I don't really believe in coincidences.
That is why when my daughter sent me this book about twisted doctrines of Hell
and I heard a podcast from one of my instructors in a similar vein... well,
hell-oh!
The book by
Brian Recker is called 'Hell Bent'. It has some really valid points that my daughter just knew I'd agree with.
She sent it to me because she wanted to talk about it with me and I'm super
geeked to do just that when the opportunity comes.
Growing up in a similar environment as Mr. Recker, I was comforted and
releived to find out (years ago now) that most Christians down through the
centuries did not have the severe doctrine of a punishing God who was just
waiting for us to step out of line and send us to hell. Who the hell would
want to love and serve a God like that anyway?
Brian makes many excellent points, drawing on the more ancient strains of
Christian teaching, fleshing out a vision of a God who would endure hell for us rather than inflict it
upon us. I couldn't agree more with these aspects of his book.
So, was it a coincidence that I just happened to listen to the podcast below
by Christopher and Wendy West while in the middle of this book?
I think not.
This particular podcast's Q&A at first seems to have nothing to do with
our common (and unfortunately errant) notions about hell. Most people aren't
that familiar with the idea of
God as a loving bridegroom with humanity as his bride. In fact the notion is unnerving to some people. But further study reveals
this spousal theme throughout the Judeo-Christian sacred texts.
This woman's question touches precisely upon what could be unnerving about the
notion. An excellent question that elicits some of the most tender
explanations of God's sacrificial love I've ever heard. In the process it
untwists some of our notions of hell, albeit from a different angle than Brian
Recker's work.
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One of the many free Visio Divina Cards on the farm.
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Toward the end of the podcast segment, Wendy sums it up best in one phrase as
she reflects on this icon hanging in Christopher's office (and coincidentally available here on the farm for free):
"The image of Christ the Bridegroom is not of God punishing us, but of God
taking the punishment."
I'm sharing the transcript below but
you can listen to it by clicking here - it is the second Q&A on this episode which starts at the 25
minute mark.
I'm praying it blesses you as much as it did me.
_______________
When Bridegroom Language Feels Abusive
Wendy: Okay, from the anonymous
listener:
“Thank you for what you do. Your podcast has blessed me so much.
My question is about where the marriage imagery of Christ and the church can
fall short. Sometimes I find it hard to love God, when I know that if I don't,
He has the power and authority to cast me into hell. If He weren't the
Almighty God, and this were a relationship between two sinners, I feel like we
might call it abusive for one spouse to punish the other for their lack of
loyalty.
Ezekiel chapter 16 portrays God doing this in a spousal context, and this
deeply troubles me. When I struggle with this, I tend to shy away from
thinking about Christ as the bridegroom and turn to other analogies such as
Him as the vine, apart from whom we can do nothing. Can you please shed some
TOB light on this?”
Christopher: My dear
sister, I hear the human struggle in your heart. This is the struggle with God.
It's not just
a struggle with God.
It is
the fundamental struggle with God. John Paul II says in his book,
'Crossing the Threshold of Hope', that the goal of original sin is to change our understanding of God. This is
the serpent's goal.
This is the enemy's goal. This is what he has
done to all of us with original sin. He has changed our understanding of God
from loving father, from loving bridegroom, to tyrant, to one who wants to
dominate us and control us and throw us into hell, cast us into hell.
He's
changed the relationship from father-son or father-daughter or spouse,
bridegroom and bride. He's changed it into master-slave. "If you don't do what I
tell you, you will be punished."
And this paradigm, this concept of
God comes from hell. It comes from the deceiver.
There is language in
the Old Testament that can reinforce that scary understanding of God. And the
passage you're referring to in Ezekiel, I'll just summarize, it's a very long
passage. I'm familiar with it.
The passage in Ezekiel is where God
confesses his spousal love, the love of a bridegroom for humanity as bride. He
takes pity on our humanity. He sees us as destitute, as cast aside, as rejected,
as yearning for love.
But we're in a desperate situation that we
can't save ourselves from. So he comes and he bathes us. He cleanses us.
He
clothes us. And he awaits the maturing of our humanity. The analogy here with
the bridegroom and the bride, it's like a lover who's fallen in love with a
young girl, and he's waiting patiently for her to grow into a woman who's ready
for love.
It says in Ezekiel that the bridegroom here, which is the
Lord, waits and sees that the woman he loves, the bride he loves has now
developed. Her breasts have grown. Her hair has grown.
This is very
explicit imagery of puberty, of what happens to a young girl as she's
transformed into a woman, and the bridegroom here is taking delight in her. And
he showers her with tenderness, with love, with gifts. He clothes her in
splendor.
And then, yeah, where it goes from there, there's a
warning. And keep in mind, this is a prophetic warning of what human beings are
capable of in their fallen humanity. I'll just speak for myself here.
I
know God has given me many, many gifts. Many, many gifts to teach the gospel.
Many, many gifts to share the riches of Christ and His Church with the world.
And
there are times in my own fallen humanity where I have used my gifts which God
gave me to glorify Him and to bless others. And I've taken those gifts because
I'm a prideful SOB as a fallen human being. And I've used my gifts that God has
given me, bestowed on me, to glorify myself.
