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I started this series by revealing how all religions share a technical definition of the term salvation. It always refers to rescue, healing, deliverance, liberation, and forgiveness. Each religion differs somewhat on precisely what salvation is rescuing us from, but the first assumption in the modern mind is that salvation is how a person avoids going to Hell.

You may have seen the highlight reels from The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett interviewing young scholar and theologian Wes Huff. If you haven’t seen the interview in its entirety, please do as it fills in the holes which the “newsjacking” scroll sphere scavenges for views and likes.

Wes Huff is the shiny new toy in modern Christian apologetics, and I largely agree with many of his conclusions, but it’s also not lost on me that he is a “company man,” in that while he isn’t employed as a pastor (to my knowledge) he is employed as an academic and an apologist. Whenever someone is paid to uphold a perspective, I listen carefully to their conclusions. In Wes’s case, it’s clear he knows the scripture and history, so I know he sees what I see, but since he’s paid to tote the company line, I believe he’s careful not to disappoint his funders. Paul said he’d rather die than fall into that trap (1 Corinthians 9:15).

This interview is a great example of the nuances I seek to illuminate in my work. I’m not here to argue one side of the discussion, but to take the competing binaries unto their transcendent perspective. Steven’s question to Wes is our world’s biggest existential inquiry:

AM I GOING TO HELL?

Wes provides the “text book” answers from within the established Christian doctrine, but I can also see him navigating the quick sand as he reframes many of the questions regressively into competing doctrinal claims, for example:

1. Wes upholds the claim that “Hell is an ongoing place of God’s punishment and wrath” reserved for those who do not believe in Jesus.
2. Wes concordantly claims that Jesus bore the wrath of God upon the cross, thus enabling mercy “for those who put their trust in Jesus.”

Last week I talked about the trap of the binary. I know not to force these claims into an either or, but modern people don’t recognize why these answers feel incomplete, but we know they are. This is Wes Huff’s Hell problem. It’s not so much that it’s wrong as it is incomplete, and most people can’t use it in conversations…so they avoid it.

I’d like to address the underlying questions that emerge from Wes and Christianity’s failure to seek the biblical answer that transcends the religious doctrinal framework. It’s my hope these questions will illuminate the biblical experience of salvation in contrast to the religious salvation.

1. Did Jesus bear the entire wrath of God or just some of it? 1 John 1:22 says: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” The term “propitiation” specifically means the “appeasement of divine wrath.” Here we see in the biblical narrative that Christ completely exhausted God’s wrath. Thus there can be no more appeasing God, there is no more wrath or retribution. The justice of God is based in mercy, love, and complete and total restoration. Wes sees mercy as central, but embraces tradition which insists on retribution on some. In my opinion this is insufficient, because he’s claiming Christ’s sacrifice made people “savable” and didn’t actually save anyone and we each ultimately save ourselves by choosing the Christian religion.
2. If Wes knows Hell is allegorical and not a literal underworld as depicted in Dante’s Inferno, and Wes knows that Heaven is restoration “here on earth,” why uphold the dichotomy and frame his answer to the biggest existential question as; “We’re all going to Hell**” (I place the asterisks there because he’s also implying; “except some of us aren’t.”) Jesus uses the term “eisersome” (begin to experience, enter) when talking about heaven here and now. All people live “here and now” and the biblical revelation is that all do “experience” bits of heaven, not just the Christians when they die.
3. Is the Good News (gospel) only so good because the bad news (hell) is so bad? When asked to describe the biblical Hell, Wes’ message is it’s a place you don’t want to go. How can heaven be here now and hell is only after we die? Jesus’ own teaching (Luke 16:19-24) reveals that chasm of Hades exists before death. Subsequently, Wes addresses salvation as being saved from such bad news. So while he claims “salvation is not just fire insurance,” his answer doesn’t go farther than that. The gospel of Jesus (Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1-2) is a deliberate redaction of God’s vengeance from vs.2. So the biblical salvation is the favor of God upon all in fulfillment of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-334). Jesus’ gospel is only Good News.
4. If salvation is received (by faith in Christ’s atoning work) not achieved (by merit or religion), then what difference does a person’s religion make? His salvation claim is then conflated with conversion to the Christian religion, i.e. “Muslim’s from Morocco are essentially going to Hell.”

