Bridge to Terabithia

I saw "Bridge to Terabithia" the other day. There is a scene where the three kids are in the back of a truck on their way home from church and they have a conversation about God damning people to hell. I thought it was important that you get the Christian perspective on that subject.

I want you to imagine a world where all crime went unpunished. How do you think things would go in a world like that? A world without judges would be a horrible place to live. The fact is, the Bible describes God as a judge many times and there will come a day when He will judge this world. God would not create a law just to disregard it by not demanding punishment when that law is broken.

When May Belle said "You have to believe in the Bible Leslie, or you'll get damned to hell when you die." Those were not just words coming from the mouth of a child, there were adults who wrote that line for her, adults who wish to put the blame for their damnation on the back of God. They refuse to admit that they are condemned because of their own filthy sin. They say things like that to make it seem like God is unfair to punish them just because they don't believe in the Bible. In doing this they think they can avert the focus off of themselves and maybe try to play the ignorance card later and say they just didn't know. But God is not mocked.

When Leslie said that she didn't really think God went around damning people to hell, she was breaking the second commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" Exodus 20:4. Do you know why so many people in the Bible continually rejected the one true God for some lump of rock shaped like an animal? They loved their man made idols because they didn't do anything. They didn't make laws and they certainly didn't punish anyone for breaking them. There is no fear of judgment coming from a lump of rock. They loved their sin, so they made gods who would allow them to enjoy themselves. That is exactly what many people are doing today, what Leslie did when she said what her idea of God was.

A lot of people even claim to be Christians but reject the notion that God will ever judge. They reject the clear words of scripture. They either take the words of God that speak of His coming wrath and twist them to mean something entirely different, or will even flat out deny that the Bible is inspired.

They also deny their own logic. As I asked you before, imagine a world without judges, all criminals being given a pardon and never punished for their crimes. What about the man who rapes and kills a little girl, the teenager to beats and old lady to death in the park for the few dollars she has in her purse, or the mother who's children struggle for air under the water of a bathtub, looking up in horror at the very woman who they thought they could trust to protect them. Who knows how many countless murders get away free and clear every year in this country. What if it were someone you loved? Doesn't our human heart, as fallen as it has become, cry out for justice? What kind of god would wave his hand at all the evil man can do as if it meant nothing?

And what of Jesus? How can you believe in Jesus and not believe in punishment for sin? If there were no damnation to fall upon this wicked world, why the cross? Why would God have become flesh and dwelt among us? Why would He have walked this earth, and loved this people who would ultimately reject, humiliate, torture, and crucify Him? Why would He take that punishment, if there were no punishment?

Yes Leslie, people will be damned to hell. But it will not be God who puts them there. It will be their own sin, and their love of it.

John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.