Skeleton In The Closet Quotes

But I'm not afraid of the skeletons in Julie's closet. I look forward to meeting the rest of them, looking them hard in the eye, giving them firm, bone-crunching handshakes.

The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets.

I may not have any skeletons in my closet, but I do have a little box of souls in my sock drawer. —T-SHIRT

Gone is the boy with the guns and the skeletons in his closet. These hands holding me have never held a weapon. These hands have never touched death. These hands are perfect and kind and tender.

One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.

There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless.

Any man who isn't married by thirty-five is either gay or he's got skeletons in his closet.

No. . .I mean, I'm sorry he. . .You know, said those things to you." "It's part of being a 'good' family. Everyone's got skeletons in their closet.

My dear sister, you can’t escape God, and you can’t escape your skeletons in the closet. They will always be there until you take them out from behind those dusty old moth-eaten coats. Your exterior facade of ‘everything is alright’ only works for a little while, and then the cracks begin to show. You can only hide behind yourself for so long. You can’t keep running!

As human beings we govern our actions with our deepest fears. But if you name that shit, you claim that shit: let enough people into your closet and you'll find there's no more room for skeletons. Leave yourself nowhere to hide and you can live your life unguarded.

Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then-- as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three.

We doubt in others, what is in fact in ourselves. The skeletons in your own closet are the things that scare you the most about others; people who come from a background of lying are suspicious of lying in others and so on and so forth. The most trusting of people, are not people who have never been betrayed or who have never felt pain; but the most trusting of people are those who in themselves do not find those things worthy of that blame. We see the world through the eyes of the condition of our own souls.

Okay, I'll admit, I have a few skeletons in my closet; but they weren't skeletons when I put them there.

It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.

Six hundred years is an awfully long time, Ever. So long it's impossible for either of us to imagine. Though it is more than enough time to rack up a few dirty skeletons for the old metaphorical closet, right?

Hell, even the straight people have enough skeletons in their closet to fill a tomb. Everybody’s too afraid of going to hell or getting made fun of to be honest about what they want and who they are, so they can’t even really admit what they want to themselves.

Don't give me truth, just give me gossip And skeletons from people's closets, I wanna be normal And millions buy it, I am blinded by The SUN.

Basements had always intrigued Dale. He thought a man could be summed up by what was kept in his basement. He descended the stairs with a mischievous smile, imagining what he’d find. Maybe some dead bodies in a large freezer, or a neighbor decomposing in a bathtub full of lye. He gleefully rubbed his palms together in anticipation as he continued to step down the stairs.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best take it out and teach it to dance.

People need to stand up for their wrongs, as they stand up for their rights.

I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.

I’m a closet sociopath. You can tell by all the skeletons I have hanging up next to my clothes.


You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with...skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office.

Secrets. Everyone has them. The light of day and truth reveal some secrets to be nagging obsessions or habits, while other secrets may be as incriminating as a literal decaying skeleton in one’s closet.

I think most people treasure the skeletons in their closets. We want them to remain unrevealed for a reason.

I want all the books on the shelves. I want the books with dinosaur words like nigger that show the skeletons in our national closet. I want books with the word cunt as well as the word kike. Words don't scare me. Suppressing them does.

There are skeletons in everyone's closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover.

In fact, I know that a 'nice live little boy' would be far better than - my skeleton in the closet; only - we aren't always willing to make the exchange. We are apt to still cling to - our skeletons, Pollyanna.

Here's a queer fact: none among the skeletons in your closet are ‘straight’ so expect them to ‘come out’ very, very soon...

I prefer all of my skeletons out of the closet, to make more room for my shoes.

I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.

We all have skeletons in our closets. Some of us are just better at hiding them behind the hangers filled with clothes." "Yeah, right, you don't seem like the type of guy who has a pile of femur bones stuffed behind your collared shirts and navy blue blazers." Nick and Wilson

The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets. — JOHN MARK GREEN

Most skeletons in the closet don't have wings. - Conner Bailey, to Alex Bailey

It is better to have ten skeletons in your closet, than walk with no bones.

When it comes to politics its not about who is corrupt its about who is been caught, because they all have skeletons in the closet.

I have known politicians with more skeletons in their closet than an undertaker's wife.

Everyone has skeletons in the closet, and those who claimed otherwise were usually the ones with the most to hide.

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun

What am I supposed to see in this closet? More skeletons? Don't you humans have a saying about that?

The entire population of Blackfin maintained a wary distance from her, as though the skeletons in their closets were spring-loaded and ready to burst out onto the front lawn.

the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.

The Nazis take the skeleton in the closet of centuries and rattle it boastfully. Force, they declare, will always be necessary, since it is in the nature of human life (which is true, if one accepts their concept of human life).

people were like icebergs--most of what really went on, especially the ugliness, was submerged

God’s purpose is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it’s to reconcile heaven and earth.

In a sense, God has a closet filled with infinite secrets about himself, but it contains only priceless treasures, no skeletons.

The thing about skeletons was, you never knew how much space they were taking up in the closet until you got rid of them.

There’s nothing worse than seeing the craziness in a calm person as they ask for something completely ridiculous and then to have them look at you as if you’re a shovel shy of a tool shed.

Squatting' in a Smith machine is an oxymoron. A Smith machine is not a squat rack, no matter what the girls at the front desk tell you. A squat cannot be performed on a Smith machine any more than it can be performed in a small closet with a hamster. Sorry. There is a gigantic difference between a machine that makes the bar path vertical for you and a squat that is executed correctly enough to have a vertical bar path. The job of keeping the bar path vertical should be done by the muscles, skeleton, and nervous system, not by grease fittings, rails, and floor bolts.

I don't mind being introduced to people's skeletons firsthand, in person. I more than don't mind it. I prefer to reach right into the closet and shake their bony hands and say hello for myself.

