Meatless Monday - environmental and health benefits -- and it's Biblical!

Today's Vancouver Sun has an item on a concept that's getting some traction: Meatless Monday. Author Eleanor Boyle says the idea is being picked up in various jurisdictions around the world -- promoting the idea of going one day of the week without meat (although the City of Vancouver is only proclaiming one meatless day so far -- June 10).

(Eleanor has already milked gags like "steakholder engagement", so I'll spare you. Thank Heaven for small mercies.)

The concept is being pitched as a step towards solving some environmental and health problems. There are issues like land use and obesity that are connected with meat-eating, and while experts figure Canadians, Americans and Australians would have to cut their meat consumption in half to allow truly sustainable livestock production, the concept is a start. Kind of like an 8-hour fast or going without coffee for a week, it's a foot in the door and (egad!) one may even like it.

(We have friends on Vancouver Island who are vegetarians, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the way they cook, you don't really notice that there's no meat.)

But there's another upside to Meatless Monday: it's Biblical.

I don't mean Religious -- as in the dictum that you can only eat fish on Friday -- I mean Biblical in that there's actually a commandment relating to it. It's called the Land Sabbath.

When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord.

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit;

But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord: you shall neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard.

What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine: for it is a year of rest for the land.

-- Lev. 25:2-5 (NKJV)

Later, the Lord states that, in the sixth year, the land will produce enough food to last through the seventh year and all the way up to harvest time in Year Eight -- the first year of the new cycle.

Talk about counter-intuitive: have "normal" harvests for five years, then production triples in the sixth year, and then you're supposed shut down production for a full year?

But the idea is to give the land rest for one-seventh of the time, just as we're supposed to devote one day out of seven to rest and the Lord. It's sustainability -- God's version.

But in our urban society, how do we observe the Land Sabbath, ourselves? Meatless Monday is one way to do it. Reduce our food consumption by one-seventh, and we're taking that much pressure off the land. Reduce demand, and there's more food to go around and less "demand" for production-increasing techniques, like growth hormones and genetic modification. 

Of course, God always gives us the choice of whether to follow His commandments or not -- but He makes it clear what the benefits are of obeying. So if people commit to following the Land Sabbath -- and Meatless Monday is a good way to start -- it is written that they'll reap rewards and blessings beyond anything they could have thought of. 

I discuss the Land Sabbath and other ways to look past fears of Global Warming or Climate Change and see how God expects us to behave in Chapter 7 of my book, A Very Convenient Truth -- or, Jesus Told Us There'd Be Days Like These, so Stop Worrying About The Environment And Get With His Program!

Stompin' Tom for the Hall?

I don't know if anyone's collecting Memories of Stompin' Tom Connors, but I have one. I have to confess, I was not a fan and after "Hockey Night", I can't recall any of his other songs, aside for one about bugs that I heard when I was in Nova Scotia in 1974. But there was something one couldn't help liking about his music and the things he wrote about: his love for the country was genuine and contagious.

I'll tell you this much: I'd love to write a song that practically everybody in an entire country knows and will sing at the drop of a hat, and that's the basis of my "Stompin' Tom Memory".

It was the 2006 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship, and I was the French-language PA announcer. (I've spent the years since then, trying to convince Hockey Canada that I actually can speak French, and indeed, my ability in that has improved greatly, thanks in large part to my being the porte-parole for TransLink, as far as Radio-Canada was concerned. But I digress ...) In the Gold Medal Final, Canada absolutely shut down the Russians (including Evgeny Malkin), and bulled their way to a 5-0 win.

Of course, General Motors Place (as Rogers Arena was called at the time) was rocking, and during a play stoppage late in the game, the DJ, Dave Levinsohn, put on "Hockey Night". 18,000 fans clapped and sang along. The puck was dropped, and Dave killed the music, as he was required to. The singing continued, unabated, long after play had resumed. It was a very cool moment and got me thinking about the song itself: there are few songs in this country as recognizable and singable, and that make total strangers bond, as the "Hockey Song" -- and that's a legacy to which just about every songwriter aspires. 

