Someone is rolling his eyes at that last paragraph. Maybe that someone is you…
Traffic has slowed to a crawl. A furniture truck has nudged its way in, blocking your view ahead, but you check the rearview mirror and notice cars backed up roughly to the planet Mercury. You hit the radio to see if the Action News helicopter with the Traffic-Cam that “gets you where you want to go” really will. Whoa! Your hand shoots back to the volume knob as fast as a surprised roach making for the floor crack—your ears are splitting from some screaming electric guitar begging to be put out of its misery. Cranking down the volume you find your station. Lisa what’s-her-name, “Live on the scene,” is giving the doleful news. You check your watch, sigh, and hit the scan button to kill time.
A funky rap number threatens to knock the begeebers out of your speakers. You flip the button. An advertisement. The button again. Another ad—“unbelievably low prices.” More buttons. Elevator music. An angry talk-show caller (Republican, you gather). Some country artist getting rich singing about how great it is to be poor. Ad. Ad. But then…some real entertainment.
The Reverend Doctor Somebody is deep into his sermon and has found his rhythm. You can hear the pages of his Bible flipping, only he pronounces it Bi-eee-ble. His doctorate apparently was not in grammar.
“Ooh,” you smile to yourself, “this guy is good.”
The sermon is on hellfire and damnation. He makes the sizzle as real as if you were at home in your kitchen frying bacon. The occasional honking of horns around you becomes the moaning of lost souls. “Can you picture, beloved, the terror that awaits the unsaved in the Great Beyond?”
“Yes, brother!” you holler, hand raised in oh-so-sincere devotion.
As he wheezes into the microphone you can almost picture his waistline straining at the buttons of a green-and-yellow sport coat. When he hits the high note to say “Jeeeeezus” you’d be willing to bet your eternal salvation that he rises on his toes behind that pulpit. Yes, for all his mournful wailing the good doctor seems to be enjoying himself as he holds forth about hell. But hey, what’s this? Traffic seems to be moving again just as the sermon is ending and the quartet comes to sing.
“Yes, Reverend,” you croon devoutly, “send me that free literature.” Another bozo ranting about hell. You punch in a soft rock station and slip the car into gear.
It is 1946, a Tuesday noontime at the Eagle and Child pub in St. Giles, England—affectionately known as the “Bird and Baby,” not far from the spires of Oxford University. To the congenial background of a crackling fire and the tinkling of glasses, friendly conversation murmurs about the room. In the corner at the rear nests a group of weekly usuals from the university. Formidable minds, these. Lounging around the table, they draw thoughtfully on their pipes between sips of bitters. They discuss literature and quote poetry, much of it their own, going at it “hammer and tongs” AS ONE WOULD LATER SAY—DEBATING IDEAS, CRITIQUING EACH OTHER’S MANUSCRIPTS, matchings wits, reveling in the good-hearted swordplay.
All are respected academics. One of their number, J. R. R. Tolkien, will one day be loved worldwide as author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But the gentleman seated across from him will become legendary. Himself an Oxford don, that gentleman has already turned heads as the atheist-become-Christian who convincingly defended his faith over nationwide BBC broadcasts during the recent war. His fame is growing yearly for his scholarly publications in literature and thought-provoking books on Christianity. By this time next year his face will front Time magazine. He will eventually be seated as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge and earn the universal respect of his peers, even those opposed to his religious notions. Within three decades after his death his printed books in many languages will number well over forty million, making him the best-selling Christian author of all time.
His name is C. S. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis is known for his conservative tweed sport coat, not a green and yellow one. Yet he too believes in hell. He has written the following about the doctrine of eternal punishment: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”1
In fact, he has penned an entire book examining the reality of that awful place.
No enjoyment here in holding forth about hell.
So it’s not just bozos who believe in a place of torment after death—Oxford profs do too. It’s not just sophisticates driving Volvos who shake their heads at hellfire sermons—the tattooed, tobacco-chewing driver of that furniture truck also turned the radio preacher off. The issue is not primarily intellectual. It’s spiritual. Many people reject the biblical notion of hell simply because they find it too horrible to entertain. Would a merciful God draw such a place on the map? If so, it’s…well…absolutely hellish—an endless extension of earth’s worst moments. A miserably written final chapter with no THE END. Imagining it drains the blood from us.
