Can we really believe in Hell?

Donald Sensing
Because of the resurrection of Jesus, Christians know that death is not the end of their existence.
At some point, God will bring creation to its final fulfillment and, just as Christ was raised from the
dead, human beings will be resurrected into eternity. Heaven is used to describe eternal life in the
actual presence of God, while hell is used to describe eternal life apart from Gods presence. Hell was
described by Jesus as the final destiny of Satan and his cohort after the final triumph of Christ over
evil, as well as the place where unsaved souls spend an eternal sentence of punishment for their sin.
There are numerous explicit references to Hell in the Scriptures. Should we take them seriously? If
so, how may we understand them? What does the Bible mean by Hell, anyway? Should we include hell
within the umbrella of our Christian faith?
For some persons this is a non-issue. Some persons consider the whole question cut and dried:
those who believe in Christ enjoy eternal life with God, and those who dont believe are adjudged into
Hell. But many others of true Christian faith have real difficulty with Hell, myself included. The
problem is this:
God is supremely good and supremely powerful. According to First Timothy 2:3-4, God wants
everyone to be saved. And God alone is savior. Through Isaiah God said, . . . for I am God, and there
is no other. I . . . am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior (Is. 45.22; 43.11).
These things being true, there would appear to be nothing to prevent God from simply exercising
his divine power to bring everyone into heaven whether they are already saved or not. So the paradox
is this: how can we reconcile an eternal hell with Gods power and Gods desire that all be saved?
A usual answer has been to point out that God is totally good, totally pure and totally just. Thus,
Gods inherent goodness and purity do not allow unredeemed sinners in his presence, and Gods justice
requires that a penalty be paid for sin. However, Jesus ministered to the worst sinners of his day,
proving that divine goodness does quite well in their presence. Jesus teachings reflect that Gods
justice is not the tit-for-tat human kind, but a supremely forgiving justice in which we actually do not
get what we deserve. Furthermore, an eternal sentence of punishment for a mere seventy to eighty
years or so of sin is not justice, it is mindless cruelty.
We know that God is always at work in the affairs of human beings to bring us into fellowship
with God to the greatest degree possible. Gods grace is the only source of salvation. Grace is a gift.
We cannot earn it, nor does God coerce us. We have to accept it. Randy Maddox, past president of the
Wesley Theological Society, put it this way: Without Gods grace, we cannot be saved; unless we
respond, we wont be saved. Sadly, experience shows that some persons resist this gift of grace and
either defy God or deny that God even exists, right up to the day they die. What becomes of them,
then?
God does not stop being God simply because we die. If God loves us in this life, God certainly
loves us in the next. If God wills to save in this life, he certainly wills it in the next. The hard question
is not whether Gods will to save disappears after we die. The hard questions are:
Why would anyone be more savable after death than now?
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Why would Gods grace be more likely to penetrate our resistance to it after we die than now?
Why would someone be more receptive to God after death than before?
And most difficult of all: if salvation really is universal and God unilaterally saves everyone
whether they want it or not, what's stopping him? Why not do it now? The world would be a lot
better place!
The case for universal salvation presupposes that either human nature or God's nature, or both, are
radically different on the other side of human mortality. Persons either become so enlightened in the
afterlife that no matter how corrupted by sin they were in life:
they nonetheless accept the full grace of God that they had always rejected before,
or, God is for some reason able to act more powerfully upon us after we depart this life than
while we are still living.
I can find no biblical basis for either position. In fact, we would have to ask a couple more
questions: Why would dying makes us smarter? Why would dying give us better judgment? It cant.
The Bible teaches that death is destructive, not creative.
The Bible treats physical death as a gateway event. The book of Hebrews teaches that we dont get
a do-over in life. We get one life, one death, and after that, the judgment, followed by eternity.
