Hope and Hell; how I came to a larger vision of redemption

As promised here is the talk that I gave last Sunday at the St James Institute in Sydney. It was well received, and I was surprised by the audience and their reaction. Most were older people - not young radicals - and they were clearly bothered by this doctrine of hell but had no alternative ways to think about it. So for many the talk was a relief that there was a viable alternative to having to believe that eternal conscious torment is an essential part of the gospel.

People also appreciated the journey idea. They liked me sharing about my experience, and the situations that provoked me to challenge my beliefs on hell. Let me quickly explain what I mean by a ‘journey’ and by ‘experience’ as it frames the talk.

I don’t mean merely a chronicle of events. I mean instead a meaning making narrative. I see life in some ways as an interaction between situations we encounter and the mental models that we use to make meaning out of those situations. We are ‘meaning making’ creatures not merely sensate ones and this makes the narratives we tell ourselves vital and crucial. I see growth therefore as the ‘amplification’ or ‘enlargement’ of those narratives - an enlargement that in my experience keeps going on.

This enlargement however is not alway easy. More often than not it requires a cycle of ‘unlearning’ and ‘disordering’ before we can move to a new ordering. In Second Road we captured this learning cycle in the ‘Frames’ model - we begin wth ‘freeze frames’ that we are comfortable with, then for some reason we are challenged and go through a time of ‘unframing’ which can be tough. But grace - and reflection - takes us through this phase to a ‘reframing’ which results in a new frame.

That is what happened in this journey to me. I think that is the work of the Holy Spirit not merely an autonomous human faculty. My experiences stretched me outside my theological models and I had to let them be challenged and reframed.

The talk finishes with a couple of great questions. Can I also give St James Institute a plug. Go to their website as they have some great talks coming up on their monthly Sunday afternoons.

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