Mike had a good lesson last week about the after life.

I thought his approach was good, too. First he told what the bible had to say about it, and then discussed how others have invented their own versions of heaven and hell. I think this is a good way to go about it, because if you only stayed awake for the first part you heard everything you needed to hear <smile!>

But seriously, there is one strong movement that I seem to run into more and more that sort of fit in with the rest but I think different enough to take head on right here, and that is the idea of hell being a place of perfectly proportional punishment for sin.

It’s very similar to what the Mormons think, or some of the others, but with a little twist. Suppose you are really a pretty good person but you are a little bad now and then. No problem – you just have a little punishment, for a short time, to be “paid back for the sin you committed” and then once you serve your time you get to go to heaven. If you’re really, really bad you just have to be punished a really, really lot for a really, really long time until your soul is in “balance” and then even the worst of us get to go to heaven.

I see some pretty obvious issues with this thinking, but first let me say this is really nothing new. Lots of classic literature has suggested this before, it just seems I have been hearing it and reading this thinking more than ever from people and places that have noting to do with “organized” religion – it tends to be from people who are steeped in politics! Some sort of warped cosmic “fairness”, that those who have good upbringings tend to be good but those who have bad upbringings, well, tend to be bad. These latter “can’t help themselves” and “don’t know” to be good, so the doctrine of “fairness” says something needs to come along and even out the playing field so everybody wins!

Smells and sounds like “the devil made me do it” or “I couldn’t help myself” or even “I’m not bad – I’m just drawn this way” (oops, maybe that’s something else entirely). The devil moves from sinister to simple servant of God. After all, if we are merely in hell or punishment to receive the repayment of the evil we did in this life, then why is the devil bad? He’s there, appointed by God, to oversee our “correction” like a prison warden, and is serving God faithfully.

And everyone goes to hell for a time. I mean, no one is going to stand before God sinless, except Christ, and even he is “rescued from hell after a three day visit” according to those who like to wrest the scripture to fit this funky thinking. The other logical conclusion is that eventually the last person will die and serve their time and then there will be no more need for hell – something that you can also twist the scriptures to suit your desires to say.

I’m always a little awestruck that these same people who think obedient Christians are bloodthirsty hateful close-minded warmongers grasp at this straw that “their” God will accept them no matter how they live, or what they do, and that they gladly will take whatever little punishment they accidentally accrue. Somehow, I think their conclusions about the “after life” came when they had an “after glow”, know what I mean?

Randy