In the outpouring that usually accompanies the passing of someone most people just plain liked, there's a movement afoot to honor Tom in the Hockey Hall of Fame. That might be a bit arch, but it got me thinking: maybe the Hall should have a section that showcases the ways hockey has been included in our culture. I remember back in the 70s, Hockey Night in Canada serialized a ghastly 1930s movie called "The King of Hockey" and that pretty much summed up the extent of hockey in the movies. But there's been a lot since then, and if I were to put the exhibit together (I CALL DIBS!), it would include:

• Stompin' Tom (of course)
• Dolores Claman, composer of the Hockey Night in Canada theme (now TSN's hockey theme -- don't start me on that one!)
• Paul Newman and Slap Shot
• Roch Carrier and "The Hockey Sweater"

OK, those are the obvious ones. I might add the movie "The Rocket/Le Rocket" to the list, if only for its terrific hockey action scenes, but sadly, it veered off into a theme of "look how rotten les maudits anglais are towards French-Canadians", and I don't know how relevant that theme is anymore -- and do we really need to be re-educated about that?

Anyway, there are others, like:

• Tom Cochrane for "Big League" (a song about Brian Spencer)
• The Tragically Hip for "Mission 50 Cap" (a song that makes reference to Bill Barilko and the Leafs)
• Meryl Streep and Michael Moriarty in the TV Movie "The Deadliest Season" (how many people know that was Meryl's first lead role?)
• Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie in "Away From Her" -- one of the residents in an extended-care home where Julie's character goes to live is a former Winnipeg Jets play-by-play announcer, and when they watch hockey on TV, they turn down the audio and let him call the action.

(Actually, Dolores Claman scores twice in the category of Iconic Compositions. Not only do 99 44/100% of Canadians know "dum-da-DUM-da-dum/dum-da-DUM-da-dum", but people from Ontario still know "A Place To Stand/A Place To Grow (Ontari-ari-ari-o)" -- even those who weren't even born when the song came out for the 1967 Centennial.)

Anyway, those are just the ones off the top of my head. With some more research, there may be other cultural references to hockey -- maybe Alex Colville or someone in the Group of 7 painted either a hockey scene or something with hockey in the background?

Might be worth some thought at the Hall.

Pink shirts and an elephant in the room

It's not often that I agree with Province columnist Jon Ferry, but his piece in yesterday's paper raised some interesting points about the annual "Pink Shirt Day", the day to show solidarity in the "war on bullying".

One of Jon's points was that the general groupthink behind the event was a form of bullying, in itself. I was out and about a fair bit yesterday, and can't recall seeing anyone wearing a pink shirt. Does that mean all those people in downtown Vancouver were staunchly in favor of bullying? Yet, was that not the implication of not wearing a pink shirt yesterday?

But the fact is, for all the years of anti-bullying messages -- pink shirts, poignant posters by elementary school kids, songs, plays and YouTube videos -- the situation keeps getting worse. People's lives are still being ruined -- both through traditional playground bullying and lintbrains on the (anti-)social network in this Age of Nasty -- and some children actually commit suicide, hoping to escape it. Maybe the approach needs to be re-thought.

One question I don't hear being addressed is, Why do bullies bully? I was on the receiving end of a fair bit of bullying when I was growing up, but I also bullied back and I believed I was absolutely justified in doing so. I won't go into a litany of excuses, mitigating reasons or extenuating circumstances: the fact is, I could be one mean sonofabitch and only realized what I'd done after I'd grown up and reflected on it.

If I "had my reasons" for bullying, so do others, and they're probably not aware of what they're doing, either. If we're serious about "stopping bullying", the bully's point of view needs to be considered.

That is, unless we don't want to admit that maybe there's a bit of a bully in all of us.

(I would also recommend a column by Stephen Quinn in the Globe and Mail from November, in which he discusses "the Culture of Mean" and the fact that meanness is all around us and children learn what's in their environment. I hope he's kidding when he suggests that "culture of mean" only applies to American talk radio. Canadian talk radio is only slightly better in that regard.

Right around the same time as Stephen's column and the summit he refers to, a billboard turned up from shoemaker John Fluevog. It showed a pair of purple suede high-heeled boots, and the caption, "No, you're weird!" I don't know if John intended this, but it came across as an excellent anti-bullying message: the perfect comeback for someone who gets razzed for the kind of clothes he or she wears -- pink shirt, purple boots, whatever. It was something my mother would have counselled me to say in response to similar ribbing from my peers -- and as a child, I did tend to dress, well, individualistically. I'm still trying to buy up all the negatives. But I digress ...)

