The hazard that concerns every person

There are a few simple controls for this hazard, freely available, but only for a limited time. Failure to adopt them exposes a person to a consequence so severe that discussing the hazard without describing the consequence would be pointless.

What follows may sound like fiction. Please bear with me.

The descent

You lay your head down to sleep. When you open your eyes, you are falling.

It is something like skydiving, except that it is pitch black and you are descending with increasing speed. At the same time, you experience something unfamiliar that proves beyond question that you are not dreaming: complete clarity. It is as though reality has bled through your body and directly into your mind, and you are experiencing it in four dimensions.

The panic would make a day inside your favourite horror film feel relaxing.

Something is worse than the falling, however, and it has to do with the blackness. You have been in dark places before, but this darkness has reached the limit—complete blackout—and somehow continues getting darker. It has a personal quality: hostile, powerful and possessive. You continue falling, and the darkness closes over you.

You search frantically through every category of situation or experience you have encountered, but this belongs nowhere on Earth. You cannot think of anything to do that might help you escape.

Seconds pass, or perhaps minutes. It may even be hours. Time itself begins thinning out in the darkness. With it go all the other things you once took for granted: happiness, joy, hope, cleanness, charity, a loving look from your partner, a reassuring wink from your father, the footy, dogs and cats, sunshowers, fishing, children, amusement, comfort and freedom of every kind.

Completely outside your control, they are being removed from you.

Not merely folklore

Accounts of this kind are not confined to religious preaching, internet testimony or popular books. Near-death experiences have been studied in medicine, psychiatry and psychology for decades.

In 2019, researchers examined more than a thousand people across 35 countries and found that one in ten met the Greyson Scale threshold for a near-death experience. Other reviews suggest that a substantial minority of reported NDEs are distressing. Falling, darkness, a void, extraordinary clarity, distorted time, hostile presences and isolation recur across the accounts.

People appear less willing to report terrifying experiences than peaceful ones. Science can record their testimony and identify recurring features, but it cannot settle by measurement alone what kind of reality they encountered.

Researchers classify them as distressing near-death experiences; many of the people who return from them use a less clinical word: Hell.

The control

Now to the control.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”Romans 10:9

If the danger described above is real, it is the most important instruction ever given to a human being.

To confess Jesus as Lord is to acknowledge his identity and authority—to entrust yourself to him rather than continuing to belong entirely to yourself. To believe that God raised him from the dead is to believe that his death was not a defeat, that death could not hold him, and that he possesses the authority to rescue you from it.

Across many hellish near-death testimonies, the same means of rescue recurs: the experiencer calls upon Jesus, Jesus intervenes, or both. The darkness releases them, a presence draws them out, or the experience ends and they return to the body.

Perhaps, at some point in your life, a man, woman or even a child has approached you and asked, “Do you know Jesus?” The question may have felt intrusive, simplistic or embarrassing. You may have wondered why a stranger cared what you believed.

This is why.

To me, Jesus is the answer to every dark and troubling thing. I go through life attempting to prevent misfortune and injury, both for myself and for my clients and their workers, but I know that ultimately we all die. Before that happens, we experience sadness, grief and loss. It may be the death of someone we love, the loss of a beloved animal, the failure of our own health, or the slow disappearance of a life we thought would continue indefinitely.

I understand this pain. I would not be strong enough to function through it, much less overcome it, were it not for the knowledge that my Father loves me and understands it too.

You will notice that I capitalised Father. I am referring to the creator of everything and to the Father of anyone willing to be adopted into his family—God.

The God who was never alone

Before the universe existed, God was not sitting alone in an infinite darkness. There was no darkness because there was not yet any space in which darkness could exist. There was no matter, distance or time. There was God.

God has eternally existed as one being and three persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Spirit; and the Spirit is not the Father. Yet they are not three independent gods. Each is wholly God, possessing the same undivided divine life, while knowing and loving the other two as someone other than himself.

You and I naturally assume that one being means one person because that is the only arrangement we have ever inhabited. But the limits of human personhood do not necessarily describe the limits of personhood itself. A mind capable of creating space, matter, time and consciousness should not be expected to fit comfortably inside the categories produced by one human brain.

God does not have our limitations. His knowledge does not bottleneck. He does not have to turn his attention from a distant galaxy to hear one person praying in a hospital room. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit comprehend the universe completely and simultaneously, and have done so since they brought it into existence nearly fourteen billion years ago.

Why did God need the drama? Why make a universe filled with dust clouds, mathematics, black holes, gravity, time and conscious creatures capable of grief? What was wrong with existing eternally within the uninterrupted peace and love of his tri-personal life? Why create more persons so that they could toil on Earth and lose the people they love?

God did not create us because he lacked company, information or love. Within God, love already existed before anything else did. He created us to know us—not because he needed to discover what we would be like, but because knowing everything about a person is not the same as sharing life with them.

If you have ever conceived a grand project—a car you wanted to rebuild or an extraordinary birthday party for your five-year-old daughter—you may understand a small part of this. The finished thing exists first in your mind. You can picture it, plan it and love what it will become, but you still want to bring it into reality. You want to see it take shape, pass through difficulty and finally become what you intended.

