Hell No Introduction

Hell No Introduction

Hell is a forgotten concern in 21st century culture. Christian theologians will argue about its design, with most insisting on the importance of everlasting torment, but exposure for the average person is limited to the comics. The typical hell cartoon tends to actually be commentary on earthly troubles. For example, one’s punishment in hell might be to perpetually push a grocery cart with a squeaking wheel. Another cartoon shows introverts who are required to go into a public hell while extroverts must go into a private hell. I suppose Dante started all this with his Inferno. Today’s cartoonists channel Dante, neglecting the fact that he was serious. 

Laughing at hell is a bit like whistling in the dark. Even if no one believes in a  hell of torment (it seems the only people who actually believe in this hell are those certain they are in no danger from it), people are still anxious about what will happen to them when they die. Many contend that there is no afterlife. We live, we die, we’re gone. Scientific materialists seem adamant on this point, even though human access to the universe is miniscule. But dying and coming to an end is no comfort to most people. Death is a sad event, no matter what we may be expecting to happen after it. 

Scientific materialism, humanism in its many forms, eastern religions, Islam, native American pantheism, and the polytheism of the Greeks and Romans are all fairy tales. This doesn’t mean they are devoid of truth—enduring fairy tales generally are laden with truthful insights. But this only results in half-truths. They come to us through dubious authorities and they fall apart on close inspection. These are sweeping statements, certainly, but investigations of these fairy tales are not the subject of this book. Their falsehood is presumed here. Therefore, my interest is in what Christianity has to say about the afterlife because I believe Christianity presents a credible explanation for reality. More specifically, I wish to explore what Christianity has to say about judgment and what will happen to the wicked.

Why is this of interest? For me, it boils down to our understanding of God himself. There is only one critical question that all humans must address: Who is God? The answer to that question frames and directs all our further thoughts and actions. One perspective on this is that we become like what we worship. The Psalmist made this point: Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell.They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat.Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. (Psalm 115.4-8).

There are not many in the world today who put stock in artisan-formed idols, but people do identify their gods in the sense that they do choose authorities for determining the meaning of life. For the most part, people claim themselves to be that authority. Many people not only insist that they must judge truth for themselves, they also believe there is no universal truth and that they, as individuals, create truth for themselves. This scheme sounds more reasonable than ancient idol worship until it is examined. Do we really want to rely on the judgment of the individual whose total experience is for only a few decades? Is it not clear that such experience, relative to all knowledge, is nothing more than anecdotal? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual who makes mistakes all the time? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual who has been mean and selfish and harmful to others, and who continues to do so in spite of wishing to do otherwise? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual who is often injured or ill and subject to mental impairment? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual who spends a good portion of his life as a juvenile, thinking like a juvenile, then a good portion in a sophomoric state, and closing in a state of mental decline? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual who has very little power over his own life and will, sooner or later, lose it? Do we want to rely on the judgment of the individual whose experience tells him nothing about what happens after death? Reliance on individuals to define truth is hardly better than worshipping a carved rock. At least with a carved rock it’s possible some wandering god will decide to inhabit it, but with humans the only certainty is that they will often be wrong, and still uncertain as to when they are right or wrong.   

This is the human condition. On the one hand, we must take responsibility for ourselves. On the other, it’s clear we are incapable of doing a good job of it. 

Must there be a god or gods? The existence of organic life is a strong evidence that it so. The existence of humans and the astonishing range of human capacities make it a virtual necessity. The idea that humans self-formed over eons via multiple accidents is an absurdity. It is a ridiculous story humans choose to believe because they cannot face the loss of autonomy. They do not want to accept that reality is defined by a god, that goodness is defined by a god, that the purpose of life is defined by a god, and that all that is good is a gift from a god. Christianity insists that God is both true and necessary.  

My early understanding of Christianity was through what is typically called an Arminian framework. Arminianism is a perspective that puts the responsibility for salvation on humans. God makes demands of humans. He insists that they believe in him, that they trust him and, if believing, that they obey him. Those who do not trust and obey God are subject to condemnation. The Arminian perspective depends on human agency, often referred to as free will. 

The problem with the Arminian perspective is that the Bible speaks repeatedly of God’s sovereignty, his predestination of the faithful, his grace, and that salvation is his gift. The Bible, while it does not shy away from making demands on humans, and it seems to assume human agency, always seems to circle back and say such things as, “It is God who opens our eyes, and it is God who gives us the ability to choose the right.” This creates a bit of a dilemma. If salvation is a gift of God, if humans do not have the capacity to choose aright, on what basis are we judged? Why would any human be condemned?

