so i was reading a little from tozer today, and came across something that made me think. he often does. here’s an excerpt:

Sometimes preachers get carried away and start sermonizing on the great calamaties posed by communism and secularism and materialism. But our greatest calamity is the closed heaven, the silent heaven. God meant for us to be in fellowship with Him. When the heaves are closed, men are left to themselves. They are without God.

tozer’s paragraph was inspired by his reading the opening paragraph in the book of ezekiel. and i was struck, not by the sunday school picture of hell that i’ve had in my mind from youth — a dungeon of fire, people screaming, and for some reason an oversized worm, but by the sunday school definition of hell: a place without God.

it makes sense that hell would be a place without God. but let’s face it; we focus more on the temporal, the tangible, than we do the spiritual, don’t we? our prayers focus on the gifts of God, the blessings of God, moreso than God Himself. could this play in our concept of spiritual negatives as well as it does the positives? could hell be more about the absence of God than it is the presence of things that harm?

if that’s so, then we could literally experience hell on earth, simply by closing ourselves to God. think about it. if we attempt to buffer ourselves from God, and He is apt to let us choose our own direction, then our “hell” could be seeing the fruition of the natural consequences of our own self-centered (as opposed to God-centered) actions, and the self-centered actions of others. the earth being replete with self-centered people (among whom am i, i might add), the culmination of all our actions brings about real calamity. wars. violence. broken hearts. hurt feelings. starvation. homelessness. broken homes. and there’s a piece of every one of us that is affected by some of these.

if that’s plausible, then i suppose it’s also plausible to conversely experience heaven on earth by the inclusion of God. by partaking of the things of his nature.

again, this is writing off the cuff, i haven’t taken time to vet the concept theologically, and i’m not trying to portray an actions-based faith, because we’d all be sunk. i’m just simply provoking the thought that maybe we can experience the spiritual eternal, here in the temporary. and that may impact the manner in which i behave today.