Chalke Talk The Open Church Network

The notion of “eternal punishment,” is not only misinformed, Steve argues, but it’s also not what Paul nor Jesus made of the afterlife. This leads many people to the question, “What about the sheep and goats”? The infamous passage that so many believe gives us a glimpse into “the judgment day.”

This week Steve continues on from last week with how we've misunderstood the doctrine of hell, particularly what Paul thinks about it.

As Steve has said over and over again, our western-framed understanding of eternal damnation would just not have registered for Paul. But as many people will say, Steve recognises, "Paul was a follower of Jesus and not the other way around." So what did Jesus really mean when he spoke about hell, particularly the word Gehenna.

The judgement of God, and often his followers, is frequently cited as the main reason that turns people away from Christianity. A religion that is meant to be about love, it seems, cannot be about judgement as well.

This is exactly the point that Steve tackles in this week of Chalke Talk.

It’s a common misconception, and common because we often don’t realize we’re making it.

Steve asks, this week, Why do we think Paul thought like us? Paul wasn’t westerner, a modernist, liberal nor a conservative. He was deeply a product of his culture, and his encounter with the gospel.

Following on from last week’s Chalke Talk, questioning why an often misinterpreted idea of the afterlife still makes its home in mainstream Christianity, Steve asks is every exclusion a failure of love?

Would God, who is described as the definition of pure love, punish people with infinite and eternal torment based on decisions and actions taken in their few short years of life on earth? Or, similarly, did Paul understand God to be vengeful and bigoted, as he is often painted, or a God that loved each of and believes in each of us to start with?