Hell on Film

I picked this picture up on MSNBC a couple of days ago, and I can’t stop looking at it. That’s the Iceland volcano that has wreaked havoc on air travel the past week or so. If you’re like me, you’ll stare at that for a while. It is so strangely beautiful and yet so horrifying. It makes me think of Luke 10:18 when Jesus says he say Satan cast from heaven like lightning.

After I looked at it for a while, it got me thinking about sin. I mean, we don’t sin in a vacuum. Oh yes, we like to think we aren’t hurting anyone, but we do. Eventually, sin spreads. It may happen in Iceland, but it drifts on the upper air currents and causes disruption around the world. Despite what the commercials would like you to believe, what happens in Iceland, doesn’t stay in Iceland.

And there’s also that terrible/beautiful thing. When Mel Gibson cast Satan in “The Passion of the Christ,” he chose a gorgeous woman and shaved her hair and eyebrows. He wanted the look to be hauntingly beautiful yet terribly disturbing. His reason? Sin is like that. We fall because Satan makes it so attractive we have trouble looking away.

I don’t have a conclusion today, no pretty way of wrapping this up. I do know this much: I’m glad God is ultimately in control. And I’m glad Jesus sacrificed his life for me so I’ll never have to know what hell really looks like.

-JB