I touched on this a little when I wrote about salvation and death, but I think Hell deserves its own place in how we distinguish between good and bad theology. I was raised with a fairly mild theology of Hell; it exists, but we aren’t sure what or where it is, so keep your head up and behave and you won’t have to worry about it. Just do your best. Don’t be too bad and you won’t end up there – but also remember that God is watching everything you do, so don’t screw up! (Mixed messages). American culture has substituted Santa and that stupid elf on the shelf for God; they know when we’ve been sleeping (blah blah blah) and will punish us with “no gifts for you!”, which for a kid is its own version of Hell. But I digress.
It is clear that Jesus believed in eternal punishment of some kind, although He spent a lot less time talking about it than He did about the Kingdom of God. Satan fell from the sky, He told the people; after the wheat and the weeds grow up, they will be separated, and the weeds will burn! You get the drift. Hell is used by many Christians as a warning for people who do bad things; Hell is ignored by a growing number of people who don’t think a loving God would torture anyone for eternity – even Hitler! Believing in Jesus, many believe, is the one thing that will keep us out of Hell and secure a place in Heaven, so what you do isn’t as important as what you say you believe. I get that God’s grace is present and that God can redeem even the worst sinner, but Jesus was also clear that, in fact, what we do and how we live matters at our final judgment.
In the same way that we don’t know what Heaven is like, we also don’t know what Hell is like. I agree with the “God is Love” people, but only to a point. I think that God’s grace is huge and that much of what we are told will send us to Hell will not. I don’t think of Hell as a place of torture; I think those who go there just don’t exist anymore. Salvation isn’t a point system, and neither is damnation. It isn’t like some game show announcer saying, “Ooh, you just missed it by a point Steve – sorry, but you go to Hell!” I think there are some people who are just too evil for God to allow to exist. They are so evil that they would taint Heaven, metaphorically. And I don’t want anyone to suffer for eternity; that seems a bit excessive. My hope – and this is all conjecture – is that God, while loving even the worst of us, can admit when a mistake has been made and rid existence of that evil.
So, I’m not sure there is a Good Theology of Hell, but I think there are lots of Bad Theologies of Hell that focus on behaviors that humans don’t like, but that God might not care as much about. These theologies are manifested by the Westboro Baptist Church’s ridiculous signs telling us that “God Hates Fags” (God doesn’t) or protestors outside of abortion clinics judging frightened girls (shame on those so-called Christian protestors!) The threat of Hell never frightened me; it seemed a bit too dramatic, and, honestly, self-centered, to think that God worries about most of those “damnable” offenses. Maybe my Sunday school teachers were right when they told me to keep my head up and do my best. Let’s stop worrying about every little thing we do wrong and leave the decision-making up to God. That is God’s job, after all.
Prayer – Help us to live lives acceptable to You, God of grace and forgiveness and judgment. Show us ways to help others in Your name. Amen.
Our art today is “Modern Hell” by Thomas Dowdeswell.