Where Will Evil Go?
I was listening to my favorite Christian spokes person on the way in to work this morning. He was discussing a new book out by Rob Bell. You can read more about that here.The age old protest comes out of his book that a loving God would not send anyone to a “hell” where they will be eternally tormented. To make such a claim Mr. Bell has to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the origin and effects of evil (and God’s character).
If God created man to pursue and enjoy a real and meaningful relationship with Him (and He did) then man has to have the choice not to accept or pursue that relationship. If there is no choice, there is not a meaningful relationship. Without a choice the Creator would have created mindless robots to follow Him without conscious choice.
That choice is the big black box in terms of the eternal destiny of men and women.
The problem is man did chose to leave the relationship in the very beginning. The most damning consequence of that choice was the dawn of evil. When we accept that our natural habitat is the presence of God, it helps us understand that being separated from Him is harmful by definition. That is exactly what the Old Testament word evil (in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) means, harm. With the dawn of evil, a place such as that described as hell became necessary.
Someone rightly described evil as the absence of God. The poison in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was separation from God, or the experience of His absence. His absence allows every kind of harm.
Men and women absent from the presence of God have crafted every kind of harm, deliberate and inadvertent. God’s presence precludes and nullifies all aspects of evil. Think of it in terms of His Holiness. Holiness is the absolute absence of evil (harm). If God is holy (and He is) then no (eternal) harm can come to those who experience His holiness i.e. His presence.
For those who say that a loving God would not send anyone to a place of eternal suffering, they are saying that God does not give people a choice in the matter of a relationship with Him. This is profoundly wrong. A relationship with Him is a free choice that we have. When an individual is forced to “love” someone that relationship is not based on anything meaningful other than the power of the one to force him/herself on the other.
God, as absolutely holy, defines good. Those who choose to go on without a relationship with Him are choosing to continue in evil (by definition, not necessarily as a judgment of their conduct). They continue to live in an environment where eternal harm (evil) is possible. So would a loving God 1) force someone against their will to be with Him for eternity? 2) allow evil (harm) to continue and grow eternally?
A loving God could choose to allow a period of time to transpire where people could choose a relationship with Him for eternity or live without Him (absence of God = evil). He could set a time limit on how long evil will be allowed to continue and grow. When this time limit has transpired, evil must go. Where? Well, to a place of final, eternal, containment where all evil (harm) is confined forever. That sounds like a terrible place to be. The Bible tells of such a place; hell.