Back to Jon's column. A point that really stood out for me was the observation by a school psychologist from New York, who said that the current obsession with bullying creates a victim mentality. While he didn't say it in so many words, the victim mentality provides excuses for one's own wrong behaviour (see "bullied back," above) and promotes weakness in the face of adversity. Once a child grows up and no longer has anyone's skirts to hide behind, won't he or she become a sitting duck for the bullies who have graduated to the business world and brought a subtler, more grown-up form of bullying into the workplace?

Worse, will they not be quick to pull the trigger and claim that others are bullying them when they run into a disagreement? Perhaps those others are simply being strong and forceful with their opinions or actions, but they could become stigmatized because of the accusations.

But the elephant in the room here is that there is a solution to bullying that I don't hear talked-about in the mainstream, and that is love and forgiveness. Love as a response to hate is not preached in the secular world, yet that is exactly what Jesus calls us to do. But God is Love, as the Apostle John writes, and God, sadly, was told to leave the public school system more than 40 years ago.

So, how well has that worked for us?

Maybe it's time to revisit that politically-incorrect approach. "Do not be overcome with evil," the Apostle Paul writes (Romans 12:20), "but overcome evil with good." And Peter cautions against "returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing." (1 Peter 3:9)

(Are there other "religious" philosophies with similar views? Do they involve reaching out to our tormentors in love and calling God's blessing on them, as Jesus' approach does, or simply looking inward to calm our own souls? That's a major point, and I'd suggest that the latter approach simply causes the bullying to intensify and sooner or later, one is bound to crack.)

After all, Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross was about overcoming, not remaining victims. We are supposed to overcome our own adversity and then help others overcome theirs. We are called to minister to victims, not become one ourselves. As Jesus says, "if the blind leads the blind, they both will fall into a ditch." (Matt. 15:14)

In the book of Revelation, we get an idea of what God has in store for overcomers: 

• To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life. (Rev. 2:7)
• He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. (Rev. 2:11)
• To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and ... a new name (Rev. 2:17)
• He that overcometh ... to him will I give power over the nations (Rev. 2:26)
• He that overcometh ... shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels (Rev. 3:5)
• Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God (Rev. 3:12)
• To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne (Rev. 3:21)
• He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. (Rev. 21:7) (KJV throughout)

I haven't seen any indication that victims get the same promises as overcomers. Overcomers are victims who have stopped blaming circumstances and/or other people and have chosen to forgive and move ahead in Christ. "If you will not forgive others," Jesus says, "how can My Father in Heaven forgive you?"

Forgiving bullies and loving them is the most effective way to defuse bullying. Turning oneself into a victim gives the bullies more power than they deserve -- and all the power they want. Forgiving them releases God into the situation and He resolves things to His satisfaction -- which means the bullies are brought to repentance.

Which would you prefer: a pink T-shirt or white raiment?

RIP - Johnny Zee

Today's Province contained a small obituary today: John Zwolak, aged 68. To the Victoria radio community, he was Johnny Zee, one of those behind-the-scenes guys who make a radio station work. There are personalities who may be the spirit of a station, but Johnny was one of those fellows who was the heartbeat and muscle of the operation.

I worked with Johnny during all my years at C-FAX -- 1988-2001. He did the occasional on-air turn, but most of his work during the time I knew him was in the production studio, producing and voicing commercials and public service announcements.

He was a great guy: good to be around, and a good example of a professional in the craft. But when I think of him, two incidents stand out. Oddly enough, both happened before I got to C-FAX.

Grey Cup time was particularly notable around C-FAX because the sports director, Ken Dobson, would go to the game, and generally take Johnny with him to do their own brand of "coverage", which sportswriter Jim Taylor described as "some of the zaniest hours in radio". That description -- and the following story -- come from my book, My Shattered Nerves! A Souvenir Program of The Dobber.*

[Ken Dobson narrating] When I first came to Victoria, one of the first C-FAX employees I met was Johnny Zee -- Johnny Zwolak. He is an expert producer,especially when it comes to editing tape. I've met some of the best across the country, and Johnny ranks right there with them. I swear, if Jose Carreras or Pavarotti ever sang a sour note, Johnny could edit that one note out and splice in a good one -- that's how adept I think Johnny is.