[Adapted and condensed Valedictorian speech:] I'm going to ask that you seriously consider modeling your life, not in the manner of the Dalai Lama or Jesus - though I'm sure they're helpful - but something a bit more hands-on, Carassius auratus auratus, commonly known as the domestic goldfish. People make fun of the goldfish. People don't think twice about swallowing it. Jonas Ornata III, Princeton class of '42, appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for swallowing the greatest number of goldfish in a fifteen-minute interval, a cruel total of thirty-nine. In his defense, though, I don't think Jonas understood the glory of the goldfish, that they have magnificent lessons to teach us. If you live like a goldfish, you can survive the harshest, most thwarting of circumstances. You can live through hardships that make your cohorts - the guppy, the neon tetra - go belly-up at the first sign of trouble. There was an infamous incident described in a journal published by the Goldfish Society of America - a sadistic five-year-old girl threw hers to the carpet, stepped on it, not once but twice - luckily she'd done it on a shag carpet and thus her heel didn't quite come down fully on the fish. After thirty harrowing seconds she tossed it back into its tank. It went on to live another forty-seven years. They can live in ice-covered ponds in the dead of winter. Bowls that haven't seen soap in a year. And they don't die from neglect, not immediately. They hold on for three, sometimes four months if they're abandoned. If you live like a goldfish, you adapt, not across hundreds of thousands of years like most species, having to go through the red tape of natural selection, but within mere months, weeks even. You give them a little tank? They give you a little body. Big tank? Big body. Indoor. Outdoor. Fish tanks, bowls. Cloudy water, clear water. Social or alone. The most incredible thing about goldfish, however, is their memory. Everyone pities them for only remembering their last three seconds, but in fact, to be so forcibly tied to the present - it's a gift. They are free. No moping over missteps, slip-ups, faux pas or disturbing childhoods. No inner demons. Their closets are light filled and skeleton free. And what could be more exhilarating than seeing the world for the very first time, in all of its beauty, almost thirty thousand times a day? How glorious to know that your Golden Age wasn't forty years ago when you still had all you hair, but only three seconds ago, and thus, very possibly it's still going on, this very moment." I counted three Mississippis in my head, though I might have rushed it, being nervous. "And this moment, too." Another three seconds. "And this moment, too." Another. "And this moment, too.

Logan licked a glob of strawberry jelly from her lower lip and smiled up at Odin. Only one comment seemed to perfectly fit her current situation. “I see dead people.” He leaned forward, hands on his hips. “Me, too. It’s the only explanation for what’s standing in front of me. Unless some high school kids broke into the anatomy closet and stole the classroom skeleton, stretched some cadaver skin over that bitch then cast an ancient ritual to animate it.

Was this the secret to everything? This bodily freedom? It felt intuitive and healthy, as if promiscuity was my birthright as a woman. Maybe it was. Was this the skeleton in civilization’s closet? The reason why men had come down so hard on us since the start of time?

Don't worry, the only skeletons in my closet belong to the mice.

If she opened the closet with her skeletons, they might drag her in with them.

I do not have skeletons in my closet, only graves.

George Bernard Shaw once famously said that if you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you might as well teach it to dance.

She put her hands over her ears and made a monkey face. Even then, she couldn't look ugly. She had such good bones, her skeleton would have been an ornament in any closet.

Man, talk about having a skeleton in the closet—this

As Solzhenitsyn famously observed, the line separating good and evil passes not between countries, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through the middle of every human heart.

We might be done with the past but the past isnt done with us. Ever think of that? Maybe the only way to move forward isnt to shove all our skeletons into a closet and pretend they never existed. The closet is still there, Nico, and the next time you open it, all that shit is going to fall in top of you. - Raven Black

We should be willing to enjoy a full picture of our heroes, leaders, and history. I believe that when we ignore the "darker side" we leave ourselves unprepared for the revelation of some unhappy deed or event of past or present. We might be better off if we leave the warts on and let a few of the skeletons out of the closets ourselves for open examination. On the other hand, there are dangers in debunking everyone and everything that is a little above the ordinary. We ought to seek a happy balance of letting the truth flow forth without either hiding or digging for problems.

To belong to a clan, to a tight group of people allied by blood and loyalties and the mutual ownership of closeted skeletons. To see the family vices and virtues in a dozen avatars instead of in two or three. To know always, whether you were in Little Rock or Menton, that there was one place to which you belonged and to which you would return. To have that rush of sentimental loyalty at the sound of a name, to love and know a single place, from the newest baby-squall on the street to the blunt cuneiform of the burial ground . . . Those were the things that not only his family, but thousands of Americans had missed. The whole nation had been footloose too long, Heaven had been just over the next range for too many generations. Why remain in one dull plot of earth when Heaven was reachable, was touchable, was just over there? The whole race was like the fir tree in the fairy-tale which wanted to be cut sown and dressed up with lights and bangles and colored paper, and see the world and be a Christmas tree. Well, he said, thinking of the closed banks, the crashed market that had ruined thousands and cut his father’s savings in half, the breadlines in the cities, the political jawing and the passing of the buck. Well, we’ve been a Christmas tree, and now we’re in the back yard and how do we like it?

Everyone will tell you that genealogy serves two purposes: self-knowledge and social status, some sort of pedigree divined from names, locations, and achievements of eminence. However, there is nothing quite like an anomaly to suck attention away from the droning census records. A suicide hinted at emotion and thought. A closet door was flung open and daylight flooded a skeleton.

All schools have their skeletons. St Oswald’s is no exception. Most of the time, we try our best to keep them in the closet. But this time, the only recourse we have is to throw open all the closets, light as many bulbs as we can and catch the vermin as it comes out.

A period which suffers from a so-called high general level of liberal education but which is devoid of culture in the sense of a unity of style which characterizes all its life, will not quite know what to do with philosophy and wouldn’t, if the Genius of Truth himself were to proclaim it in the streets and the market places. During such times philosophy remains the learned monologue of the lonely stroller, the accidental loot of the individual, the secret skeleton in the closet, or the harmless chatter between senile academics and children

Only one comment seemed to perfectly fit her current situation. “I see dead people.” He leaned forward hands on his hips. “Me too. It’s the only explanation for what’s standing in front of me. Unless some high school kids broke into the anatomy closet and stole the classroom skeleton, stretched some cadaver skin over that bitch then cast an ancient ritual to animate it.” She laughed. For as much as she now disliked the bastard she had to admit he was amusing. “Did they do the same to that shit you’re wearing? You do realize it’s 2008 right?” She raised a hand. “Wait let me see if I can reach you using your own language. You do ken ‘tis year of our Lord two thousand and eight aye?

Do we get a second chance? The question often arises: “Can I reject God now but change my mind on the threshold of his kingdom?” To ask the question this way, however, is misleading: it reveals that we probably don’t actually want the kingdom. If we prefer freedom from God now, what makes us think we’ll change our mind when his kingdom comes? If we harden our hearts toward his presence today, why would we expect tomorrow to be different?

