Deus Ex Machina

Everyone's attention was set squarely on the stage. Many, visibly shaken, were crying. In a packed out church, we watched as an evangelical pageant with the inauspicious title Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames was performed. It had promised to be a powerful and unflinching examination of the events immediately proceeding our death––from a decidedly fundamentalist Christian perspective––and it delivered on that promise. Mostly I was enthralled by the spectacle of it all, being a teenage boy who lived in a small town named, rather fittingly, Paradise.

First you should know that I was a child that took my parents' beliefs very seriously. Once, when I couldn't find my family members at home, I was certain they were caught up in the Rapture, the Second Coming of Christ, and I was left behind. So, when the curtains rolled back and lost souls were being dramatically and mercilessly dragged to Hell, wily demons delighting in their charge, I was deeply affected. The actors portrayed people who were living in sin, ignorant to the eternal consequences, having rejected their opportunity for Christ's atonement while on earth. In particular, there was a group a teenagers drinking and driving, seeming to have the time of their lives, albeit short lives. As you may have guessed, this ill-fated troupe of revelers crashed their car and soon discovered the wages of their actions. This particular sequence stayed with me because it pushed its thumb hard and deep into the guilt I felt for not evangelizing my fellow youth. I felt, or was led to feel, that if the people I knew were to die and I hadn't shared the gospel with them, their awful fate was somehow on my hands. This was a real source of anxiety. God depended on me and people depended on me. And if people were being damned because I didn't care enough to save them, how on earth could I deserve Paradise?

Now, I cannot imagine an orthodox Christian environment that doesn't attest to the sovereignty of God. So, naturally, I knew as a child to believe that He was in control. Even so, I was confused. If His will that “none should perish” could somehow be subverted if I failed to act, God's control was seriously in question. That we, claiming to be redeemed yet irredeemably flawed, were left sole proprietors of the work of reconciliation to God seemed to me a glaring hole in the logic of salvation. Worse, it seemed contrived. Besides, left to me people were gonna burn, because I wasn't going to tempt losing friends to an idea I did not yet comprehend.

I had heard this scenario compared, metaphorically, to people trapped inside a burning building. We see the fire, know how to get people out of the fire, and have the ability to enter the fire because of our super-duper, flame-retardant, spiritual firefighting uniform. How could we, so well equipped, stand by and watch when so many souls were being lost? This way of thinking––that the size of Heaven's population will be more a reflection of the fervor of the saints than of the magnitude of God's mercy––gradually crystallized around my understanding of my very service to God. And if somehow it was wrong at an elemental level, I had no point of re-entry. How else, if we were indeed eternal creations with an eternal destination, could I engage the idea of Hell without falling invariably into the same pattern of thought?

Just a few nights ago I had a dream that seemed to wrestle with this tension. In it, my wife and I were in a rather large country home with various other people. We were in a state of panic as we saw the glow of fire rise from a nearby barn. Running outside to see what had started the flames, and presumably to help anyone trapped behind those flames, we saw above us the obvious genesis of the fire. Littering the darkness like so many falling stars were great balls of flame growing ever larger as they closed the distance between the night sky and our terra firma. We stood rooted in place, a paralyzing dread replacing all other sense or thought in our minds.

I have never been in an apocalypse, but I imagine what I felt in that moment was akin to what one feels with the sudden knowledge that they, their friends and family, and everything they hold dear is about to be utterly screwed. These meteors began to crash all around us with the force and destructive ferocity of, say, blazing elephants being shot like spit-wads from God's drinking straw. Meanwhile, I, with the omniscience afforded those having a dream, knew this very thing was happening concurrently all around the globe. With new conflagrations rising all around us, it seemed inevitable that we were gonna burn. But suddenly and inexplicably everything stopped. Dazed and uncomprehending, we stood still. Then, out of nothing came before us the dream's deus ex machina, the bulk of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

The transition between the spaceship arriving and the alien talking to us is a little fuzzy. But it was here that it began to explain what all the brimstone was about. It told us that they hadn't come to kill or destroy, but rather to observe. The alien explained how they wanted to discover whether we, humans, were worthy of their race and how we basically were not. They saw what to them were our weaknesses, which were our cultural values of altruism, sacrifice, charity, love, et cetera. These were clear examples of our disregard for the evolutionary model of strength, progress and preservation. The reason, it explained, for the power they held over us lay in their full embrace of the principles of strength and the magnification of the individual. Still, the alien was courteous enough to show real disappointment, as though it was seriously bummed out that we weren't up to scratch.

