Hell

I had several sticks in my bra so it must have been a good day in the woods. Cassie and I had to bushwhack to get a better view, just in case you thought I was doing something inappropriate.

It was a stunningly beautiful day and that got me thinking about hell.

Before I broach this subject, please know there is no universally accepted Christian understanding of hell. I can break down some of the history of our concepts of hell, or here's a helpful link and you can do your own research http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/hell.html.

I'm content to join the leagues of folks like C.S. Lewis and Dostoevsky who approach hell with some poetic license so it doesn't turn into the place we send people we despise or who drive slowly in the left lane.

One point of theology, if we define God as the trinity, the mutual outpouring of love, then hell is the space where one is given the freedom to live outside that love. Let's say that's my basic premise to ground this imagining.

What if we thought of hell, that space for those who insist on living outside love, as stunningly beautiful?

Stay with me. Thinking of hell as a place of torture and punishment isn't overly helpful for many reasons, but imagining it as beauty allows vileness, hate, and evil to be revealed for the repulsive things they are. There is something about beauty that not only knocks the breath out of me, but it makes me feel alive, real, and in many ways exposed and vulnerable.

I hike on Mondays and bask in the beautiful because I carry so much brokenness and sorrow with me. People suffer and carry horrible burdens and on Mondays I offer them up to beauty; I let beauty wrap her arms around all that is grotesque in this world and even though it can't make everything right, it does put it back into perspective. Beauty is part of how I see God being revealed, but it's not beautiful in the sense of pretty, but as a wholeness that encompasses the love and suffering it takes to get to that place.

I'm not sure I can explain it well, but there is something about beauty that exposes and redeems, which is why I think it could be hell for some. One can disguise evil and hatefulness so much easier when one is surrounded with mediocrity and numbness. It is the extravagance and splendor of the beautiful that reveals anti-love for what it is.

I think it is hard for us to take salvation or hell seriously when we live in so much comfort and gray. Concrete and convenience make it hard to experience beauty or hell.

I don't know what I'm getting at other than I appreciate getting sticks in my bra and scratches on my face so I can find the ridge where the mountains stretch brilliantly before me. Somehow it lets the sinfulness of the world and the redemption of love meet and I can trust and hope that all will be well.