Dogs are better than people. This is a complete and true verified fact. Dogs don’t care what you look like. Dogs don’t care what skeletons hide in your closet. They don’t care what color you are, or what weight, or how rich, or how guilty. They don’t care about your gender or your sexual orientation. They don’t care if you have deformities or illnesses. They care about being fed and played with and petted. They’ll lick your face because it’s your face. “I love dogs,

have you heard the sex party rumor?” She winced and said, “It actually does sound familiar.” I had the impulse to shake my head, but I didn’t want to mess up Veronica’s handiwork. I said, “You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office.” 2004

Now it is a noticeable fact that we do not much mind what men think of us, or what humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, or object, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It is the exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possession by a hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of our skeleton-closet’s whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as a chat over it by a party of half-a-dozen — exclusive depositaries though these may be.

Mississippi is the shadow, the soul, and the skeleton closet of the nation. If America had ruins, Mississippi would be it. Every step you take got blood in the soil.

Any man who isn’t married by thirty-five is either gay or he’s got skeletons in his closet.

Why is it that I so often feel like the craziest person in the room? I guess I usually am, but it’s definitely a frustrating feeling.

But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.

You stuff your own closet full of skeletons and you wonder what kind of bones everyone else has stuffed away.

You don't have to face every skeleton in your closet before you can make some room in there!

My skeletons are not in the closet; they’re on the front lawn.

Nobody would be quite as surprised as my wife, when I killed her.

I’VE never seen such a look of mortal agony on a human face before. She screamed quite a bit before she died, and the last shriek was forever frozen on her face.

Left to their own devices, Valenti and his son Kyle tended to live like a couple of undergrads in some low-rent fraternity house.

Hell is the absence of God, found in the presence of our own autonomy.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance. —George Bernard Shaw

Even individuals we admire can have skeletons in their closet.

Dementia was nothing if not a stroll through the many skeletons lining the family closet.

He’s pale, bald, and bony. He looks like a skeleton. And that, my friend, is precisely why I keep him in my closet.

Some people have skeletons in their closets, but mine are buried all over town

Everyone’s got skeletons in their closet.

You cannot go poking skeletons in the closet without making maggots wriggle." - Springfield Road

We all have skeletons in our closets, but if you see someone who still loves you despite knowing about them, then that person is a true friend.

The skeleton in my closet carries a hammer and sickle.

We’ve had plenty of skeletons in our closets,” continued Thomas. “Hell, one of our Rooks was a skeleton. And he was in the closet as well, come to think of it.

Sometimes it's hard for me to understand that people can believe in me, that they can trust that I'll be anything more than the sum of the skeletons in my closet. But I can be. And I am.

God’s will is not currently done on earth as in heaven, implying a distance in heaven and earth’s relationship. The earth exists in a state of exile and alienation from its intended home with God.

To ask God to redeem Jerusalem but not cast sin outside the city walls is like asking a doctor to heal your body without excising the disease. Like asking the light to arise without casting out the darkness. Like asking for restoration to come and destruction to remain. It is to ask for a contradiction. God excludes sin from his kingdom because of his goodness, not in opposition to or in spite of it.

Family history isn’t full of happy endings, Jefferson. You know that. And isn’t that one of the allures of the job? It’s the skeletons in the closet that get people like us out of bed in the morning, isn’t it?

Good behavior is often a means of keeping God at bay. Obedience and obligation can erect as much a barrier to life with God as lawless rebellion and wanton destruction. Duty and debauchery have more in common than we might expect. Selfishness and self-righteousness just might be twins separated at birth. Both good and evil hang from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the problem is that they are on the wrong tree.

In Breeze’s business one got used to running across the skeletons in people’s closets. If Billy’s skeleton wore women’s underwear, it didn’t really matter. Homosexuality on Billy Winston was like acne on a leper.

People don’t blush when they’re embarrassed. White people blush when they’re embarrassed. Why so embarrassed, white people? Any skeletons in your closet? Oh yeah, that’s right—we’ve got more skeletons in our closet than anybody.

Today I share about my addiction and recovery journey as often as possible because I don't want to die all alone in a dark closet, shrouded in shame beside the decomposing skeletons I tried so desperately to hide. I want to live.

What sin does, in essence, is pull our gaze from God and others and turns it in upon ourselves, so that we become “curved inward,” valuing ourselves over and against God, first and foremost, and the others God has given us to love.

It is more important to move on to positive actions without stopping to wallow in anger about injustices -- including the unjust suppression of inventors. Exposing the skeletons in the closet serves to enlighten, but getting off-message with retribution will be counter-productive.

Off course, if Steven had a wife in the attic, like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, that, I thought, would be another matter entirely. But the very idea made me laugh. His building had no attic, and his one small closet couldn't even hold a skeleton. It was too packed with clothes, his and mine.

[Capitalism's] critics argue on moral grounds; the supporters on economic grounds. The critics, wedded to a moral code of self-sacrifice, are oblivious to capitalism's practical success. The supporters, equally wedded to such a code, are morally disarmed against the onslaught of their antagonists — and are reduced to the citation of empirical facts and figures. The supporters, unable to break free of the conventional creed urging selflessness, have too often regarded capitalism's inherent pursuit of self-interest as a guilty secret, akin to an unsavory skeleton in a family closet.

Pol Pot (the architect of the Cambodian genocide) and my sweet grandmother (who wouldn’t hurt a fly) stand together before the Great Physician, and his question is not, “Which one of you was better?” but rather, “Will you let me heal you?” In leveling the playing field, Jesus makes way for grace.

In fact, some might argue that starting C-PTSD treatment by diving into the back of your closet and chasing out your scariest, most deeply buried skeleton is a terrible idea. You could find a murderous clown in the storm drain of your life, and he could start haunting your everyday existence. You could dig up something that triggers you badly and makes your symptoms worse or is so unpleasant to look at that you just quit therapy and never come back. That’s why many trauma therapists try to set up a strong framework of coping mechanisms before people launch into their foundational traumas.

