The Two Fates

     "That ye may be blameless and pure, the sons of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world [alt: as stars in the universe]." Philippians 2:15

     We are stars shed from the blood of the sun, the sparks of a greater flame that is infinite and glorious, sending us flying upward into the pitch black sky of night. We are in constant rebellion against the dark: we will not conform to its shades and secret sins. Like a new caretaker purchases a rotting old building and begins by replacing a bulb in a dark alleyway: the roaches flee and the caretaker begins his repairs. So we too, having been purchased by God through His blood and pain and having our old deformities set right, we shine in the dark places as our master sets to fix the whole.

     God did not call people to merely escape from Hell; He has called us to bear the fruits of His fire. Read Galatians 5:22-23. There are the fruits of the Spirit; there is the result of being one with the consuming fire. If you have not these things, then you are still a dead ember lying lifeless on the ash heap of the world. A fire is coming for you and your kind, but you will not survive it.

     Hence are our two fates: to burn or to burn. To be filled up by the fiery Spirit of God like an overfilled cup or to be drowned in an infinite ocean of His fiery wrath. To the burning Love or the burning Wrath you must flee. The choice is yours; the results are eternal.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

Damnable Ignorance

"Know ye that the Lord, He is God; it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture." Ps. 100:3

"But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of Thee, and of Thine own hand have we given Thee." I Chr. 29:14

Humility, joy, love, and every other aspect of Christ-likeness comes from a resolute focusing of our heart and mind on the fact of our necessary dependence. "The Son can do nothing of Himself," Jesus said to the Jews, "except what He seeth the Father do" (John 5:19). Such is the nature of true Christ-likeness: a state of utter acknowledgment and living in the reality of one's dependence on God.
What person can truly claim to have "arrived" by their own strengths? Many do make such a claim, but it is all noisome hubris. Their strengths are God's strengths, for He is their Creator and thus has given them those strengths. Likewise, which of His children can truly claim to be their own man/woman? Sadly, many do, and they boast of their strengths "as if [they] had not received it" (I Cor. 4:7). It is God, and not ourselves, who "makes" us in every way; we are His and not our own. To claim otherwise is nothing but pride and Sin, the parents of such damnable ignorance, for many are cast into Hell thinking that they can live and move and have their being apart from God.

-Jon Vowell

Commentary on "The Gospel in the Context of the Trinity"

From a discussion between fellow believers on Facebook:

Bro S asked: "Do you think God can commune with people who are 'positionally' righteous (i.e., righteous in Christ) but not personally righteous (i.e., righteous in their own actions)?"

JLV responds: Being positionally righteous is what gives you the power and motive force (i.e., the indwelling Holy Spirit) to be personally righteous. If you have a complete lack of personal righteousness, I would question your positional righteousness.
Still, I understand and agree with you that are actions can affect our communion with God, but only as a hindrance or a help; they can neither abolish nor establish it. Christ's Atonement makes you positionally righteous, and thus reestablishes the communion man lost at the Fall. Your personal righteousness only serves to strengthen or weaken (or keep stagnant) that communion.

Bro JS asked: "Can one be 'personally' righteous in this life?"

JLV responds: We can be "personally" righteous, but only because we have been made "positionally" righteous. Remember, any righteous action we do is not us, but God working in and through us.

Bro JE asked: "Just curious about your phrase 'but are destined to stay separate from Him forever, which is the true meaning of Hell.' I understand that separation from God is part of hell, but there is a definite punitive aspect of hell, and that punishment must be meted out. That punishment only intensifies the abandonment...or the abandonment intensifies the punishment. They go hand in hand."