God did not make ornaments or machines. He made beings who could know him, answer him, love him, resist him and become more than they were at the beginning. Unlike a car or a birthday party, which lasts for a limited time and may eventually be replaced, God’s project—you and me—was intended to continue forever.

That freedom introduces the possibility of suffering. God could have made creatures that performed every required action automatically, but obedience without the possibility of refusal is not love. He does not stamp his feet or send a lightning bolt through your brain to force the correct thought into it. He allows you to acknowledge him, ignore him, trust him, blame him or attempt to build a life without him.

Many people take what life throws at them and dig further into themselves: What have I done to deserve this? How can I fix it? What am I doing wrong? How can I make certain I get what I want?

You can instead bring the pain to God and say, “Lord, make me whole. Heal me. Forgive me for ignoring you.” He is not reluctant to receive you. Jesus says that heaven celebrates when one person turns back to God.

God does not merely observe human pain from outside it. In Jesus Christ, God entered it.

God takes the hard road

God did not load into the universe as Louis XIV at Versailles, looking over fountains, orange trees, geometric gardens and an estate full of servants. Jesus was born in an occupied country and raised in an ordinary working family. He became a carpenter and knew the demands of ordinary work—the fatigue of physical labour and the responsibility of helping to provide for a household.

For most of his life he lived outside public attention. Then, when the time came, he left the obscurity of Nazareth and began telling people that the Kingdom of God was approaching.

What is the Kingdom of God?

Jesus’s listeners knew that something was wrong with the world. Israel had spent centuries awaiting the king God had promised. Many expected the Messiah to defeat their enemies, restore their nation and rule visibly from Jerusalem. Even Jesus’s closest followers struggled to imagine a victory that did not involve political power.

Jesus announced something larger. God’s rule was entering the world through him. The sick were healed, demons were driven out, sins were forgiven and people normally kept at a moral distance were invited to come near. This was what creation looked like when its rightful King exercised authority.

For roughly three years, Jesus travelled, taught, healed and told people who he was. Crowds followed him. Some believed he was the promised Messiah. Others heard him forgive sins, speak of God as his Father and place himself at the centre of humanity’s relationship with God. To them, this was blasphemy.

The religious leadership moved against him. One of his own disciples betrayed him. He was arrested at night, tried and handed to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The chief priests stirred the crowd against him, and Pilate sentenced him to death on a cross.

Jesus’s followers scattered. Peter denied three times that he even knew him. Jesus was flogged, mocked, stripped and dressed as a failed king. Roman soldiers pressed a crown of thorns onto his head, struck him and led him away.

Crucifixion killed slowly. The man who had healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on water and said that he came from God now hung publicly as an exposed and defeated criminal.

After he died, his body was placed in a borrowed tomb and sealed behind a great stone. The disciples had disbanded, the authorities had won, and the man who claimed equality with God lay dead behind stone.

The reversal

On the third day, several women went to the tomb and found the stone moved from its entrance. The body was gone.

A missing body could be moved, concealed or stolen. The problem was that Jesus began appearing to people.

Mary Magdalene saw him near the tomb. The disciples encountered him together. Thomas, who had rejected their testimony, was confronted with the wounds he had demanded to see. Jesus walked with people, spoke with them and ate in their presence. His followers said that the same man they had watched die now stood before them in a transformed but physical body.

Paul recorded that Jesus appeared to Peter, the other apostles and more than five hundred people at once. He also appeared to James and, later, to Paul himself—a man who had been persecuting Christians rather than looking for a reason to join them.

The disciples who had scattered at Jesus’s arrest began announcing publicly that God had raised him from the dead.

This changed the meaning of everything that had happened. The cross was not an interruption to the Kingdom but the means by which it would be opened. Jesus entered the consequence of human sin, exhausted its claim against those who belong to him, and emerged beyond its reach.

He had not returned to ordinary mortal life like someone revived in a hospital. He could be touched and could eat, but his body was no longer subject to disease, ageing, corruption or death. Christians are promised the same kind of life.

The rescue offered through Jesus is therefore larger than avoiding hell. God intends to raise those who belong to Christ and admit them into the Kingdom for which human beings were created. For those who belong to Christ, everything death appeared to take—love, recognition, companionship, beauty, cleanness, freedom and joy—will be restored without decay.

After appearing to his followers for forty days, Jesus instructed them to carry this news to the world. As they watched, he was taken up until a cloud concealed him from sight.

His followers were left with a message, a promise and a responsibility: Jesus Christ had defeated death; forgiveness was available in his name; and he would return.

That is why the control at the beginning of this article depends upon believing that God raised Jesus from the dead. If Jesus remained in the tomb, he cannot give eternal life to anyone. If he rose, then a way through death exists, and it belongs to him.

Why “not that bad” is not enough

Why can a person not simply live reasonably well, avoid serious wrongdoing and trust God to recognise the difference between an ordinary flawed human being and someone truly evil?

