Fire and Brimstone
(Continued)

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Many years later, Christianity spreads across the West and finds common ground with Norse Mythology. Later, after the publishing of Dante’s Inferno written in 1310, which was a fictional tale where Dante, the main character, travels through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise (three stages)—it was quite vivid and grotesque, you now have the foundation laid for the emergence of HELL to pervade the consciousness of millions. But it was all made up. The words Hell and Hades replaced the word Gehinnom in the Bible, and so it made it easier for Hell to become a place for evil where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth; the place of eternal suffering; the place where the lake of fire and brimstone burns eternally; the place where you are hidden from God; the place where all evil souls go to suffer continually…

So, here we are, still back where we were. We still don’t know many times who is REALLY bad and who is REALLY good. We think we know but most of the time we don’t have enough information to know what’s what… And, what about hell? Did I scare the hell out of you or scare the hell in you? What are we to make of all of this information? Can you now see why the Universalists said, “To hell with it, universal salvation for everybody!” It much easier…

While you ponder, I want to go back to that young man at the school. He was looking me in the eyes and asking me, “Am I going to Hell”? I looked at him and said, “Young brother, you are already in Hell because your mind is not at peace. Your mind is not free. In fact, you are in danger of being in Hell for a long time because you are focused on two many things that will not lead your life anywhere. Your grades are bad, your attendance is poor, you are not learning.” I said, “You are in jeopardy of losing your chance to be a productive person. You must use wisdom in your decisions.   What you do now, your work ethic, effort, desire, all of it will play in your future when you leave this school” He said, “What about God punishing me?” I said: “God need not punish you because you are punishing yourself already.” I said: “God helps those that help themselves young man…Your future is in your hands. Go and manifest your personal greatness!” Then I told him that he need not worry about going to hell but need to look and see what was going on within—within himself because that was the real Hell!
You know, Shakespeare said that “Art is a mirror held up to nature.” This is what mythology is except the mirror is held up to the us… Joseph Campbell said: “When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.”

And so, it is hard for me today to believe that hell is an actual place, rather it is a psychological state. Hell is a public myth of our very private dreams… Those dreams that go to the depths of our being, places people don’t know about. And right there in Hell we spend too much time despairing and being insecure, and vengeful, and angry about this or that, and selfish, and afraid. Unless we seek a higher plain of reality, we live in this purgatorial like state in our own personal hells. We wrestle with these thoughts, and if we don’t deal with them, elevate our consciousness, and put them to rest, they begin to manifest outwardly in our actions and in our relations to others…

If there is a lesson this morning, it is not just that Hell is imagined, but it is also that we have to understand that the story always points right back at us. Change will not come in our world until we change ourselves. The new heavens and new earth, the “Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming down from Heaven as a bride adorned for her husband”— this speaks metaphorically of the Beloved Community and represents peace. This will never come until we elevate our consciousness and know that the peace we seek is the peace we must find within. Fix yourself and fix the world. You need not fear the literal place of Gehinnom. You need not worry if your soul will go down to Hades after death; you need not worry about whether you will be weeping and gnashing your teeth for eternity; you need not worry about falling off the bridge of judgment, or trying to get through the narrow door. But if you want to worry, worry about finding a way out of those metaphorical hells that hold your spirit hostage. Worry about finding release from those cycles of pain, so that your life can be a blessing to others… As I said to that young man, I say to you, but I pose a question as I close: Are you in hell? Are you in jeopardy of losing your chance to be a productive person? I tell you this day, your future is in your hands. Go and manifest your personal greatness and help to speed up the day in making the new heavens and new earth a reality for yourself and all of creation.
Thank you for your time this morning. Let it be so. Amen.
 

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Copyright by Rev. John T. Crestwell. All rights reserved. Please contact him for permission to use.