Not interested in the hell’s best kept secret

Thursday, October 15, 2026

A friend asked me to listen to the talk Hell’s Best Kept Secret and to say my opinion. The talk was published on 11 Oct 2015.

I did not get further than the introduction because I disagree with what the speaker assumes to be the mission of the church. Here is the excerpt that made me trigger:

To illustrate the function of God’s law, let’s look for a few moments at civil law.

Imagine if I said to you, I have got some good news for you today. This is great news. Someone has just paid a $25,000 speeding fine on your behalf. You’d probably react by saying, “What are you talking about? I don’t have a $25,000 speeding fine. My good news wouldn’t be good news to you. It’ be foolishness. It wouldn’t make sense. But more than that, it would be offensive to you because I’m insinuating you’ve broken the law when you don’t think you have.

But if I put it this way, it may make more sense: On your way to the meeting today, the law clocked you going 55 miles an hour through an area set aside for a blind children’s convention. There were 10 clear warning signs stating that 15 mph was the maximum speed, but you went straight through at 55 m an hour. What you did was extremely dangerous. There’s a $25,000 fine. The law was about to take its course when someone you don’t even know stepped in and paid the fine for you. You are very fortunate.

Can you see that telling you precisely what you’ve done wrong first actually makes the good news make sense? If I don’t bring instruction and understanding you violated the law, then the good news will seem foolishness. It will seem offensive. But once you understand that you violated that law, then the good news will become good news indeed.

Now, in the same way, if I approach an impenitent sinner, someone whose understanding is darkened and say Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, it’ll be foolishness to him and offensive to him. Foolishness because it won’t make sense. The Bible says that the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. And offensive because I’m insinuating he’s a sinner when he doesn’t think he is. As far as he’s concerned, there are plenty of people far worse than him.

But if I take the time to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and open up the divine law, the Ten Commandments, and show the sinner precisely what he’s done wrong, that he has offended God by violating his law, then when he becomes, as James says, convinced of the law as a transgressor, the good news of the fine being paid for will not be foolishness. It will not be offensive. It will be the power of God under salvation.

Now, those few thoughts in mind, by way of introduction, let’s now look at (…)

No, Sir, the mission of the church is not to explain to everybody what they are doing wrong. It is not our job to help God with identifying sinners. People do not need our help to understand what they did wrong. They know it. If they do not yet know it, life will tell them. Our job is to announce the Gospel to those to whom this happened, who already do feel guilty for some unpleasant aspect of reality. Our job is to tell them that God’s mercy is infinitely greater than human justice.

And the speaker doesn’t say that he is going to explain the above in his talk. No, he considers it as evident. That’s why it would be a waste of time for me to listen further.

More than this. Hearing such an interpretation of the Bible hurts me deeply. I believe that this introduction is a wrong interpretation of the Bible. If this guy is telling the Gospel, then I am not a Christian. I believe that content like this causes reasonable people to refuse the Bible. Such talk should get marked with a clear warning that it contains heretical content.

After coming to this conclusion I read that the speaker is Ray Comfort, an evangelical minister and Young Earth creationist.

Try to change my mind if you want!

Feedback

Another friend helped me to understand more.

In ecumenical prayers like those of the Taizé community, we actually find ourselves alongside Christians who think very differently. If our disagreements were political, we’d probably argue our point, but if one of the main points of our being together is to pray together despite our different backgrounds and understandings, I choose not to argue. If I do, I will soon find myself in a dualistic I’m right/you’re wrong situation.

So the first priority is to establish that we’re all humans trying to live a Christian life and to share our understanding as far as we’re able with other people.

The second point is that the peace of God passes understanding. Basically God is bigger than us and our communication skills are developed to enable us to talk to other people. What we say about God is limited then by our humanness. So we worship and pray and know God by love, not understanding.

The ‘evangelical’ approach assumes that humankind is sinful and that as individuals we each have a backlog of sins. The good news is that God has sent Jesus to take our punishment in our place. We are therefore saved from hell. This is an emotional and converting experience for many, and they expect that what worked for them will work for everyone else.

I looked at his congregation, young people, dealing with the traumas of adolescence, especially, we can assume, discovering sex, and the talent of sex for making us do stupid and sometimes harmful things to partners and ourselves.

Other Christians, who haven’t had this kind of conversion experience, or who grew into faith in a church in the more Catholic tradition, don’t assent to any particular theory of how this sin/salvation system works.

We are more contemplative, more concerned to allow the Holy Spirit to create prayer and holiness in us. Yes. We believe in sin. How could we not in this batshit world? But sin is bigger than my sin or your sin, and we’re all implicated in the continuing story of human sinfulness. For us, the Cross represents God’s love for us, rather than Jesus taking our punishment in our place.

If I were you, I’d be happy to explain what your experience of Jesus is, in a conversation with your friend, but it’s difficult to do so in writing, because if he thinks in terms of there being only one way of being a Christian, it sounds as if you think he’s wrong and you’re right. I hope this helps.

I answered: You got me in flagranti: I do think that Ray Comfort is wrong and I am right. Yes, I got the message, I should be careful with my judgments about heretical content.

But note that the question is political. I’m writing as a software analyst, not as a theologian. When my friend sent me his link, I was actually busy writing a paper for bringing faith education into Estonian schools: Kvaliteetne usuõpetus koolidesse!.