My wife and I watch Mandolorian, the new Star Wars show, regularly. In the most recent episode there is a scene where two stormtroopers capture Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda is extremely cute and also helpless, he is being kept in a sack. The storm troopers are hitting the sack every time he makes a noise, and finally one of them punches him because the baby bites him. At this point the watcher of the show feels righteous anger. A giant hole of injustice has just been created and we want it resolved right now. Luckily, we can trust the author of this particular Star Wars narrative. A war robot, who has been programmed as the child’s nurse, then shows up. He demands that the child be given back to him. The storm troopers refuse. The robot then dispatches one stormtrooper by breaking his wrist and hitting him in the face then takes the other by the head and repeatedly smashes him into a speeder bike until both the storm troopers and the bike are broken. At this point we feel like jumping for joy. That giant hole left by the injustice of the stormtroopers toward baby Yoda has just been filled in with justice.
It is hard to find shows or books that we can trust to resolve injustice in today’s world. Today there is an infatuation with showing life how it really is. In this literature people die, slaves are tortured, the world’s justice system is flawed. Everyone just wants money, power, and sex and good doesn’t always prevail. Well, maybe this is a good caricature of how the world really works today, but God promises to make all things right.
This isn’t about whether or not hell is a physical place or how hell works. If this is our question we are missing the point. The point is that we can trust the author of our story. He is going to take the hole that injustice has left and he is going to fill it with justice. And when he does, it will feel right, it will be the way the story had to resolve. We will feel joy at his coming because all that bad stuff that injustice was leading toward will no longer be a worry.
The Bible calls us to live as if the story has a good ending. We have no right to be cynical about what the future holds. We are to have hope in the face of hopelessness and joy in the face of death because we can fully trust our father to make all things right in the end.