Is it possible that dying has a fixing effect on our eternal destiny? Heres an analogy. I once
learned how to develop photographic negatives and make prints therefrom. Its not difficult, although
with today's digital cameras it's a vanishing art. Once the negatives have been developed, you make a
print by placing a negative frame in a vertical projector. You focus the image on the bottom plate and
turn off the lights. Then you place a sheet of photo paper on the bottom plate and expose the paper for a
calculated time. Then you immerse the paper a chemical solution that brings the image forth. Finally,
you place the paper in another chemical solution known as the fixer. The fixer sets the image
permanently.
I wonder whether while we live we are developing, but death fixes us where we are, as far as
salvation goes. Even if Gods will to save continues after we die, perhaps it is more difficult, not less,
for us to be saved then than now not because God is less powerful, but because we are less
responsive. Freshly poured concrete can be molded, but hardened concrete cannot. It may be that death
hardens us so that we cannot respond to Gods saving grace.
If Gods salvation is coercive, then this wouldnt matter. But the Scriptures tell us that God saves
from love. Loves nature is invitation, not compulsion. Jesus called people to follow him, but forced no
one. So we are brought to confront Hell as a real possibility. What, then, is Hell?
At one level, we can understand hell as a useful idea. The concept of hell helps us to understand
that there is a moral order to creation. The ideas of hell and heaven reinforce human understanding of
justice, for if evil is finally destroyed, or at least separated from Gods presence, we can see that what
we do in this life has ultimate meaning. Human actions have cosmic significance, and our struggles for
justice, mercy and righteousness have divine sanction. Asbury Seminary professor Jerry Walls wrote,
The doctrines of heaven and hell are the supreme articulation of the claim that we can
neither evade responsibility for our actions nor the motives behind them. They represent
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the epitome of the notion that we never serve our ultimate self-interest by doing what is
immoral, just as we always serve our ultimate self-interest by our steadfast commitment
to do what is right.
When the Bible speaks of hell (or heaven), it uses highly symbolic speech. The theologically
conservative Nelsons Bible Dictionary says,
Because of the symbolic nature of the language, some people question whether hell
consists of actual fire. The reality is greater than the symbol. The Bible exhausts human
language in describing heaven and hell. The former is more glorious, and the latter more
terrible, than language can express.
So while the Bible does describe hell as a place of fire and burning, we need not take that literally
to take it seriously. The New Testament word translated as hell is Gehenna, which was a real place
outside Jerusalem where pagan Canaanites had once burned their children in sacrifice to their god
Molech.
In Jesus day Gehenna was the depository of all the filth and garbage of Jerusalem, including the
dead bodies of animals and executed criminals. To dispose of all this, fires burned constantly. Maggots
worked in the filth. When the wind blew from that direction over the city, its awfulness was quite
evident. At night wild dogs howled and gnashed their teeth as they fought over the garbage.
Jesus used this awful scene as a symbol of hell. In effect he said, Do you want to know what hell
is like? Look at the valley of Gehenna (Nelsons). So hell may be thought of a cosmic garbage
dump, the exact antithesis of heaven.
Hell is a spiritual condition, not a physical location. Hell is the ongoing rejection of God. C. S.
Lewis described hell as the skid row of creation, where souls have become so intoxicated by sin that
they no longer even try to break the chains that bind them there. Their dilemma is that they are captive
there because they choose to be. They would rather have a delusion of freedom than gthe reality of
salvation. Their delusion, wrote Lewis, is that if they glorified God, they would lose their individuality,
but their choice has really ruined their human greatness. Hell, Lewis said, is the greatest monument to
human freedom.
The apostle Paul wrote of the self-imposition of godlessness in the first chapter of Romans:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness
of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about
God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 ... So they are without
excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to
him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; ... they exchanged the truth about God for a
lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (1.18-22 excerpted).
Hence, Pope John Paul II wrote that hell,
... is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises
already set by people in this life. The very dimension of unhappiness which this obscure
condition brings can in a certain way be sensed in the light of some of the terrible
experiences we have suffered which, as is commonly said, make life hell. Hell is the
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ultimate consequence of sin itself, which turns against the person who committed it. It is
the state of those who definitively reject Gods mercy.
