Fed Up With the Foolishness

So a guy with too much free time on his hands took a three minute song by John Lennon and spun it into an entire book. All you really have to do is imagine there’s no heaven, imagine there’s no hell, imagine there’s no consequence, imagine that God is a liar and that Jesus merely aimed to scare us when discussing hell never really believing it is a real place, and you get the gist of what has been causing an uproar of controversy within Christendom recently.

I don’t know maybe I’m getting a little brittle with age, maybe my capacity to suffer fools is dwindling with time, but I’m just fed up with all the foolishness. We are such a rebellious generation, we are such stiff-necked and proud people that we will readily flock to anyone who will offer an alternative to Gospel truth.

If God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, then reason would dictate that His notion of justice is likewise different than our notion of justice. It is when creation attempts to usurp the authority of the Creator, when we think ourselves wiser than He who made us from the dust of the earth that we arrogantly assume we can dictate terms, and bend God to our will.

The simple truth, the painful truth, the honest truth, is that we have declared our independence from God, we are emancipated, and as such we feel we have the moral authority to make up the rules as we go along. We stand in the buffet line of spiritual dogma, doctrine, and personal interpretation, pick and choose at our discretion those morsels we like, and what we have at the end of it all is something that is palatable to the flesh, and something we created all on our own.

Our pride and our arrogance will not allow us to accept that some things are beyond our understanding, that there are mysteries greater than ourselves in the universe, and so we feel the overwhelming need to tinker, to fit grand and infinitely complex notions into tiny boxes. It’s like giving a monkey a hammer and letting it run loose in a china shop, no good can come of it.

‘But brother Mike, aren’t we supposed to ask questions?’ Yes, ask as many questions as you would like but be prepared to receive answers you were either not expecting or that are not to your liking. Often times, be prepared to receive no answer at all, and allow for the mystery of the unknown.

This man of whom I speak, this man that has caused so much debate within Christendom is quick to say that Jesus can handle the controversy. True, Jesus can handle controversy, but this is a manufactured controversy and Jesus already made His feelings on the topic of hell crystal clear.

Luke 16:19-26, “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, but there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus at his bosom. Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented, and besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.”

These were the words of Jesus. Jesus spoke of hell, he spoke of the great gulf, the separation between those in Abraham’s bosom and those in Hades, as well as the fact that those who want to pass between these two plains cannot.

There is no controversy here, just the ramblings of a man unwilling to accept that there is a narrow gate through which we must agonize to walk, that there is a narrow path upon which few find themselves, and that there is a wide path that leads to destruction upon which most of the world is currently walking.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.