Welcome To Gehenna

"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,

You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother

will be liable to judgment,

and whoever says to his brother,

Raqa will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,

and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna."

Welcome to Gehenna!  How do we interpret this passage of scripture?  I think it is relatively simple.  Jesus says that if you hate your brother, well, you can go to hell.  But, the news is even worse than that.  You may not hate your brother, you might just be angry with him, or you might call him a fool. In either case, you would become a citizen of Gehenna.  

The listeners did not have to think metaphysics when they heard these words of Jesus for they could go to Gehenna any time of the day or night that they wanted to.  Gehenna lay outside of the walls of Jerusalem and was a place where the, using the polite term, garbage was burned.  The fires burned day and night just under the surface the process of decay aided by the worms, flies, and maggots continued both day and night.  To be sure, Gehenna was not a place that the local Chamber of Commerce put into their brochures as an enticement to visit the city. 

As nasty as this place is, it is the place we are invited to move to by Jesus if we just call our brother a fool.  It is not easy to be a follower of Jesus, it never has been, and it never will.  What He proposes runs counter to the way we think.  When we are offended by someone, our natural self-wants to go on the offensive and strike back at the person or persons that have offended us.  

In order to avoid Gehenna, we must wage a war not against those who offend us but against that part of our soul that is reaching for the sword.  Our war should not be against our brother but against ourselves and the defects in our nature that cause us to respond with hate instead of love. 

This is not easy nor is it natural for us to do.  Yet, throughout our life, we should learn to practice forgiveness of those who offend us because there is no good neighborhood or good neighbors in Gehenna.