Digging a bit deeper, we will want to ask the question, “How is free will and responsibility even possible?” The Arminian wants to argue that God gives every person the ability to choose appropriately. Some people choose well while others choose badly. While this seems fair it doesn’t explain how if God creates each person and if God gives each person his or her abilities, and if God is eternal and all-knowing, how, then, does responsibility fall to humans?

Free will, then, is intellectually problematic for Christians. Let us note here, though, that however much of a pickle it may present Christians, free will is an impossibility for scientific materialism. If we believe in scientific materialism, what we must also believe is that all actions and thoughts are predetermined. Our choices are made for us by our chemical make-up, by social pressures, by the information we’ve stumbled across and accepted, by our prejudices, and by the quality of the chicken nuggets we had for lunch. We may feel passionately about our work and our families and our hopes for universal justice, but all of these passions must be meaningless hard-wired reactions to the histories that formed us. For the scientific materialist, it is not possible for anything to matter. No one can help what they think and do, not even those who oppose our views or who seem to behave insanely. This is a hard pill to swallow, of course, and very few do, because it’s too depressing and, more importantly, doesn’t seem to align with human experience. 

While scientific materialism unravels under the pressures of determinism, Christianity does not. If there is an all-powerful God who controls creation; if this God exists outside of time and yet can operate within time and within creation, the mysterious possibility of this God taking responsibility for human actions and requiring humans to take responsibility for their own actions remains possible. Christianity exists within this tension. The Christian God says to all people: “Trust and obey. Look to me and I will give you the vision you need to see, I will open your ears so you can hear, I will give you the strength you need to obey, I will give you the heart you need in order that you will know Me.”

I wrestled with this problem of human responsibility and the sovereignty of God for years before I finally accepted that God’s sovereignty is inescapable, necessary, and is our only source of hope. But after finally surrendering to this idea, I was still plagued by the thought that this sovereign God would establish a world in which some would be saved while, seemingly, the vast majority of people would be damned to everlasting torment. I used to scoff bitterly, “It’s not even ‘Eeny, meeny, miney, hell’; it’s ‘Eeny,, hell, hell, hell’”. The very hard problem I was left with was, what kind of God are we talking about who would create such a world?

The question than then became crucial was: what does the Bible actually say about everlasting torment? I began to read and ponder the relevant verses. It didn’t take long before I became suspicious of prevailing Christian interpretations of these verses. The biggest and most common proof texts for everlasting torment were the verses that used phrases such as “tossed into the eternal fire” and “where their worm will never die”. It seemed to me that interpreters were missing the obvious. If you toss someone into an eternal fire, what we should expect is that the the person would be consumed. There have been thousands of burnings at the stake in human history, I suppose, all of which confirmed this expectation. Mentioning that the fire is eternal only emphasizes the fact that it is more than sufficient to complete the process of consuming whatever is thrown into it. There is no escape for those thrown in. Similarly when there is a worm that doesn’t die, that worm will pick the flesh off the bones until nothing is left but a skeleton. These phrases are not references to everlasting torment, they are descriptions of irremediable death sentences. 

This was the beginning. Further study of the Bible confirmed for me over and again that God’s punishment is not everlasting torment but irrevocable death. This, in a nutshell, is what this book is about. While it spends some time looking at motivations and the historical development of the idea of everlasting torment, it focuses mostly on what the Bible itself has to say. There are many passages that deal specifically with judgment, and there are a number of biblical themes that intertwine with these passages. As far as I can tell, they are all saying the same thing.

What, then, is the fundamental message? It is this: God is good. He has created a world that is a trial by fire. There are some who are being refined by the fire, while there are some who are being destroyed by it. The news is glorious for those who are being refined. The news is not so good for those who are being destroyed. Even so, God’s punishment for them is essentially what they have expected all along: death. In this sense, humanists have received exactly what they’ve asked for. God has given them their independence. Death is the logically necessary conclusion of anyone who chooses to turn his or her back on the source of life. Still, God is gracious to all. Some are blessed with life for a short time, while others are blessed with everlasting life. No one suffers everlasting torment. 

But if God is good, if God is really good, the question we ought to be asking is, “Why not turn to him?” If he is really good, all of his commands are for human flourishing. No one should settle for the feeble riches one can attain through the short visit we all pay to the earth. As Jesus put it, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8.36). He is begging the question, of course. To hear his question should result in the hearer asking, “What then must I do to be saved?”

It is important that we discard the idea of everlasting torment, as it is slander about the Lord God. It is a taking of the Lord’s name in vain, that is, assigning actions to him that are untrue. Instead, we need to see his goodness, be attracted to his goodness, be attracted to his humility and love. And on top of that hold a healthy fear of the reality of his power over all creation.