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Such questions have been magnified in my mind during the past few months. If you are a reader of my ministry website, Christian-Universalism.com, you may have noticed that nothing new has been added since August, and it is now November. If you subscribe to my Hope Through Christ mailing list, or my Christian Universalist Fellowship on Yahoo Groups, you may have noticed that I have not posted any messages since I announced that I was going on vacation, hoping a fresh ocean breeze would help restore my health. It did not. This summer, my long battle with clinical depression turned into something even worse: bipolar disorder. For those who don't know, bipolar disorder is a serious brain disease characterized by uncontrollable mood swings, both up and down and everything in between -- too excited and happy, too angry and irritable, too sad and depressed -- back and forth, often randomly or set off by minor stresses in life. The bipolar brain is a brain on fire, unable to regulate itself because the neurons have literally become frayed to the breaking point, charged up with noxious electrical energy that produces ever-changing mental symptoms. People with bipolar disorder must learn how to exert tremendous willpower and self-control, tapping their deepest reserves of inner strength in order to keep the disease from spiraling out of control. Medications can help, and hopefully they will help me, but often they are of limited benefit. My life during the past three years has been a journey of struggle through pain, and spiritual growth through rebuilding the foundations of my faith from the bottom up. Everything I believed in was tested, and much had to be rejected. Fundamentalism proved to be unsustainable in the light of my experiences, which forced me to evaluate just who I believed myself to be and what kind of a God I believed in. As my health mysteriously collapsed at a young age, and doctors were unable to help, I found I had no choice but to turn to God for support. But the God I had believed in was nowhere to be found. The "Jaysus Chraaahst" of the fundamentalist pulpit didn't want to work miracles for me, no matter how many glory hallelujahs I shouted. Perhaps he was too busy tending to the fires of hell. If so, then I guess he really was present in my life -- or so it seemed -- for my life had become a living hell. First there were panic attacks and dizziness, then chronic fatigue syndrome and neurological problems, the loss of my job and social life, many days spent in bed or on the internet desperately researching medical issues, the horror of treatments that only made me worse, followed by depression and several periods of suicidal thoughts, and now there is the bipolar disorder. Through all of this, my soul has been strengthened tremendously. I know this with certainty. Like a 90-pound weakling who goes to the gym and builds muscle through grinding workouts, pushing himself to the uttermost limit of a slowly increasing capacity, I have found myself gradually developing a more muscular soul as my body and brain have suffered. Perhaps another good analogy would be the way a blind person must develop an unusually acute sense of hearing, to compensate for the lack of sight. Similarly, a sick person must develop a healthy and robust spirit in order to survive. There have been times of anger -- even rage -- at the hand God has dealt me. There have been the begging, pleading prayers on my knees, crying out to the Lord for healing that never came. Or did it come? Perhaps it came in my spirit, rather than the fleshly aspects of my being. Perhaps the spirit is indeed what is more important. When I pray, "Your will be done, Lord, as You know is best for me," perhaps God interprets that as a call for spiritual healing before the physical.
How can people who do not share this hope of universal salvation in the afterlife possibly stand against the miseries of this world? I believe they cannot. Either disbelieving in the Divine Being and the immortality of the human soul, or believing in a sadistic, satanic god of merciless anger and wrath who would torture some of his offspring forever; both of these attitudes are the same in one important way: the lack of true hope. Without hope of a greater promise beyond the suffering we all eventually experience in the flesh, without hope of security for one's soul -- the security of knowing we shall never be annihilated and never be damned -- a person cannot hope to withstand the trials and tests of this challenging life on earth with one's spirit intact. One must feel a constant existential angst, lost and alone; and one's only hope then is to distract oneself with endless superficial activity, like a mouse running on a wheel, trying to forget it is trapped in a barren cage. Unwilling to confront and resolve one's deepest fears -- the fear of a life that may end in a final state of death or hopeless agony -- one is reduced to a shadow of one's true spiritual self, never free from the looming certainty of the grave and the possibility of continued suffering beyond the grave, if one does not live up to the lofty standards of an unknown god. It is then that the storms of life are sure to hit, testing the weak souls to their own personal limit. I have been faced with many struggles because God wants to prove my faith true. He wants to see my soul develop into a mighty, impregnable fortress of certitude, confident in the ultimate and ever-present reality of God's love. And the foundation of all this is hope. Without hope, the soul must wither and shrink from its full potential. Hope is what has kept me going through times of sorrow, frustration and anger in my life, when my faith has been severely challenged. Without the hope of universal salvation, my soul would turn blackened and burn away in the hellish fires of despair. How can we have hope in unseen promises of divine love and heavenly blessing when our lives are full of suffering? If some souls suffer severely on earth and do not appear to receive the same blessings most enjoy -- things such as a healthy body and brain, enough to eat, opportunities for advancement in life -- isn't it logical to believe that some souls will also suffer