This is the proper
application of this imagery. Because what happens in Ezekiel here is that the
bride who's been made beautiful, she was destitute. And through God's
tenderness, she was made beautiful.
The bride then uses her beauty
for her own vain gain. She uses her beauty to seduce men. She becomes a
prostitute.
And she doesn't even become a prostitute out of
destitution to get payment for it because she's in some terrible situation. She
uses it for her own vanity. She doesn't even accept payment.
She just
wants to revel in her own beauty and vanity. And what God is saying, if you do
that, there will be a natural consequence that you... not that God is going to
throw us into hell out of some vengeance.
"You didn't follow my
rules. I'm casting you into hell." That's the paradigm from hell of who God
is.
A proper interpretation of the Old Testament story here, which we
must view always in light of what Christ definitively reveals about who God is.
I'll get to more of that in a minute. We must interpret this in light of what
Christ reveals about who God is.
And what we must conclude is that
God casts no one into hell out of vengeance. The warning here is do not let your
pride and vanity get the best of you with the gifts that I bestow upon you.
Because if you go down that road, the consequence of that road, the natural
consequence of that road is that you will break covenant with me.
Let
me put it to you this way. If marriage is an image of heaven, which it is, and
if heaven is going to be a marriage, which it is, it's not going to be a shotgun
wedding. What do I mean by that?
God forces no one to marry him. Why?
Because if he forced us to marry him, it wouldn't be love.
So often
people will say, well, if God is love, there couldn't possibly be hell. And if
we're thinking soundly, we must conclude precisely the opposite. It is because
God is love.
It is because God loves us that hell must be a
possibility. Why? Because love respects freedom.
That's what love..
if God forced us to say yes to his marriage proposal, if the eternal marriage of
heaven were a shotgun wedding, we were forced into it, it couldn't possibly be
love. The possibility of hell exists, and that's the way we have to phrase it.
The possibility of hell exists precisely because God respects our freedom.
And
God respects our freedom precisely because God is love. Satan wants us to think
that God is not a loving bridegroom, but I hate this word, I'm going to spell
it. But he wants us to think God is a R-A-P-I-S-T.
The fact that hell
is a possibility demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that God is not an
R-A-P-I-S-T, but that He is a true, loving bridegroom who honors our freedom
even to say no to Him. Christ has revealed the full truth about who God is, and
the full truth of who God is? God is love.
He is a loving father. He
is a loving bridegroom.
Christ's entire life is declaring:
"You think God is a tyrant who wants to dominate and control you?
And
if you break the rules, cast you into hell? You think that's who God
is?
I will let you dominate me.
I will let you nail me to a
tree.
I will descend into hell myself to demonstrate to you that God has no
desire to dominate, control, harm you, or throw you into hell.
You think God is an R-A-P-I-S-T?
This is my body given up for
you in love.
I will let you R-A-P-E me in the sense of wreaking utter, utter,
violating havoc to my body.
To demonstrate to you that God has no desire whatsoever to wreak utter
havoc and violate your body.
You think God would whip your
back if you gave him the chance?
I will let you whip my back to demonstrate to you that I have no desire
whatsoever to whip yours... stop persisting in this lie from hell, that
God is a tyrant who wants to dominate and control you and violate you.
Stop persisting in that unbelief.
Repent and believe,
believe, I am love, I am love, I am love. This is my body given for you.
This is my body given for you."
We must let the paradigm of the love revealed on the marriage
bed of the cross cleanse us of any such notion of God as some vengeful God
who wants to throw us into hell. That is a long journey, my dear sister,
and you're already on it. How do I know you're already on it?
Because
you never would have asked this question if you're not already on that
journey. Keep going, keep going, keep going. That lie has very deep
tentacles in all of us.
And it can take a lifetime to uproot
that tenacious lie. But this is why Christ came into the world, to undo
the work of the enemy. And that work is already being done in you, my dear
sister.
It's happening. It's underway. Glory be to God.
I
want to address one more thing here. Before I, I, I, I'm so excited to
hear whatever you might say here, Wendy. Um, the one more thing I wanted
to say was, can you, she asked, can you explain where the analogy doesn't
work, where the analogy of the bridegroom and the bride isn't, isn't
adequate?
And we do have to acknowledge this. Every analogy
limps. All analogies are inadequate.
The spousal analogy is the
least inadequate, but it's inadequate. Uh, and, and here's an inadequacy.
She touched on this idea of the, the equality of spouses, right?
That's,
that's a very important point. You and I, Wendy, are equal in nature and
dignity. I am your husband, you are my wife.
Wendy: Yeah.
Christopher: We are equal in nature and dignity as human persons. In the analogy of
the bridegroom and the bride, where God is the bridegroom, this is where
it breaks down because we are not equal to God in nature and dignity. He
is an infinite divine Christ here.
I'm speaking of Christ. He's
an infinite divine person. He is not a human person.