Because “not that bad” measures us against one another. God measures us against holiness.

The Father does not lie, exploit, envy, lust, manipulate or make mistakes. Nothing corrupt is hidden beneath his outward behaviour. His goodness is not the result of restraint, reputation management or fear of consequences. He is good completely, inwardly and without interruption.

Human beings grade wrongdoing comparatively. We excuse a thought because it did not become an action, an action because no one was seriously harmed, or a pattern because someone else behaves worse.

Jesus said that a man who looks at another person’s wife with the intention of possessing her has already committed adultery in his heart. God sees the will taking shape before circumstances allow it to become action. The outward boundary may remain intact while the inward betrayal has already been welcomed, owned and enjoyed. “I did not do anything” does not answer the fact that I wanted to.

We may never strike the colleague we despise, steal the money we covet or publicly humiliate the person whose failure secretly pleases us. Restraint matters, but restraint is not innocence. God sees the pride, hatred, dishonesty, cowardice and self-protection from which our visible actions emerge.

A person charged with robbery is not released because someone else committed murder. Another person’s greater offence does not erase the first.

Before God, the problem runs deeper than a collection of offences. Sin is the continuing claim that our lives belong finally to us: that we may accept God’s gifts, inhabit his creation, use the minds and bodies he gave us, and still reserve the right to decide when his authority matters.

The consequence is separation from God.

God judges evil because a good ruler cannot grant it permanent sanctuary. At the same time, a person who finally rejects God is rejecting the source of everything that makes existence good. Light, order, kindness, mercy, companionship, beauty, rest and joy proceed from him.

Hell is what remains when separation becomes final.

It is not a crowded alternative kingdom where people continue enjoying their preferred sins without God. The pleasures attached to sin in this life are corrupted uses of things God made good. Remove every trace of his generosity and nothing pleasurable remains.

Say goodbye to kindness; that comes from God. Light does too. There is no hope in hell. There is only darkness, torment, regret and the knowledge that what has been lost cannot be recovered. Jesus described a man in torment longing for a single drop of water.

Hell is the sewer system of creation: the final containment of everything that has rejected God and cannot be permitted to corrupt his Kingdom forever. Human beings are not the only intelligences associated with it. Scripture speaks of spiritual beings older and more powerful than us who also opposed God and await judgement. There is no reason to imagine their company making the place less hostile.

No human being can grit his teeth and endure this consequence until the debt is paid. Separation from the source of life cannot be survived through toughness, and corruption cannot make itself clean by remaining corrupt for long enough.

This is why Jesus’s sacrifice is necessary.

When Peter resisted Jesus washing his feet, Jesus told him, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” The scene gives physical form to the central truth: no one makes himself clean enough for God. Christ must wash him.

That cleansing is offered through the cross. Jesus takes responsibility for the debt we cannot discharge and gives us a standing before God that we could never manufacture. Whether your life has been respectable, chaotic or deliberately cruel, his sacrifice is sufficient. Nothing short of complete cleanness can live permanently within the unveiled holiness of God.

“Other people are worse” misses the issue. So does “God loves me, so I should not have to change.” God’s love is the reason a means of rescue exists; it is not permission to carry rebellion into his Kingdom.

God is asking you to stop defending what you know is wrong and allow Jesus to make you clean.

Adopt the control

If you understand the danger but remain unsure what to do, begin by telling God the truth.

Repentance is turning around. It is admitting that God has been right about you, that your life belongs to him, and that you need the rescue he has provided through Jesus.

Close the door, turn out the light and get comfortable. If your knees and back permit, kneel. You are about to address the sovereign creator of the cosmos.

You might pray:

Then begin living from that decision. Read the Gospels and learn who Jesus is. Speak to God plainly and regularly. Find Christians who take him seriously, and tell someone what you have done. Ask for help with the parts of your life that need to change.

You will still fail. You will act selfishly, lose your temper, entertain corrupt thoughts and retreat into cowardice. The difference is that you no longer need to protect those things with excuses.

Never let “It wasn’t that bad” become your answer to God. Say instead, “I have no excuse. Please forgive me.” Thank him for the sacrifice that allows you to speak those words without terror.

The person who belongs to Christ can bring wrongdoing into the light, accept correction, make restitution where possible and continue forward without pretending to be innocent.

You will encounter many reasons to believe that God does not mind what you do, that obedience is unnecessary or that forgiveness is yours without repentance. Beneath these claims is the same lie that has followed humanity from the beginning: You do not need God’s approval. You can determine good and evil for yourself.

Rebellion covers the desire to be forgiven until a person no longer believes forgiveness is necessary. Do not allow it to do that to you.

While you are alive, you can turn to Christ with the whole truth about yourself and be received. His sacrifice is sufficient, his resurrection is real, and his authority reaches further than the darkness described at the beginning of this article.

I work in safety because preventable suffering matters. I want people to finish their work, return home and continue enjoying the ordinary goods of life: family, friendship, animals, sunlight, rain, food, laughter, rest and meaningful work. But even the safest life reaches its end.