JLV responds: I do believe that there is a punitive aspect to Hell, and that the punishment and abandonment go hand in hand. However, I've believe that the punishment and abandonment are so hand in hand that they are one and the same.
For me, 'separation from God' is not merely a separation in regards to proximity (i.e., God's here and you're there). It is a complete severance from all that is good in the universe (i.e., God). God is the source of (and His very nature is made up of) all good things (e.g. the fruits of the Spirit). To separate from Him is to be separate from those things and bound to their opposites.
God is light; to be separate from Him is to know only darkness. God is love; to be separate from Him is to know only hatred. God is peace; to be separate from Him is to know only confusion and chaos. God is joy; to be separate from Him is to know only sorrow. Etc., etc. My definition of Heaven is absolute communion (i.e., complete unification) with God; thus, my definition of Hell is absolute communion (i.e., complete unification) with not-God. To be bound in an intimate and total way to God is heaven; to be bound in an intimate and total way to everything God is not is hell.
Therefore, the abandonment is the punishment because it is a complete severance from God and thus a complete unification with all He is not (e.g., darkness, hatred, chaos, sorrow, etc.). When we desire God, our desire becomes our reward; when we desire not-God, our desire becomes our punishment.

The Perpetual and The Transitory

"What shall I say? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field: the grass withers, the flower fades: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God shall stand forever." Isaiah 40:6-8

I think it's safe to say that the hardest part of eternal life is keeping our focus on the perpetual and off the transitory, on the eternal and off the fleeting. This is the hardest thing, because the concrete world is all we know literally in the realm of our senses, and we are more sensuous than spiritual before salvation. Some act like salvation means a complete end of confusion and deception, of mistaken identities and lost focuses. It is a lie. When you are born from above, you are just like any newborn: you have to get your "spiritual legs" underneath you. Salvation is getting the legs; eternal life is learning how to use them. Being "spiritual," having "mythic eyes," is not an imparted superpower, but a learned discipline. Be wedded to the fact that everything in this world (good, bad, or indifferent) is geared to knock your legs out from under you, to blind your eyes. Practical agnosticism comes the moment we think living by faith is easy and not a battle. The Spirit of God is your strength, but you must be prepared to face the noise of this world as it vies for your attention. God cannot help the one who walks onto the battlefield and is ignorant of the battle (except to let him get knocked around a bit).
"All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." Notice that the material world is not condemned. There is a "goodliness," a loveliness to the world that is as real as the loveliness of a flower. Gnosticism is a lie, and this verse stands defiantly against it. The material world is not evil, per se; it is just transitory, not the end, and therefore not meritorious of our focus. It will wither and fade away by the very same breath that gave it life (vs. 7). It fades not becaus eit is evil, but because that is its very nature; it cannot be forever.
"The word of our God shall stand forever." Only what is of God will be forever, and in that sense only what is of God matters. This heaven and earth do not matter; the new ones do. Our little kingdoms do not matter; the kingdom of God does. Life as it is does not matter; only eternal life does. We do not matter; only God does. Do not misunderstand. I am not giving a qualitative or moral judgment. I am talking about focus. The earth is good and to be cared for, we must see to our affairs like adults, and life is meant to be lived; but we must never get wrapped up in those things, for they will fade away. Some people are so wrapped up, so hopelessly bound to things, that they will wither away with them. Hell is the place where all things eternally wither away into the nothingness that is not-God.
Perhaps it is true that your focus determines your reality, even if that reality is false. We must guard ourselves daily from the snare of the transitory. The more we focus on a thing, the easier it becomes to stay focused on it. Pray that the eternal Lord teaches us to stay focused on Him.

"Teach us to get lost in You,
Not in this world,
To trade the food of egypt
For Milk and Honey..."
-Jon Vowell

