{"id":733,"date":"2016-02-15T05:53:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T05:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/?p=733"},"modified":"2016-02-16T00:39:18","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T00:39:18","slug":"love-and-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/2016\/02\/15\/love-and-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Love and Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valentine\u2019s Day brings the annual punctuation of Winter\u2019s cold by the arrows of Cupid. We are put in mind of romance and love, as we wander the rows of pink and red cards, and navigate the bewildering assortments of chocolate and flowers. We may find ourselves reading delightful poems by Donne or Byron, or perhaps thinking of tragic love stories from ages past.<\/p>\n

Since we are observing the holiday this year on a Sunday, this is a good time to recall the deepest and oldest, and perhaps most tragic love story of all time. This story eats Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d for breakfast. It is more intriguing than the pathos conjured by Tolkien\u2019s \u201cLay of Beren and Luthien\u201d. The story in view here, of course, is the tragic tale of God\u2019s deep love for humanity, for his created beings whom he made in his image, and endowed with the gift of life. He has loved us despite our rebellion and waywardness. God has endeavored to woo us back. The shocking finale is that God wrote himself into our story, taking our humanity and all its joys and sorrows upon himself.<\/p>\n

As in the words of an old Lutheran hymn (Adapted from Thomas A Kempis)<\/p>\n

\n\u201cOh, love, how deep, how broad, how high,
\nBeyond all thought and fantasy,
\nThat God, the son of God, should take
\nOur mortal form for mortal\u2019s sake!\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, that love often has gone unrequited. In the end, a soul that says, \u201cleave me alone\u201d gets its wish. In the title above, I invoked the idea of Hell, which I won\u2019t try to fully define here. An important aspect of the definition is that the ultimate curse is the precise opposite of the ultimate blessing, as expressed in the famous \u201cAaronic benediction\u201d<\/a>. Instead of God\u2019s presence, there is absence. Instead the light of God\u2019s countenance shining upon his beloved, there is only darkness and loneliness. <\/p>\n

Some might ask us how we square the idea of a loving God with a concept like Hell. I was recently listening to an old message by Tim Keller, of New York\u2019s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and was struck by a statement, that we will never really understand the depth of God\u2019s love for us without believing in Hell. What did it cost God to love us? Was it nothing? What did Jesus actually endure on our behalf? <\/p>\n

It turns out that what really makes Jesus the \u201cman of sorrows\u201d arises from much more than the mere physical tortures inflicted upon him. It wasn\u2019t just the weight of the cross that bore him down. Christian theology teaches that Jesus had to endure abandonment and forsakenness, the sudden disintegration of his relationship with the Heavenly Father. In other words, Hell.<\/p>\n

I recall wasting a couple hours in 1997 watching \u201cEvent Horizon,\u201d a science fiction horror film that is almost exactly like \u201c2010\u201d crossed with \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d. It begins creepily enough with a ghost spaceship returned after disappearing into a black hole, and a team of astronauts and scientists travel to investigate. From this promising start, the movie degenerates quickly into a fairly brainless gore fest. The spacecraft is orbiting what turns out to be a portal to Hell, and one of the characters gets possessed by a demonic entity. But there is an interesting point: At the end of the movie, one of the remaining crew members willingly enters the portal to Hell, in order to save the others. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Jesus did. He took on Hell so that we might escape it. That\u2019s a love that is astounding and unfathomable. However, if we try our best to understand it and embrace it\u2013to take it into our hearts\u2013it will be life transforming.<\/p>\n

So, reflect on that, and happy Valentine\u2019s Day. <\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valentine\u2019s Day brings the annual punctuation of Winter\u2019s cold by the arrows of Cupid. We are put in mind of romance and love, as we wander the rows of pink and red cards, and navigate the bewildering assortments of chocolate and flowers. We may find ourselves reading delightful poems by Donne or Byron, or perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[310,369],"tags":[370,86,171,367,366,101,77,368,71],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feasts-and-seasons","category-theological-ideas","tag-event-horizon","tag-aaronic-blessing","tag-atonement","tag-benediction","tag-curse","tag-hell","tag-love","tag-separation","tag-valentines-day"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}