Kindness and Hellfire: Motives in the Christian Life

This was a message/sermon I gave at the Lantern Community Church in Calgary Alberta July/27/2008.


John Stewart Mill wrote in his book called On Liberty that, “However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”

By the way I hate it when people start with a quote but I couldn’t help myself. This rings too true.

I have one goal in this talk. Instead of trying to give you the meaning of the passage we’re going to talk about, I want to help you figure out how to go about reading the bible. I’m no master by any stretch, but I read a lot. I’m even going to school to read. And write and think critically. It’s not easy to think read critically especially with a book like the bible. How do we balance our faith with the hard edge of reason? Is it even possible? What I try to do is read critically and lovingly at the same time, the two constantly working in tandem.

Instead of trying to find a theme, instead of placing this passage in a box, interpreting it to give you an overarching idea, I am going to just read it and then highlight what I think is interesting, the oddities. And then instead of telling you what it means, I’m just going to suggest what it could mean, it’s a scattered method, but then there might be a bit for any one of you. I don’t feel qualified to tell you what it means, I would rather like to show you where some paths are but not necessarily where those paths go.

So, lets read it and see where it takes us. This is Jesus talking near the end of Matthew before he hung on the cross:

31-33"When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

34-36"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

37-40"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.'

41-43"Then he will turn to the 'goats,' the ones on his left, and say, 'Get out, worthless goats! You're good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'

44"Then those 'goats' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn't help?'

45"He will answer them, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.'

46"Then those 'goats' will be herded to their eternal doom, but the 'sheep' to their eternal reward."

Lets start with some problems in the text. One of the first steps when thinking critically.

The first thing I notice about this passage is all the hell talk. “Fires of hell;” other translations say “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”. I have to be honest and say it makes me uncomfortable; the very idea of a place where all the people who didn’t know or never heard about Christ go and burn forever is a hard concept for me. To fit it into the idea of a loving God is a hard sell. I don’t see the justice or the love. But within just this passage we have to ask the question, and I think it’s an important one, why do the goats go to hell? What sin placed them in this position? We’ll come back to that.

Another problem I have, similar to the problem I have with hell, is the strict separation between the sheep and the goats, there is no middle ground, no mild sentence for those who are only mildly goat-like. And (this may be a side point) it is odd that Christ uses the language of species. A person cannot change what species they are, is being a sinner the same as being a certain species? What this tells me is that the metaphor or simile should not be brought to that extreme of a conclusion. Because I think a person’s ability to choose is key to this passage. I think we could all agree that a person’s action cannot be punished if they had no choice but to act that way.

I think it’s key to ask these kinds of questions whenever we approach a text. If the bible is the bible it should be able to stand up to criticism. When we read the bible, we should never approach it ready to just take what it says, we should look deep and if a certain interpretation leads to a quacky conclusion like ‘sinners are a species’ then maybe we should look deeper or from a different angle. Here’s a story to highlight this point.

When I first started to work at Starbucks there was one thing that I learned right off the bat. There were a lot of rules. There was a specific way to do everything. Every drink had a recipe to follow, pumps to pump, shots to pour, lines of drizzle to driz. There were things to do when you started work and before you left. They taught you the right way to talk to customers, bag pastries, and line up merchandise. I did my best to learn them all, to do the best job that I could. I even became a supervisor. It’s true.

But even with all these guidelines, I did what I could to have a personable attitude whenever I ran the floor. I’m the type of person that I will often choose comfort over a guideline if I see no real reason for the rule. I was a good supervisor, people liked me, and then I met Jae Kang.

I would be on the bar making drinks, the supervisor, the veteran, and Jae would come and enlighten me about a step I had missed, or criticize my foam. Which, if you have ever worked in the coffee industry you would know how insulting it is when people beat on your foam. On not a few occasions, he would bring out the Book. He would lay it on the counter, and flip to the page which would be proof of my transgression, right there in black and white.

Sometimes he was right. Sometimes I just got lazy and I had to pull up my bootstraps. But there were other times when Jae would be so sure I had done something wrong, against the rules, but I would use the opportunity to show him that there were times when the rules needed to be tossed – an idea he was hard pressed to accept.

On one occasion we were in the middle of our evening rush when a lady came up to where I was making drinks and handed me tickets to a Dixie Chicks concert. She couldn’t go, she said and the concert was that night, we could use them or give them to somebody. She left them with me and I decided I’d give them to the next customer who would take them. That’s when Jae stepped in. He had it on good authority that we were not supposed to give out gifts to customers. I’m not sure where he had read it but he seemed really sure. I think the rule had something to do with keeping customers from thinking we were giving the tickets out as a raffle, we had to keep people from complaining that we were being unfair.

I think I was right in giving out the tickets. I think I was right to make somebody’s day. But was I? Was it right? Can something be right if it is against the rules?

Now bring this back to the bible. What happens if you are doing something that you feel is right and good but somebody corrects you with a bible verse, New or Old Testament?

I don’t think we should allow anything to stop us being kind to another. If the bible is used to hinder kindness it can’t be right.

