(Re)Thinking Everything - Excerpt

FRIENDS!!!

My book (Re)Thinking Everything releases on Amazon TOMORROW.  Can you believe it?  Me neither!  Here's an excerpt from chapter 1, To Hell with Hell.  

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And so here I am 11 years later, still on a journey of (re)thinking what hell is.  And before I say anything else let me say this VERY loud and VERY clear: 

I’m by no means an expert nor am I naïve enough to think that I have all the answers about a place that we can’t say for certain exists or doesn’t exist.

And so I’m not here to tell you what to believe.  I said that in the introduction – I’m not here to give you answers or tell you what to believe.  Like, if you believe in a literal hell and believe in sulfur, fire pits, eternal separation from God, torture, demons, and all of those things – go for it; I’m not here to tell you that you’re wrong or crazy or try to convince you of a different way.  Not at all.  

Unless you use that sort of stuff to scare, manipulate or shame somebody, I really don’t care what you believe.  For all I care, you can believe that God is a man on the moon who makes it rain skittles, unicorns, and fire from his magic wand.  I really don’t care.  

Nor am I here to give you an exhaustive history of hell or build a systematic theology of hell, because there are other people with many more credentials who have done an immensely better job of that than I ever could (there’s a list of helpful resources at the end of the book).  

I’m not a theologian.  

I’m not a scholar.  

I’m not a historian.  

I’m just a normal, everyday person trying to pick up the pieces of my religious trauma and piece something back together that looks like halfway decent Good News.  

Now, I’ve been told that my current thoughts about hell are “unorthodox”.  I had a professor from seminary send me an email a couple of years ago expressing his deep “concern” about me and my very “unorthodox” thoughts about Jesus, hell, faith, etc.  

Blah, blah, blah.

At first I was highly offended – “the audacity!  Who does he think he is?!”  But then as I thought about it more, I laughed it off because the thing is – my thoughts about hell and the things I’m about to share with you really aren’t all that unorthodox at all.

“Orthodoxy” refers to “conforming to the approved form of any doctrine” and although some of my thoughts about hell aren’t grounded in any particular branch of church history, the core of them is grounded in many branches.

More on that throughout the book, but for now I’ll tell you that I’m extremely hopeful that every person will end up in “the good place”.

Heaven?

Paradise?

Nirvana?

Bliss?

Starbucks?

I have no idea what it is, really.  Choose whatever name you want, but I’ll refer to it as “heaven” – I hold on to a hope that every person who has ever lived will somehow and in some way end up spending eternity in the blissful presence of the Divine.  

Christian.

Jew.

Muslim.

Atheist.

Buddhist.

Witches.

Addicts.

I guess you can call me a Hopeful Universalist?  I say “hopeful” because I’m not arrogant enough to declare that I know for certain what happens in the next life, but I do have enough hope in God’s love and grace to believe that universal reconciliation with the Creator is certainly high on the list of very real possibilities.

And so whereas the view that many of us were raised with would only award heaven to the “Christian” who has “accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior”, I don’t believe that heaven is withheld from anyone and I have hope that at some point and in some way everyone will get in.  

Why?

There are 4 big reasons that I’ll share:

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Glenn Siepert