So understandably, hell’s stock has fallen lately from lack of public confidence. Of course atheists have never bought into “the place downstairs.” For them, belief in an afterlife is roughly equivalent to having faith in Bart Simpson. But thousands, perhaps millions, reject hell as a myth yet still believe in heaven and cherish fond hopes of going there. This kind of one-sided optimism is straight out of Oz. It defies explanation. No ostrich has more sand in his eyes than these people. What straws are they grasping? Some cling hopefully to the Kubler-Ross phenomenon—reports of people clinically dead who revived telling of blissful beyond-the-grave experiences. But there are also documented reports of people whose dance on the edge of eternity left them terrified beyond words.2 Are these reports being taken seriously? Others draw comfort from the Bible—its descriptions of a compassionate God and the joys awaiting his children in the world to come. Surely if we hate suffering, God must hate it worse and could never have founded an institution as horrible as described in Dante’s Inferno. But the same Jesus who gave heaven a five-star rating also described an otherworldly chamber of horrors. And he made clear that Satan doesn’t top the list of people to be feared. For the determined evildoer, God is the one to shudder at. “[Hell] has long been prepared; it has been made ready…Its fire pit has been made deep and wide, with an abundance of fire and wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze” (Isaiah 30:33).3
Have we really grasped the fact that God runs hell? We tend to think of that lower world as Satan’s neighborhood—he’s the tough guy who prowls the streets and calls the shots. But Satan will be yesterday’s news in hell—the once-feared bully who’s been thrashed and sent to his room by a strapping big Dad you don’t want to mess with. His screaming and wailing will be heard from outside his window for blocks. “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur.…[He] will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). God, not Satan, will send ripples of fear through everyone there. “They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne’” (Revelation 6:16).
Have you ever seen an uncomplaining, long-suffering person finally vent a righteous rage? It’s more sobering than watching a foul-tempered factory boss cuss out his workers for the sixth time in one morning. In hell, God won’t be the baby Jesus, meek and mild; he will be the hulking male warrior come to do battle. He will be patience exhausted.
What could be more horrifying than having as your prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer a Father whose son you murdered? Someone you’ve ignored and offended all your days? Someone whose mercies you have ungratefully inhaled over a lifetime—like the spoiled kid on Christmas morning tearing through his gifts with no thought about who gave them? Someone whose interests and reputation you have only cared about when it served your purposes? Someone to whom you made promises when
in trouble, but forgot them the minute things got better? Someone with meticulous knowledge of your every wicked thought, selfish motive, unkind word, and shady deed from your earliest days? Someone who can never be outwitted, sweet-talked, or negotiated into accepting a plea bargain? Someone who cannot be talked into showing mercy, because the time for mercy has passed? Someone who is serving justice—doing what is right—to inflict eternal misery on you? Someone who will touch off praises in Paradise for rewarding you in kind for your sins? For the Scripture says: “Rejoice over [unrepentant people destroyed in hell], O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged [them] for the way [they] treated you” (Revelation 18:20).
But don’t misunderstand, as if God were rubbing his hands together thinking of more inmates arriving at the furnace doors. God didn’t make hell for people. Jesus said it was “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). It’s unnatural for humans to be there—as unnatural as our turning our backs on a Creator who loved us—as unseemly as our shrugging the Father’s kind arm from our shoulders while caressing Eden’s serpent coiled around our hearts. God takes no joy in sending anyone to eternal misery; his Son was a lifeguard, urgently warning swimmers of treacherous waters. But in dozens of passages God warns that he will hurl everyone into that unthinkable pit who persists in challenging or ignoring him.
“Say it ain’t so,” we yell like the shocked young baseball fan earlier this century who couldn’t believe some unwelcome news about his team. But it is so. Jesus himself told us, or we’d never believe it. He mentioned it more frequently than heaven. And he was blunt. His pleas were so urgent because hell’s pains are so unbearable.
Hell is spiritually and psychologically unbearable. Jesus likened it to being “outside”—the warmth and partying is indoors but the door is slammed on us. He described it as “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12).4 Darkness makes people lonely. Nighttime makes them afraid. No shimmering dance of candle there—no promising sunrises. No welcoming glow of Christmas lights through the windows. No sunwashed vistas of ocean or landscape. No lovely or pleasant faces. Eventually, no memory of what a smile ever looked like—just the disorientation of cave explorers whose flashlight batteries have run out. In abject darkness, people can do nothing but think. Jesus taught movingly about our thoughts in hell—remorse for missed opportunities, memories of friends and family we knew on earth, concern for those we loved whose destinies our bad examples may have affected. Our terrors and strong pangs of conscience will have no distractions or entertainments to drown them, no pleasant company. There will be company in hell, but none of it pleasant.
Hell is also physically unbearable. Jesus once said, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out…and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28–29). Never mind the task God will have raising people long buried, or those whose ashes have been scattered to the seven seas—God is omnipotent. But why raise the bodies of his enemies except to punish them through their five senses? “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
Jesus was specific about this. He likened hell to being cut into pieces. Better to be tossed in the ocean with a mill stone hung around your neck than set foot in there, he warned. Better to be maimed—hand and foot sawed off, eye gouged out—than to wake up in that inescapable prison (Matthew 24:50-51; 18:6, 8-9). Worse, if possible, are his earnest and repeated warnings of fire. No bodily injury matches severe burning. Yet this gentle teacher warned of the “fire of Gehenna.” Gehenna was a ravine to the southwest of Jerusalem where trash burned perpetually. By Jesus’ day it had become the standard figure for hell, and Jesus agreed with that usage.
“But aren’t these descriptions just figurative?” we ask.
Whenever the biblical writers describe the afterlife, you sense that they are straining for adequate words. The realities are greater than the figures. Heaven is better than gold streets and pearly gates. If hell is not literal fire, it’s not because Jesus was exaggerating. It’s because hell is worse.
