On "Charging into 'Hell' with a Squirt Gun"

On Charging into ‘Hell’ With A Squirt Gun

There is a popular expression that I hear in church circles, and from pulpits, and in casual conversation from time to time. The saying is, essentially, that, “charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun,” is a nonsense thing to do. Let’s take a brief moment to laugh with the saying. It’s a funny way to express what is otherwise meant as a serious warning. Imagine someone charging into the unquenchable fires of ‘hell’ with a toy squirt gun filled with a few ounces of water. Good luck with that, right? Hahaha.

The laugh we get from this is a certain kind of laugh though. Its a laugh that comes from a feeling of contempt or scorn, a laugh that the philosopher Joseph Albo describes as arising when one, “ . . . observes his neighbor doing or saying something that is unbecoming to human nature or the person’s dignity.” We laugh because we feel superior to the foolish man with squirt gun in hand braving the fires of ‘hell’. We laugh at his folly for being vastly unprepared for the task before him. He’s not someone in whose footsteps we want to follow by any means.

It is unknown whether he came back or no, or what became of him exactly in ‘hell’ after his charge but we assume the worst: that he is as good as gone. We have him fixed in our minds, a timeless statue like Lot’s wife. The man who “charges into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun” is a sign, a great illustration to us all of what men ought not to do for shame. Our haughty laughter echoes in the chambers of sanctuaries, at coffee shops, and in basement rooms as we retell the legend of that man, who so full of folly, took it in himself to charge into ‘hell’” with only a squirt gun. 

This phrase I am convinced, though well intended perhaps at its outset, has now become for us a great enabling myth of discouragement. The myth is that young Christians should not take up action for the kingdom of God because they will, in all likelihood, be defeated. “Christ’s sake, you are outnumbered and unprepared,” says the myth. “Until you have managed to achieve the unachievable, until you are capable of beating ‘hell’ in your own power and strength, until you are full grown (in the brain) and know the scriptures at least as well as any good Pharisee, you have no business doing any kingdom business for the Lord. You’re simply too small and you need to ‘grow’ a little more so people don’t look down at you and laugh.” That is the myth. “Until you are like a master, you ought not serve and until you can manage ‘hell’ with as much ease as you can a small candle in the middle of Antarctica, you have no business there to do anything noble.” That’s what the myth says.

God is our Antarctica in the ‘hellish’ fires that we face in life and “Master” status was never the goal Jesus had in mind for his sheep. We are free to love God, love people, and live for his kingdom now at this present moment! But the myth encourages that we take a precautionary, delayed approach to noble action. This ends up bewitching us. The spell is that we fall into a deep sleep of inaction.   

The myth says that God cannot use small things done by single individuals to change the world. This is the exact opposite of what God has shown us to be true time and time again. “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor 27-29)”. The story of David and Goliath comes to mind. As a single individual he slew a foe that greatly outmatched him in size and strength and he did this with only a few small stones in hand. But do we laugh with contempt at David? No. We give glory to God for using a squirt gun to mop up the fiery ‘hell’ of Goliath that stood in the way of God’s kingdom. My friends, if it pleases you to drop the haughty laugh immediately do. What is much more of folly than “charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun” is feeling superior for having not done it, and then laughing at the man who chose to make a small difference.

The idea of “charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun” is that our young people are overly zealous but without knowledge, and without preparation, know-how, etc., to such and such a degree, and so much so, that their efforts for the sake of the gospel and God’s kingdom should be seen with contempt or scorn. They are aspiring for something so far above them, something that is clearly out of the scope of what they are capable of doing.

While it is true that we, as the young, can have zeal without knowledge, this is not our biggest problem. In fact, we have the opposite problem. What we have is knowledge without zeal. We don’t have the kind of heart it takes to charge into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun. We don’t have that kind of guts.

Our problem is not that the young are ill advisedly charging into “hell” with a squirt gun, it is that while we have super soakers, we deny the power thereof, our hands being not on the trigger, nor our eyes on the field before us to know when to shoot. We are not ready to engage the world with a gutsy heart and be “alive to Christ”. Our senses are deadened to that sort of thing at this point. We sit on the outside looking into “hell” from our safe friend groups, from our comfortable digital libraries and artificial hearths, from our institutions and homes, and we wonder why our lives are so boring, while all around us there are people who do not know the gospel, who desperately need to know the One who can save them, Jesus Christ, with promise both for the life to come and also for this present life.

The capitalist culture in which we live has brought us many blessings and great material prosperity but it has not been without cost. There is a new kind of evil we see: isolationism. We have an epidemic of lonely and depressed people, people who live vain lives on escapist computer game realities and the like, people so dispelled by efficiency and material prosperity that they have fallen for the great trap of riches warned about in proverbs, “ . . . [they] have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’”. Every one of them needs the gospel. There are people in dark places of sin and despair, in psychological realms, in the realm of ideas, in physical places, in destructive relationships, and in spiritual places so dark that it is best not to even dwell on that darkness. They need reaching, loving hands in their life. If we were less concerned about dutifying Christians, obligating them into regular church attendance with an iron fist, and collecting the tithe like movie tickets, perhaps we could see these weightier things and practice some love and justice without leaving the other things undone.