When you give me art—give me something that reaches inside of my core and twists, taking the very breath that sustains me away. Give me something that wakens me from my lethargy. Give me something that causes me to ponder and question all that I have come to know; due to my circumstances that I have been allotted in this life. Give me something that causes me to question my pride and arrogance of knowing that I am right in my thoughts, beliefs and perceptions. Shake me: as if you had grabbed me and pushed me against the wall—shattering all of my preconceived notions; causing me to break out of the box that I have put others in. Give me something that scraped over the scar tissue of wounds that you carry within, opening them afresh and causing you pain—real core pain—pain that you had pushed down; pain that now resides in your closet of skeletons. When you give me art, give me you, or give me nothing at all… ©2014 Suzanne Steele

Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum.

This confronts our popular cartoons, where little red devils poke you with pitchforks and laugh at you on into eternity. Jesus tells us this is not a place where Satan reigns; it is a place where he meets his destruction. Where his agenda is contained. Where sin’s wildfire is bound with the arsonist who first lit the match.

Spring Cleaning All morning I have been pulling skeletons out of the closet the old bones that keep me awake at night the old faces I see in my dreams. But in the closet there are only old letters old clothes that don’t fit boxes of souvenirs postcards of favorite places Dust stirs in the corners like a secret heart trying to beat again. Wreckage from an old war I sit like a widow sifting through it touching the skeletons for the last time. It is spring and time to let go of them let the closet billow with fresh air. And if it’s true that the past is always with us then let it be invisible as an angel. But first I must bury these old bones.

Every town has its secrets.” He began. “San Felipe is no different. Skeletons are hidden in closets for a reason my friend. And trust me when I tell you, San Felipe has many skeletons. The moral of the story is; don’t go snooping into strange closets. You will only find sins and betrayal. Why do you think we drink tequila so much?

Hell begins to look like a place God creates alongside heaven for the primary purpose of torturing sinners for eternity. But this is the wrong story. In the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God’s good world, and God is on a mission to get it out, to reconcile heaven and earth from hell’s evil influence to himself through the reconciling life of Christ. The time is coming when God’s heavenly kingdom will come down to reign on earth forever, when Jesus will cast out the corrosive powers of sin, death, and hell that have tormented his world for so long.

Suddenly, I had a problem. Jesus wants to get rid of sex trafficking too, only he takes it a lot more seriously than I do. I want to get rid of sex trafficking; Jesus wants to get rid of lust. I want to prune back the wicked tree; he wants to dig out the root. And that wicked root is in me. I may not be a sex trafficker, a pedophile tourist, or a greedy madam—but I have lust. I can be one lusty animal. Jesus says if you even look lustfully at one of God’s daughters, demeaningly commodifying her as an object for your own self-centered gratification, then the power of hell has its roots in you, and when God arrives to establish his kingdom, you are in danger of being cast outside the kingdom with it.

Evil is a parasite that wants to tear creation apart from the inside out. In the same way that a healthy body does not require cancer to exist, God’s creation does not require evil to exist. But the inverse is not true. Cancer does require a living, breathing body to sustain its existence, and evil similarly requires God’s good creation to sustain its own existence.

perhaps Dawood’s status as a fugitive and an outlaw beyond the reach of the Indian legal system suits many back home in India. Empires built with his money would collapse and many skeletons would tumble out of the closet if he was ever brought back home. The powers that be would rather have Dawood Ibrahim stuck in Pakistan. And so the cult of Dawood will be perpetuated.

to put anything off-limits. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty-three and the way I handled that,” he said. “But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.” He didn’t seek any control over what I wrote, or even ask to read it in advance. His only involvement came when my publisher was choosing the cover

If your roots are in Jesus, your fruit will be love. Fruit takes time to grow; it doesn’t appear overnight. We don’t have to beat ourselves up for not being perfect Jesus-followers the day after we’ve started walking in his dust. It took the disciples a long time too. But the longer we’re planted in God’s garden, the deeper our roots grow in his goodness, and the more generosity, joy, and selflessness begin to spring forth from our branches.

Hell is cruel. Yet to blame the cruelty of hell on God is like an alcoholic blaming sobriety for the pain of his addiction. Sobriety is the cure the alcoholic needs, not the disease that afflicts him. His enslavement arises not from sobriety but from those forces that exist outside sobriety's realm. His problem is rooted in the fact that he ultimately craves sobriety's absence more than its presence; the cruelty is in the craving and its consequence.

The Underworld guards the secrets. It's got the skeletons in the closet, and any other skeletons you might wish to get your hands on. It's got the stories, or quite a few of them. 'There is something down there and you want it told,' as poet Gwendolyn MacEwen says. The swimmer among the jewelled dead — double-gendered, like the seer Tiresias — in Adrienne Rich's poem 'Diving Into the Wreck' has a similar motive: There is a ladder. The ladder is always there ...

Where I live, being considered “good” has little to nothing to do with institutional religion. The social benchmarks for moral applause have more to do with whether one eats organic, rides his or her bike to work, and supports a humanitarian initiative in Africa. Things like these—even if good things that contribute to the flourishing of our world, in a manner similar to many traditional religious works—comprise our contemporary bars of righteousness by which one’s social capital is improved. In corporate culture, these bars may have more to do with how much money we’ve made or the size of our portfolio. In political culture, how much power we’ve attained or the heights up the ladder we’ve climbed. In popular culture, how much sex we’ve had or the number of Twitter followers who are interested in what we have to say. The cultural decline of institutional religion has simply meant the relocation, not the destruction, of social norms through which we pursue personal justification and social acceptance for our existence.

His teeth began to chatter. God All-Mighty! he thought, why haven't I realized it all these years? All these years I've gone around with a--SKELETON--inside me! How is it we take ourselves for granted? How is it we never question our bodies and our being? A skeleton. One of those jointed, snowy, hard things, one of those foul, dry, brittle, gouge-eyed, skull-faced, shake-fingered, rattling things that sway from neck-chains in abandoned webbed closets, one of those things found on the desert all long and scattered like dice!

Faith is not a work that gives us mastery over Jesus. Faith is that work in which we are mastered by Jesus. There is nothing we can use to lay claim upon God except his claim upon us. God accepts us in Christ; our obstacle is found in our rejection of God’s acceptance in Christ. Faith levels the playing field, because it is no longer our righteousness as upstanding citizens that makes us worthy of the kingdom, and it is no longer our lawlessness as criminals that makes us unworthy. It is Jesus’ grace that makes both worthy—if we are willing to receive it.