Then a man standing next to me spoke up. He was tall and brawny, with a truly masculine beard. He said, stepping forward, “Wait, this isn't fair. You make it sound as though we're all weak in the ways you described. But I've always felt different. I am strong and capable, and I've never been appreciated enough for that. What you've been saying makes sense to me.”

I suppose he passed their test, because they proceeded to let him board their ship. He did so happily, seeming glad to finally be in good company. Once again, in my omniscience I knew that this was happening everywhere. It was the rapture I had been so afraid of as a child, only inverted. And instead of people being plucked out of thin air, these people were making an election.

I woke up from the dream and couldn't stop thinking about that last scene. Why did the man choose to go? Didn't the alien demonstrate its otherness when it spoke against our values? Wouldn't this man regret losing what is largely considered the goodness in this world? A part of himself? It all seemed very unlikely. Then it struck me that this dream was toying with an idea about man's nature I had not fully embraced. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend in which he expressed similar skepticism. He said it was hard to believe that anybody, with the full knowledge of God and His goodness, would consciously reject Him. In other words, no one would choose Hell if they knew into what they were getting. It sounded reasonable, if not a foregone conclusion. And yet looking closer, I could see that this implied the chief reason we reject God is our lack of knowledge of Him, rather than, say, our nature.

In fact, if it all boiled down to lack of knowledge, God would be cruel to punish anyone for their ignorance. After all, isn't it the believers' fault for not sharing the Gospel in the first place? Surely there are millions who are dying without our having preached to them. On top of that, our witness is compromised by our sin, therefore many who reject God received a necessarily twisted picture of Him to begin with. If Christians were remotely capable of withholding His eternal presence from others by virtue of our action or inaction, we would be more damnable than anyone on this planet. Of course, this would be an absurd scenario in which it would be more of a liability to know God than to not. And if God is not a liability, how can those ignorant of Him be judged rightly? Christ himself interceded for those crucifying Him because they “knew not” what they did. Was He just being rhetorical? The unavoidable conclusion must be that people make a personal election to be separate from God only in full knowledge of their decision. Thus, when I was told that people who weren't Christians were like victims trapped inside a burning building, what I failed to see was that in this scenario people weren't being damned, it was the very notion of man's free will being damned. C.S. Lewis described Hell as the greatest monument to human freedom and said:

There are only two kinds of people––those who say “Thy will be done” to God or those to whom God in the end says “Thy will be done.” All who are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn't be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.

Understanding the elective nature of Hell, our own consciences condemning us (see Romans), the next obvious yet difficult question is this: Why would anyone make that choice? Are they insane? Consider this metaphor: I have long disliked chocolate. And since most people like the stuff, I have had many frustrating encounters with chocolate loving zealots. Almost without fail, they will first tell me that I mustn't have ever tasted truly good chocolate and continue to insist that I try, even after I've already declined. It never occurs to them that I simply dislike the very essence of what to them is so wonderful, and the higher the quality, therefore, the stronger is my distaste. Following, the more diluted the chocolate the more tolerable it becomes. My point is this: we humans are all quite egocentric in our understanding of other people and we naturally assume others share our will. And as Christians in love with God, it is easy to assume that those who don't share our predilection have simply never “tried the good stuff.” How easily we forget that before God removed the scales from our eyes we were at enmity with Him. In fact, to tell someone that, whether they realize it or not, they really do want to serve God would most likely be insulting, because you would also be telling them the framework that has justified their life and actions is wrong. To make an extreme example of this, Communist radicals in any number of revolutions have justified killing millions of people on two atheistic assumptions; they were good in and of themselves and there would be no Divine judgment for their actions. Your good news is not everyone's good news. The image of the damned screaming to be let out of Hell is false and damaging because it assumes that their true desire has not been fulfilled. The burning building scenario implicitly rejects this concept and ignores the most important question of all: Where did the fire come from to begin with?

