What's It All About?

Ask different Christians what the Christian life is all about and you will get different answers. Some Christians claim it is all about following the commands of God. Some Christians claim that it is all about serving others. Some will say it's all about love. And others will give you entirely different opinions. So who's right? I believe they all are to a degree. To me the Christian life is about continuing the journey, about constantly seeking God's will and trying to implement that into our lives. God asks us to follow His commands but we must be careful to remember that it is by His grace and not our works that we are saved. He asks us to serve others but again the focus must be on God and not ourselves. He claims that the greatest among faith, hope, and love is love but we must undertand that God is love and what love truly is. In other words, no matter what part of Christianity we tend to fucus on, we must remember that our focus must be on God or there will be negative consequences. Focusing on our SELF is the root of SELFishness. And selfishness is the root of greed, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, adultery, etc. All of which are hurtful acts that tear apart families and relationships. When we focus on God we are heading in the right direction. We are taking the focus off ourselves and on someone with pure motives. This is obviously a short and simple explanation and I could spend much more time on the subject, but then you would probably get tired of reading it and would stop visiting my blog.

Is Hell Eternal?

An interesting question was posed in Rob Bell's new book, "Love Wins". That question was, 'is punishment in hell eternal'? I hope upon hearing that question, your heart leaps for hope for those who leave this world unbelievers. If your first thought is that of attacking such a thought, I would ask you to evaluate where your heart is. It is, after all, God's desire that none should perish. However, He loves us enough to give us a choice. The arguement for such a belief is based on the idea that the word for eternal has been translated wrong. The word is 'aionion' which is argued to mean 'for an age' instead of 'for eternity'. The arguement has some basis in the fact that Aionion can mean 'for an age' in certain contexts. However, the arguement hits a bit of a road block in Matthew 25:46. The text can be read one of two ways. Either, "And these will go away into eternal (aionion) punishment, but the righteous into eternal (aionion) life." Or, "And these will go away into an age of (aionion) punishment, but the righteous into an age of (aionion) life." If taken the second way we must acknowledge that either we are not eternal, we will cease to exist at some point after our physical death, or we must acknowledge that those who are saved may fall in the afterlife. Neither of these translations are as appealing as a one way road leading out of hell to Heaven. To be honest, the only interpretation of this passage that cannot be true is the one way trip to Heaven, any of the other three have a fairly good arguement. Which do I believe? At this point in my studies, I honestly don't know. What do you think?