And if
there's something going wrong in the marriage between Christ and his
church, we know with absolute certainty the problem is always with the
bride. Right? It is not possible to extrapolate from that, that the
problem in our marriage, you and me, Wendy, is always with you.
Although
my pride sure would like to think that sometimes. That ain't the truth
because I am a fallen, imperfect bridegroom. Jesus is not a fallen,
imperfect bridegroom.
He's a divine bridegroom. So yeah, the
analogy breaks down. That would be one example.
I could point
to many others, but I just wanted to acknowledge she's on to something
very important there. And I just, I'll throw this out to, if the vine and
the branches helps you, praise God, stay there. Stay there, but you can't
look at any of these images in scripture and think one corrects the
other.
What it corrects, what this vine branch thing might
correct, is your faulty notion of the bridegroom and bride image. So let
that vine and branch image correct any faulty notion you have of the
bridegroom, bride image, but don't think it's, the image itself needs to
be corrected. Our faulty understanding needs to be corrected.
And,
of course, in the bridegroom, bride image, let's never forget the curse.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will dominate you. This is a
curse.
This is not God's plan. And when we're in the mode of
the bridegroom dominating the bride, and we project that on to God, we are
in trouble, right? The correction for all of that is St. Paul saying
husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.
Wendy:
One of the things that was coming to me in this just reflection on Christ
as bridegroom, I'm looking around in your office where we're recording,
and you have several different Eastern icons on the walls. And icons are
not something that everyone is familiar with. They are beautiful,
traditional, prayerfully painted images that depict important scenes and
realities of the faith.
And there is a particular icon that is called Christ, the
bridegroom, and it's an image of Christ carrying his cross. Right? So
there is the beautiful, just, I don't know, confirmation.
You
may want to look up that image, Christ, the bridegroom, as an icon, to
recognize. It just kind of confirms a lot of what you were saying, that
here is our bridegroom. So, not punishing, but taking the punishment.
Right?
It's the opposite.
Christopher: Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. Not, oh, thank you, Wendy.
That
summarizes everything I wanted to say in one sentence. Thank you, Wendy.
That is the Holy Spirit.
This is what Christ reveals. This is
what Christ reveals. Say it again, Wendy.
It's so powerful.
This is loaded with the full glory of the reversal that Christ came to
give us of our image of God. Go ahead, say that again.
Wendy: The image of Christ the Bridegroom is not of God punishing us, but of God
taking the punishment.
Christopher: Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Makes me want to dance. It
makes me want to cry. It makes me want to leap for joy.
That, I
never heard it said so well. It's beautiful, Wendy. Flesh and blood has
not revealed that to you, Wendy, but your Father in heaven has revealed
that to you.
That is so powerful.
Whoo!
Thank
you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord.
You came not to
punish us, but you came to take upon yourself our punishment. And by that,
I don't even mean that we were supposed to be punished by God, and Christ
took it on. Rather, I'm saying
Christ took on the punishment that we dished out.
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God didn't kill his son, we did.
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The Unity of the Trinity
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We crucified Jesus, not God the Father.
It's not some vengeful God casting on his son the punishment that he
wanted to cast on us. This is fallen humanity rejecting God in the
extreme, and God's saying, go ahead, go ahead, get it out, get it out, I
came to absorb it.
It's not that Christ comes to punish us,
it's that he comes and says, go ahead, punish me. Punish me, get it all
out, get all your hatred aimed at God, get it out at me, I'm God, I will
absorb it, and I will show you in the midst of it how much I love you.
I've come not to punish you.
I've come not to condemn you. I've
come to save you. Astonishing.
Utterly astonishing.
______________
The above transcript was lifted from the 'Ask Christopher West
Show', ACW369, Jan 26, 2026
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-christopher-west/id1448699486?i=1000746662743&r=2674(Start at the 25:00 minute mark.)
This material may be protected by copyright.
One last thought before I wrap up this post.
I loved the movie "
Where the Heart Is" and it has one of my most quoted
lines. In fact, whenever I'm trying to explain the notion of hell to
anyone, it bumbles unbidden out of my mouth. This is because it captures
the stark and dreadful truth that we humans create our own hell in one
simple line:
"Harry, we're alcoholics, we're generally satisfied to hurt ourselves."
This is Thelma replying to Harry's apology for supposedly hurting her
somehow. It is that crystalline and rare honesty that one finds almost
exclusively in the rooms of twelve step programs.
In essence, we can blame God for hell and all the evil in the world all we
want. But if God had wanted to create beings that would only carry out
some carefully coded program of goodness, he'd have done so. Of course, there'd be no
room for love in such a creation.
No.
He created us instead.
Creatures that actually had the freedom to refuse his love and despise his
goodness. Creatures that could bring great harm to themselves and others
thus creating their own hell. Creatures for whom he would lay down his
life to rescue them from their self-inflicted misery.
But also creatures that could truly chose to love and receive his love
willingly. Creatures that could reject the overwhelmingly popular lies
sown by the enemy of humankind and instead trust in God's goodness.
I'd suggest that perhaps we are all a mix of such evil and good 'wolves' as the ancient
Cherokee proverb puts it.
Which wolf wins?
The one you feed.
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