All I know is that salvation is some sticky stuff. Very.
This is the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five-minute podcast about eternity. I’m Tripp Hudgins.
I don’t remember the first time I encountered the idea of salvation…or of eternal damnation for that matter. It’s always been there…lurking, insisting, persisting. Growing up basically unchurched in the Christendom of the South does things to you, I guess. Suffice it to say that one of the reasons why I started this little podcast was to address the 400 pound gorilla in the living room of my mind.
Salvation and it’s corollary, damnation.
I don’t know if it is because I have been threatened with damnation. That’s a terrible experience.
I don’t know if it’s because those who I love have been threatened with damnation. Also terrible.
In any case, I have always found myself arguing for some kind of universal salvation. Always. Before I thought of myself as Christian and after I became Christian. My stance on this has not changed.
The very idea of a God that would eternally damn their own creation, the beloved created in their own image, makes no damned sense. We aren’t late model Fords or something else that might be cast aside. We’re souls, bodies, hearts, people, the Imago Dei.
This has been my ditch to die in for some time.
Perhaps to keep me on my toes, the world keeps throwing this idea back at me. “Some people are just damned,” it seems to say. Someone says the words hell and hand basket and I’m on it again.
So, let me share a couple of things so that y’all know where I am.
Salvation is universal. As in the entirety of Creation is saved. God’s grace is pernicious. It slides in where no one would ever expect it to be and redeems what it finds. It is like the waves that wash along the shore. Relentless. Unwavering.
That said, I believe Hell is real. I’m a recovering alcoholic with bipolar disorder. In my experience, Hell is a place that can be encountered here and now. No one is there, of course. That’s one of the things that makes it so terrible to visit. It is desolation itself. No one else is there. It is isolation in its purist form.
The work of Christian communities is to harrow Hell like Jesus did. If you recall, the Church tells a story of where Jesus was between his death and his resurrection. He was harrowing Hell. This extra-canonical tale is about the emptying of Hell itself by Christ Jesus. We are to rescue people from the Hells of this world, relieve suffering, end isolation, strive to bring life and deny death its victory. Anything else is theological malpractice. It is sin.
In his famous Easter Vigil homily, St. John Chrysostom said it this way:
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?
Yeah. He said it around 400 AD. My ideas aren’t new. And I stand by them.
As always, more later.
My name is Tripp Hudgins. Thank you for joining me this week on the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five minute podcast about eternity.
Episode 7