In Between Heaven and Hell
Certainty—the idea that we know some things for sure—is one of our greatest barriers to knowing we are loved. It keeps us hiding and running all at the same time.
“It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” - J.R.R. Tolkein
It’s early Sunday morning here, and like every Sunday morning, I feel pulled toward the safety of a previous life. Maybe you know the one, where church is the only place you want to be, where your white-knuckle grasp of Bible truths is the surest thing in your life. I remember what it’s like to walk in those doors like its the home I always wanted. The pastor gets up on stage, and he says things with such surety. You walk out into the cold with the windbreaker of three steps to a better life.
There are so many things about that version of faith that I miss—the feeling of being a part of something important. The promise of heaven to vanquish the real-life feelings of hell. I even miss the confidence in everything I thought I knew for sure. Certainty is such a convincing caretaker.
And yet, what I “know” today is so much more reliable than what I “knew” then. It is firmly planted in the soil of this world. It is as accessible as a breath. And it calls me out of my hiding. Maybe to church, maybe not. But certainly, out my front door, to be swept off to the world in between heaven and hell.
Certainty is a Fire
As a young evangelical, God's mercy was a sure thing (if you did it right). It was an object, delivered by a scripted prayer, that was somehow both grace and formula, gift and acquisition. Once you had it, it continued to be a paradox: something you both could never lose, and always lived with a vague terror you never had. Seminary libraries are filled with formulas for assurance of salvation.
Christian summer camp was always a good place to reckon with certainty. The old trope of children accepting Jesus for the 12th time or recommitting their life to Jesus around the Friday night campfire is both caricature and truth. I loved Christian camp so much that I spent three summers as a counselor, one of the greatest jobs I ever loved, but it was the fires of one summer as a 12-year-old that I’ll never forget.
Summer camp is known for its complex late-night strategy games: sprawling versions of Capture the Flag, scavenger hunts spanning acres of land. In one such game, hundreds of slips of paper were hidden throughout the grounds. A contest ensued for which campers/cabins could collect the most slips before a set End Time. We raced from the woods to the creek to the barn to the lake and back again, all consummating in an evening chapel around the fire. The slips were collected and counted. Winners were recognized.
A pile of unfound papers was left by the fire, a visual question mark as the sermon ensued. The camp pastor had volunteer kids throw the unfound scraps into the fire. An object lesson: all the people we don’t find with the “gospel” will end up just like those slips in the fire. If we were willing to work that hard to collect meaningless pieces of paper, how much harder could we work to collect souls for Jesus?
I returned home with an evangelistic zeal that set me ablaze (yes, I realize the metaphor is getting weary… 😉) I evangelized over recess. I stood under the incredible weight of responsibility: people’s eternities were in my hands.
Like a hot potato, my own “salvation” scalded, ever forcing me to pass it on (usually in the most awkward of terms). The more rigidly you believe you are right, the more hegemony is required. You’ve got to push that inflexible rightness out, so everyone else can be as certain as you portend to be.
Scared Kids
I don’t even think it was visions of the fires of hell that enflamed me that summer. I think, if I’m honest, I was a really scared kid. Not about the eternal, but about my place in the here-and-now. A kid who didn’t know how to belong in the world. And taking responsibility for heaven was somehow easier than facing what was right in front of me.
We’re all scared kids. My story isn’t extraordinary, and the feeling isn't firmly in the past. We feel exposed and fragile, believing if we only hold on tight to what little power (certainty is a kind of power) we can find, the ground will cease to shake beneath us. Many of us scared kids believed we could hold God’s love in our hands if we took responsibility for His mission in our hearts. We bought an old snake oil: Doing the work proves His love is real.
What I now know is that my hunger for God’s love was real. My magnetism to the promise of unconditional mercy was real. It’s real for all of us. We who rush from the gym to drop-off to work to basketball practice to a small group to bedtime over and over. We who are ridden hard by anxiety, approval, and somedays apathy. The work has changed perhaps. We’re not pulling our friends into dark corners of the playground to explain how to get out of hell. But we are working. Working, working, working. Hoping somewhere in the work, we’ll feel the mercy of approval.
The problem with God’s love is we cannot hold it. We cannot store it up in a bank and withdraw when necessary. God’s love is available to all, but only accessible to the naked and the present. We cannot see it in a rush; we cannot earn it in a task. We Americans, who are comforted by our progress, our uniqueness, and our certainty, cloak ourselves in the exact things that keep us impermeable to love.
We hold onto our certainties because without them we are left to naked faith. Our religious formulas, our Roman Roads, our TULIP Calvinism, all exist to systematize an impossible mystery: a God that can’t be held by our hands or our theologies. A God too expansive, rich, and close for us to earn. Like Abram leaving Ur, Esther marrying the King, Jeremiah’s lament, Jesus being called insane by His family, we all have to leave the cozy of the familiar and the secure. We shed the security of guarantees.
The Lenten Stance
We have to walk out into the wildlands, unsure of where our next country is, perilously in the in-between, dizzied by the nearby signs of both heaven and hell. When we are present we see what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven around every corner: the kindness of a stranger, the creativity of a child, the purple stripe in a sunrise. Heaven is breaking in all around if we are "here" enough to notice it.
Hell is here too, of course. Wars, coronaviruses, politicians, and parking lots. Real suffering is always nipping at our heals. Its threat is what keeps "the work" and our certainty so tantalizing. We are hoping to stay one step ahead of the pain.
But to be fully alive is to be awake to all that is wrong, to be attuned to all that is right. To see the suffering in ourselves and in each other and not cover it with platitudes or plans. The Lenten stance, the one we are training for, is a permanent in-between. A liminal space. It is where we learn the tenacity of love. Its gentle fierceness, ever-present for those who will stand uncovered.
I'm about to walk out the door for the day. Maybe you are, too. As I pass the threshold, I will take in a slow breath. A reminder that my safety in the world is not in what I know or how fast I move. My safety is as close as a breath. And with this fragile confidence, who knows where the road will take me.
P.S. I’m spending the rest of Lent inviting us into the unpolished safety of hope, imagining that the faith we’ve been handed isn’t the only faith we can know. I hope you’ll subscribe:
P.P.S. - Being a writer in 2020 is a weird thing because you’ve got to constantly ask people to share your stuff. So if you like it, this is me asking, would you share it?