If I'm honest, I just don't know what it means to think well about hell. I've spent a great bulk of my life thinking about the doctrine of God, salvation, and figures like Jonathan Edwards, but I really don't spend an aweful lot of time meditating upon hell. To get some conversation going, let me try to draw out some thoughts about what it might mean to think well about hell.

1. Questioning hell because of God's love is absurd. 

Let me explain my brash statement. It is not surprising to find atheists taking a similiar line of logic to deny the existence of God - a loving God can't exist with the reality of this kind of world - or so the argument goes. But for Christians, we have no room to make these arguments. What we must never do is to start with a general idea - love - and then apply it to God. Rather, since God is love, we must see what God is like to know how to define love. If our God send people to hell, that has to somehow inform what a loving God is (even if we don't directly tie it to his love per se). In the same way, we must not talk about a loving God outside of talking about the cross. 

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In the last post, I provided a summary about emerging adults from Christian Smith’s new book Souls In Transition. Now, let’s explore what this means for ministering to this generation. Rather than focusing on outreach to the current emerging adults, I want to focus on how we pass on our values to the next generation in light of this research.

Are Christian Kids Leaving their Faith?

One of the surprising findings of Souls In Transition is that 64 percent of 13 to 17 year old conservative Protestants (evangelicals) remained so as emerging adults five years later (p. 108). Thus, 36 percent are leaving their evangelical faith after five years. This is still a significant number, but it is a far cry from the common claims that 80-90 percent of evangelicals are leaving their faith after high school graduation. Smith says, “The myth of overall religious decline among emerging adults must be dispelled” (283). In fact, Smith argues that those who do not go to college are more likely to lose their faith than those who do go.

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Doctrine is under attack. You initial response might be, “Of course it is, heretics have been challenging the foundations of the church since its inception!” But there is a powerful difference regarding the challenges of today: not only are particular doctrines under attack (e.g. the Trinity, the incarnation, Hell, the inerrancy of Scriptures), but the idea of doctrine itself is increasingly being considered antiquated, irrelevant, and downright divisive. And these challenges are not only from outside the church, but from inside as well.

In God’s Word, true knowledge of Jesus Christ is what brings transformation: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).  Eternal salvation depends upon believing accurately in Christ: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…” (John 6:40). We recognize false prophets because they deny a key doctrine about Jesus, namely, that He came in the flesh (1 John 4:2). And Paul’s encouragement to Titus is to “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9). Biblically and historically speaking it is difficult to underestimate the importance of right doctrine.

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