From the Gospel of John:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 3:16-17 (NRSV) – January 21, 2014.)
Making the rounds of Facebook these days is an anti-religious meme which basically equates religious teaching to child abuse. It says:
If parents constantly told their children:
“We will love you forever . . . as long as you do what we tell you to do and never disagree with our views. But if you disobey , we will make sure to torment you until the grinding of your own teeth makes you cry; we will lock you up in a dark place where you’ll be strangled by snakes, and we will see that you burn in a lake of fire.”
We would recognize it as child abuse.
So why do we keep thinking that, by outsourcing the job to a deity, it becomes something else?
There’s nothing in the meme which specifically mentions Christianity, but because members of our faith so often evangelize by fear, by threatening Hellfire and damnation on those who fail to convert, I’m fairly confident that we can assume the Christian faith to be the target. I wish it weren’t so and I wish I weren’t so sympathetic to the producers of the meme! But, let’s face it, there’s a good deal of really awful theology and really bad evangelism out there.
The truth, however, is that an awful lot (nearly all, in fact) of the mythology of Hell is not found in Holy Scripture. The English word Hell is derived from an ancient Germanic word (hel), which in Norse mythology named a place of eternal punishment. When the Greek Hades (used in the New Testament to name the place of dead) and the Hebrew terms Gehenna or Sheol (used in the Old Testament for the same purpose) were translated into English using this Germanic word, that resulted in a transfer of the pagan concept into Christian theology and its vocabulary.
Then along came poets like Milton and Dante and added all sorts of wonderful, fantastic, and clearly non-biblical imagery to the popular imagination — and, voila! — a full-blown picture of Hell featuring brimstone, lakes of fire, and tormenting demons ruled over by the fallen angel Lucifer, and inhabited by poor human souls condemned to an eternity of pain. One must admit that segments of the church have made full use of this as a scare-tactic mechanism to encourage conversions and to keep the faithful in line, but it was and is wrong to do so. Neither the New Testament Hades nor Old Testament Gehenna had any attached meaning of eternal torment; the Greek signified the place where all the dead, the good, the bad and the indifferent, were thought to go, while the Hebrew terms signified a place of disposal, a place of ending.
It is true that Jesus used imagery of an after-life fire to describe the punishment of unrighteous, but the implication is of annihilation and destruction, not eternal punishment. (See, for example, Matthew 13.) His parables, such as the tale of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), cannot be the basis of a theology of eternal torment; parables are metaphoric or analogic teaching tools of limited application and to stretch them beyond their immediate point is to misunderstand and misuse them.
This is especially so when we have his own direct testimony in the Gospel of John. Because of signs displayed in the crowds of many sporting events, many people are familiar with John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And many of us were required to memorize this verse in Sunday School. Few, however, know or memorize the next verse — “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Two things must be observed and emphasized about how these verses describe the mission of the Christ. First, in verse 16 the alternatives are not an eternal life of joy versus an eternal life of punishment; the alternatives are “perishing” (i.e., annihilation and ending) or “eternal life.” Second, the purpose of Jesus’ life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension is not to condemn but to save.
The meme, so far as it goes, is accurate. There is way too much bad theology threatening people with Hellfire and damnation; to my way of thinking, any such theology is too much. But the meme is as wrong as those who promulgate the pagan mythology of Hell as a part of the Christian faith. It isn’t and we need to expunge it from our theology and from our vocabulary.
In a word, Hell can go to Hell!
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Today is the feast of St. Antony of Egypt. According to a Life of St. Antony written by Athanasius, Antony and his younger sister were orphaned when he was about 18 years of age, inheriting a goodly estate which he began to manage. However, writes Athanasius, six months after his parents’ death he was “turning over in his mind the way the apostles had left everything to follow the Savior” when he heard a sermon on Christ’s encounter with the rich young man whom the Lord instructed, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Matt. 19:21) 
There’s a lot of talk these days about “class warfare,” most of it sheer nonsense. There is, it must be admitted, a growing class divide, an increasing gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of us. One might be tempted to write about that in light of this psalm’s reference to the “scorn of the indolent rich” and the “derision of the proud.” But, let’s face it . . . scorn, derision, contempt, and generally obnoxious conduct transcend class and other distinctions. 
