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Questions Week 15, Day 1

by David Joynt on August 06, 2017


IS HELL REALLY REAL? MATTHEW 5:21-22


As modern people, the idea of punishment is very hard for us to countenance. Since we tend to focus on the psychological roots of bad behavior, we have a tendency to explain evil away as a consequence of trauma or mistreatment, which then leads someone to hurt others. There is great value in this modern way of approaching criminality, since it forces us to empathize with criminals and understand how immorality is often rooted in suffering. But there is a dark side to our psychological perspective. We have a penchant for under-estimating human responsibility and excusing bad behavior in ways that explain away crimes and underplay damage to victims and clear injustices.

The New Testament offers us a salutary lesson that shocks our sensibilities, it speaks of final, dire consequences, and of the dangers of hell.


Read our lesson from the Sermon on the Mount.


How do you feel as you read it?

Tags: evil, sermon on the mount

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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