This is my last installment of allowing Linda Mercadante’s research to help us understand what many of our listeners are thinking while they listen to our sermons. The research comes from her book, Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious. I have benefited from her interviews of SBNR and hope you have too. We tend to think that our listeners are immune from such thinking, but it’s in the air we breathe. We’re all affected by such thinking and the Church is moving, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, toward such thinking. Biblical preaching is one way to keep the Church of Christ on course.

The final area we’re highlighting is the flat out rejection of a literal heaven and hell. Mercandante writes:

“They outright rejected the idea of a static heaven and a torturous hell. Most also rejected any kind of ‘winnowing’ process where some would go to a better place and some to a worse one” (p. 195).

Or…

“Guiding their judgments, again, were factors like the American ethos of ‘fair-play’ and equality, as well as the therapeutic ethos….a number felt that believing in heaven and hell, or in any kind of afterlife, was immature, childish, selfish, and/or a vestige of a superstitious past. Several felt almost ‘honor bound’ to reject such seemingly unpopular or unscientific views” (p. 196).

Or this direct quote: “‘I never believe that you have to make people behave because they think they will burn in hell if they don’t. That’s threatening them to behave, which is negative reinforcement, which I don’t ever think is good.” (p. 198).

There you have it. As you know, if you preach the Bible from cover to cover, eventually you will butt heads with such thinking. We cannot change their minds unless God graciously opens their eyes. However, we can kindly let some of our listeners know that we know they struggle with this teaching. We can be the best amateur, expository apologists we can be (seems to me I’ve read about a book with such a title, but can’t remember for sure).

Even our mention of such an intellectual/spiritual struggle helps our faith-families realize the fight we’re in for God’s reality in a world that champions human fantasy.

Preach well for the sake of His reputation in the Church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal