought to be using that energy towards our own sanctification. If it’s God’s responsibility, it’s not going to hurt his efforts to have us working towards his goal for us; and, if it is our responsibility, it’s about time we do something about it.

A little light reading

Have you ever heard the term “christianese”? I’ve heard it defined as a word that is uniquely Christian—something that people outside of the church are not going to use in everyday conversation. Words like mercy and grace both fall into this category, but one that even a life-long Christian may have trouble defining is sanctification.

According to dictionary.com, sanctification is “to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate.”

Although that definition may explain what sanctification is, every definition offered here neglects to mention who is doing the sanctifying. Is it the individual? Is it God? Is it both?

Perhaps this question is too detailed for a website like Dictionary.com, but, as Christians, this is something that ought to be discussed. Our judgment on the matter has a huge impact on the way we approach sanctification in our lives—either we passively wait for God to sanctify us, or we actively pursue the sanctification on our own strength.

So, which is it?

There is little consensus in the church on the subject, and I am not an expert. For my own personal belief, however, I tend towards the belief that it is a joint effort. For God to impose sanctification upon us takes away our free will. If, however, the process rests entirely on us, that is giving us a huge amount of both power and responsibility. If the process is joint, that means that we choose to pursue it, and God has the power to grant it.

That’s my understanding of the subject. But maybe I’m just taking the dicitionary.com way out: leaving it undefined.