At One, One Way Or Another

In the Disney animated movie Hercules, Hercules travels to Hades to rescue the soul of someone he loves. He dives into the swirling vortex of lost souls hoping to reach her. This is not a pleasant experience for Hercules. As soon as he enters the whirlpool he begins to wither and waste away. He very nearly dies before reaching her in time. But he does reach her and after he has Megara in his arms, he doesn't waste time in the caustic, deadly whirlpool of the damned, but he gets both of them out of there. In the context of this story, I want to talk about the Atonement. The word Atonement comes from the words "at one", and it describes the process in which we become "at one" with our Savior. Like Hercules, Jesus Christ dove down into the depths of Hell to save our lost souls. This was not a pleasant experience for Jesus. We cannot begin to imagine the pain that a perfect, uncorrupted, pure soul such as His must have endured when it came into contact with the hellish environment in which we ourselves inhabit in our sinful and fallen state. As awful as it looked for Hercules swimming through those lost souls and dying right before our eyes, it was a million, billion times worse for our Savior. But because He loves us so very much, because His greatest desire is to be "at one" with us, He was willing to plunge His perfect soul into the burning, withering, hope devouring depths of Hell to be with us. But Hell is not a place in which Christ intends to stay a nanosecond longer than He has to, and we all know from personal, painful experience, it's not a place where we love to stay either. Christ didn't dive into the depths just so that we both could slowly dissolve into mindless, hopeless misery. He dove down to get us out of there. The Atonement of Jesus Christ did not end in Gethsemane or Golgotha but at the empty tomb on Easter morning. It is not enough for Christ just to suffer with us and be at one with us in our misery. We must take His hand and repent, and allow Him to save us from our sins and pull us out of Hell so that we may be at one with Him in Heaven. If we demand that Christ save us in our sins, what we are saying is that if Christ wants to be at one with us, He must join us in hell and suffer neverending torment, wasting away just like in the movie Hercules. The longer we delay our repentance, the longer we force our Savior to endure immersing Himself in acid and unquenchable flames and unspeakable anguish just so He can be at one with us. Christ's love knows no bounds and He will be at one with us in pleasure or pain, agony or ecstasy, torture or bliss, prison or paradise, Heaven or Hell. One way or another, Christ chooses to be At One with us, so rather than forcing Him to dive into the darkest depths of misery and despair, let us instead choose to repent and joyfully join Him in the light.