We've had our fun times. When we did our first Grey Cup broadcast -- not play-by-play, but a special talk show from Montreal -- Terry Spence was supposed to go, but he couldn't make it,so they took a l-o-o-o-n-g chance on one Ken "Dobber" Dobson. The uestion was, was it safe to send both Dobson and Zee, both well-known imbibers of Labatt Blue and Kokanee, to Montreal? Worse, we were to broadcast from my favourite watering-hole, the original Irish pub, The Hunter's Horn on Peel Street, owned by my good friend, Martin Conroy.

We arrived in Montreal on a Thursday night to get ready for our broadcast fromthe Hunter's Horn on the Friday. We had lined up as our guests Jean Beliveau -- we had thought -- Jim Fanning, then manager of the Montreal Expos, and Danny Gallivan.

Apart from our two-hour broadcast, we had fifteen "cut-ins" that we had to do, talking with people from all over town. Well, in one particular case, Johnny suggested that, even though we were recording them all inthe Hunter's Horn, we should say we're at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, to make it seem like we're not always at this tavern. So I did that: I said, "This is Ken Dobson with Johnny Zee at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel."

A chap at the bar heard me say, "Queen Elizabeth Hotel", looked around the room, got up, went outside, called a cab and said, "take me to the Hunter's Horn". Thought he was in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. And being a Montreal cab driver, he drove him all around about five blocks and brought him back to the Hunter's Horn!

***

Here's a photo of Johnny with Ken Dobson in another sports-related incident: Dobber was a big baseball fan and for Opening Day 1977, C-FAX station owner Mel Cooper promised Dobber to get him two Yankee Stadium seats for opening day. Dobber thought it was a cruel joke, but indeed, Mel came through. He never actually said they would be seats at Yankee Stadium: he had gone out and bought two of the old seats that were taken out when The House That Ruth Built was renovated and presented them to Ken -- on air.

Dialogue balloons (provided by Ken's and Johnny's longtime friend, John Bate): Johnny: These old Yankee Stadium seats are great! Dobber: And they come with old Yankee Stadium hot dogs!

===

But those two stories are more about Johnny with someone else: the big story I remember of Johnny Zee was his, and his alone. He pulled a Sunday morning shift in May, 1980. In between records, he gave a shout-out to a local black-powder club. In case you're not familiar with them, these are gun enthusiasts who specialize in old-style, load-through-the-muzzle, pour-in-the-gunpowder and tamp it down with the ramrod kind of shooting. They tend to be a rowdy bunch, dressing up in Daniel Boone-style buckskins and coonskin caps.

So Johnny was doing the shout-out when he heard several loud reports -- loud enough to be heard through the studio window and picked up by the on-air mic. He said, "wow ... sounds like they're getting started early!"

Except it wasn't the black-powder club that made the noises. The noises came from Mount St Helen's, some 300 miles away, blowing up.

===

It's always tough to say goodbye to a friend and colleague. I hope Johnny knew how much he was appreciated by those who worked with him -- and how much he'll be missed.

===
My Shattered Nerves! was a "non-biography" of Ken Dobson that was written when we knew he was dying of cancer. It's a collection of anecdotes both by and about him, which sold fairly well in Victoria, where he had a lot of fans. The experience also taught me the meaning of that dreadful word, "remaindered" -- the term given to books that a bookstore hasn't been able to sell and sends back to the publisher -- in this case, me. If you're interested in getting a copy, there are a few available on Amazon.

It ain't over ...

You gotta love God's timing on things.

Earlier this month, the Quebec government passed a law allowing for assisted suicide and a Japanese cabinet minister opined that the elderly should "hurry up and die", and take pressure off resources for social services. ("If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they should get on with it, and decrease the surplus population.")

Now, we have two incidents of note that make one think a bit harder. The former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, is showing signs of brain activity, seven years after being felled by a stroke. (Frankly, I thought he had died, but he has been alive ever since, in a vegetative state.) Meanwhile, in China, a 101-year-old woman was declared dead, but woke up as she was being placed in her coffin. The "celebration of life" was quickly re-purposed as ... well ... a celebration of life.

Chalk these up as two more instances where we think we know what's going on and God says, "oh, no, you don't!" We think life and death are things over which we have control, and God reminds us that He's in charge and He has things all planned out. As with anything in life, our attitude should be, "where is God?" rather than, "isn't it awful, what's happening to me?"