Of course there are downsides even in almost nearly perfect societies: there are historical skeletons in every closet, and yes, countries with homogenous, monocultural tendencies do tend to be a little too safe and dull, and insular. Looking to the future, the Nordic countries are also facing some serious challenges—aging populations, creaking welfare states, the ongoing integration of immigrant populations, and rising inequality. But it’s still Scandinavia. It is still the enviably rich, peaceful, harmonious, and progressive place it has long been. It’s still The White Album.

have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.” He didn’t seek any control over what I wrote, or even ask to read it in advance. His only involvement came when my publisher was choosing the cover art. When he saw an early version of a proposed cover treatment, he disliked it so much that he asked to have input in designing a new version. I was both amused and willing, so I readily assented. I ended up having more than forty interviews and conversations with him. Some were formal ones in his Palo Alto living room, others were done during long walks and drives or by telephone. During my two years of visits, he became increasingly intimate and

Well, that was certainly a disgusting display worthy of your father's family." "Shut up, Ma," Lisa Livia said, her hands on her hips. "Like you weren't born in the Bronx, and the Fortunatos weren't a big step up for you. Now you listen to me. You try to move this wedding away from Two Rivers again, I'm gonna clean every skeleton out of every closet you got and make them dance, you hear me? I'll dig up everything you ever buried, including my daddy, and then I'll sink that beat-up rowboat you're living on so you'll be out in the street with nothing. Do not fuck with my kid and do not fuck with my friend, they are all the family I got, and they are off-limits to you. Understand?

Maybe! That’s the moral of many, many stories. Chaos emerges in a household, bit by bit. Mutual unhappiness and resentment pile up. Everything untidy is swept under the rug, where the dragon feasts on the crumbs. But no one says anything, as the shared society and negotiated order of the household reveals itself as inadequate, or disintegrates, in the face of the unexpected and threatening. Everybody whistles in the dark, instead. Communication would require admission of terrible emotions: resentment, terror, loneliness, despair, jealousy, frustration, hatred, boredom. Moment by moment, it’s easier to keep the peace. But in the background, in Billy Bixbee’s house, and in all that are like it, the dragon grows. One day it bursts forth, in a form that no one can ignore. It lifts the very household from its foundations. Then it’s an affair, or a decades-long custody dispute of ruinous economic and psychological proportions. Then it’s the concentrated version of the acrimony that could have been spread out, tolerably, issue by issue, over the years of the pseudo-paradise of the marriage. Every one of the three hundred thousand unrevealed issues, which have been lied about, avoided, rationalized away, hidden like an army of skeletons in some great horrific closet, bursts forth like Noah’s flood, drowning everything. There’s no ark, because no one built one, even though everyone felt the storm gathering.

We all need sympathy. And as it is impossible that we should ever perfectly obtain it from our fellow men, there remains but One who can give it to us. There is One who can enter the closet where the skeleton is locked up. One who is in touch with our unmentionable grief. He weighs and measures that which is too heavy for us to bear. That blessed One! Oh,that we may each one have Him for our Friend! Without Him we shall lack the great necessity of a happy life! A personal Savior is absolutely needful to each of us to meet our individual personality. Jesus, alone, can understand with our joy and make it still more gladsome. He,alone, can understand our grief and remove its wormwood. "Man unknown to man sermon

I told myself it was curiosity spurring me on. I didn't realize that a dictionary might be like reading a map or looking in a mirror. butch (v. transitive), to slaughter (an animal), to kill for market. Also: to cut up, to hack dyke (n.), senses relating to a ditch or hollowed-out section gay (v. intransitive), to be merry, cheerful, or light-hearted. Obsolete lesbian rule (n.), a flexible (usually lead) ruler which can be bent to fit what is being measured... queer (adj.), strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character, suspicious, dubious... Even at school I remember wondering about closets, whether there was a subtle difference between someone being in a closet and a skeleton being in a closet.

Suddenly a force greater than my common sense—which, I’ll admit, has been pretty faulty lately, propels me—and I find myself creeping up the long staircase to the forbidden second floor. I need to see Michael’s room. I need to find out if he is a secret slob, or if there’s even more interesting evidence of whom he is up there. I’m not expecting to find anything big, like a literal skeleton in his closet. But I am going to find it, whatever it is. And I will know once and for all who he is. I make it to the landing when I hear a burst of barking below me and I freeze. Someone has let a dog in. Which means that some member of the Endicott family is actually in the house. Which means that one of Michael’s parents is about to catch me snooping.

God wants people in his city: he tears down the walls to let everyone inside. But God’s very presence is a fire that protects the city. Like a father protecting his children from the bullies on the prowl. Like a chief protecting his village from hostile invasion. Like a husband protecting his wife from a would-be rapist. God protects his kingdom from the tyrannous onslaught that wants inside. God fights “fire with fire.” He does not need cannons or jets or armies to protect his city: it is protected by the very strength of his presence, indwelling in glory with all who would receive him. God’s holy love is experienced inside the city as redemptive glory. But to those ill-intentioned powers that want to invade, God’s holy love is experienced as protective fire.

We all have skeletons in our closets, they say. My family included. But ours hid in the attic, not the closet. They hid among the journals, photos, shoe boxes, wedding dress, and board games. Ours were tumbling out. I had to clean up the mess alone—hide the evidence. If this is what new beginnings looked like, I didn’t want one. If starting over meant facing the ghosts that haunt the past, I wanted to keep the past. But there was no going back. I knew too much. I’d seen the bones. I’d met the monsters. My parents wore masks to make them look happy, to hide secrets, to tell us they loved us. Even I wore a mask to hide my own monster. But now the masks had fallen off, and sliding them back on wouldn’t hide the truth anymore. What was seen could not be unseen. The new beginning was here to be faced, like it or hate it.

God is not the author of evil; we are. G. K. Chesterton was invited by a London paper in the early 1900s to submit an essay in response to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” He humorously, and wisely, responded with a simple four-word essay: “Dear sirs, I am.”10 One of the problems with the ways we tend to talk about the power of hell is that we shift the blame for the cruelty that is ours in the world away from ourselves and toward the heart of the God who is good. Our problem is not that we are good and God is evil. The gospel flips this illusion on its head: God is good and we are evil. Our healing begins with our repentant acknowledgment of this fact; then we can fall into the arms of mercy that are waiting to receive us. But what if we will not repentantly acknowledge this truth? What if we will not fall into mercy? What if we will not receive and be healed?

