Perspective: The Gates of Hell

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

The Gates of Hell

Scripture:

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."

Revelation 21:5 (NRSV)

Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.

Luke 16:26 (NRSV)

Mirrors on the ceiling

The pink champagne on ice

And she said,

"We are all just prisoners here

Of our own device"

From "Hotel California" by The Eagles

Recently, at a Bible study, a friend of mine said that a lot of Christians don't like to discuss the more troubling aspects of our beliefs, such as the fear of God, hell, and things of that sort. What he said bothered me, not necessarily because I believe differently than he does but because I too tend to avoid such topics when, perhaps, I should address them.

For eleven years of my life, I attended a Christian school attached to a fundamentalist church, and, though I am thankful to this school for imparting to me extensive knowledge of the Bible, I have picked up an aversion to discussing the subject of the afterlife. The Gospel, which literally means "good news," hasn't always sounded like good news to me. As I understood it back when I was a student, all people have committed wrongdoings and are thus doomed to eternal conscious torment. Jesus Christ, both the Son of God and the only man who never sinned, died in order to take the punishment for all people. Anyone who puts his trust in Jesus and in His sacrifice will be spared from eternal damnation.

I basically came to believe that, if I didn't get my beliefs about Jesus straight, I would burn in hell forever and ever, and this is the reason I originally "got saved." Still I found myself haunted by fears and doubts. To keep my sanity, I eventually decided to forget about the afterlife and to instead focus on this life while trusting in God and trying to do what God calls me to do.

Since then, my beliefs about a lot of things have changed, including my beliefs about the afterlife. I still believe in hell, but I don't believe in hell in the same way that a lot of Christians believe in it.

Here and now I will try to articulate my current understanding of the undesirable state of existence that some people call hell. I realize that my own beliefs about this topic are somewhat different from the beliefs of other Christians, so I ask you to read with an open mind but also with prayerful discernment. I fully acknowledge that these are only my beliefs, and I claim no actual knowledge of the afterlife.

The first thing I want to say is that humanity is good by nature, and I know that a lot of people would disagree with me in that regard, saying that humans are actually sinful by nature. According to the creation story at the very beginning of the Bible, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good."¹ God saw that all of creation was good after God had already created humanity, thus God saw that humanity was good as well. In other words, "God don't make no junk."

God saw that both the earth and humanity were good, but, if you tune in to a television news program or open a newspaper or look at a news website, you will quickly see that people are, in fact, not good and that the world is not the good place God intended it to be. Humanity is good as created by God, but the catch is that we are not good because we are not fully human. There is something both inhuman and unnatural about all of us. Somehow, for some reason, all of humanity has become broken, and, ever since this happened, God has been at work putting humanity back together again. It is for this reason that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, left the glory of Heaven to live among mortals.

Christians often say that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, and I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Christians generally understand this to mean that Christ is God but that He is also like us. This is where I disagree. Peter Rollins points out that if Christ is both fully God and fully human then Christ is two things we are not. As Rollins once explained it, "To say someone is fully God is to say that they are as far from me as this earth is from the farthest star. To say that someone is fully human is to say that they are as far from me as the smallest quark."² In the life and teachings of Jesus Christ we see what God is like: as Christ said, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."³ In Christ, we also see what humanity was meant to be, for Christ has set an example for us.

Jesus once said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."⁴ A way is not something a person believes but something a person follows. Jesus did not call people to merely believe in Him but to follow Him. Christ not only calls us to hope for a restored creation but also calls us to be His disciples, following in His footsteps and participating in His work of restoring creation. When we pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,"⁵ we are not only expressing our hope for the future but also declaring our mission statement as followers of Christ.

According to the Old-Testament prophet Micah, all God really wants from people is "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."⁶ Christ embodied all of these things: He treated people fairly, showed kindness to those in need, and was the model of humility. Much more than that, Jesus embodied love. To His disciples He said, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."⁷ People do not live in the way they were created to live, but Christ leads us a different way, a way of love for one another.