The Absence of Truth

"...they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth." Isaiah 38:18b

The Truth about God: "And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent." (John 17:3) The presence of Hell is the absence of truth, including truths about God. We can never know Him in any way on this world or in the next if Hell is our primary disposition (and consequently our primary end). A life bound to Sin is a life bound to Hell. Such a life is not life at all; it is a living death, a dead man walking. It is a life with the absence of God; and where God is not, there Hell is. We can never know Him in this life of the next when we are in the pits of Hell: we are cut off from the intimate communion of His presence. We can never know the wondrous rapture of that dance when Hell is within us, and us within it.
The Truth about Ourselves: "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me." (Psalm 139:1-6) There is only one person Who knows us in every aspect and element of our being, and that is God. To be in the pit is to be cut off from Him, and to be cut off from Him is to be cut off from all knowledge of self. God is the source of self: He designed it, He knows it backwards and forwards, and He knows the extent of the effects of Sin upon it. The only way to "know thyself" is to get back to the source of our self. As long as we are in the pit and the pit is in us, we are in a constant confusion about ourselves. We fly this way and that, trying to "find," "discover," or "reinvent" ourselves. There is only one Who knows us the way we wish to know and be known, and to be cut off from Him forever is darkness forever, and Hell indeed.

"Thy Presence
Is the freedom of Thy Truth.
Lead me into Your Light,
And keep me there..."
-Jon Vowell

The Inescapable Choice

"O Lord, by [your works] men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live." Isaiah 38:16

It is true that our destinies are in our own hands, but there are only two destinies to pick from: into the will of God, or out of it. We may end up in endless possible places: as a missionary, a millionaire, a lower or upper middle class citizen, a happy person with a good life, a horrendous monster, and so on, endless possibilities layered with endless variables, as far as the imagination can stretch and as deep as it can dig. For all the possibilities, however, they all have as their basis one of two choices: with God's will, or without it. Either your life is a living amalgamation of surrenders to the will of God, or you have consistently rejected it and consequently have been consistently left behind by it. Those are the only two ways to go. They both branch out into endless possible paths, but all those endless paths began at one of those two choices, and they take you one step closer to either Heaven or Hell.
Humanity cannot escape that choice, and that is most surely aggravating. I think most people want neither to accept nor reject God's will, but simply for God to leave them alone. Unfortunately, that wishes is granted in Hell, for Hell is God leaving you alone for all eternity. "By Him men live, and in Him is the life of my spirit." Outside of God, there is no life, love, joy, peace, hope, or anything that is "good and green" in this world. As Lewis put it, "God cannot give man happiness outside of Himself," not because He is cruel or selfish, but because "these is no such thing." Life is found in Him alone. No matter what our excuses, any middle ground we invent, even the most logical and noble, leads away to Hell if it does not have God in its equation. We choose either God or not-God, and not-God is Hell. We can choose to reject Him in the end, but we cannot escape the consequence of our choice.

"Life and Light of men,
All other ground is sinking sand..."
-Jon Vowell

The Absence of God

"...and He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness." Isaiah 34:11b

Edom is receiving the judgment of God, and the results are chaos and emptiness. Interestingly, in the original language (i.e., Hebrew), the words "confusion" and "emptiness" are the same words used in Genesis 1:2 for "without form and void." In Paradise Lost, John Milton had the outer darkness that surrounded creation ruled by "Chaos" and "Night." Absolute disorder and absolute nothingness are the direct result of the absence of God. Before "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," the earth was chaotic and empty. Could it be that Edom's judgment is to be ignored by God and left to the darkness and chaos of evil?
The absence of God is the presence of Hell, for Hell is the only place that God is not, the one place for those who reject Him could possibly go; and it is His absence that makes it Hell. It is no small thing to teach that Sin brings separation. To be separated from God means to be separated forever from the Source of all joy, love, hope, virtue, wisdom, righteousness, goodness, peace, order, justice, honor, kindness, light, knowledge, strength, grace, mercy, and all things "good and green in this world." To reject and be ultimately cut off from that which our heart truly desired, from that which we were created to be one with, is Hell indeed.
The choice between Heaven or Hell is really the choice between God or not-God. Heaven means nothing without Him, and Hell is what it is without Him. This includes our daily choices as well as the ultimate one. Every day, our choices unleash Heaven or Hell in ourselves and unto others. Will our choices today release the presence of God, or will we suck Him clear out of the room?

Heaven and hell lie in my hands;
To unleash or quench, my choice stands.
May Your Presence, like a Fire,
Burn within my soul, and unleash Heaven on earth...
-Jon Vowell