How could a God that was supposed to be Love itself consign so many people to eternal punishment just because they didn't believe in the right version of Him? If you will remember from my introduction, this was the first question that I posed as a reason for rejecting God. The thought that a vast number of people would be destined to eternal conscious torment simply for having something different from the Christian view is a troubling one to many people.
I have dwelt on this topic steadily for the past two months, reading what I could about different views of Hell, talking with others on the subject, praying and meditating. It is a complex question that I don't pretend to know all of the ins and outs of. The answer comes to me in part from the verse immediately following a common memory verse in the Gospel of John, and a verse from 2 Peter:
John 3:16 "For GOD so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:17 reads as follows: "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."
2 Peter 3:9 "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
The question posed belies a common misconception: That God should send people to Hell because they are not Christian.
A more accurate way to describe the Christian concept of Hell is that we are all headed toward judgement as a consequence of our sinful nature. The word sin literally means "missing the mark." We sin whenever we fail to live according to the standards which God has ordained, and when we do so we go a little further off course.
Imagine you are drawing a line across a sheet of paper, and your destination is a dot on the other side. Unless you possess a latent talent for drawing straight lines, chances are you'll need a straight edge to draw across. If you try to draw the line freehand, from one side to the other, the odds of your hitting that dot perfectly will be slim. You'll likely end up near it, maybe only off by a degree or two. This doesn't seem like a big miss, but if you stretch that line out to a mile that degree is multiplied to such a large degree by the time you reach the point you thought the dot was it is nowhere in sight.
God is loving, yes; and supremely so. There is no being that can love like He can. We must understand, as well, that God is Just. There is a just penalty for stepping outside the boundaries of what God has ordained as Good, and we all do so at one point or another. One major role that Jesus Christ played was that of intermediary between God and man. God knew that we were all condemned unless he himself took the due consequence of our sin. He offered himself to himself in our place, so that all we had to do to make right with God was to recognize his gift and follow him in Faith.
Faith in Christ is an acceptance of an invitation to reconciliation to God, and an expressed willingness to walk along the "straight edge" that he offers us. It is an acknowledgement that no one is good of themselves, and that we cannot work our way into Heaven, but must take the hand that is freely offered us by our creator. Christianity is the only religion, as far as I know, that offers people this invitation. Perhaps this is why it is also the least ethnocentric. The teachings of Christ have the power to reach people of all cultures and all religions because they fulfill what people already know about God.
As far as the nature of Hell is concerned, I do not believe in eternal flames or demons flying around torturing damned souls. I also do not believe that it is an earthly state of mind. When people believe they have experienced Heaven or Hell here on earth, they are merely foretastes of the real thing. I do believe that Hell is the absence of the presence of God. The Bible describes us as being made in the image of God. That is to say that we are made to reflect His Glory. Hell is the state in which we no longer are given the privilege of that reflection. We are in a sense cut off from His Light and Goodness. It is the realization of the soul that its goodness was not of itself; that it is now cut off from that light, by its own choice, for all eternity.
I'll end with this thought by C.S. Lewis: “In the long run, the answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out past sins and at all cost give them a fresh start? He did, on Calvary. To forgive them? They don’t ask for forgiveness. To leave them alone? This is what hell is. Only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done.’ And those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’ All of those in hell choose it and without that self choice, it isn’t hell.”
As always, I encourage everyone to share your thoughts. After all, one sided discussion can only get us so far into understanding ideas, especially those as controversial as this one, and often more questions are raised in answering the original ones. Thanks for reading!
Well put. I also reject the idea of fire and brimstone and eternal stabbing my demons. The absence of God seems punishment enough. I wonder though if God allows repentance from hell? Or is it really too late? For me the question of Gods nature is not whether he is loving but if he is forgiving even at that point. I'm not sure you or anyone has an answer to that but if you have some insight I'd love to hear it
ReplyDeleteThanks, somedumb! Like you said, I don't think anyone does have an answer that they can glean from Scripture as far as possible post-condemnation repentance and forgiveness. My instinct from a plain reading would be that repentance after death is not likely at best, the thought being that those who hear the words of Christ and deny them in life would be even less likely to accept them in death. Being finite beings, we have no concept of what Eternity truly is, but if it is a place outside of time then it is also a place free of change; at least change in any way we could now understand.
DeleteThere is the theory, though, that during his three days in the grave Christ descended into Hell to gather up those who had not heard him in life. Perhaps as Hell is an eternal place he is there today, still giving people a chance to come to him. It's not something I would ever dare count on, though. The urgent call to Christians to spread the news to the whole world is explicit. I do believe that those who were truly wicked in life (I myself would be loathe to place the judgement) are also condemned according to their actions. Jesus gives a couple of parables about Hell where some seem to get a harsher judgement than others, shadowing the portrayal of the land of the dead in the apocryphal Book of Enoch... I could go on for a while, honestly! It's hard to fully explain an idea as big as this one in one blog post!