“The Lake of Fire”

I don’t often use this blog to cross over into the world of politics, mostly because I don’t have time to unpack the issues, and also because I feel as though my time is better spent explaining some of the basics of the Catholic faith.  The events of our recent provincial election have led me to take some time to dip my toe into this arena, but I’m going to focus on explaining what I can express best: the perspective of my Catholic faith.

If you paid attention to the election campaign of this past month, you’ve probably heard that a  Wildrose Candidate – and Christian pastor – was reviled by many for being a bigot and a homophobe because of a blog post he wrote nearly a year ago entitled “Born this way.” This post was meant to be a ‘sequel’ to the Lady Gaga song of the same name, but from a Christian perspective.  (As a side note, using popular culture to try and explain what we do or don’t believe as Christians is nothing new.  St. Paul’s speech at the Areopagus in Acts 17, having identified an altar to an unknown God in Greece, proceeded to teach the Athenians about Jesus.  In that same spirit, engaging popular culture has long been an effective tool in the work of evangelization.)  I managed to find a screenshot of the blog in question and read the blog post in its entirety.  While his comments were a little ambiguous at times, they don’t constitute all the things he’s been accused of by politicians and media alike – and as a result, by many Alberta residents.  I’m going to focus on the key two statementspoints that have been repeated ad nauseum online, in speeches, and on TV, and explain what I think he meant.  Early in the blog he writes:

“You see, you can live the way you were born, and if you die the way you were born then you will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell, a place of eternal suffering,”

And later he concludes:

“Accepting people the way they are is cruel and not loving!”

It’s easy to read these two comments and assume that many things about this man; that he is guilty of intolerance in the worst possible way.  How could a pastor speak in such a cold manner?  He must be a fanatic, and certainly cannot be trusted to hold public office.  In doing so, however, you’re neglecting to consider one of the basic premises of Christian anthropology: the fact that we are all affected by sin, beginning from our first parents, and the remedy to that was the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.  As a Pastor concerned for the eternal welfare of his congregation, this would be a topic near to his heart.  The Catechism explains this very well:

All men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners”: “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.”  (Catechism of the Catholic Church #402)

To put it simply, each of us is born into sin.  This is the reality of our human existence.  But here, in our sin, God loves us, and invites us to live in relationship with Him.  He invites us to turn away from sin, to change, and to “be perfect, just as (our) heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48.)

The problem in a society that has become increasingly based on the tenets of tolerance is that we begin to lose a sense of what sin is.  We can come to believe that there is, in fact, no such thing as sin- and without sin, there is no hell (which, according to the Catechism is eternal separation from God.  The image of a ‘lake of fire’ comes from Revelation 20, and is meant to convey a sense of the frustration and suffering it would be to be separated from God.)  But as Christians, in the same way as we believe we are all created for Heaven – the “Beatific vision,” “Wedding feast of the Lamb,” “The Father’s House” – again, as an invitation.  God forces us to do nothing.  But we can use the freedom He grants us – the freedom to choose whether or not to live in relationship with Him – to be selfish, to embrace sin, and to turn away from him.  The Catechism explains it very well:

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him.  But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor, or against ourselves… to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice.  This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell.’  (CCC #1033)

In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis explained it in even simpler terms:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says in the end “Thy will be done.”

One could say – as did the pastor in question – that rationalizing our sin according to the doctrine of tolerance is one’s own free choice to separate themselves from God.  To embrace sin simply because we were ‘born that way’ is a recipe for disaster, because it becomes the choice not to repent, not to accept God’s merciful love, and the result of that would be ”the lake of fire” (AKA Hell.)  Also, from that perspective, a Christian pastor would be cruel and not loving NOT to challenge the members of his congregation to turn away from sin.  It would be the same thing as if I, upon seeing that my three year old son wanted to run onto a busy street (and likely get runover by a car) did not do everything in my power to save him.  That’s what it means to love someone, not simply telling them what they want to hear, but inviting them to something much more profound: life in Christ.  And a life in Christ consists in many things.  Christ simplified it to two simple commandments: loving God and loving your neighbor.  Modern society has oversimplified this to meaning that we’re all simply called to “be good people,” which misses the point.  Loving God and neighbor is a call to conversion, to repentence.  We have commandments and beatitudes which are meant to serve as a bare minimums of what it is to follow Him.  The Christian life is, at times, hard, and is, at times, not the most popular thing in the world.  But what Christ has promised is that it is worth it.  From the Catechism again:

Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.  (CCC 1024)

Whatever difficulties we face, whatever it is that we might be asked to give up or sacrifice, or whatever persecutions we undergo will pale in comparison to the reward that is coming.

[It is also worth noting that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops released this document last year on the pastoral care of those with same-sex attraction: http://www.cccb.ca/site/images/stories/pdf/ministry-ssa_en.pdf as it gives further insight the Church's stance in this area.]