It’s a heavy time for so many. I haven’t felt like saying anything hopeful about it, cause I’ve got my own sadness, & I don’t always want to be hopeful. Sometimes I just need to feel what I feel. But if it’s helpful, brief thoughts on depression, suicide, & hell. No disclaimers.
Hell is a real place. Have you been? It’s where your stuck inside your own despair, trapped in your head, can see no way out. I’ve visited a few times, & thought I was over—wanted to be over. I’ve stood over the non-metaphorical cliff, ready to make that last call.
If you’ve been to the darkness—really—you know how strong the tide pulls you out. Anything to silence the voices, forget the flickering reel in your head, & let go into the night. You think there is a hell worse than this? What, a cosmic marshmallow roast worse than losing hope?
Hell is real, & you don’t have to go down to get there—hell is whatever geography you happen to be in, when you get stuck inside. The vastness of it, staggers you, how the dark can cover all things, most of all you.
The best news about hell, is that God is there. Because there is nowhere God is not, sure, but mostly because we go there, & God goes where we go, to come for us. “He descended into hell...”
And if hell is where God is, there must be a way out of it...now, or later. Because God is the escape door, always. Because if it weren’t possible to go there & back, Christ wouldn’t have done it. To believe there’s no way out of any hell, is to not believe in God at all. Selah.
I’m not trying so much to keep people out of hell, as tell them God is in hell with them, even the ones of their own making, & won’t stop, until every hell is filled with the glory of heaven. See him lying next to you in the dark. See him walk into hell like he owns the place.
Anybody can believe in a fairy god in a far off heaven. To believe in Jesus, is to believe in the one who descended into hell...& keeps on coming, & keeps on coming, & keeps on coming down...cause we keep coming down here, & down here is where he must go to get us.
And before the theological fan boys come to talk about determinism of either the positive or negative variety, up or down...I’ll see & raise your training, & tell you I’m not interested in any inevitabilities, man. I’m interested in possibility, which is what God IS.
If there is a God anywhere at all, then there’s nowhere that resurrection is not possible, & no story that is necessarily over. You think time is wide or deep enough to keep him from running after you? As long as it takes, the father runs—across the years. There is no too far.
I know this is startling for people who believe death & resurrection only “happened.” Like it’s not still happening now. Like what happened to Jesus, doesn’t keep happening in his wake. As if history could hold him down.
