Open Letter: God’s Unconditional Love
Sibling in Christ,
Thank you for providing me with some of the resources and references you have been collecting to support your spiritual and theological concerns.
As we grow in our understanding and practice of what it means to love the Lord with everything that we are, in how we love others as we love ourselves, and in our discipleship and relationship with Jesus we know that our knowledge will always be incomplete and our abilities will always be imperfect.
I know that like seeing through a mirror dimly, offers a lack of certainty and is terribly unsatisfying.
Even though certain verses of scripture and certain encounters I have in the world can leave me feeling confident that we are seeing clearly and a belief is definitively and eternally right, good, and true… My experience compels me to try and lean into a more compassionate, humble, and tolerant approach to human wisdom and understanding.
I hear an honest and deep-felt concern in your heart for people who do conform to your understanding of how to read and interpret scripture.
Pastorally, I would caution you to be very thoughtful, critical, and careful when adopting any perspective or giving spiritual energy to a movement or religion that emphasizes an “us vs. them” approach.
Religious belief can offer the most beautiful, powerful, and meaningful experiences we are capable of having.
Religious belief can also lead us to thoughts, words, and acts of intolerance, violence, and unspeakable evil.
God gives us the gift of being able to love God. We believe that in Jesus, God gives us the gift of knowing that God loves us and there is nothing that can ever separate us from God’s love. The ways humans show our gratitude and love are wildly different across this good earth.
I hope you’ll agree that no one should have to lose their dignity, be punished, demeaned, dehumanized, or destroyed, or be forced to comply through threats of violence or spiritual damnation because of the way they believe, worship, pray, or love in a way that is different.
I am left wondering, how is it possible that God’s love and grace is freely given to people who can be so very different from us and hold to such different interpretations of what they think it means for them to live a good, free, and abundant life?
I appreciate that we were able to establish agreement around some basic Christian and biblical statements such as God is love and that salvation is by the grace and gift of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I believe that the sum of our life experiences has brought us to different positions. As I attempt to understand, and respond, I offer these incomplete perspectives on the position you seemed to be taking during our conversation.
You have expressed the strong opinion that it is not possible for God to love or forgive those who believe differently than you do. You selected several cultural references, historical and contemporary writings, and biblical verses to support this claim. I hope you understand that these materials you provided will require some additional analysis, synthesis, and critical thought on your part before we can begin to make sense of them.
It appears that the gist of your criticism from the rhetorical questions you raised are about my refusal to promote a specific “doctrine of hell” as a core teaching of our church and my personal and pastoral refusal to use fear or threats of punishment as a tactic or strategy in my preaching, teaching, or pastoral ministry.
You also expressed concern that:
1. I would not confess a belief in hell. I affirmed my belief in Jesus and the power of the cross of Christ in justification of the unworthy and sinful. The only confession I am able to offer is that “Jesus is Lord.” I know this is an echo of Barth.
2. I refused to offer any clear limits or conditions on God’s love; I am not comfortable nor do I feel capable of setting up dividing lines around God. I believe that would be idolatry.
3. I refused to agree with you that there are things that can separate us from God’s love. I choose to emphasize the Biblical teaching that “Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.” This is the great “alleluia” of our faith and a thought that has offered me much comfort through the years.
4. I rejected the idea that a God of love that teaches us to be forgiving will not offer grace, forgiveness, love, and the opportunity for repentance both in this life and in death. I believe that all fall short of the glory of God in ways that we know and ways that we don’t… I do not believe that I am capable of perfect adherence to the law or absolute repentantance for my imperfections in this life.
5. I do not believe that the opportunity for forgiveness is finite or limited by our mortality. I can not know the way that God treats those who have died in ignorance or anger or with unconfessed sins known and unknown. I trust in the Lord, I trust in the mercy and love of God and that I, like all God’s human children, will be given the opportunity to experience divine love and mercy, the promise of being at one and complete in God, a glorious revealing of the truth “face to face,” and become repentant in death. I do not believe that any who receive the truth in death are denied access to resurrection life in Christ.
6. I give thanks to God that through water and the word I am given the opportunity to live in the promise of God’s love in this life– foretaste of the feast to come. I lament that some choose to reject this really amazing way, truth, and life right now and will have to wait until their death for it to be revealed to them in glory. They are missing out!
7. While confessing that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and that discipleship in the reign of God he proclaimed is the best way for me to live my life, I refused to accept that because a person does not know what that means or choses another path for their life that God would withhold love and grace.
I hold that if you need to emphasize the existence of hell in establishing a religious value system in your faith life you are free to adopt that belief. You should not be judged on such a belief. You are not wrong. I simply believe that zero people have chosen death following death’s defeat on the cross of Christ.
Death has no more dominion.
Hell has lost its teeth.
I reflected back on a speech I heard at the 2012 National Youth Gathering by another pastor who said that Jesus on the cross did “not even lift a finger to condemn the enemy… but said I would rather die than be in the sin accounting business…” I wonder if you heard her speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9Y5S3UYi8
At some point along the way I chose to use a message of unconditional love and grace rather than fear or threats to inspire faith and grow the love of God in people. I know that may not always be comfortable for some who desire a more exclusive and narrow interpretation of various verses in the Bible.
To that end, given my limited understanding, I can hold that hell is merely the place that Jesus Christ is able to affect the power of divine love upon the unjust and undeserving. A place that I believe we encounter in this life when we fall away from living into the reign of God. A place that no one chooses in that promised moment when the truth of Christ is revealed.
I look forward to our continuing conversation.
In Christ,
Pastor Roger
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