Life is not what it was meant to be; the world is not what it was meant to be; and people are not who they were meant to be, but, like many Christians, I hold on to the hope that God's work of restoring creation will someday be complete and that all of creation will be restored to the goodness God intended in the first place. The end of the Book of Revelation describes a time when God will live on earth among the people and "wipe every tear from their eyes," a time with no more death or mourning or pain, a time of healing.⁸ I think Jeremy Camp describes this new creation beautifully when he sings, "There will be a day with no more tears, no more pain, and no more fears."⁹

Amid the beautiful description of the new creation is a chilling warning: "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."¹⁰ If Jeremy Camp is correct that in this new creation there will be no tears, pain, or fears, then there can be nobody present to create tears, pain, or fears. This means that if a person is perfectly happy with the way the world is now - full of violence, hatred, greed, and exploitation - he or she won't be at home when God makes all things new. One of Jesus' first messages was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."¹¹ If we refuse to repent of the things we do that cause suffering, then we cannot be a part of God's new creation. God is not going to force God's way on us, but will rather let us choose which path we will follow.¹²

Hell is what we choose when we decide not to take part in God's plan to restore this broken world. Hell is what we choose when we reject the way of love Christ has shown us. I do not believe, as many believe, that hell is a literal lake of fire into which God throws people for not believing the right things about Jesus. I believe that hell is not necessarily a place at all but rather a state of existence - a state of faithlessness, hopelessness, lovelessness, and godlessness.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." ~ Dante's Inferno

So often people think of hell as something that people might experience after they die, but what if hell is a reality in the world of the living as well? I think it is completely appropriate to speak of someone "going through hell" or to speak of something "hurting like hell." In my opinion, the saying, "War is hell," is a literal statement. Some creeds say that Jesus descended into hell. On the cross, Jesus went through hell because of the faithlessness and lovelessness of other people, and He experienced hopelessness and godlessness as He cried out, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"¹³ When we make destructive choices, we put ourselves through hell, and we also put other people through hell.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, had a number of interesting thoughts about hell. In the novel The Great Divorce, he writes, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."¹⁴ In The Problem of Pain, Lewis writes, "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."¹⁵

Perhaps the gates of hell were not built by God to keep prisoners inside but were instead built by hard-hearted people to keep God and God's love out. Perhaps hell is described in the song "Hotel California" when the woman in the story says, "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device."

Christ once said that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against [the Church]."¹⁶ What we often fail to realize is that Jesus is using militant imagery in this statement. According to Shane Claiborne, the followers of Jesus Christ - the Church - are called to storm the places of hell in the world in order to show love, grace, and freedom to those trapped inside.¹⁷ The Church is called to attack the unjust systems of this world and to show the world another way.

If you think that my beliefs have gone soft, please understand that my current belief about hell is the only way I can reconcile the concept of hell with the concept that "God is love."¹⁸ Please also understand that my current belief about hell does not necessarily offer me any comfort, for so often I am convicted about how I choose my own way over the way of Christ and therefore choose my own personal hell over the abundant life Christ wants for me. What does give me comfort though is knowing that I am still a work in progress, for God loves me and is working to transform me.

Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Whatever your beliefs about the afterlife, it is not enough for us to simply believe that Christ is our personal Lord and Savior. As Christ said, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of My Father in heaven."¹⁹ We must believe in Christ enough to actually follow in His footsteps. All of us are called to follow Christ in the way of love He has shown us. We are all called to be the Body of Christ, doing the very things Christ did. By following the Way, we learn the truth about who we were meant to be as humans, and we experience the abundant life that God intended for us since the beginning of creation.

Notes:

1 - Genesis 1:31 (NRSV)

2 - Peter Rollins. "Salvation for Zombies." January 15, 2012

3 - John 14:9 (NRSV)

4 - John 14:6 (NRSV)

5 - Matthew 6:10 (KJV)

6 - Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

7 - John 14:34-35

8 - See Revelation 21:1-22:7 (NRSV quoted)

9 - From his song "There Will Be a Day"

10 - Revelation 21:8 (NRSV)

11 - Matthew 3:2 and 4:17 (NRSV)

12 - Rob Bell. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. 2011, Harper One. pp. 36-39

People gave Rob Bell a lot of grief for challenging common conceptions of heaven and hell in Love Wins, but nowhere in his book does he claim that there is no hell.

13 - David A. Seamands. Healing for Damaged Emotions. 1981, David C Cook. p. 43

14 - C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce. ch. 9

15 - C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. ch. 8

16 - Matthew 16:18 (KJV)

17 - Shane Claiborne. Out of Ur: "The Gates of Hell." January 18, 2007

18 - 1 John 4:8

19 - Matthew 7:21 (NRSV)

The picture featured in this perspective is an illustration to Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré.

If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.