Here’s a guideline for reading the bible, and I think it’s a good one.
Never allow anything you read, in the bible, the paper, don’t allow anything you hear, from a sermon, a commercial or news cast impede your ability to be kind to others. If you read something that brings you to the conclusion that you should have a prejudice against a certain group, or that you should dismiss them out of hand, it is wrong. It can’t be truth. This is not as easy as you may think. The Church, historically speaking, has had a hard time accepting this as a guideline, most of what we would call atrocities in the Western world went hand in hand with Christian dogma. Too many evils are backed up by a biblical text or argument. And sometimes the bible is encouraging the evil. Sometimes it can’t be denied that the bible is propagating a cruel inhuman way.

Today we read in the bible that homosexuals are a plague on the earth, that they should even be stoned to death. Does this idea encourage kindness? Is not love our guide?

And this is where we invoke the mantra of all enlightened Christians, “love the sinner hate the sin”. What wisdom! We cannot hide behind this dogma any more. What happens with a person who defines him or herself by this “sin”? When there is no distinction between the sin and the person? What should we hate and what should we love? Is it our job to hate anything? An important question I think. What did Jesus hate? I’ll come back to that too.

This guideline, to allow love or kindness to be your guide rather than just words on a piece of paper, is not just out of my head, it is at the heart of this passage. I touched on the question of why the goats go to hell earlier. Lets go back to the passage, the grounds the King gives for the goat’s damnation. He says to them,

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'

Interesting. This goes against every protestant bone in my body. Nothing is said about faith, or belief, just action. What happened to faith alone? What happened to grace? It is just not here. Why? Some people would bring in other passages in order to soften this fact. Talk about Paul and the theology he expounds but I don’t think that’s fair. Jesus words should stand alone, should they not? So, why do the goats go to hell? Or better yet why does anybody go to hell?

Kindness. The goats go to eternal punishment because of something they didn’t do. An action. Does that make anybody feel uncomfortable? Like I said this goes against some long standing protestant notions, like faith. I’m no theologian, but I know the words of Jesus to know that this notion fits perfectly within the framework of Christ’s ministry on Earth.

Jesus was angry with unkind people. What did Jesus hate? He hated hypocrisy. Which is really the worst kind of unkindness, it is unkindness in the name of God. It is a total misuse of God’s word and in the Pharisees situation it is a misuse of God’s authority. How can it be that the Pharisees can be within what the bible says, be called authorities, but not love the downtrodden or the untouchable? Can this still happen today within Christianity?

Does Jesus only care about action? No. But this passage highlights just how important it is. Action, and I don’t mean things like Jewish laws or going to church or even personal sins. I mean acting in a kind way one to another. Jesus cannot imagine a person following him and not taking every opportunity to love the people around him. In this sense the passage is very simple. Do not neglect your neighbor, your wife, your uncle, your employees, or your boss. You know this. But what we tend to forget, in the midst of all the controversy over certain sins or lifestyles, is that this is the sin in Jesus’ eyes. Read Matthew, whenever he condemns a Pharisee it is for this sin. This is the sin that gets his blood going. I am not aware of any other sin that he condemns as strongly to the point that all others either stem from it or pale in comparison to it.

Next we move to questions of motives. What motivates the sheep? This is, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of the passage and it still confuses me. It is confusing only for the fact that Jesus makes no mention of motive. Remember how the sheep answered Jesus at the beginning of the passage?

'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?'

What kind of faithful sheep are these? They aren’t even aware when their master is around. They are completely unaware of the judgment awaiting them, Oblivious to the fact that their actions would in some way reflect on the outcome of their lives in the hereafter.

Fear of hellfire is not a part of what motivates the sheep. The days when preachers preached hellfire and damnation are over. I don’t think I ever heard a sermon where the central message was “be very afraid”. And, if anything, this passage enforces the movement we’ve gone through in the way we speak about hell. The general feeling today is that hell is no longer aloud to motivate a Christian. But this leaves us in a predicament; this is where it gets interesting.

How can you not be motivated by hell once you are aware of the reality of hell? We do not have the luxury that the sheep have; we are not just blissfully unaware of h-e double hockey sticks. What does motivate the sheep? I don’t really know, the text doesn’t really say. It only says that they were unaware of the repercussions of their actions. They didn’t do it for a reward or to escape punishment. Then what? The good feeling that results from doing good? Maybe. Or maybe there can even be more pure motives. What is a good motive when it comes to living a Christian life?

I’m lost by this question. I’m hard-pressed to believe that a human being can have pure motives in any area of their life. It would be great to have a simple answer to this question. Because, it seems as though the human mind is far too complex to land on a simple answer in respect to motives. All we can really do is try to know our own motives. Critically approach our own mind, our own heart. Critical thinking comes down to honesty, allowing our conscience to have full control. Seeing right from wrong, seeing truth from lies. If you look at your heart and life and see that your living under false pretences in any aspect of your life then it’s time to let the truth sink in, and then to make a change.

Like I said at the beginning I had no over-arching idea. This is just a part of what I gleaned from the passage. I’d like to continue the discussion. If any of you are on facebook I will be posting the whole message on the Lantern group site. And you could also talk to me in person. And I encourage all of you to talk about what you hear in church every Sunday, if you go to this church or any other, never just accept it. Knowledge is not digested the same way as food. It has to be mulled over and challenged before it can truly go to the heart.