Hell and other cheerful thoughts

Call me strange (no, really), but I've been a bit obsessed with the subject of hell for a while. While the Christian faith is primarily about obviously good (if horrendously difficult) things like love, hope, new life, justice and forgiveness, in the background there always lurks this nasty threat of hell. It's Christianity's darkest and most terrifying doctrine, one which many believers would gladly remove from their creed if they could, and which I suspect has driven more than a few over the years to the brink of madness, despair or to abandoning their faith. One of my friends tormented himself for years over the thought of his friends going to hell, and I'm sure he's not alone.

Some kind of hell is common to most faiths

Let's remember that some kind of hell or afterlife state of punishment is common to most faiths, in folk versions even if not the mainstream teachings. It seems hard-wired into the human religious mind that there should be justice and punishment for unrepentant evildoers in the afterlife. Probably most of us feel deep down that the likes of Hitler and Stalin deserve to be punished for their deeds; that those who have got away in this life with murder, rape, child abuse or whatever crimes we see as most heinous should be brought to book in the afterlife and made to suffer in some way for what they have done. The idea that we, our families and friends may also find ourselves on the wrong end of divine justice is a bit less comfortable though.

Views of hell in different religions

Probably the most barbaric and horrifying view of hell is the Islamic depiction of unending physical torture in literal fire, where Allah causes skin to be regrown each time it is burnt away in order to prolong the agony. Among the mildest is (surprisingly) that of Old Testament Judaism, where there is no fully-developed picture of the afterlife, and Sheol (the grave) or Hades is seen as merely a place of shadowy, ghostly half-existence. It's only in the inter-testamental period that the idea of post-mortem punishment and bliss starts to enter Hebrew writings, particularly the idea of hell fire.

Christian views on hell range from a sub-Islamic place of eternal conscious physical torment - which I find almost impossible to accept - to a very figurative state of regret and possibly of purging/cleansing. Some Christians even hold that there is no such thing as hell - that those who are not for whatever reason able to enter the bliss of the redeemed are simply blotted from existence into oblivion.

Hell in the Bible

The Bible presents a very mixed and complex set of pictures... none of them are literal depictions

The Bible itself presents a very mixed and complex set of pictures of hell. As well as the classic lake of fire of  the Book of Revelation we have images of prison, pit, outer darkness (outer space?), exile, exclusion or separation, annihilation/destruction and a state of restlessness (the opposite of God's 'Shalom' peace).

This range of pictures should tell us at least that none of them are literal depictions of a physical place - for example, it would be hard for a literal lake of blazing fire also to be outer darkness or a prison. (Indeed, in the Revelation account Death itself is thrown into the Lake of Fire, which makes it fairly clear that the author is talking figuratively.) Instead, each image describes some particular aspect of the state of those restless souls who are not (yet?) able for whatever reason to enter the rest and peace of God's kingdom.

Images of fire and darkness

Fire is the most common image of hell in the popular psyche, but the view of lost souls tormented in flames by demons with toasting-forks comes from the grotesque medieval imagination rather than from the Bible. The Bible does talk of fire, but as a metaphor not a literal description. Fire depicts both God's own blazing, dazzling goodness and also his righteous anger and judgement against those who violate, destroy and dehumanise others. It represents destruction (rather than torment) - 'Gehenna', the word Jesus uses for hell, was the smouldering rubbish dump outside Jerusalem where waste and detritus would be burnt away to ash.

Fire also represents those human passions like lust, greed, anger and resentment which smoulder or blaze inside our hearts, consuming us from within. And finally, and more positively, fire crucially depicts purifying flame, the refining fire which burns off dross till only the pure gold remains. All of these convey different aspects of what hell may truly be about.

Prominent among other New Testament pictures of hell is 'outer darkness... where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth'. The idea seems to be of exclusion or exile, thrown out into the dark outside with only regret for company.

Hell as self-chosen and merciful

Hell is always ultimately
self-chosen

My own current view of hell is that it is not so much a place as it is the post-death (and perhaps post-resurrection?) spiritual state of those who utterly shut out and refuse the continually-offered love, truth and mercy of God. I do not believe that it is necessarily permanent, but that the key to the exit is on the inside and that hell is always ultimately self-chosen. (I also do not think that by any means all who were not in this life professing Christians will find themselves in this state - see post Many ways to one God?)

To look at it from another angle, in the kingdom of heaven there can be no thing or being that has not been redeemed, resurrected, reborn or renewed by and into God. By definition, no evil or corrupt thing can dwell there - it would simply be impossible, just as a fish could not survive in air. All that does not allow itself to be redeemed must therefore remain outside for its own sake and survival as much as for those inside.

The most helpful literary depiction of this for me is in C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. In this, the heavenly country is too solid, too real, for the shadowy unredeemed souls to inhabit - they would be pierced by its grass as if by swords and crushed by its raindrops as if by boulders. To be transformed so that they can live there they must all let go of or give up some particular dear but deadly thing that they have been holding onto (or that has been holding onto them) - for one it is lust, for another resentment, for others self-pity or pride or hate or fear. Sadly, in Lewis's story most find it too difficult and prefer to return to the shadowy 'grey town' where unredeemed souls dwell in ever-increasing self-isolation.

Lewis suggested that hell was God's final act of mercy on those who would accept nothing else from him. It allows humans the ultimate dignity of choice, but also sets a limit on how bad the consequences of that choice can get. (He felt that the image of 'pit' expressed something that had a limit and did not go on getting deeper or worse.)

To punish without hope of redemption is not an act of love
For those who insist on a literal hell of God-sanctioned eternal conscious punishment, I can only say that God is love and God is good. This is the God revealed in Christ. To punish without end and without hope of redemption or rehabilitation is not an act of love. But to allow me to choose eternal isolation for myself - to allow me to reject God's unendingly-offered love - may be.