CHAPTER THREE
MY BRUSH WITH HELL
I made some unsettling accusations against Christian orthodoxy in the last chapter. The fact that you are still reading tells me volumes about you. For instance I know you would not be reading these words unless you were absolutely committed to knowing everything possible about the Jesus that Paul knows. I know that because the natural thing people do when confronted with unsettling news is to turn it off--unless that news involves what they do for a living. Then they pay close attention because they understand the news involves their way of life. The fact that you depend on Jesus as your way of life gives me hope that you will understand what drove me to make the startling and unsettling accusations against Christian orthodoxy I made in the last chapter.
I am a Protestant, trained by Protestant theologians and teachers. But since I have been moved into an understanding that is not taught in any Protestant or Catholic seminary, what I say might well be relevant to all varieties of Christians...if it is true.
This book was originally completed about 1985. About a year prior to that, something happened to me that radically altered my life: I realized what legalized abortion means. It forced me to rethink everything I had ever learned.
Enclosed as an appendix at the end of this book is a dialogue designed to communicate precisely what happened when I finally understood legalized abortion. I do not include it in the main body of this book because I am no longer primarily concerned with that issue. I now see it is just one of many examples of how this world is going to hell.
But since it was legalized abortoin that made me understand what it means to live in a world of sin, legalized abortion is central to the witness I bring throughout this book. Suffice it to say that legalized abortion put me in the presence of hell itself. In other words, legalized abortion made me afraid I was in danger of going to hell myself.
Most people who have read this book find it virtually impossible to avoid turning at this point to the Appendix. Curiosity about my past trials overcomes their curiosity about the true subject of the book. I have been tempted to omit the Appendix entirely because I suspect that it hinders rather than assists people learning how to stop the world from going to hell. But I include it now because the information contained there is relevant to our present historical context. I am firmly convinced it would be better for the reader to treat it as Appendix, and hope these words will move the reader to resist the temptation to jump to the back of the book and there find an excuse to ignore learning how to stop the world from going to hell. Which, after all, is what this book is about.
So, back to the narrative. When I found myself in a place where I thought I might be going to hell, I became very confused. You see, I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus Christ is alive and that He has died for my sins. Yet, in the presence of legalized abortion I became terrified that I might go to hell in spite of the fact that I am a Christian. This was very confusing and disturbing, so I became very confused and disturbed.
I was about as confused as a man can be and still function, about as angry as a man can be and still remain nonviolent. Yet in spite of my inner turmoil, the outward appearance of our life (my family and I) was unchanged; I went about business as though nothing had changed in my life.
About the most dramatic change that occurred in our lives was we quit spending time with Christians. Oh there were a few around the country I occasionally spoke to, but for the most part the family receded into itself. The definition of reality I had arrived at made normal Christian Fellowship impossible: it seemed hypocritical to be carrying on normal church business in light of the fundamental anomaly I had discovered myself a part of.
But I had one bedrock fact that moored me to the here and now, that made it impossible for me to make any radical changes in response to the horror I saw all around me. I understood that no matter what I did (even if I launched myself against legalized abortion like a kamikaze pilot, as I saw a growing number of Christians around the country doing, and as I was sorely tempted to do) if I did not support my family, I was worse in the eyes of the Lord than an unbeliever. Since I made a living as a retail store owner, any radical public reaction would have not only legal consequences but direct and unavoidable financial consequences that prudence could easily see would be disastrous to my ability to support my family.
So I got up each day and went to work, deeply troubled in my soul, but fully aware that in the fact of my obedience to the Lord's admonition through Paul (1 Tim. 5:8) to provide for my family I was doing my best to show the Lord I had not given up; I had not quit trying to be His sheep--even if I acted like a goat, looked like a goat, and smelled like a goat. Even if every day that passed I understood more fully that I was personally responsible for the continuing holocaust in the slaughter of the least among us, I knew that the Lord knew my heart: He knew I did not want to continue to be culpable, and He knew that His Word had bound my conscience so that I had to continue my culpability in order to avoid doing anything that would destroy my ability to support my family. In other words, the Lord knew that His instructions were binding me to a course of action that made it impossible for me to escape the consciousness of the mortal sin in which I found myself. I knew He knew I was acting in obedience to His Word: in this knowledge there was peace; but, at the same time, I was conscious of the fact that every passing day I was aiding and abetting the slaughter of over four thousand of the least among us in the United States of America. This sin hung over me like a canopy that threatened to block out all remaining light from what had once been a truly glorious day. I struggled against the dying of the light, but no matter how hard I struggled I could not escape the fact that I was a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, who was, each passing day, personally responsible for aiding and abetting the slaughter of thousands of precious unborn people created in the image of God.