Then I read the sermon. The shocker hit when I realized that Edwards’s audience was the church! He spoke not from the street corner but from the pulpit. Not to the passersby outside but to the parishioners inside. The sinners in the hands of an angry God were the people who bore his name! This was judgment for God’s people, directed at a church filled with idolatry, apathy, and sin. I began to realize that God’s coming judgment is not so much an evangelistic tool used to frighten outsiders into the kingdom as it is a housecleaning tool used to weed out hypocrisy and call insiders back to the faith they proclaim. It starts at home. I love Edwards’s sermon now. There are a few parts I disagree with, that conflict with aspects of the biblical story we’ve observed in this book (though brilliant as all get out, he couldn’t be right all the time).4 But in the bigger picture, Edwards’s sermon is a reminder to me that I cannot slide by on the coattails of calling myself a Christian.

Jesus contrasts who blesses and curses. The sheep are blessed “by my Father.” We might assume, then, that the goats are inversely cursed by the Father; but no such thing is said. Jesus simply says they are cursed. Like the rich man clutching his greed in the rubble of his riches while heaven calls him “son.” Like the wedding crasher refusing wedding clothes while the King calls him “friend.” Like the older brother weeping and gnashing his teeth in the backyard while the Father invites him inside to join the prodigal’s party. God blesses; we curse. The Father is good; we want to be left alone. The Light shines brightly; we prefer darkness. Ultimately, we are judged not for our failure to successfully wrap our hands around God’s arm, but rather for our stubborn refusal to be grasped by him, our incessant prying of his fingers from our recalcitrant hearts. God redeems his world; our destructive power is cast outside. God’s kingdom is established; the wildfire is banished. God brings an end to the bondage of creation.

His teeth began to chatter. God All-Mighty! he thought, why haven't I realized it all these years? All these years I've gone around with a--SKELETON--inside me! How is it we take ourselves for granted? How is it we never question our bodies and our being? A skeleton. One of those jointed, snowy, hard things, one of those foul, dry, brittle, gouge-eyed, skull-faced, shake-fingered, rattling things that sway from neck-chains in abandoned webbed closets, one of those things found on the desert all long and scattered like dice! He stood upright, because he could not bear to remain seated. Inside me now, he grasped his stomach, his head, inside my head is a--skull. One of those curved carapaces which holds my brain like an electrical jelly, one of those cracked shells with the holes in front like two holes shot through it by a double-barreled shotgun! With its grottoes and caverns of bone, its revetments and placements for my flesh, my smelling, my seeing, my hearing, my thinking! A skull, encompassing my brain, allowing it exit through its brittle windows to see the outside world!

I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.

How happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear and good in your heart.” “Everyone has a skeleton in his closet, as the English say.

Skeletons hide in many closets. Some are buried deep; others are just behind the door.

Next up is Papini, who doesn't demand an apology because he is citric and happy: we aren't here to discuss his trespasses. His skeletons skitter back into the closet.

Many people lived with “skeletons in their closets,” burying their deceased family members below the floors

First, I warn you to stay out of the limelight, and you ride Lowell straight out of the Ranch and into international stardom like a dominatrix on a sex pony. Then, you double down by evicting every skeleton from the collective closet of Commonwealth’s board. You, Ms. Kim, are either a total fucking maniac or seriously out of practice at this whole intrigue thing.

Teach the skeletons in your closet to dance," author unknown

This New Jerusalem imagery illustrates the same point the Guide is making: the Landlord contains the blackness in the black hole so it will no longer be allowed to infringe upon the flourishing of his good world. God contains evil so that it will not be allowed to do violence to the peace of his new creation. When God’s kingdom is established, no longer will any evil aggressor be allowed to bring bloodshed to God’s planet. Hell is not a place God creates to torture people, but a power that God contains to protect the overflowing life of his new creation.

Tout le monde devrait avoir une mouffette à aimer dans sa vie. Même les mecs sexy en uniforme.

we all have skeletons in our closet that make us who we are. Sometimes it takes a village to finally bury them once and for all.

In other words, I had seen the skeletons hidden in the closet, and now, regretfully, I wished that I had interviewed them instead.

You won't freeze me in my tracks or put me on a string. I won't be made a puppet on a stage at leftwing. There are no strings to yank or closet skeletons to sell, and I will not walk the plank above your wishing well. You'll see me in the street. You'll hear me in the field. There will be no retreat or brake at the yield.

Half the time, the very thing you think that’s going to destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to anybody with skeletons is dust them off every now and then—as long as your closet ain’t full of them. It’s not good to have more than two or three.

It’s not vision. It is instead willful blindness. It’s the worst sort of lie. It’s subtle. It avails itself of easy rationalizations. Willful blindness is the refusal to know something that could be known. It’s refusal to admit that the knocking sound means someone at the door. It’s refusal to acknowledge the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, the elephant under the carpet, the skeleton in the closet. It’s refusal to admit to error while pursuing the plan.

Those of us troubled by language about the “extermination” of Canaanite populations may find some comfort in the fact that scholars and archaeologists doubt the early skirmishes of Israel’s history actually resulted in genocide. It was common for warring tribes in ancient Mesopotamia to refer to decisive victories as “complete annihilation” or “total destruction,” even when their enemies lived to fight another day. (The Moabites, for example, claimed in an extrabiblical text that after their victory in a battle against an Israelite army, the nation of Israel “utterly perished for always,” which obviously isn’t the case. And even in Scripture itself, stories of conflicts with Canaanite tribes persist through the book of Judges and into Israel’s monarchy, which would suggest Joshua’s armies did not in fact wipe them from the face of the earth, at least not in a literal sense.)9 Theologian Paul Copan called it “the language of conventional warfare rhetoric,” which “the knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized as hyperbole.”10 Pastor and author of The Skeletons in God’s Closet, Joshua Ryan Butler, dubbed it “ancient trash talk.”11

Sometimes it helps to share it. To not hold it in.” “And what would you know about it?” I run my tongue over my teeth. “You’re not the only one with skeletons in that big-ass closet of yours.

We got more skeletons in our closets than Calvary Cemetery.

The skeletons in my closet are stacked so high and tight that it looks like a mass genocide took place in there.