I heard a Catholic priest say once that if Christians were to truly conform themselves to Christ, the world would come running to the Church. A nice thought; people are basically good and would naturally choose God in the form of Christ if only those lazy, selfish Christians would get it together. Unfortunately, you cannot paint people as basically good without painting God as basically bad. If both, in nature, were good, we could live in harmony with God and not worry about all this Christ stuff in the first place. If man were basically good, God might justly be called sadistic for his treatment of his creation. If man were basically good, all the pain, despair, loneliness, hate, war, greed, jealousy, and death would be something imposed on us rather than created by us. It is impossible to care about justice and to see the world as it is and say, without dishonesty, that man is basically good. The better question is this: what good is there in us and where does it come from? In response to World War II, and after seeing society drive further into self destruction for decades, writer Dorothy Sayers observed:

The Christian dogma of the double nature in man––which asserts that man is disintegrated and necessarily imperfect in himself and all his works, yet closely related by a real unity of substance with an eternal perfection within and beyond him––makes the present perilous state of human society seem less hopeless and less irrational.

When I was in high school, we were required to read Lord of the Flies. It disturbed me. It depicted young boys engaging in cruelty, tribalism, hatred, bigotry and murder. Those we so romantically refer to as innocents were shown descending into evil when societal controls and figures of authority were removed and showed no signs of returning. The book certainly wasn't an optimistic view of human nature. However, the weight of history doesn't oppose its vision. Over and over, we see that the loss of law and governance reduces mankind to barbarism. We, in America, can speak of our own innate goodness without feeling dishonest, but only if we ignore our stable government and (relatively) effective legal system, the social and religious moral values maintained and encouraged, and the social alienation that comes from disobeying them. It is not hard to imagine, however, how I would behave if I could have everything I wanted and there were no ramifications. I'll tell you. I would make myself a god. Sure, I would do good things for people and strive to be magnanimous in many ways – largely so that I might be recognized and adored. True altruism – self emptying – is a transcendent, divine act that does not and cannot come from me as the point of origin. According to Christianity, everyone in my dream––outside of God's grace in us––would have chosen to go with the aliens. Yes, the aliens rejected the things we generally consider good, but they also worshiped themselves, and that is the human heart's natural, final proclivity. If you believe that without any grace or guidance in your life, never having inherited or learned how to exercise goodness, you would naturally choose to self-empty and love without return, you are a much better person than I am.

When I was young and struggling to rectify the beliefs of my family with its apparent contradictions, I don't recall having man's complete brokenness explained to me. It would have helped. Oh sure, I was told that everyone was sinful and needed the forgiveness of Christ, but what that meant exactly was a bit fuzzy. Did that imply that we were all equally broken, or that we were all sorta broken but not as much as others? The mere fact that I was saved and others were not implied a certain rightness, and following that, a certain better-ness. If I had a dime for every time I heard someone disparage non-believers, atheists, and liberals for their world-view, I would have a nice bit of spending cash. Clearly, we must have been some sort of special. You know, not totally depraved. After all, we had made the right decision by joining the winning team. Never mind Paul the Apostle having said that the message of God taking the form of a man and then dying would sound, understandably, like crazy-talk to the unbeliever. What we believe is ludicrous and even offensive by the world's account. The Cross only becomes what it is––achingly beautiful––when the soul, not the mind, perceives it as truth. Try standing someone in front of your favorite work of art and, through sheer force of logic, explaining to them why they should be moved by it. Peter Hitchens, when speaking of his brother's atheism, said that arguing polemics would never change his mind, but instead:

It is my belief that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the unexpected force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time.

If you are a Christian reading this, I am sure you've heard many times people referring to the day they accepted Christ. I've said it. You've probably said it. I wonder how many times any of us have talked about the day we recognized Christ's acceptance of us, the day Christ penetrated our rebellion and revealed Himself as poetry? But then again, why would we say it that way as long as we thought our wisdom, our ability to discern properly from all available options, was what initiated our faith? And if that's how it really happened, why wouldn't we be able to simply convince other people to do the same? After all, the difference between being damned and secured would effectively boil down to a mental hurdle. Of course, the Biblical authors rejected this notion outright. Instead, they wrote about faith itself being given to us by grace. That mysterious interaction between man and the Holy Ghost is something I cannot determine for a single human soul.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith––and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God––not by works, so that no one can boast. ––Paul, from his letter to the Ephesians

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. ––Jesus Christ speaking in the Gospel according to John

Without understanding the providential nature of grace, I would continue to believe that I could be held ultimately accountable for another person's position before God. Moreover, as long as I believed faith was something I came up with and was the one thing that differentiated me from the eternally damned, the breakdown would go something like this: I am justified before God because I chose wisely, and my neighbor is condemned before God because he is proud and unwise... unlike me. The reality, as told by the Christian faith, goes more like this: mankind is entirely dead in its transgressions and is incapable of reconciling itself to God outside of His sovereign grace, therefore my very salvation is to His glory alone, and my natural choice ten times out of ten is to reject God and serve myself... exactly like my neighbor. This is a jagged pill, but it's the Gospel. As I overheard someone say, the grace ain't amazing if the wretch ain't a wretch.

