![\"\"](\"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/san_djovani.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Why are men so preoccupied with heaven and hell? Especially, hell? Why are so few preoccupied with Jesus? They have some incoherent notion of wandering around in heaven, along streets of gold, in and out of pearly gates, from mansion to mansion, visiting their dead relatives, with absolutely nothing else to do for the whole eternity. The notion becomes only slightly more coherent with respect to hell: worms, fire, frying pans, demons with horns and tails and forks, etc. They will tell you all of the warning sings of the coming of the antichrist\u2013including his nationality and hair color\u2013but few are watching for the signs of the coming of the Christ.<\/p>\n
Where is the man who just wants to be with Jesus\u2013not in heaven, not out of hell, but with Jesus? Where is the man who says, \u201cI do not want heaven, I do not care about hell; I want Jesus\u201d? Where is the man who is ready to follow his Lord to the moon and back, even to the edge of the earth?\u00a0Where is the man who says, \u201cIf in order to be with Jesus, I must go to hell, I will gladly go there\u00a0and be burnt a thousand times\u2013just to be with my Lord\u201d?<\/p>\n
What a consumerist attitude\u2013\u201cAccept Jesus in order to avoid the fires of hell and inherit life in heaven!\u201d\u00a0\u201cFor God so loved the world\u201d that He came all the way to earth in order to be with us, all the way to poverty, to hunger, to thirst, to weariness. He came to serve, to wash feet, to be rejected, tempted, tested, arrested, beaten, tortured and killed. If, in order to find His lost sheep, Jesus had to descend into the very abyss itself, did He not do that? Did he not choose His beloved over the comforts of heaven? Sure, He is eternally risen, but He is also\u00a0eternally<\/em>\u00a0crucified. And\u00a0men respond by \u201caccepting\u201d Him in order to gain eternal comforts and to avoid eternal discomforts?!<\/p>\n Imagine a man who plans to get married, and instead of saying to his beloved, \u201cI want to be with you because I love you,\u201d he says, \u201cI want to be with you because I want to have my meals cooked, my house cleaned, my socks washed, and I want to have sex regularly.\u201d Even we, fallen humans, do not say this to our beloved. In our best moments, we say, \u201cI want to be with you because I love you\u2013for better or\u00a0for worse<\/em>, for rich or\u00a0for poor<\/em>,\u00a0in sickness<\/em>\u00a0or in health\u2026\u201d Why do men not extend the same idea of love toward God, and are instead obsessed with getting stuff\u00a0out of God\u2013as if He has not given enough already?!\u00a0Scared of hell?\u2013accept Jesus! Want eternal retirement in heaven?\u2013accept Jesus! Problems in life?\u2013Jesus will fix them!<\/p>\n This is not to say that there is no heaven or hell or problems. But this is to say that when\u00a0God<\/em>\u00a0says, \u201cI love you,\u201d do\u00a0men really have to ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why are men so preoccupied with heaven and hell? Especially, hell? Why are so few preoccupied with Jesus? They have some incoherent notion of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-22659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-orthodox-wisdom","tag-personal-thoughts-on-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/san_djovani.jpg","views":{"total":269,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1768405136},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPyw9-5Tt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22675,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22659\/revisions\/22675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}