The Irish philosopher Peter Rollins once commented: “Whenever someone promises you heaven there is hell to pay.” I am sure that such a statement might raise an eyebrow or two among some Christians, thus causing them to wonder if Rollins is just another one of those New Age Atheists. Well he isn’t, he is Christian to the core.
He’s also brilliantly perceptive. So please stay with me for a few minutes and I hope I will be able to help you appreciate the wisdom in Peter Rollins.
We are now well into the season of Lent. Thank God we have Lent each year to remind us all of our need to “change!” Now I am not talking about those cosmetic changes that might result from our New Year’s resolutions—promises we make to ourselves that we hardly ever keep. No, I am talking about a life altering, transforming change that occurs deep within us.
I will tell you that such deep change requires a lifetime of effort. One Lenten season will not suffice. Such transformation takes years and years of intentional effort in allowing God to shape our hearts and minds. As a dear Christian friend once said to me: “Please forgive me, God isn’t through with me yet.”
Essayist Daniel Clendenin writes: “There's a deep hunger and thirst in all of us . . . a palpable longing for human nourishment that no amount of power or money, no prestigious job, nor any gorgeous home in an upscale neighborhood can satisfy. My anxieties won't disappear by winning the lottery. A new lover will not bring true love.” Lent helps us recognize the elusive rabbits we often chase in life—rabbits that are almost never caught by our own efforts alone (happiness, contentment, acceptance, love, well being, etc).
Clendenin gets very close to the meaning of Rollins statement. In a word: Be careful of the promises that are made to you because they also bring the fury of hell with them. We would say more colloquially: “There is hell to pay when the price of a promise comes due.”
The German people, for example, are still paying the price of hell for believing in the promises of a psychotically unstable megalomaniac: The promise of a return to world dominance and greatness; a return to economic health; and, a return to global respect following the demoralizing defeat of World War I and the treaty of Versailles. It was just to tempting for most Germans not to embrace. It was as if Hitler was saying to his people: “I will make Germany great, again!” And many believed Hitler and there was hell to pay for believing in such promises.
Today we hear similar promises don’t we? Promises of creating peace through strength (which never works); promises of safety and security by eliminating the undesirables amongst us; promises of solving the complexities of immigration by building border walls of exclusion; the promise of eliminating welfare fraud by indiscriminately drug testing all poor people on welfare; and, the promise to take America back (back from where and from whom is still up for grabs).
Rollins reminds us that when heaven is promised hell is the price we most often have to pay. Germany learned that difficult lesson. Will we avoid such a painful lesson? Whose promise will we believe?
The promise of Jesus to give us “abundant life” has been widely ignored. This rabbi from another time and place promised humanity the ultimate reward for living in ways that God created us to live. Once we are able to see that the promise of abundant life has little to do with money, wealth or health, or even heaven after we die, then learning to live abundantly in this life becomes a real possibility—it becomes our major responsibility in fact.
Once we learn to appropriate the ways of Jesus into our life patterns then abundant life becomes a reality for us all. It is the one promise that will never fail.
Christ is the great Promise Maker and the ultimate Promise Keeper.
Yet history has demonstrated that the world has largely ignored Jesus’ promise of abundant life. So many today are being persuaded to embrace the promise of a better America and a better life by those who quite frankly cannot and will not deliver on that promise. The hell we might have to pay for believing in such a promise is almost too painful to consider yet remains a real possibility.
The only promise these loud promise makers will keep is the hell we will eventually pay. For me, I trust in the One Promise Maker whose promise of an abundant life is the only legitimate promise worth considering.
So my prayer for Lent this year is for the Lord to help me remove those things within me that make me less of the human being he created me to be and to eventually become. The promise of abundant life is ours to claim and the best part of the promise?
There is no hell to be paid.
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