disproportionate misery in the afterlife, that perhaps there really is a burning hell of eternal torture for some unlucky beings? Such thoughts come from the adversary. We must put these ideas aside as the mere imaginations of a frightened and angry mind, the beast within us all that cries out in opposition to the reality of God's plan. For we are assured that "In his great mercy [God] has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade -- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire -- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." (1 Pet. 1:3-9). Those who are acquainted with suffering to a disproportionate degree tend to be those God has selected in this life for a special challenge. Some who have difficulty believing in a spiritual reality find themselves pushed by Fate, even to their breaking point, until they open their hearts to a higher plan for spiritual growth through struggle, with the goal of meeting one's Maker as a radiant spirit whose light has become a beacon for others. Such a soul I believe is my mother, who has suffered with disabling fibromyalgia pain for the past 15 years, and was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease. As she has been forced to confront numerous obstacles in life, I have watched her change from the spiritually dead atheism of her upbringing in a communist country to a more open-minded, holistic spiritual perspective. I am confident that by the time she dies, she will lie on her death bed assured of her destiny with a loving God in paradise. Some religious people who have difficulty believing that God is all-loving and merciful to sinners may find themselves feeling less and less secure in their standing with their wrathful Judge, until they crack under the pressure to discover and follow the correct doctrines, the correct church, the correct way of life at all times. And when that crisis of faith finally occurs, the soul should emerge stronger than ever before, bolstered by the newfound understanding that it is not religion that determines our salvation, but the knowledge of God's infinite and unconditional love for all souls -- even the soul of the pagan, the homosexual, the criminal, the crazy or "demon-possessed," the patient who remains sick or dies despite the minister's blessing. No one is beyond the power of God's love -- no matter how things might presently appear. For the truth is, "Love never fails.... Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Cor. 13:8,12). It is a love that only God can fully know while we are here on earth, living in the illusion of separation from His love. But one day we will know it with Him and marvel. Until we begin to feel the unfailing love of God in our heart; until we are willing to see the eternal Light that has been placed within all human beings, never to be snuffed out; we remain unsaved, condemned to burn in the hell of our own false impressions of reality -- a fear-based worldview that is incompatible with the truth of Perfect Love out of which we were created and to which we shall all return. When we are born again into the knowledge of God's all-conquering love, we are saved from the hell we have immersed ourselves in, the fire of man-made dogmas that offer nothing but misery and shame to those who bow down before such idols. Come out, O My people, says the Lord, from the hell that is within your own mind! Enter into the heaven that can be found within, the heaven of assurance that is built on a foundation of hope. For as Jesus said, "the kingdom of heaven is within you." (Luke 17:21). We only must hope to find it. When the struggles of life hit hard, our faith may be shaken, but hope must remain. Without hope, we are cut off from the Source of true being. Without hope, we are nothing. As the saying goes, "Get busy living, or get busy dying." If we have no hope in a benevolent Higher Power, then we are already dying inside. But if we strive to trust in the gospel of hope for all souls, we are already living -- even if outwardly we are dying in the flesh. So when something bad happens in life, let's make it our business to keep hope strong. It is the foundation upon which faith is built. When the storms of the world blow against the house of our faith, we can always repair or rebuild it upon a secure foundation, hoping in a God who created us in love and will preserve us -- all of us -- for all eternity in our Father's house, no matter how long and difficult the road back may be.
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When difficult events in life test our faith, shaking it to its very
foundations, what can we rely upon? On what, exactly, does our faith stand?
As I look back at how my spirit has changed during the past few years
of struggle, I can clearly identify the most important healing God
has worked in my heart. God has given me hope. Not false hope,
which my highly intellectual and rational mind could never allow.
Not a hope that is limited only to a few chosen people who believe
and do the right things and have the right church membership, with
hopelessness for everyone else. No, I have been given true hope --
the hope that there really is a profound and amazing spiritual
reality beyond this mortal life, and that whatever it may be, above
all it is good! No matter what torments the flesh may bring us, we
can rest assured that after death, there will be no eternal torment
in hell -- not for any of God's children. All human beings were
created in Love, to love and be loved, and to know and to share the
Reality of that Love with others. It is a love that could allow no
fiery hell where even a single soul will be punished forever for
imperfections and mistakes. Yet it is a love that will hold us in
the refiner's fire to purify us like gold, until we are worthy of
shining with a pure and glorious Light.|
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Heavenly Father, please bless this ministry, lead multitudes to this website, and help them see the truth of Your love and forgiveness for all people through the power of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the whole world. Open their eyes to Your true nature, take away their fears, and fill their hearts with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. |