During the weeks and months in which I struggled against the sin that bound me like a transparent casket in which I could move around freely, and through which I could view clearly the things around me, but nevertheless was a casket out of which I could not break free, a question began to nag at me: If what I see is the truth, why is Jesus still with me? Why am I as clearly aware of the presence of the Spirit of Christ as I have ever been at any time since He revealed Himself to me? Isn't the Lord supposed to turn away from those who continue in sin after they have understood the nature of their actions?
Since the presence of the Spirit of Christ in my life was a self-evident fact that I could not deny even if I wanted to, I realized there were two possible answers to my question: (1) I had misinterpreted the meaning of legalized abortion; or (2) the Lord had forgiven me for the sin in which I found myself trapped. The first option made me review every item of information I had interpreted to mean I was culpable in the undeniable slaughter going on around me. The harder I looked the more convicted I became that I was not hallucinating my guilt. It was there as sure as the sun in the sky or the love in my wife's eyes. As a citizen of the United States of America, I was culpable in the slaughter unless I had done everything in my power to stop it, and having done so, either stopped it or was removed from any opportunity to utilize my power in resistance against it. In other words, from my point of view, I was culpable in the slaughter unless I was either killed or imprisoned trying to stop it.
That left option two: the Lord had forgiven me for the sin that entrapped me each passing day. I liked this option a lot, but I did not understand how He could do this. The God I know does not tolerate sin well, to say the least. I was in absolute turmoil in my spirit because I had no understanding of how God could go on forgiving me for being an accessory to the murder of the least among us. In spite of the fact that I never lost consciousness of the presence of Christ in my life, I was afraid that He was going to forsake me because of the sin I was trapped in. This chronic fear made peace of mind an evanescent reality.
In order to find peace of mind, I reviewed everything I had learned about how God forgives sin. At the root of my understanding was the Apostle Paul's summary, "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." Paul's summary clearly defines how sins committed in ignorance and unbelief are forgiven: God's mercy is revealed in the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; those who receive faith in the atoning power of Christ's sacrifice are to understand they are forgiven for the sins committed in ignorance and unbelief.
But the sin that enslaved me was not done in ignorance and unbelief--at least not now. I had had that excuse for years, but I understood clearly now: I was not ignorant, and I was most surely not an unbeliever. And I kept on sinning! I was not stopping! I could not stop! Every day that went by, I was culpable in the slaughter of thousands of people who qualify as the least among us. Why is the Lord staying with me? Why has He not abandoned me in my trespasses and sins? How can He remain Just and at the same time continue to be the loving, comforting Presence that stills the terrors in my soul?
The questions haunted me like no questions ever had. I took them to Christian friends and advisors; I took them to the theologians both living and dead I had been introduced to while in seminary. I got two answers: there were those who denied I was culpable in the continuing slaughter and was therefore imagining personal sin that did not exist. I ignored these people from then on: their counsel had proven to me they were disqualified to speak for the Lord; instead of helping me escape from my sin, they were committed to ignoring their own sin. The other answer I got went like this: Neal, the Lord knows your heart. He knows you do not want to aid and abet the slaughter of the least of those among us. Because your heart is pure in this matter, the Lord is willing to forgive your actions.
When I pressed them for "how" the Lord could forgive me, the wisest among them referred me to my mystic Union with Christ. Because of this mystic Union with Christ, they alleged, my sins were forgiven--even those committed after I received faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Those counselors who understood the horror of legalized abortion confirmed for me what I had already suspected. The only way to explain how the God revealed in Holy Scripture can forgive sins committed by Christians who know better and who go ahead and sin anyway relies on what Protestant theologians call "the Doctrine of Mystic Union with Christ." Since I had encountered the Doctrine of Mystic Union several times during my years as a Christian aggressively trying to understand the Bible, I was more prepared than most people to understand the significance of what my counselors told me in my time of turmoil.
The problem with what they told me was it made matters that much worse. I had already seen that of all the traditionally accepted doctrines in Protestant theology, the doctrine of Mystic Union with Christ, a doctrine that all Protestant theologians defined as foundational, was the clearest anomaly I had ever encountered in all my years as a studying Christian.
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