On Evangelism
“there is enough hell on earth to need to cast others to one after this life has ended” -me
Evangelism, the gateway to offer salvation (get definition) is not merely word of mouth, or meditation of heart, but the actual experience of God. The 'intention' of using scriptures about 'know because the earth has a maker' is justifying hell and not offering heaven or salvation hope. With this amount of sickened evangelism, God may well be at the place of saying the things S/he said to Isaiah, “i will reach my right hand to save because no one else is there to do so” and so forth. I believe this happened already, and if we don't look back (and look forward) with that in mind, the fulfillment of the law in Christ Jesus (his whole person, not just the cross) then we are uselessly demanding commitment to a religion and doctrine that claims to save but cannot.
I have been accused of universalism in my theology. And that not believing in hell, or at least how it was presented to me in churches, conferences, and rallies growing up somehow makes me a heretic. I do not believe in a different kind of hell because I love everyone and want some hippie Jesus to save the world with flowers in his hair, but because I believe that the Cross, the Person of Jesus, and the death/resurrection/ascension/return did something and that something is salvation regardless of our personal prayer at an altar call of guiltiness.
I do not believe that God will condemn those we do as a nation or denomination, not because my mother and brother have mental illness and are violent and down right hateful at times. They have a lot of hell on earth, in their minds, and in their daily lives being labeled as “disabled”. Heaven will not be some Cloud Ten interpretation of a bad movie, produced by Pat Robertson, and starring a list of 'renewed washed up actors'. It has to be more than that. It was in scripture, it was in the words of Jesus, and Paul and Peter and James. We don't look to the promise of God enough, but to the judgment.
Paul's statement about “preaching Christ crucified” was about Hope, not hell. It was about what Jesus said in “repent of your way of thinking/believing, because God has come again and is going to save us, through me, now and in the future” (paraphrased, obviously) We can wrap our heads around hell because there is penal systems in our world that condemn quickly, and we get to see punishment as fair treatment with a small amount of evidence. God's system of thought, although only minimally understood by us, is about the whole person, and whole of humanity, like the sheep/goats parable. The in/out statement wasn't about prayers prayed but about hospitality and good deeds. This works in with Grace, because God's grace was the claim that “salvation is come” to us all. If we took evangelism in this direction, using the verses that are major in the musical scale of God's song, we would do better at making disciples and a hopeful world.
After all, God has hope in us, right...right?
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