For the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about hell. I don’t mean that I’m worried or scared about going there- that’s not really the case at all. But I have been thinking about the existence of hell, and if it does exist, what is it like.
It seems like many Christians hold on to the vision of hell that is complete with lakes of fire, horrible torture rooms, and demons with pitchforks that poke you for ever and ever. I even saw a book at Border’s the other day written by some guy that has supposedly had this vision of how horrible hell is and how it’s a real place and how you’d better believe that the demons poke you like you’ve never been poked before. Like Heironymous Bosch mixed with a Rob Zombie movie. Or like the hell that is depicted in the most absolutely heavy-handed Chick tracts.
Anyway, I’m not convinced that this vision of hell is a sensible one, for several interconnected reasons.
First, that kind of hell is part of a system where our motivation for turning to Jesus Christ is out of fear, fear that if we don’t do what God says, we’ll get poked with demon pitchforks. It’s obedience, and worse yet, entering into a relationship, motivated by fear of punishment. That’s honestly really immature. It’s actually the lowest sub-stage of the Pre-conventional stage of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and I simply do not believe that God’s relationship with us operates on the lowest possible moral level. That’s just not the God I believe in. Quite the contrary, I’m much more inclined to believe in a God that wants to help elevate us, to lift us up to a higher moral place where we encounter him. At the very least, I believe that God deals with each of us individually on the highest moral level that we can potentially reach.
Second, that kind of hell is logically untenable to me. Usually, it is justified by appealing to the justice and righteous wrath of God. In other words, horrible pitchfork hell has to exist because God is pissed at us for sinning and he fully intends on taking our mistakes out of our hide. We earned it and we get what we deserve. Leaving the “pissed-off God” image aside, there’s a logical flaw in this justification. There’s no way that eternal never-ending punishment is the just reward for what is ultimately a finite (though in my case fairly large) quantity of sin. If God meted out our just desserts, hell would look more like a temporary purgatory.
I also have trouble with the idea that God made hell to punish sinners, and then he made us all be sinners. Why would He do that? There’s no reason He had to? What would motivate God to build a horrible eternal torture chamber and then make a bunch of people who were inherently headed there? It just seems like a crappy thing to do.
The hell I can easily imagine is an outer darkness, eternal loneliness, eternal separation from God. I’m talking about a hell where God says “you spent your whole life trying your hardest to get away from Me, and now there’s nothing I can do but let you go. I wish you could stay here with Me, but you spent your whole life pushing me away.” Eternity alone, in the darkest void. No company, no warmth, no light. Just loneliness and darkness, and the same pain we experience here, but magnified over eons. That’s a kind of hell I can easily imagine.
I realize that none of this is based on scripture. I’m not so sure I care that much, though.
Sailing to Byzantium 
I think hell’s role is simply as a place set aside for those who don’t want to go to heaven. That said, you can imagine the neighbours you’ll have there. But at least it’s better than nothing and no-one.
But then my definition of heaven is pretty out there. This probably relates to my own imagining of God as a guy who gets up in the morning, goes in to a job he hates but no-one else can do, but spends the whole day thinking about going home and puttering in his garden.
I think if I was God, I’d prefer plants to people by a long shot…
David
I think Milton does a pretty good job at portraying hell. Of course, it’s only his particular vision.
And Dante – if you want all the fine details.
ggw
If you’re interested, I just recently read a short story about heaven and hell that you might find interesting. It’s called Hell is the Absence of God. Click on that link if you want to read it. The story really isn’t a pro-religion story — the god it portrays is cruel, arbitrary, and unfathomable. But it had some interesting ideas, and it is well-written.
For my part, I think the title of that story is more or less correct. I think our “punishment” will be to get just what we deserve, which may be distancing ourselves from God and those we love. And probably the worst part, in my opinion, is knowing that we could have done better if we had just tried. An eternity of regret seems like hell to me.
You mentioned Kohlberg, which interests me.
According to him, not all people actually make it through all 4 stages of moral development, no? So what would a universally understanding God do when he explains Hell? Perhaps it (and many other moral principles) has been explained from so many angles in order to give every person a way to understand it. For a kid, or a person who thinks like a kid, Hell is like sitting in the corner. Only it’s a huge flaming corner and you never get out (for someone who lacks abstract thinking, “you will feel very bad” is non-communicative, and also a bad, unclear generalization anyway). Could it be that this man’s vision of Hell was indeed true– for him– but it wouldn’t have been for you because you’re (hopefully) in the Formal Operational stage? By “true for him”, I do not suggest a relative absolute reality, but tailored pertinence in relative perceptions of a single absolute reality?
If you buy into what I’m saying, here’s another thought: what if “formal operational” Hell (you get what you ask for, in this case) isn’t exactly a real description either? Do you think God is on the Kohlberg scale of moral development at all? Or is he dumbing things down/ making them mentally and emotionally relevant for even the smartest people?
That’s kind of what I was getting at when I said “I simply do not believe that God’s relationship with us operates on the lowest possible moral level. … I’m much more inclined to believe in a God that wants to help elevate us, to lift us up to a higher moral place where we encounter him. At the very least, I believe that God deals with each of us individually on the highest moral level that we can potentially reach.”
Maybe for one person, the best kind of morality they can rise to is a fear-of-punishment stage, and for them, God has a fear-of-punishment motivator? And maybe these things aren;t “objectively true,” but then I wonder if “objective truth” and “subjective truth” are even meaningful and relevant statements when we’re talking about a God who exists outside of time and space?
But is God even about not-doing-wrong-things? I mean sure, there’s that element to God, but is it the focus? Isn;t there something fundamentally different between a God who wants to get you to act right and not do bad things and a God who simply wants to enter into a relationship with you and have you respond to His infinite love?
We must remember that we alone can’t figure out hell, or God, or eternity. It takes His spirit within us along with His word. Even with these two working with us, we still only “see through a glass dimly”. Many have tried to figure out many spiritual things through there own intellect, it can’t be done. The word and the spirit must work together in our life if we are going to be led into a deeper understanding.
Seek Him and you will find.
Hello. First comment here, and I hope you don’t mind me joining into the fray.
I very much like what Jurgen Moltmann has written about heaven and hell and judgment and all that. Like you, he (and I) believe that God seeks relationship, and all that stuff about hating bad things we do is merely because that stuff we do ultimately turns us from that relationship. It’s hard to enter into a sincere love relationship with God when we’re messing over our neighbors. And if we believe that which Jesus taught, and we will ultimately be judged before Jesus, his character would be that of mercy and grace, rather than of meting out eternal punishment.
So… Moltmann’s vision is that we will become aware of our sins, and of the pain that they caused. We’ll feel the ramifications of our misdeeds and missed potentials in ways that we’ve never realized before. I can imagine that it would be a terribly painful experience, where we realize our full brokeness.
But then, in mercy and love, Christ will ask us… “So. Do you want to be made whole?” And when we answer yes, we are taken into the Kingdom – which is a place where we can explore our full potential.
If anyone says no, then they live with that pain of the confrontation of their failings. That’s hell.