What makes hell supremely worse than any earthly pain is how long it lasts. Many sufferings in this life eventually go away. A pregnant woman in delivery keeps sane only by telling herself that all the pant-pant-blowing will soon end. The broken bone will mend. The headache will pass. Temporary relief is only an aspirin or a hit of morphine away—at least the edge will be gone. Boot camp will be over and I can go home on leave. It may take years, but gradually the misery will subside. But people with chronic physical or emotional pain lead the most desperate lives on earth. No break, no rest. That’s why some jump off bridges—to find relief at least in death.
But the person in hell will never know relief. People who have been there for thousands of years are not a day closer to the end of their sentence than when they entered. Hell is, in the sobering words of Jesus, “eternal fire.” He called it eternal in the same breath that he called heaven eternal (Matthew 25:41, 46). Unless God is lying about heaven, hell lasts forever.5
Okay, so this is what hell is like. But how does the existence of such an awful place explain any mysteries about our earthly sufferings?
HELL WILL SERVE JUSTICE TO THE WORLD’S HITLERS
Unless hell exists, there is no justice in the world. Consider the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, culminating in World War II. Could anyone begin to tally the suffering caused just from that awful conflict? Think of Poland carved up like a piece of meat—half tossed to the dogs of Germany, half to the wolves of Russia. Think of the children made fatherless, the wives made widows, the pain of tens of thousands of soldiers writhing on the battlefields with limbs blown off. Think of the fear of simple civilians whose towns were overrun. The women raped. The six million Jews murdered—gassed, shot, cremated.
Think of the evil festering in Hitler’s own mind and heart. He was never brought to justice—according to what most believe, he committed suicide. Yes, he was pressured into suicide by the encroaching Allied armies. But why should the butcherous Führer get off with sipping some strychnine in a glass a wine, in the comforting presence of his mistress? And what of his high-ranking followers? For every war criminal found guilty at the Nuremberg tribunal and hung, there were thousands of lesser players who committed unthinkable atrocities who were never caught—who fled to obscurity in South America or elsewhere and lived a normal life span in comparative ease.
How can this be fair? Even for those who were tried and executed, hanging was too good for them. It was a merciful end. These people were never paid back remotely in proportion to the pain they caused. If there is no hell, they are sleeping peacefully this moment after causing millions of others sleepless or nightmare-filled nights. Only the existence of hell brings some semblance of sense to the misery of World War II. Hell ensures that all will be repaid in full. No one will plea-bargain a reduced sentence. No dream-team of lawyers will enable these people to walk. Justice will be served.
HELL EXPLAINS WHY “GOOD” PEOPLE SUFFER
In 1981 Rabbi Harold Kushner published his national best-seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Almost everyone who picks up a copy can relate to the title. “I’m a good person. I’m a good neighbor. I pay my taxes. I don’t deserve the trials I’m going through.” You can’t read this book without immediately liking the author. Although a man of learning, he doesn’t flaunt his scholarship; his whole tone is humble and compassionate. Perhaps part of the reason is that he has suffered. When their son Aaron was three, the Kushners learned that their boy had a rare condition called progeria, “rapid aging.” They were told that Aaron would never grow much taller than three feet, would have little hair on his head or body, would appear elderly while still a child, and would live only to his early teens. Aaron did die at age fourteen. Rabbi Kushner wrote the book out of that experience.
For a Christian, rea
ding the book is bittersweet. It is so well-written, so interestingly illustrated with true stories, so sympathetic of the human dilemma—yet so unfaithful to the Bible, both the New Testament (which is understandable) and the Hebrew Bible (which is not).
The book’s thesis is this: since good people suffer unfairly, God must lack either goodness or power. The author opts to believe in God’s goodness but to abandon belief in his power—God is good, he hates suffering, he would like for all humans to live healthy, happy lives, but he cannot arrange for this. Yet God can strengthen people in their sorrow and do many helpful things as a compassionate deity.
What’s fascinating is that Mr. Kushner never entertains the possibility that we suffer because we are sinners. Understand, he doesn’t refute the idea that people are sinful and deserve suffering; he assumes that it’s not true.6 At times he almost appears to mock the idea. He writes his book “for all those people whose love for God and devotion to Him led them to blame themselves for their suffering and persuade themselves that they deserved it.” He has seen “the wrong people get sick, the wrong people be hurt, the wrong people die young.” He maintains that in God’s eyes “we are good and honest people who deserve better.”7
But the doctrine of hell pours sand on this mirage. It slaps the sleeping in the face and says, “Don’t you realize the nonsense you’re entertaining? Don’t you see the seriousness of your self-righteousness? You may think you’re measuring up. But God is angry enough to punish you eternally. He is holy beyond your wildest dreams, and you have offended him beyond your imagination. Your trials, even the worst of them, are merely a preview of what’s in store—they are spoonfuls of hell come early. Wake up! Examine yourself! Seek God!” In short, grant the Bible’s teaching that we all deserve hell—even the “best” of us—and the problem of why we suffer dissolves. Because we merit hell, the hell-on-earth we suffer is fair.
When God Weeps Page 20