I don't want to believe it but I do

I wish I could say that I didn't believe in hell. I can't imagine a place where I am away from God. Even now that I've been a christian for well, I don't know how long, I just don't like the concept of hell. I don't like to think about friends and family going to that place, where God does not dwell, and that absence becomes a real physical pain. But I do believe in it. I believe in it because Jesus believed in it. However, that does not mean I have to like it. Lets be honest, do you think God likes the idea of hell. Does he want the beings he made in his likeness to be apart from him. Isn't living on earth hell enough for some people. I'm not just talking about people in third world countries who don't know where their next meal is coming from or when their last meal was, but the "average" middle class American who drives their gas guzzling SUV to star bucks to buy a frapuccino and then spend too much money on a crappy movie, and then afterwords going to a greasy sit down chain restaurant to buy crappy food for too much money. In case your wondering that is what I did on Monday night, minus the SUV part. I do those things to get away from the hum drum of every day life. The last thing on my mind is maybe spending some prayer time with God or actually opening my bible to learn and understand more about the one who can't be understood. The hell that I see is boredom. Others may see hell as the aforementioned hunger, or loneliness or depression, or addiction. Who knows? After seeing all this, I can't imagine what the real hell is like. Right now children are starving, a woman is being beaten, a man is getting mugged, another man is cheating on his wife, a wife is secretly getting an abortion, and I'm spending my time on this website at 3 o'clock in the morning typing my complaints instead of doing something. Other Christians are going on "christian" cruises, buying "christian" shirts, listening to "christian" music, watching "christian" television or movies. It seems that Christians are in our own hell right now. I think hell is a place of pure selfishness. People in hell are there because they cared only for themselves.

We Christians are selfish with the grace he has given us. To be sure, many evangelicals are more then willing to share the gospel with you by telling you about what was done on the Cross, but we seem to have a lot of trouble with the showing of that. Why are there hungry people in the world, when we evangelicals apparently have enough money to buy cruise tickets, new computers, or ghostbusters video games(I think that one applies to me alone)? We protest outside abortion clinics, because we believe life is being taken away from the innocent, and yet so many of us evangelicals criticized those who protested the war in Iraq, because we felt they were anti-American. When did Christianity become something exclusive to America? Since the Iraq war began over 4000 service men and women are dead, and who knows how many Iraqis. If we are pro life, shouldn't we have fought for their lives as well, or do we only care about people before their born and then afterwords just tell them to screw off? That is how the world sees us. And we wonder why church attendance is down. Couple all of this with the watered down Jesus that most churches preach now adays, and you can get a good look at hell without going their. I can't help but wonder if God wants us to go through some sort of hell before getting to our home with Him. If so, then WHY? Why are we in pain on earth, and then when we die to so many of us experience the REAL pain of God's absence? I just don't understand. I guess I'll get the same answer Job got.

I used to ask my self how many people are in hell because of me? I think of specific examples and think that I should have stood up for the gospel more, or I should have been so pushy at that moment. If you are like me you may ask those questions as well. I want everybody in to go to heaven, but I guess that just won't happen. My responsibility is to first love every one no matter what, and tell them that Jesus loves them. That sounds so ridiculous. It has to be more then just telling them. I can't go to a starving person and just say Jesus died for you and then walk away. Is the gospel so simple that I can preach it by feeding some one? Does it get back to that stupid faith versus works argument? I can't save my self, so how can I save another? How do we know about the Cross? It is because men and women gave up EVERYTHING to tell us. Today we can't even give up our SUVs. I see hell every day, and I don't know what to do. How can He expect us to change things, when we as the church are completely screwed up. Are our failures used against the ones we are supposed to love.

You know what it all comes down to? The will of God. I believe everything is in his hands, no matter how small. I guess we just have to do as were told. Even when it doesn't make since. I don't have the nail marks in my hands, and I have never been able to make a tree from nothing. I have yet to make a living being out of the elements. I can't control the currents or tides, and I can't see into the hearts of men. I can only try to do what he tells me. I do believe in hell, but I also believe that in the end it will all make sense, even though I can't make heads or tails of it now. Thankfully I'm not God. And thankfully I don't understand Him. If I did, then he wouldn't be much of a God.