Under a "right to die" scenario, Sharon -- who was 77 when he had the stroke -- may well have been buried long ago. Instead, while his doctor says the chances are "very, very slim" that he'll ever get out of bed, he does say his colleagues will be studying the case to learn more about humans in a vegetative state. Besides, when he had the stroke, who would have predicted he would last this long?

Any kind of miracle is worth celebrating, and yet there are those who would talk about "quality of life", as if life is defined by whether we can continue to play tennis, have sex or eat chocolate cake at will. I'm sure that attitude contributed to my dad's going out more with a whimper than a bang when he passed away at age 88: looking at what one can't do, rather than what one can. It's at times like this that we need to remember that Jesus came to bring us abundant life. He didn't say anything about "quality".

Then again, when we remember that 0ur lives -- in whatever form they take -- are gifts from God, what more "quality" could we ask for?

All icing - where's the cake?

Every Christmas, my family would make carrot pudding -- similar to carrot cake and plum pudding -- and there would be hard sauce on the side. The carrot pudding is actually quite nutritious: carrots and raisins and flour and eggs and a bunch of other good stuff -- the hard sauce is a garnish. Quick recipe for hard sauce: butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract, all to taste. Method of eating the carrot pudding with hard sauce: a spoon of pudding, then slide the pudding through the sauce.

I would always leave some of the hard sauce for the end, to have some "straight" -- without the pudding. But there was always a rule that I set for myself: I had to finish the pudding before I could have the hard sauce straight.

Last night, I watched The Polar Express, the movie with a bizarre animation technology that looks almost human the same way you sometimes think your cat is speaking English when it meows a certain way. Anyway, TPE is a "nice" story, if rather predictable: cynical child has up-close-and-personal encounter with Santa Claus and has his life changed as a result. A bunch of have-not kids get presents on Christmas. Formerly friendless kids make friends. The main character is advised to "BELIEVE".

As I say, it's a nice story. So why did I come through it with a grieved spirit? Because it's a lot of hard sauce, and I haven't seen much real carrot pudding over the Christmas season. Let's see: earlier this week, Fox TV aired a triple-play of three shows I'd never heard of before, billed as "three Holiday Classics". The first two had something to do with Santa Claus and the third was a Peanuts special ... except it wasn't A Charlie Brown Christmas, but "Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown", which was little more than a bunch of comic strips knitted together and animated with no reference to the true meaning of Christmas and CERTAINLY no sign of Chris Shea's* halting but sincere rendition of Luke 2 as Linus in ACBC. ACBC did air during the Christmas season, but it usually has a "don't blink or you'll miss it" schedule, as if the network executives are eager to get this "Jesus" malarkey out of the way and get on with the real holiday.

Last night's TV offering included something described as "The two sons of Mother Nature argue over Christmas."

Unclear on the concept?

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and others that don't necessarily refer to the true meaning of Christmas, the same way that I enjoy hearing Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" and Tom Petty's "Christmas All Over Again". But it feels, more and more, like we're getting force-fed a bowl of hard sauce without the carrot pudding -- with the same stomach-turning results.

(I actually have a personal issue with Rudolph. I like the story behind the recording of the song -- that Gene Autry's wife rather liked it, but he didn't think it would amount to much; but they had a few minutes left in a recording session, so they laid it down rather than send the musicians home early. But the more I think about the story line, the more I realize it's kinda cynical. I mean, look: here's someone with a physical aberration, who gets teased and bullied about it, and he only gains favor with the others because his "aberration" happens to be useful under certain circumstances. If it hadn't been foggy that one particular night, he would still have been teased and bullied. Moral of the story: if you can't prove your aberration is useful, suck it up, Prince Mishkin, 'cause they're still going to bully and tease you. At least the song doesn't take the tack the TV show does: that they'd have to "cancel Christmas" because Santa can't get fly in the fog. As if.)

===

*Sadly, I just learned through a Google search that Chris Shea passed away just over 2 years ago at the age of 52. Would have loved to have told him how much that little reading of his affected my life.

If there is no hell

I've been contemplating this for the past few weeks, ever since an item appeared in The Province about a documentary by a professing Christian who claims there's no hell. Filmmaker Kevin Miller, whose doc is called "Hellbound?", is quoted as saying that the word "hell" isn't even in the Bible.

