Hell Fire & Brimstone

I will admit, I do not often think of the afterlife until I need to. Generally I live life expecting that I will live forever here on Earth. I have made myself quite comfortable here, and I call it my home. Everything will be going along just as usual until, I am reminded of Death: humanity’s ultimate insult. World religions discuss Heaven and Hell and I will admit there are some pretty interesting beliefs out there. Atheism suggests that our life here, is all that there is. Most religions, I have found, have no guarantees about going to Heaven. This is quite odd to me but a discussion for another day. The main question that I have had return to me over and over again is, ‘What kind of Loving God would be willing to send people to Hell?’ and also, ‘if Jesus so loved the world that he was willing to die, why wouldn’t he just find a way to make it so we can all go to heaven?’ Well, after looking into it further this week, I have taken a 180 degree turn in my thinking about Christianity’s take on Heaven and Hell, and I will tell you why.

First of all it is important to pinpoint what exactly Heaven and Hell are. I have always pictured Heaven as the place floating on clouds with a bunch of naked, baby Angels, and hell being similar to prison but burning up at the same time. These images I had did not come from study, but rather from cartoons I watched as a child on Saturday mornings. A closer look into the theology of Heaven and Hell, opened my eyes to the possibility that Heaven and Hell are not so much punishments or rewards we receive due to whether or not we ‘lived a good life’ and were ‘good people’. C.S. Lewis points out that since God is God, he is the ultimate good and therefore the closer you become to God, the closer you are to Heaven. Lewis suggests that you cannot get heaven without getting God: “God made us: invented us as a man invents and engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking god to make us happy in our own way, without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” (Mere Christianity). Therefore, if God is good, wouldn’t it make sense for us to want to be near him and in return, if we do not draw near, doesn’t the result of Hell only make sense?

Next point I thought was important to look at was, ‘Why would God send decent people to Hell?’ Well, for myself I only have to look at human relationships: if in my friendships I come across somebody who is a ‘good person’ and I happen to really love them, in fact I was so in love with them that I was willing to die for them, how do you think they would react? You would think that they would love me in return. Now let’s suppose that they heard from our mutual friends the depths of my love for them and they chose to both reject and ignore me. How would I react? I guess I would give them the distance that they wanted. Now let’s suppose I was God (I like doing this more than I would admit), and I was the Ultimate Goodness, the natural result would be that their rejection would turn into Hell, not because I sent them there, but because they chose separation/rejection of my love.

Thirdly, I have always wondered why God would be willing to create beings who would reject his ultimate act of love. Why not just create creatures who were prepared to accept me? Well I’m sure we’ve all heard that God desired beings who chose him with their own free will. Lewis explains this in The Problem of Pain: “In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside…” In this statement, Lewis comments on the matter of free will suggesting that it is not so much God who sends us to Hell, but rather it is ourselves who willingly decide to remain as far away from the Ultimate Goodness that we lock ourselves away in our own selfishness for Eternity.

Lastly, is there any solution to this problem of Heaven and Hell? I’m not perfect and I’m not sure that God will always see me pursuing Him. What then? “In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out [everyone’s] past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.”(Lewis, The Problem of Pain). In the end, God will not force anyone to be with him. Hell, by definition, is complete and total separation from the Ultimate Good: God himself. If people will not accept God, then they get what they want. The real question is, what do you want? Are you unwilling to surrender? Or do you believe that, “To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/ Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” (Milton’s, Paradise Lost)

P.S. Jesus Himself cried out about those who reject him in Matthew 23:37 : "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together,as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing"