North Carolina's Road to Hell

These days, people should begin realizing that the road to hell isn't paved with good intentions, but rather with whatever asphalt mixture coats the interstates leading into Raleigh, NC.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a man who could teach us a few things about Christian discipleship, had this stunning quote in this APM Marketplace Story. Wilson-Hartgrove states,

“I don't mean to say these people aren't committed to Jesus and to Christianity,” Wilson-Hartgrove said. “I mean to say, as a pastor always has to say to people at some times, that they're gravely wrong and that if they do not repent, they will go to hell. And unfortunately because they're leading our state right now, our whole state will go to hell.” 

The "these people" Wilson-Hartgrove refers to are the Republican state legislators and leaders who are driving the state known as a "valley of humility between two mountains of conceit" (sorry Virginia and South Carolina) as far to the political extreme as possible. From enacting ridiculous (and perhaps classist and racist) voting laws to saddling the state's financial liabilities on the backs of the most vulnerable, the Republican state legislature hasn't even so much as blushed while ramming their radical agenda through Raleigh.

A statewide protest movement, led by the state NAACP, has begun converging on Raleigh each week in what are being called Moral Mondays. A sizable group of peaceful protestors (many of them clergy) have even been arrested while non-violently demonstrating in state capitol. The Republican legislators have not been amused, one even going so far to calling these protests as "Moron Mondays."

And that is why Wilson-Hartgrove made the statement that he did- one that surely disturbs most of us. Americans generally don't like being told that they are going to hell. Indeed, fire and brimstone preaching has been blamed for Americans' continuing mass exodus from the church. But Wilson-Hartgrove is too clever a theologian to be so sloppy with his rhetoric.

Perhaps Wilson-Hartgrove remembers the story Jesus told in Luke 16:19-31 in which a poor man named Lazarus dies and is carried to Abraham's side. A rich man, indifferent to the plight of Lazarus, also dies but is sent to Hades for his recalcitrant behavior. The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus down to him so that he may cool his tongue with a drop of water. Abraham, however, refuses the rich man's request, reminding him of his irresponsibly lavish lifestyle on earth.

I don't think that Jesus had it in his mind that this story should evoke within our minds images of Dante's Inferno. Rather, I think Jesus hoped that his audience (both then and now) recognized that the nature of the rich man's request highlighted the true torment of hell, that is to live in a place where you expect the poor to be at your disposal and you demand a certain type of treatment based upon a contrived view of yourself. The rich man didn't ask Abraham to let Lazarus know that he was sorry for ignoring his plight while on earth. Instead, even in the afterlife, the rich man views Lazarus as an inferior individual to be used for his own pleasure and purposes, perhaps poor due to a perceived laziness or upbringing on the part of the beggar.

The genius of Jesus' story is that while he presents the idea of hell within a parable, he does not want listeners to assume that hell is simply an abstract concept. For Jesus and his followers, hell is very real indeed.

Hell is an elderly individual with arthritic knees who waits three hours in a line to vote only to be turned away because she does not have the "proper identification." Hell is balancing a state's checkbook on the backs of teachers, the uninsured, and the unemployed because you assume that they are lazy and addicted to hand outs. Hell is arguing against the "redistribution of wealth" when it comes in the form of food stamps and medicaid expansion but welcoming it with open arms when it is presented under the guise of corporate tax breaks and deductions for high income earners. Hell is when we begin to think even for one second that the best way to enrich ourselves is to trample on others around us because their voice does not matter as much ours and their lives are not as valuable as our own.

And with such a view of the world and of the people who populate it, the love of God is stillborn, absent, exiled from our existence. This is hell in its most brazen and terrifying reality.

We might pray that the NC state legislature changes their behavior and begins working to ensure that the state handles its business in a fair, just, and honest fashion. There is no shortage of intelligence within their ranks to make this happen. However, such actions take humility, contriteness, and other attributes all too often exiled from our modern political system.

For this reason, perhaps it is incorrect to assume that God ever sends anyone to hell when it appears that we are perfectly capable of finding the way there on our own.