Got your attention didn't I?
Well, that was the idea. To get your attention and hopefully keep it. The title of my blog alone probably caused you to make an instant judgement about me. And it was probably not a favorable one. But ya know, thats ok. Im a big boy and I can take it.
In a way this is a follow up to my previous blog on the book "23 minutes in Hell". In that blog, I said that I believe that the Church, which includes us and preachers, have gotten way out of balance.
Did you ever watch the Karate Kid?
In the movie, Mr Miyagi tells Daniel (the kid)
that he must have balance. Balance not just in his Karate stances, but in life. The old saying is that all work and no play makes John a very boring person. We all need to balance work, play, church, family, etc in order to live a productive and happy life.
The Church is no different.
In order to have a complete understanding of what it means to be a Christian and to lead a Christian life, we need a well balanced message. In the history of the Church, we have struggled to find and maintain this balance. We struggle with everything from balancing works and grace to heaven and hell.
Most Churches and Church pastors are very well versed in the heaven part. They seem to have grace, faith, and salvation down pretty well pat.
But what we lack in our modern day Churches is a good understanding of the consequences of sin, which include Hell.
In all my years of attending Church, which are about 35, I have never heard a sermon on hell. In my opinion, its impossible to understand the fullness of Christianity without a good understanding of hell. Its like being told all your life what it means to be good, but never being told what it means to do bad. Without a knowledge of what is means to be bad, its impossible to know what it means to be good.
"What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."
Romans 7:7
We were given the law for the very reason that we would know that we are in sin and need a savior. I don't know about you, but this seems a bit weird to me. If God had not told me what coveting was, how would I know that I had done it? And if I did not know that I had coveted, would I have coveted?
Its a bit like the old saying of "What came 1st, the chicken or the egg.
The Chicken came from an egg. But a chicken had to be around to lay the egg that the Chicken came from. Of course as Christians, we know the answer to this one. God created a chicken, not an egg. So maybe this is not the best example. Or maybe the old philosophical thought of; If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Perhaps an even better example is from a movie called "The Matrix".
In the 1st Matrix movie, Neo had just went to see the oracle for the 1st time. Neo enters the room where the oracle is at. There is a vase in the corner on a table. The oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. At this Neo turns around and knocks the vase off the table and breaks it.
Neo asks the oracle how she knew this was going to happen. The oracle tells Neo that what will really puzzle him later on is if she had not told Neo about the vase, would he have still broken it?
This is the same sort of circular logic that God seems to be using.
But that is probably a subject best left for a longer blog later on. What I actually want to cover today is hell and why pastors would, or at least should, be going to hell. This is a subject that every pastor should be covering.
Well, I finally found a pastor that is going to hell. His name is James McDonald.
No... he is not actually going to hell. So dont leave bad comments or contact him and tell him that I said he is going to hell. Not that he would probably care anyway. He might even get a chuckle out of it.
He is going to hell with respect that it is preaching on it. Here is the link. http://jamesmacdonald.com/blog/?p=6279
I wont go into detail on what James had to say. You should listen to it yourself. My main purpose in the blog was simply to point out that this preacher is well balanced. He is preaching on the consequences of sin, the primary one which is hell. And on order to have a full understanding and appreciation of the gospel, Churches need to be balanced.