Brynn, nobody’s as together as they seem. Everyone has skeletons in their closet and monsters under their bed.

Writers wear their skeletons on their sleeves. While the rest of the world locks them in a closet.

I do not overreact!” That was a flat out lie. I make time in my day to overreact. Overreacting keeps my head from exploding.

No. No… No!’ the fear ebbed my voice, cut through me like a knife. I ran, bare feet slipping and sliding over the floorboards. I turned the corner and headed for the backdoor. Run. Run. I must run. As soon as I reached the backdoor in the kitchen, pulling the barn door from the hinges, I felt his gaze upon me. Cinders and kindling crunched at my feet; what had once been my lovely mahogany kitchen furniture was now little more than firewood. My crockery and china splintered in shards and as I turned to face him, I felt them dig into my skin, cut me with every shiver that bolted through my frame. ‘You wanted Hemlock House. You have, Hemlock House.’ His voice was dark, cruel and yet hauntingly light. As if cooing, whispering to a newborn. He was lounging against the countertop as if waiting for breakfast, as if waiting for something so meaningless.

To long for the dawning of the light is to long for the casting out of darkness. To hope for the resurrection of life is to hope for the banishment of death. To dream for the healing of the body is to dream for the excising of the disease.

When we reclaim the biblical story of God’s purpose to bless, reconcile, and heal the nations through his international, multiethnic kingdom, the subtopic of judgment against those forces that stand opposed to this kingdom begins to come into clearer focus. When we reclaim the biblical story of God’s identification with the weak against the oppression of the strong, the subtopic of holy war begins, again, to make more sense. So we will spend time reclaiming the biblical story from its distortions, reframing these topics back within that story, and demonstrating the difference this makes. The beauty of this method is that dealing with these topics can give us fresh insights on not only these questions, but our faith as a whole. It can provoke paradigm shifts that help us look afresh from new angles at the bigger picture where our vision has been distorted. Pulling out the skeletons can be more than just an exercise in cleaning closets; it can give us a fresh appreciation for the house as a whole.

house, sans boys or Neil, contrasted

What was one more skeleton in an already crowded closet?

the

Both good and evil hang from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the problem is that they are on the wrong tree. But there is good news. There is another tree: the tree of life. Where life is received from God, rather than sought independently from him. Where all is given, nothing is earned. At the tree of life, the moralist needs the mercy of God as much as the murderer, the Pharisee as much as the philanderer, the legalist as much as the lawless. Being a good, upstanding citizen who follows all the community’s rules and earns the respect of one’s peers is not the criterion by which one enters life with God. God’s mercy is. Jesus’ cross is the life-giving tree. It is the place where our sin, rebellion, and destruction are absorbed and mercy made the basis for entrance into the life of God. Jesus invites us to let go of our independence and be bound in union with him, to stop eating off the tree of good and evil and start feasting on the tree of life: his life.

God is on a mission, as we have seen throughout this book, to reconcile the world. That is, to reconcile heaven and earth: what we might call the vertical dimension of God and humanity, transcendence and immanence, all of creation. God is on a mission to reconcile east and west: the horizontal dimension of the human community, the nations of the world, the global social body. He is on a mission to reconcile good folks and bad folks: the ethical dimension of moralists and murderers, Pharisees and philanderers, the legalist and the lawless. God is on a mission to reconcile weak and strong: the power dimension of kings and slaves, the bullies and the battered, the president and the powerless.

The extinction of desire stands in stark contrast to the redemption of desire.

Sometimes in life we need to go to the closet and grab our skeletons, pile up all those that we have outgrown or those that are no longer “in style” and toss them out, We may keep a few that hold sentimental value, but we are asked to please toss out all those that no longer fit us. Spring cleaning for the soul.

This theme is central to the gospel: our future hope is for that day when the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord;13 when God brings all things into subjection under Christ’s feet;14 when the earth is flooded with the glorious presence of God as the waters cover the sea;15 when creation is delivered from its groaning under the weight of sin into the glorious freedom of the righteous reign of God.16 God’s purpose is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it’s to reconcile heaven and earth. God has given Jesus authority, as his resurrected King, to establish this kingdom reality on earth as it is in heaven. Upon his resurrection, Jesus declares: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”17 God’s reason for giving Jesus this authority is, in the words of Paul, to “bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”18 In Christ, God’s purpose is to reunite that which sin has torn asunder, to thread the ripped fabric of creation back together again. Jesus’ resurrection brings the earth back from exile into the glorious, heavenly presence of God. Jesus reconciles heaven and earth.

Jesus’ doctrine of hell levels the playing field. This is one of the things I have come to love about it. It does not elevate me above the world; rather, it humbles me before the world. As a man, I need to come to grips with the fact that lust is not allowed in the city where all God’s daughters are treated honorably, with respect, and lifted high. As an American, I need to understand that nationalist superiority will not be allowed in God’s kingdom, where the nations are healed, where Iraqis and Afghans are at the center of the celebration, where we rejoice together in God’s presence. As a pastor, I need to accept that self-righteousness and hypocrisy will not be allowed in Jesus’ city, where religious folks seem to have a harder time getting in than most.

In the caricature, God creates hell in order to torture sinners. But in the biblical story, we are the authors of hell’s fury. God does not create the power of hell; we do. God does not rape kids and murder his neighbors; we do. God is not the one with skeletons in his closet; we are.

Jesus calls us to holiness and justice. Holiness involves dealing with the spark, the poisoned well, the root in our own hearts. Justice involves dealing with the wildfires, the raging rivers, the wicked trees in our world. Holiness and justice are the tools Jesus has given us to join his fight against the power of hell. These are the inseparable pathways through which he calls us to follow him. Together, they are means by which the church proclaims its resurrected King and bears witness to his good kingdom that is coming soon to reconcile heaven and earth and redeem the world.

One of the problems with the ways we tend to talk about the power of hell is that we shift the blame for the cruelty that is ours in the world away from ourselves and toward the heart of the God who is good. Our problem is not that we are good and God is evil. The gospel flips this illusion on its head: God is good and we are evil. Our healing begins with our repentant acknowledgment of this fact; then we can fall into the arms of mercy that are waiting to receive us.

leaving me standing in front of the skeleton who built my closet.