Very recently in the church office mail there was this small envelope addressed to me personally — the address has been typed out on a separate sheet of paper, cut therefrom, and glued onto the envelope. There is no return address and the postmark is a Cleveland, OH, cancelation. Inside there was no personal note of any kind, just a page torn from the last quarter’s Forward Day by Day devotional. One side, as you can see, has been scribbled all over; clearly not the side I am supposed to read. The other is the meditation for October 30, 2013, which begins:
The first day of the year on the Church’s calendar has a variety of names: 
A couple of weeks ago our choir and the brass quartet offered a really lovely service of Advent Lessons and Carols on the evening of Second Advent. We had things set up a little differently than you usually see our chancel and I hear later that someone had asked, “What’s all that Catholic stuff doing on the altar?” I was confused by the question because we always have “Catholic stuff” on the altar!
For that reason, icons are typically not realistic; they are very “wooden,” very simple, almost cartoonish. Much is left to the viewer’s, the prayer’s imagination. I love to pray with icons and with other “visual aids,” with paintings, photographs, candles, flowers, all that “Catholic” stuff. It is one of the beauties of our Anglican tradition that we understand worship and prayer to be an activity of the whole person, to engage all of our senses. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the Psalmist wrote. (Psalm 34:8) We take those words seriously and so we don’t exclude any form of prayer or spirituality; we don’t distinguish between what is catholic or what is protestant. If it’s helpful in prayer, if it offers an aid to our understanding or our relationship with God, we thinks it’s fine. We draw on the catholic tradition, on the protestant traditions, on the orthodox tradition, even on non-Christian traditions. We’re willing to say “Yes” to anything that aids our connection to God.
The Mary painting is by Sandro Botticelli, a Renaissance Florentine painter of the late 15th Century. In his painting, Mary is a Medici princess! She’s all decked out in these Renaissance robes, standing in a beautiful palace in front of window looking out over a lovely formal garden. Not very a very realistic depiction, of course, since she was a 1st Century Palestinian peasant girl! In any event, what is important is not how she’s dressed, but the emotions the painting conveys, and not only hers but also the angel Gabriel’s.
The paintings of Joseph are, first, a painting by an 18th Century German Bohemian painter named Raphael Mengs. Other than this painting, I don’t know this painter, but I did see this painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is notable, first of all, for it’s depiction of Joseph as a relatively young man. Usually in art, Joseph is portrayed as an old man because of a legend that he was very old, had been previously married, had other children (who are those identified in the Bible as Jesus’ brothers and sisters), and passed away early in Jesus’ life. Scholars generally disagree with that: most now believe that Mary was probably only 13 or 14 years of age, Joseph perhaps 16 to 20. 
The second painting of Joseph is by another 18th Century painter, the Frenchman Georges de la Tour. De la Tour is more conventional. He portrays Joseph as an elderly man, bald with a bushy beard. He appears to be in bed and to have fallen asleep while reading; a book is in his hand. The angel stands next to him; the scene is lighted by a single candle standing on a bedside table between them. We cannot see the candle, but only its light on the angel’s face and on Joseph’s. Joseph appears to be waking up, but not quite awake. He seems to be in that in-between, liminal stage — not quite asleep but not quite awake. I don’t know about you, but if someone tries to get me to do something when I’m just waking up like that, they’re going to get a resounding “No!”
I ought to be thinking “purer thoughts” or something . . . . 
The parable of the bridesmaids has always bothered me. Whenever I have to preach from it I have to get passed my first reaction, which is, “Really? People will be kept out of heaven for being stupid?” Of course, that is a misreading, or perhaps I should say “over-reading,” of the metaphor.