There is a deep mystery at the core of man's reconciliation to God, and I believe this makes many of us very uncomfortable. I've even heard people question whether Mother Theresa was truly a Christian because she didn't walk the sick and dying people of Calcutta through the sinner's prayer. To me, this opinion is crass and myopic. Here is a woman who knew the Father's heart so intimately that she became a living sacrifice to the least of these. The reality of the God's presence was made deeply real when she showed, though they had nothing and were incapable of caring for their own most basic needs (all our states), that they were precious and valuable. Her actions, clearly done in the name of Christ, were extravagantly redemptive. Jesus Christ didn't simply tell people He loved them; He became love for them. Moreover, His sheep knew their shepherd and didn't have to be arm-wrestled into receiving His love. When those who know they are utterly helpless, created things, see the face of their loving Creator on that last day, they will rejoice and praise him as Savior. The criminal on the cross beside Jesus didn't say the sinner's prayer, he saw himself as he truly was before the perfection and holiness of God, and he was saved.

A few years back, my wife, Deborah, shared with me her confusion over what her responsibility was in sharing the Gospel. While feeling no specific aversion to sharing her faith, she also felt no specific compulsion to do so; at least not in any solicitous way. Her faith was no secret to her friends, but she never made overt attempts at conversion. She didn't want to be disobedient toward God, but neither did she feel as though she had been. While I didn't, and still don't, have an answer for her, as matters of obedience are always resolved at the internal level between God and individual, an answer came to her in the form of an e-mail. Her former employer, a middle-aged woman with New Age sensibilities with whom Deborah had never shared her faith, wrote to tell her that she had decided to become a follower of Christ. To Deborah's surprise, this woman told her that she was the person most responsible for her decision. Of all her employees, Deborah was the most compassionate, responsible, caring and loyal. The fact that she was a Christian, something her employer discovered after overhearing a conversation she had with a patron, was something God used to soften her heart toward Him. Now, not only did this reaffirm Deborah's inherent purposefulness as a Christian by virtue of Christ in her, it revealed the profound reality that God uses every means available to reach His sheep. Christ said that not one of His would be snatched from His hands, something that should relieve our self imposed anxiety and redirect our attention to the majesty and authority with which our Lord operates. That we serve a sovereign and gracious God who is powerful to save demands reverence and profoundly speaks of His love for us. Not ironically, this knowledge––deeply registered––will engender love within us, which, in turn, He uses to achieve His own ends. And here we find that God is always, always the hero. The only thing He has given us the power to do is love others, and even that comes as wonderful gift through the Holy Spirit. We save nobody and we never will.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh... declares the Sovereign Lord. ––Ezekiel 36:26

Afterthought:

In writing this essay, I recognize that the theological underpinnings are by no means universally agreed upon (conditional election vs. unconditional election), and I feel the need to make clear that my attempt here is not to cause contention or demonstrate my rationality as superior to those brothers and sisters I've known along the way. Although my thoughts find their home in Reformed Theology––standing in contradistinction to Roman Catholic and Wesleyan/Arminian thinking––I have no intention of creating a systematic argument for the doctrines of grace. Quite simply, this essay is my attempt to grapple with the evangelical guilt I felt as a young person. I wondered how one can truly desire to serve God and love others in a way that leaves the glory squarely on God's shoulders, freeing one from the roller coaster ride of pride and guilt. This approximates, I think, how this might be understood. And in no way is this essay an attempt to marginalize evangelism. There would be no logic in a dismissal of that kind. It is, however, meant to demonstrate the primacy of love. Also, this is in small part an attempt to demonstrate that Hell, though uncomfortable a concept, is a theological and logical necessity within the framework of Christ. Though it is true that our world demonstrates a devastating rejection of those things God calls good, and Hell is the natural extension of that rejection, we must always remember that God's mercy and power to reconcile is far greater than any of us can comprehend. I believe we will praise God all the more when we see just how many people God has drawn to Him, totally outside our expectations or systems of prediction. God bless.