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When I was a child, I recall reaching out to a presence that I had no way to name. I had no religion, but I knew that there was something there. This presence was inviting and did not impose any conditions on me; it was there in a benevolent way. I was only around 4 or 5 at the time, and in my innocence, I assumed it was the loving man at the mall with whom I took a picture. He could see me when I was sleeping, knew when I was awake, and wanted to give me presents if I was good. So, I called it St. Nicholas. In God's sense of humor, I now work at St. Nicholas Church, but that’s not the story I’m sharing today.
At some point in my later
adolescence, I was told that this presence was the Father, and the face of this
Father was the image of Christ. So, I addressed it as such and felt a bond with
it. Transitioning into my teens, I was more exposed to ideas about God and came
to believe that this being would destroy me if I did not get my life right.
This caused me to weep bitterly every night because I did not want this to
happen. I knew I was doing things that were bad, but I felt stuck in my
wrongdoing and wretchedness. For this reason, my prayer to this being ended
each night with, "Please don't give up on me."
As I entered adulthood, I
began my journey into Christianity and learned about forgiveness, but I still
felt the terror of losing this being that I wanted to be with. I would fall
into sin, and when I did, I felt like I would be destroyed. I remember one time
I made a significant mistake and felt doomed. I cried out in desperation,
"Father, please don’t forsake me," and that’s when I heard His voice
for the first time say to me, "My son, I will never forsake you." I
still did not fully understand, and when I fell into sin again, I felt
abandoned. He came to me once more and said, "Look at what you did before.
Did I leave you then? Look at what you just did. Am I not here?" He did
not want to say it, but I had a strong impression, like knowledge, that He knew
I was going to do it again. If He had not said these things to me, I would not
be a Christian.
As I became more involved
with Christianity, I eventually developed the confidence to keep going after I
fell into sin. I knew He would always forgive me, so I kept coming back to the
path. However, there were times when this thought would creep up on me:
"Would I even follow this Christian God if there was no hell?" I
could never answer this question. I really wanted to love this God, but I
couldn’t. My obedience was still based on the fear of being doomed, and the
churches I attended did not help.
When I became a Christian,
I did not know what Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox was. I made my way
through all these traditions to get where I am today. One thing they all have
in common, which did not help my situation, is that they all teach that I will
be doomed if I do not believe and act the way they say. Their foundation for
this is how they understand the Bible. In their interpretation, it’s universal:
do it God’s way, or He will end you, and not just end you, but torment you for
all eternity. Basically, God is a jerk. They won’t say that because they all
have their strange theology for how God’s love is equal to His wrath and other
things to justify a being who we would naturally reject.
Sometimes I would justify
this "antigod." It affected everything. I was afraid of Him, and I
would make other people afraid. I would teach "turn or burn,"
"obey or you will pay," and then I would speak of a God of infinite love.
It was a total contradiction. I could never answer that question: would I
follow if there was no hell? I think for about my first 20 years, it was no and
yes, but it wasn’t a true yes until I stopped believing in the Bible as I was
taught to believe. I began to question and challenge the traditional teachings,
and for this, I became the heretic.
I think my heresy really
solidified when I heard a debate between a Christian apologist and a famous
atheist. The atheist asked simple questions like, "Are you okay with
ending innocent life, as in children and infants, or sex slavery, which are all
things God commands people to do in the bible?" The apologist defended
these things simply on the basis that God can do what He wants. I bet if that
apologist saw that in a religion not his own, he would rightly condemn it, but
instead, he defended it and sounded about as evil as the God he was defending.
The way that God is
revealed by the human editors of the Old Testament, if you read it literally,
makes Him seem like Zeus. Without any help in understanding the Old Testament,
you can easily arrive at a God who will destroy you if you don’t do things His
way, which includes ending innocent life. Unfortunately, the New Testament is
worse in its teaching on hellfire. Jesus says things like, "If you don’t
bear fruit, you are good for nothing and will be thrown into eternal
fire." How can you love someone if you are living in fear of them at the
same time? It just can’t be done. It’s like in this message of Christ: you’re
dealt a bad hand, do it this way or else.
If I went to my family
members and threatened to destroy them if they did not do things my way,
someone would call the police. This is basically the mainstream of the
Christian message. God wants to destroy, but He has sent Jesus to stop you from
being destroyed. How has the message changed? Like the God of Moses, if we
don’t do what He says, we are destroyed. It’s the same message made to sound
like He loves when He does not. It is a message of control and domination based
on fear.
One of the most evil
teachings that was birthed from this perspective is penal substitutionary
atonement. This came from the Middle Ages, and it was theology used to control
and manipulate people into religious obedience. The idea is that God is so
angry that He needs to punish us but doesn’t really want to, so He sent Jesus
to take a beating. Again, if I were to do this, someone would call the police
on me if I were to do that to my kid on behalf of the others, but this type of
God is normal for most Christians. The problem with this thinking is that there
is nowhere in the New Testament where Jesus comes to pay off God’s anger, and
it will challenge anyone who thinks differently.
This angry God prevails
even in my own tradition. We are taught that any deviation from church
authority, for example, missing our day of holy obligation, could get us
damned. We see this play out in the history of the Church. What happened when
there were disagreements? The other church became anathema, and these anathemas
were recited in our liturgies. There was even an anathema of the Jewish people.
This is historic abuse at the highest level, and how does it make God seem?
Like a jerk.
In saying these things,
I’m not saying I don’t want to be a part of my Church. I love my church, but I
think you should not have to fear being critical of the unhealthy depictions of
God, which I reject. I think faith in Christ should be presented as something
beneficial to people, not something that will lead to destruction if you don’t
agree. I don’t interpret hell in the Bible this way and think hell is something
that can be better worked out as a doctrine. As it is now, it makes God seem
evil. The idea of tormenting or letting someone be tormented is not the action
of a Father, no matter how evil that person was. As a father, I would be viewed
as evil for treating my children this way. Should we not do the same for God?
Judgment is a good thing.
For me, it’s the idea of ending evil at the end time and its ultimately beneficial for the person who caused the evil.
This is how I understand God’s wrath, and so did many church fathers like St.
John Chrysostom, who taught that wrath is a paternal action and that punishment
is a good thing that benefits the one being punished. I think this is the only
way to see God, as a loving Father.
Going back to that
question I asked myself, “Would I follow God if there was no hell?” the answer
is yes. Jesus Christ came to set us free from the power of the devil, not the
anger of God. This is the gospel of the early church, not escaping hellfire,
and this is the message we have preserved in the Eastern Church! Our sin ultimately
harms us; it does not harm God. It keeps us from the good things of God, and
our sin comes from our entanglement with the god of this world. I don’t want to
be a slave. I want to be loved by God and Christ gives me that power, the power
to be free. I no longer fear hell and do not believe God is a jerk.
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