There is much to fear in a Godless world

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” These tortured words of Jesus on the cross describe His experience suffering the judgment of God for the sins of the world. For the first time in His eternal existence, Jesus felt the unspeakable emptiness resulting from God’s absence.

God removing His presence from Jesus may not seem like adequate punishment for all of the sins of the world. After all, there are many in today’s world that desire this very experience.

They live, making choices in opposition to all God desires, developing the greatest distance possible.

Jesus’ anguished cry was a hellish expression as He encountered a truly godless existence. The total absence of God is the presence of Hell. This is what awaits everyone who rejects God from their life; a place where their desires are fulfilled.

Considering this, Hell may be different than we think. It will be a place of complete rejection, but maybe mankind’s rejection of God, not God’s rejection of mankind. C.S. Lewis described Hell as a cloister of ultimate defiance — those who reject God gathered in solidarity against Him. In this he suggests its gates may be locked from the inside, keeping God out, not keeping its inhabitants in.

The punishment of Hell is the fulfillment of its inhabitant’s desires — the total absence of God providing complete human autonomy. Mankind will be free to do with and to mankind whatever it desires, without the protective intervention of God.

To me, this is more frightening than any eternal fire I can imagine.

Pastor Mark Holmes is an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Church and has served the Darrow Road Wesleyan Church since 1997.

Tags: community, church, religion