On Hell

First let me lay out an important truth that you should realize before reading any further: Nobody really understands how good people go to Hell just because they are unbelievers, especially not me. The problem is that we are finite minds trying to comprehend an infinite intelligence. Like it or not, our souls and minds are intrinsically tied to the meaty part that we call our brains. Our thought is chained to the whimsy of protons and electrons. Our minds have a beginning and an end and therefore can never “fit around” a concept that is without end (i.e. God, Heaven, Hell, etc.). There is a very good reason that the Bible teaches us using methods like fear, rituals, commands etc.; because our minds are too small to really understand the BIG truth. For instance, Wendi and I will soon be potty training Judah. Basically we'll be saying to him “no, you can’t just go around taking a dump in your pants and then expect someone to clean you up for the rest of your life”. Why? Well the ‘why’ is a bit too large a concept for him to understand just yet but as he grows (in age) he will begin to understand naturally. Apply the same principle to our situation and you’ll understand why Jesus said ‘only through Me’. (John 14:6)

Jesus says, “No, you can’t just be a nice person and go to Heaven.” (I'm paraphrasing here)

“Why?” we ask.

“Well the ‘why’ is a bit too large a concept for you to understand just yet, but as you grow (in spirit) you’ll begin to understand naturally.”

That being said, let me try to share with you the (very) small, incomplete explanation for Heaven/Hell that God so graciously revealed to me. We’ll need to agree on some simple concepts, or ‘precepts’ if you will, in order to understand the big picture so I’ll define a few things first.

First precept: You must agree that there is a God who is eternal, meaning He has no beginning or end, He was not created, He simply IS.

Second precept: You must agree that this God created things (Birds, trees, orgasms, jam, more jam perhaps, radiators, Belgium, etc.).

Third precept: you must agree that God is love. That is to say, He is not hate. God is simply goodness; not some all-encompassing, good and evil, love and hate, light and dark, life-force of which everything is a part of and He is a part of everything. God is just love and good, He is not hate and evil too.

So, what can we draw from the statement, "there is a loving God, who simply IS, and who created all things"? Well, first we can say that there must be two kinds of stuff in existence: the kind of stuff that simply exists, and the kind of stuff that was created. God is the first kind of stuff, therefore if God is love, then love must also be the first kind of stuff. What does that tell us? That hate is also the first kind of stuff, the kind that simply exists, the eternal kind, because if there is stuff that love IS and love DOES, there must also be stuff that love is NOT and does NOT. Hate and sin and evil is this type of stuff; the type of stuff that God is NOT and does NOT. If nothing were bad, how could anything be good?

So now we have the literal definition of Hell. Hell is eternal separation from God, hence, eternal separation from love, from hope, forgiveness, justice, goodness, etc. Too often Christians get confused and frustrated because they try to define Hell by a reason for being there. It’s illogical to say Hell is a punishment for sins or unbelief. Would you say that your bedroom is punishment for not taking out the trash? Of course not. Your bedroom is a just a place, you may be there for punishment, or you may be there by choice. Hell is the same way. Hell was not created as a punishment for sins (though if we end up there I’m sure we’ll feel punished). Hell was not “created” at all¹, it simply exists because logically if you can be with God you can be without God. Yes, you can be there for punishment, but you can also be there by choice (and I believe if you really look beneath the surface you’ll find that everyone there is so by choice).

Now, on to the tricky part: why anyone ever ends up there. This is one of those things that we really can’t understand but we must learn to accept. In order to accept it, we must first accept two things: that God’s love for us is as eternal as He is, and His very first gift to us was the ability to choose to love Him back or choose to deny Him.

What exactly was the serpent’s temptation to Eve in the Garden? It wasn’t that she’d become super-intelligent by knowing about good and evil. What really got her attention was that this knowledge would make her “like God” (Gen. 3:5). At that moment she decided that she wanted to be deserving of worship; that she wanted to be in control; that she wanted to be “like God”. She could have eaten from the Tree of Life and lived forever but instead she chose to deny her Creator in order to better love herself. That is the absolute basis of all sin: that we might get what we want; that we might be in control; that we might be objects worthy of our own and other’s adoration. It’s in every single decision we ever make. When we decide to lust after one another without the bonds of marriage, when we decide to be a little greedy and buy a new video game rather than tithe the church, when we eat like pigs, when we despise our bosses and take our vengeance by stealing pens and paper clips, when those three quarters stay in our pocket for a possible Coke later rather than finding the hand of a hungry homeless man, when our jobs come home with us and make us neglect our family, when we want to beat-up our lover’s ex because we want our lover to know we are powerful, when we argue with the ones we love because we must prove that we do what we want regardless of how they feel about it, all these times we are choosing to love ourselves more than God.

It is for this reason alone that anyone ever winds up in Hell. If you were in love with someone who loved only himself and just used you for everything you’d give him, would you marry him and invite him into your family and your home? Surely not. You couldn’t no matter how much you loved him, and neither can God. He gives us ample opportunity to choose Him over ourselves. Job 37:7 and John 6:45 assure us that God makes every single person aware of His presence. He even went so far as to give us a way out because he knew that we’d never be able to perfectly love Him over ourselves (that way is belief in the Christ), but at some point God has to give up and accept that some of us will never love Him even a little more than ourselves (He gave us that choice). He doesn’t just stop loving us when we go to Hell. His love is eternal, but He cannot simply invite those who love only themselves into His family and His Heaven where love is true and true love is selfless. He’s really not sending anyone to Hell. He’s letting them go, because they’ve chosen themselves over Him and as we saw earlier the only alternative to being with God is to be without Him.

That’s why Christians are so constantly trying to share Jesus’ love with everyone we care about. Not because they will suffer for their unbelief, but because if they don’t believe we will suffer their absence in our Heavenly family!

¹There is of course the "lake of fire" spoken of in Revelation, but that's beyond the scope of this post.