The closest analogy to hell I can think of is that of addiction. I remember a twenty-nine-year-old
woman named Latisha Lewis in the news who confessed that she murdered ninety-year-old Ella
Gilbert, whom she did not know, to steal money to buy drugs. Addiction can become so powerful that
it overwhelms the faculty of reason and distorts our will beyond self-control. Latisha Lewiss tragedy is
that she became an addict by her own free will. The first hit of narcotics she ever took was her choice.
So I think of hell as a sinners crack house, a state of being that is hopelessly beyond self help. It is
a perversion of the will so strong that God is not even hoped for, much less sought. Salvation may be
technically possible because Gods grace is still offered, but effectively impossible, because it is not
even recognized. "The gates of hell," wrote C. S. Lewis, "are locked only on the inside."
This kind of hell is a photographic negative of heaven isolation rather than fellowship, apathy
rather than love, loneliness rather than community, conflict rather than peace, desolation rather than
richness. The torment of hell is not chiefly that these things are unbearable (even though they are); the
worst torment is that even if hells addicts want to escape, they will not or cannot accept Gods grace to
do so. The torments of Hell spring from their own self-centered incapability to let God in, and all that
results from it.
So Hell may be understood not as a sentence God imposes on sinners, because God desires all to
be saved. Hell is Gods recognition that he has been rejected. Even though Gods grace continues to be
offered without ceasing, its acceptance becomes evermore unlikely as the addiction to godlessness
becomes evermore concrete.
If this theology of hell works for you as it does for me, then there are still steps to take. One is that
the prospect of eternal punishment need not figure prominently in the Gospel of love. The Gospel's
message is not that God angrily condemns all who fail to meet narrowly defined criteria. God is love
and desires with great liberality all to be saved, even to the extent that in all eternity, God never gives
up seeking out his children. But it avoids what Methodist Professor David Watson admitted is the
pitfall of universal salvation, that evangelism is really a pointless exercise if everyone winds up in
heaven, anyway. On the contrary, the reality of hell makes a decision for Christ in this life crucial.
Who is Christ? becomes not merely one important question among others, it becomes the
central question of human affairs. Evangelism is the only truly vital mission of the church.
The New Testament says that when Christ returns he will be reunited with his church in a
celebration so magnificent that the Scriptures describe it as the grandest wedding celebration ever held.
(In Jesus day there was no occasion more festive or joyous than weddings.) I expect to be at the
wedding banquet of the Lord along with you.
Are we preparing ourselves spiritually for this banquet? Do we understand how the reward of
eternal life with God places a burden on us today? David Watson wrote,
When even a cursory thought is given to the countless millions in the world who are
hungry, who are suffering, who languish under injustice, or are ravaged by war, the
prospect of anyone celebrating personal salvation . . . borders on the obscene. There are
still too many of Christs little ones who are hungry, too many who lack clothes, too
many who are sick or in prison. There are too many empty places [at Gods banquet
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table]. The appropriate attitude for guests who have already arrived is to nibble on the
appetizers and anticipate the feast which is to come. To sit down and begin to [feast]
would be unpardonable . . . especially since the host is out looking for the missing
guests, and could certainly use some help.
Here is my deep fear: that when I take my seat at Gods banquet table, the seat next to me will be
empty - and it will be my fault.
So why are we here today? What is this church for?
Here is what the devil would like us to do to make sure he stays in business:
Fill our committees rather than deploy missions
Get new members rather than make new disciples
Keep the doors open rather than open new doors
Keep ourselves comfortable rather than make the world uncomfortable
Protect our place and privileges rather than proclaim the Gospel
But most of all, we will help keep Hell a going operation is we just fall for the temptation that
there is plenty of time, plenty of time, and we dont need to renew our devotion to God today. Theres
plenty of time, and while we delude ourselves thinking that way, the devil will order more trainloads of
brimstone, because he wont be going out of business anytime soon.
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