For the Spiritually Sound

I designate in the title the audience I seek to reach. I don't mean to confuse those wavering or those struggling with disbelief, but to those who know God is God, and God is good.

I was reading Philip Yancey, as I am prone to do, and I came across some spiritually devastating thoughts. He was essaying the book of Job. He wrote:

The contest posed between Satan and God is no trivial exercise. Satan's accusation that Job loves God only because "you have put a hedge around him," stands as an attack on God's character. It implies that God is not worthy of love in himself, that people follow God only because they get something out of it or are "bribed" to do so. In Satan's view, God resembles a politician who can win only by rigging the election...'People love God,' said one priest, 'the way a peasant loves his cow, for the butter and cheese it produces.' Job's response after all the props of faith have been removed, will prove or disprove Satan's challenge. A weathly man, Job has much to lose if God stops blessing him. Will he continue to trust God even after he forfeits it all?

All Job stood to lose was wealth, health, and his family. Sounds like pretty high stakes, but Yancey, as he is prone to do, takes it a step further with famous behaviorist Edward O. Wilson's words on Mother Teresa and altruism:

[Wilson] explains [Teresa's] good deeds by pointing out she was secure in the service of Christ and in her belief in immortaility; in other words, believing she wouled get her reward she acted on that "selfish" basis...We have faith in God in hopes that we will get something out of it.

I've always connected people's affinity for God with their desire for earthly peace and pleasure but never have I traced that affinity to infinity. To immortality. To eternity.

So here I am grappling with my true love for God. Wow. I mean William Safire said that "The Book of Job delights the irreverent, satisfies the blasphemous, and offers at least some comfort to the heretical," but I never knew it would do just the opposite to the believer. I was left awkwardly holding the oh so breakable question:

Would I still love God if I went to Hell after death?

I've been wondering in the past few minutes why we are even told about Heaven and Hell. Why don't we put love to the real test and not let reward and punishment get in the way. Here I am like Job questioning God. His ways are obviously higher than mine. I do think, however, that Jesus Christ would have a much smaller fanbase. All the lukewarm Christians might drop off. That might be a blessing...unless I found myself to be one of them.

Without the promise of Heaven, however, our concept of the character of God would be much different. I'm not trying to go down that theological road. I want simply to think about what love is. Why do I love God?

I can't of course tell you exactly what my initial reasoning was in deciding to follow God (as I described in the previous post, Born) but I can tell you that most of what kept me on the alleged "straight and narrow" through my early childhood was fear of Hell. As I grew older I began have these high ideals of being thankful for "who God is" but if you put me to the wire and across from the skyscraper on which I stand there is another where God stands, yet there is nothing to catch me should I slip headlong into an eternal damnation then chances are I'm not taking a chance.

But all this is implying that, as Yancey says Satan's real challenge was, "that God is not worthy of love in himself." And something in my grain tells me that can't be true. I cannot make myself agree to the notion that God is not worthy of love. And this gives me hope of my own love for Him.

In my spirit, all of it really boiled down to the fact that I don't know God well enough. If in my present relationship with God I were to find there was no escape from Hell then I may abandon the whole gig and engulf myself in earthly pleasures. But I believe with all my heart that if I truly became accquainted with God then nothing could deter me from Him. I could never find Him undeserving of my full and devoted love. The prospect of Hell would make me afraid to my core and I would plead with God Almighty for escape, but if none was offered, I would love Him still. If I truly knew Him I would know Him to be good, all good and the source thereof. He is worthy of love simply for who He is.

The truth is, fortunately, that there is escape from Hell and God provides it through His son Jesus Christ. This is a gift we should never take for granted. We can't. The Kingdom is Heaven is why we are still locked in the great big tank of an earth. We have to work for it and fight for it and die for it. But lest we forget who the King is, we had all better, as Leonard Ravenhill would say, "...get sackcloth and ashes and humble ourselves and say 'Almighty God.'" We have to know Him to love Him.