Stakes: Lent XXIV

. . . the torrents of oblivion made me afraid.

 - From Psalm 18

We don't take the time to understand what's really at stake.

We have blinders on, that have convinced us that, no matter what, one way or another, we're going to live forever.

We'll be in one place, or the other. We'll be in paradise or the underworld. But we'll be alive, just the same.

In this regard, death without Christ does not scare us much, otherwise there would not be so much humor around the idea of "going to Hell." And it's a horribly misplaced game we play, in our dallying about the idea of Hell, as it is commonly understood.

Joking around about Hell would be the same as cracking wise and silly about the Taliban, or Auschwitz. Although . . . I suppose our glamorization of the Vikings and of pirates just proves how we are unable to access the meaning of terror. We seem to want to keep a part of it alluring.

And so it is with Hell.

But if we really believe what people want to believe about it . . . it is nothing to laugh about.

How about dropping our suppositions about eternal torments, and take the biblical concept of annihilation? This one idea alone totally separates Christianity from every other world philosophy and religion. What if you really die? What if death yields life only, for only those that have accepted it . . .and absence of life, or death, or oblivion, for them that have not accepted it?

It is a much simpler equation.

Life + Acceptance = Life
Life - Acceptance = Not Life

Lent is a good time to reflect upon the deeper things of Scripture, that nobody wants to talk about. It is a time to understand what's at stake: either life forever; or absence of life.