Well, on the principle that the way to disprove the statement that "all crows are black" is to find a white crow, the "white crow" in this case is in Matt. 5:22: "... whosoever shall say 'thou fool' shall be in danger of hell fire."

Now, in the Bible, some words that are rendered in English as "hell" do not actually refer to the place of eternal punishment -- "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell", for example, actually refers to "Sheol", which Strong's Concordance defines as "the abode of the dead" rather than a place of eternal punishment (although that's listed as a definition, as well) -- but the "hell" Jesus refers to is, in fact, the fire-and-brimstone, abandon-all-hope, you're-not-getting-out "hell" that we've come to accept.

The Greek word is "Gehenna", which is basically a transliteration of the Hebrew "Hinnom". Strong's Concordance notes, "Hell is the place of the future punishment call "Gehenna" or "Gehenna of fire". This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and their future destruction."

(Remember, too, that when Jesus tells the parable of the beggar Lazarus, the rich man who rejected him in this world calls to Abraham from his vantage point in hell.)

So, the concept of hell as a place where the souls of people who are caught up in evil are sent to burn eternally is very much a part of Jesus' teaching, and since He is God in the flesh, we can be pretty sure this is the Word of God. With one deft stroke, we can see that this you is full of navel lint. Why bother any further?

There are a couple of reasons. One is that his idea seems to get some traction -- after all, it'd be oh-so-nice if the Bible was all about love thy neighbor and do under others as you would have them do unto you and everything is beautiful and don't worry about sin because God loves you so much He'll overlook it in the end. That's dangerous, because that's a lie.

Another reason is that this particular premise leads to the time-honored question, "How could a loving God ...?"

In this case, How could a loving God send sinners to hell? If He loves us (the thinking goes), why would He send some of us to hell? Ah, one can think, then the whole teaching of Christianity must be off-base. Miller says some Christian teaching is more about hell-avoidance than coming to Christ.

I couldn't agree more: I certainly didn't come to Christ because I wanted to avoid going to hell: I did so because I saw that was a better way than anything else I'd tried or heard of. But the concept of hell is very real to me, and avoiding it (or so I hope) is an added attraction, and particularly powerful when temptation starts prowling around, looking for an opening. After all, a truly loving human father still keeps the thought of punishment for disobedience in the background: just as there are rewards for doing good, the reminder of a punishment for doing bad is necessary.

Besides, the reason why hell is one of the foundations of Christianity is because, since God is a loving Father to us all, He needed to send Jesus to re-connect us with Him. If there were no hell, why would we need Jesus?

But let's get back to that idea that God sends people to hell. Here's an idea to put on the SkyTrain and see if it gets off at Metrotown: God does not send people to hell; He sends sin to hell. But if someone is clinging to that sin, they wind up going there, too. Jesus says, "every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up." (Matt. 15:13) And what happens to anything that is still hanging onto that plant? God has given us choice (because He loves us and wants His people to love Him not by coercion but by choice) and if we choose to hang onto that plant, we'll get cast out of His garden and tossed into that fire along with it.

Paul's list of people who go to hell -- 1 Cor. 6:9-10 -- is a list of people who choose to cling to sin rather that to Jesus. (Paul doesn't actually say they go to hell: he says they do not inherit the Kingdom of God; but since there is no "door number 3", that leaves only one other option.) But the Apostle also adds a note of encouragement after listing all of that: "And such were some of you: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

In other words, we all have gone through periods of clinging to sin but we found our way out through Jesus Christ; and we need to remember that when we deal with others.

That leads to another point about the concept of hell. It keeps those of us who have come to Christ from getting smug and self-righteous. Note that I said, above, that I "hoped" I had avoided hell by coming to Christ. What I mean by that is that I hope I'm not missing something in my walk: I'm grateful for the Grace God has extended to me, and I don't ever want to take it for granted. I'm ever aware that I don't deserve the blessing God has poured onto my life, especially since I came to Him.

One of the sad things about all this is the way that people tend to embrace the "Grace without sin" doctrine. People want to feel better about themselves without actually tackling the stuff that's put them in that space. Maybe it's because they believe that their issues will be too big and complex for them to deal with. And they're right. But that's why we have Jesus. Just as there is no grace without sin and no healing without sickness, there can be no heaven without hell.