I hope you watch the video and can observe these nuances and how they resonate inside you. For me, I’m not content with the Heaven Hell binary as carrot and stick belief. If a person truly believes that an all knowing, all powerful, loving God suddenly changes upon our death to a wrathful God who insists on retribution in the form of an eternal conscious torture for the vast majority of his image bearers, then such a belief of Hell will obscure the gospel and its good news. Is the heart and message of Christ truly being represented in the modern Christian industrial complex?

The answer is not to disbelieve in hell, but to grasp the biblical revelation of hell, especially if salvation is how we avoid it. Below is how I assemble the biblical facts. Tell me if you agree or not.

This delusional bend of our will means if left to ourselves, we’ll live oblivious to the power of love which is restoring all things, and our self assertion means we reject our Maker and forfeit our birthright (true identity) and purpose, preferring the whole spectrum of death to resuscitation. God in his love for us, embraces and exists in and as humanity, in Christ and takes upon himself the entire wrath of God, on our behalf, leaving not a single particle of retribution to exist forever, and justifies every true soul that will ever exist.

Because of Christ, humanity’s dilemma is no longer our separation from God, but our proximity to God. The Good News of the Gospel is that we are being loved into existence moment to moment as God’s own existence and Divine union (heaven) is immediately upon every soul who cares to see and hear.

The proximity of God’s love chastises both the light and dark within all people forever as we each struggle against and yield to God in our own way. I can’t think of any person who lacks this experience, though our circumstances are unique to each of us. Some fight our darkness more than others, the same piercing light causes some to love and others to hate all it reveals.

Since an all-knowing God cannot forget, nor gain new information, there could never have been a time when any human soul ever sprang into existence, but all have perfectly and forever existed in the mind and wisdom of God. And since we existed in God prior to our births, we only truly exist there now, and we can only exist in God following our deaths. The all consuming fire of God, (lake of fire) to those who experience His presence is the crucible of life (which is eternal) that burns all that is false away, leaving only our true identity which is perfectly hidden in Christ and found in God. Heaven is the perfect description for those who longingly desire to have all that is not real consumed forever in this fire, so that we can completely unite in God.

The same fate, that of returning to the fire of God, befalls all humanity, and for those for whom the love of God is as Thomas Merton says: “not their greatest joy”, then the proximity and fire of God, will be a torment to those who will their pseudonyms to remain. This is not wrath forever, but love forever. Hades is emptied, the gates are eternally open, inviting each falsehood to die in fire and be simultaneously utterly consumed and discovered forever in the authenticity of God. The judgment of God isn’t a separation between good and bad people, but the separation of the good from the bad in each person. It’s the loving fire of God that does this. Paraphrasing Kierkegaard, Hell is the refusal to be one’s self before God”, now and forevermore. Eternal life has already begun folks, we either exist and are purified in the loving fire of God or we live an illusion of existence than cannot pass through the fire. Heaven and Hell are both proximity to God.

We experience both heaven and hell every single day. Faith and doubt. Overcoming sin while ensnared by it. Hating or looking down on others is as much a living Hell as sulfuric flames wicking our feet. Loving God and others is as much Heaven as hearing the choir of angels sing. Pastors or apologists who can’t reveal our existence in both here and now, will not be able to deliver us from either in the future. So if I were asked that question by Steven, this is how I’d answer:

“You are far more delivered from Hell than you realize, and remain in Hell far more than you may have considered.”

Every sentence of these claims can be backed entirely by scripture. So then, if perfect love casts out fear, what would be the experience of faith based in love not fear? I call it experiential salvation.