I hope its starting to dawn on you that what is accepted as orthodoxy without much of a second thought is, in my view, something more like heresy. “Charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun” is what we want to see! Especially in the young! Young people are the ones with the most free time, the most influence on people who can still be influenced, the most energy, the most strength, and the biggest hearts. Why have a discouraging and contemptuous, laughing disposition towards them? Let’s encourage them instead of stopping their charge! They can make an impact on the world. Don’t you believe that? That’s why we don’t need a negative saying; we need a positive call-to-action saying! Here are a few examples of sayings that would be more useful:

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.” -
Saint Francis of Assisi

“There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle.” 
-
Robert Alden


“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5)
”Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105 an encouragement for movement perhaps?)
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

Those would be much better sayings for our young people to have at the forefront of their mind rather than the image of falling with their squirt gun shamefully vanquished by the overpowering fires of ‘hell’.

I think our first inclination is to be negative, to not trust the Body like a doubting Thomas, at least it seems that way in my experience. Recently I was engaged with an atheist in a public Internet forum dialogue that people, for whatever reason started to follow with interest. I was met with great warnings from Christian brothers to be careful because “whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” I heard other people make comments such as, “are you sure you’re not doing more harm than you are good?” and the like. The glass was felt to be half full and at times it seemed, strangely enough, that it was even considered something like a glass entirely empty or even, perhaps, poisonous, though the glass was really just a dialogue between a Christian with someone who is not a Christian, something that should be, in my view, considered “normalcy” in support of the kingdom of God. The “charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun” fear mantra was palpable as a felt attitude about the dialogue, although there were other palpable attitudes of a more encouraging sort. Those are the ones I decided to listen to. If anyone wants to examine “the glass” of this conversation as it were, it is open for viewing on facebook in a group called “Cuddle Session by Rob and Max”. We engaged each other on a wide range of topics, all of which I sought to speak to in a way so as to exalt Jesus as Lord. I did an imperfect job. It is easy to be critical and negative of someone who enters the battlefield and charges ‘hell’ with a squirt gun as it were, to criticize their technique and the way they employ their weapons, etc., but we must simply realize that doing something for the gospel of the Lord and for the glory of God is the right thing to do and we should want to encourage actions along those lines.

Charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun is a poor depiction of what our present situation is. It presumes that any taking of action, any going into the world is hopelessly heroic and destined to fail. It assumes that things are too big and too unmanageable in scope, like ‘hell’, when in reality charging into ‘hell’ with a squirt gun looks more like giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, or inviting a lonely person to hangout with a group of friends, or being a listening ear for a friend in trouble or distress, etc., things that are mightily and gloriously ‘small’ yet immensely important. Think of how David fought in the face of his great foe, Goliath. He fought bravely. Even if we feel outnumbered or outmatched, if the job of bringing the kingdom of God and the message of the gospel to our community seems so vast and great so that it feels as daunting as ‘hell’, even if the enemy is powerful and we feel certain to be defeated, we are to act in the confidence of the Lord because he is living and walking, alive, and unbeatable as far as it goes. He is the one that defeats death and sin and hell, not us. We are the ones that lead people out of darkness into the light. We do this with love, not squirt guns. Love is much more powerful than squirt guns. Light cannot be conquered by the darkness. Darkness can’t comprehend it. It doesn’t matter what darkness we are talking about: dark rock, dark paper, or dark scissors, light beats all.

We have tricked ourselves into thinking we’re in a strange squirt gun vs hellish fire paradigm and that we are unable to do anything. In a sense, we can’t do anything. Apart from Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Father we can do nothing. It has always been that way. There has always been nothing to lose and everything to gain here. It is God who gives the increase; we have only merely planted and watered. We don’t bring anything about as far as that goes or we might have opportunity to boast, and no one may boast before God.

The truth is this: a single light can lead many out of darkness. And a single man can charge into ‘hell’ (the world) with the gospel message without hesitation, though it is better to have multiple lights to do this. What we need is a new voice of optimism, a voice that says that the Lord is risen, a voice that says, “go out into the highways and the by ways and call in the people”. Because what we have is a bunch of naysayers throwing water balloons on the little sparks of fire that do exist in our midst.

Don’t be afraid to employ the squirt gun, to do the smallest actions for the glory of God, as small as bringing one of these little ones a glass of cold water perhaps. God is the God that takes mustard seeds and turns them into huge trees. Start employing small seed-like loving actions for God’s kingdom immediately, and do the exact opposite of what this phrase is discouraging you into not doing.

As always, feel free to comment my friends! Always interested in what you have to say! 

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