In fact, for many people, Christianity has been
completely rejected because they have only heard that it’s scary. God is going to consign them to a fiery eternity
of pain and suffering. Comic books about
this punishment for non-believers are available for free and try to convert people
to faith. Fear is preached, the end of
the world is predicted as it was this week with another rapture date, and woe
to anyone who ignores this message.
The parable Jesus told about Lazarus and the
rich man was meant not to scare people away from hell. The stark contrast between Lazarus and the
unnamed rich man and the role reversal it implied was a call to compassion. That call is a core part of what it means to
be the United Church.
In 1925, Methodists, Presbyterians,
Congregationalists and Union churches came together to build a national faith of
justice and compassion, not fear of Hell.
They developed a document of beliefs they could agree on. It was called the Basis of Union. Of the twenty statements, the only reference
to Hell was Article 19, “Of the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, and the
Future Life” where it said that ‘the finally impenitent shall go away into
eternal punishment and the righteous into life eternal.” It doesn’t even
mention Hell by name, or purgatory or even Satan. The last statement, Article 20, says that “God
will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. We confidently believe that by His power and
grace all His enemies shall finally be overcome, and the kingdoms of this world
be made the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.”
So while tent revivals were happening and
people were told about God’s wrath that would punish them with Hell, the United
Church was grounding faith in a loving God.
God was seen as compassionate, caring and welcoming all people. Not a vengeful, angry punisher, rapturing up some
while the left behind got punished. In
the book, “The Hell Jesus Never Intended”, Keith Wright says the idea that God
condemns us and sentences us to hell, is troubling. He writes quote:
It’s frightening
for many because love that must be bought at the price of a violent death on
the Cross hardly sounds like love…the nonviolent God of Jesus becomes a God of
unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the
victim who is most precious to him, but holds humanity accountable for a death
that God both anticipates and requires… is to paint an awful picture of God, to
make God an arbitrary and capricious tyrant.
Given that Jesus taught his disciples to pray using
the word ‘Abba’, the Aramaic word for daddy, the idea that God, our loving
parent is also fixated on punishing us, stands directly in contrast to God who
is the shepherd frantically looking for the lost lamb, the woman seeking high
and low for her one missing coin, the mother hen calling her chicks to her, or
the Prodigal father, so grateful for his son’s return that he throws his best
coat on his son even though the boy is probably coated in pigsty slime!
Since the beginning of the United Church,
leaders like our first Moderator George Pigeon, or Louise McKinney from
Claresholm Alberta, heard the call not to preach a terrifying God but a
reconciling God. George was the
Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in 1924, and a professor who worked hard
for union. He tried to persuade all the Presbyterians
to join, but 17% of Presbyterians and 10% of Presbyterian clergy voted against
union. George was voted unanimously to
be the head of the new denomination and did his best in the two tumultuous
years of his term, to settle the many disagreements, hurt feelings, power
struggles and turf wars that resulted. It
was complex and heated, but moments of Grace abounded too. Presbyterian and Methodist seminaries came
together peacefully at most theological colleges, and much to many people’s
surprise, Newfoundland, who wasn’t even a part of Canada, had all of its
methodist churches originally reject Union, but in 1925 they all joined
anyways. Louise McKinney, one of Alberta’s
Famous Five women, who had helped women get the vote in 1918, was one of only 5
ladies out of the 350 delegates at the first worship service. She and other United Church women addressed
the struggles of the poor like Lazarus through the Temperance Movement. They hoped that prohibition would lower family
violence and child poverty. It was both
Pigeon and McKinney’s way of addressing the social injustices they saw in their
communities, not realizing that causes of poverty and addiction were far more
complex than they originally thought.
That was also the driving force behind residential
schools. Just as Temperance was a simplistic
solution to a complex problem, Residential schools also turned out to be simplistic. One culture assumed it had the God-given
right to impose itself onto another singular culture but what was in fact a
broad diversity of cultures, languages and spiritual practices. One General Council Commissioner in Calgary this
summer talked about being sent to the most convenient school rather than the
closest one; he spoke Haida Gwaii and ended up in Alberta surrounded by Cree
children.
When we assume we know best, when we think we
have a guaranteed spot in Heaven, we may end up surprised like the rich
man. When we use fear to teach people about
God, we may find history judging us harshly.
When we use this parable to inspire us to act justly, we can find the healing
that Jesus wanted for us. When we love God like Abba Daddy the way Jesus taught,
we can live bold and courageously like George Pigeon and Louise McKinney. Like them, we may not be perfect, but we are
growing in our love of our neighbors and God.
May it be so for us all.
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