We all have skeletons in our closets, Arnold. I’m not proud of everything I did in my younger, wilder days. But that doesn’t mean I’m any less of a person now. I have regrets. I have pain. But today, I choose what kind of life I’m going to live. Today, I can start fresh. The past has no power except what we give it. I refuse to let skeletons rule my life.

I wonder what her secret is. Everyone has one, a skeleton in the closet just waiting for a necromancer. I'd rather not have my shit lifted up from the grave and sicced on the world, but it looks like it's happening whether I want it to or not.

The polygrapher is not one’s friend even if he or she tries to convince one he or she is on one’s side. Outright deception! What the polygrapher frequently does is attempt to plant fear in the ‘interviewee’ by hyping the accuracy of the polygraph machine. For the love of God the polygraph machine isn’t God! The more one’s afraid that the skeletons in one’s closet would be unearthed; the greater one’s physiological reactions would turn out. Enough!

Worlds need those pockets, the urban closets that hide the skeletons of a modern society.

The widow’s comments are typically what most people feel at difficult times. First, she wondered if it was some sin in her life that brought this. We all have things in our pasts that we are ashamed of. We all have skeletons in the closet. And we often fear that God is somehow “getting even” with us by bringing some calamity or disaster our way. Second she accused Elijah of killing her son, which is the way many treat God. They want to accuse God of doing things that bring us grief in order to make Him look bad. This was a horrible thing for her to do, to lay this guilt on Elijah himself.

I have my demons, shit I can nearly hear the skeletons rattling in my closet. But, I know that I’m capable of love. Love is ultimately what destroyed me.

He claims me and Shay will never be like we used to be until all the skeletons are out of the closet. He

Having taken a brief, essential look at faith, we now have the foundation set for overcoming. So many people have the bad, self-sabotaging habit of focusing on self and/or others to the point that they sincerely believe it is impossible to be an overcomer; I mean an actual overcomer. They recall the many times they have failed, and see the many times hypocritical people declare themselves to be holy, but have a graveyard full of skeletons in their proverbial closets, proving them to be religious liars. Thus, they say it is impossible to overcome. What’s wrong with this picture? In these cases, why will these people never overcome? It’s simply a matter of wrong focus, and an unwillingness to exercise miraculous faith in God.

(a) hell’s location is not underground, (b) its purpose is not torture, and (c) its construction is not a chamber. These characteristics are not only a little bit off; they are in many ways completely backward.

The point? Heaven’s primary counterpart in the gospel story is not hell; it is earth. Heaven and earth are threaded throughout the biblical drama of creation, rebellion, and redemption. If we want to confront the caricature of hell and reclaim the photograph, we must reframe it back within this biblical story of heaven and earth. We should first ask, “What is the biblical story of heaven and earth?” And as we shall see in the pages to come, when this broader story is in place, the logic of hell begins to arise as a smaller subplot in a broader story that proclaims loudly and clearly the glorious goodness of God.

Heaven does have a counterpart, but it is not hell; it is earth.

We shall see in later chapters that sin, death, and hell, when they do enter the story, are presented not as good things created by God but rather as invasive intruders into God’s good world.

Jesus’ blood reconciles creation to God. The cross and resurrection may accomplish more than this, but they do not accomplish less.

To summarize, in the biblical storyline we’ve looked at thus far, heaven and earth are created by God, torn by sin, and destined for reconciliation. This provokes the question: What is it heaven and earth need to be reconciled from? It is here that the logic of hell naturally arises, that the puzzle piece starts to fit. For the world to be reconciled to God, it must be reconciled from the divisive and destructive powers that have caused the problem in the first place. It must be rescued from hell.

Once again, I had a problem. Jesus wants genocide out of God’s world too, only he takes it a lot more seriously than I do. I want to get rid of genocide; Jesus wants to get rid of rage. I want to put boundaries on the wicked wildfire; he wants to snuff out the spark. And that wicked spark is in me. I may not be a Third World dictator, a genocidal soldier, or an interrogation torturer. But I have anger, and it’s most often not the righteous kind. I can be a vindictive beast. Jesus says if you are nice to folks on the outside but rage against them in your heart, you are in danger of the fire of hell.

We are the ones, not God, who unleash the destructive power of hell in the world.

As I stand before Jesus, the problem I am faced with is this: I am a lusty, violent hypocrite. In the Gospels, Jesus relates the power of hell to three primary issues: lust, violence, and religious hypocrisy.11 These are not abstract “spiritual” ambiguities that are distant from everyday life. These are global realities that are as close as the news that pops up on the TV screen every evening and as intimate as the person I look at every morning in the mirror. And Jesus is the resurrected King, who wants to send these toxic houseguests packing.

But in the biblical story, we are the authors of hell’s fury. God does not create the power of hell; we do. God does not rape kids and murder his neighbors; we do. God is not the one with skeletons in his closet; we are. So how do we join Jesus’ fight against the power of hell in God’s good world today?

The difference, of course, is once again that when we tell our war stories, we depict ourselves as the good guys and the hope of the world. In the gospel, however, we are first revealed as the invaders, those God must liberate the earth from.

The Great Physician longs to heal. We cannot get him dirty; he can only make us clean.

Hell is that place where God tells its residents: Thy will be done. Have your way. Live as you want without me. Hell is a democracy.

God stands against our injustice because he identifies in love with those we violate.

This book is divided into three parts: “The Mercy of Hell,” “The Surprise of Judgment,” and “The Hope of Holy War.” Mercy, surprise, and hope

One of the earliest challenges the church had to face was Gnosticism, a heresy that said salvation was about Jesus getting us out of earth and into heaven. It derived from an outside philosophy that devalued the created world. Against this, the church proclaimed loudly, boldly, and clearly that God’s purpose in Jesus is not to get us out of earth and into heaven, but to reconcile heaven and earth from the destructive power of sin. To redeem creation to himself.

God’s goal is not to pluck us out of humanity. It is to heal humanity.

Jesus’ people often seem to be given only two options: capitulate your faith in the bible and swoop everyone up in a universal “love is god” type of pop-theology, or bang your bible on the pulpit and preach about how “those people” out there on the other side of the church doors are all on a highway headed to hell.

Regardless, God’s closet door won’t seem to stay shut. Our culture is asking questions, from the latest Amazon best seller denouncing the brutality of God, to the most recent New York Times editorial lamenting the inherent violence of religion, to one of many conversations overheard at the local coffee shop on “why I could just never believe.” This conversation is on our culture’s lips.