Why We Need Hell

Hell has never been a fashionable destination, but in recent years it’s met a fate that even the most passé hotspots don’t endure; people suspect it doesn’t exist. Or, if it does exist, it attracts no customers; "we are permitted to hope that hell is empty" is how this is sometimes phrased. Even the most conservative Christians have a hard time putting a positive spin on a wrathful God who flings evildoers into flaming torment.

It is tragic that some Christians have been so battered with stories of a prideful, vindictive God that they have fled from Jesus’ fold. No wonder some become atheists; who would want to spend eternity with such a tyrant?

Yet I’m going to make a case for hell, though not the one you see in cartoons, a fiery cavern where demons poke you with pitchforks. Dante made that kind of thing look pretty exciting, but "The Inferno" was written almost 1,300 years after the gospels. When you strip away European and medieval assumptions, and look at the writings of Christians in lands and cultures closer to Jesus’ time, you get a different picture.

First of all, hell is not a place. If you’re separated from your body and exist only as a spirit, you don’t take up any room. In the Hebrew Scriptures all the dead, righteous and unrighteous, abide in Sheol (the Greek Scriptures translated it "Hades"). It is a non-physical realm where the souls of all the departed await the Last Judgment.

But they don’t all experience it the same way. In Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31), the Rich Man is not sequestered in a bleak alternative dimension; he’s able to see Lazarus, and speak to Abraham. But he’s sure isn’t having a good time.

How can this be? Because the real answer to the "where" question is "in the presence of God." Nothing exists outside God, making the concept of "separation from God" only a handy metaphor. "Whither shall I flee from thy presence? … If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there" (Psalm 139:7-8). In this life, we perceive God's presence pulsing through all material Creation. In the next life that materiality will be dissolved, and we’ll be irradiated by the living energy that sustains the universe.

Those who love God and prepare themselves to assimilate his light will begin to be transformed even in this life; they become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). But those who resist and ignore God "harden their hearts" (Hebrews 3:15). If they "love darkness rather than light" (John 3:19), they will find the inescapable brilliance to be searing misery and paradoxical blindness.

Continued on page 2: Hell is not a punishment... »