How Can God Send People to Hell?
People today want a God without wrath to take man without sin into a kingdom without justice through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
- Richard Niebuhr “The Kingdom of God in America”
Among the objections voiced against Christianity, this one is, in my experience, one of the most popular. Any objection to Hell strikes me as being made on two levels; an intellectual level and an emotional level. We object on an intellectual level because the existence of Hell does not seem to jive with a good and just God, but we also react on a visceral, powerful emotional level as well. The Bible says that God is good, and Christians seem to parrot the phrase “God loves you” or even “God is love.” How can we possibly reconcile these two extremes of love and Hell?
First and foremost, I want to make sure we are all on the same page when we say “Hell.” Just as the media has incorrectly spread the message that in Heaven people become angels and are reunited with their friends and family, so it has also spread the message that Hell is a torture chamber beyond even the cruelty of Auschwitz attended by demons and devils with cloven hooves. Both images are incorrect. As an interesting and significant aside, neither devils nor Satan “rule” Hell. There is no King of Hell, it is a prison. And while Satan may be the biggest and baddest prisoner in there, he remains a prisoner all the same subject to the power of God.
More to the point, however, no one ends up in Hell apart from his or her choice in the matter. Hell is not where people go because they just didn’t believe the right thing and play by God’s rules. God is not capricious, He is not a spoiled child with infinite power who throws a tantrum when people don’t do what He wants and so He throws them away to be tortured forever.
“’Son of man, say to the house if Israel, ‘This is what you are saying: our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?’ Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.’ Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11-11)’”
Clearly, the choice to either die or not die (that is accept or reject God) is a choice we make, or don’t make, and a choice we are responsible for.
God’s intent for His creation was life, not death; relationship with Him, not separation. Yet people decide to turn away from God and, in so doing, pave their own way to Hell. God does send people to Hell, but those who go are those who have said their whole life, in thought, word and deed, that they will not live the life God has prepared for them which is, by the way, better than the life anyone could make on his or her own. As C.S. Lewis remarked, “The gates of Hell are locked on the inside.”
Those who go to Hell are given exactly what they want; life apart from and without God’s love, light, goodness, hope and direction. Life without God. And if you turn away from the source of all light, life, goodness and hope – what you are left with is very bleak indeed. God is loving, indeed God is love, but we here in America are only willing to accept the soft virtues of compassion, tenderness, tolerance and mercy and do so in a highly sentimental way. We forget that God is also the hard virtues as well; He is just, moral, righteous and holy.
Therefore, Hell itself is not defined geographically (like a place) but relationally (like a relationship between two people). Those in Hell are, from that point on, removed totally from any relationship with God. And while God sends people into Hell who have essentially been choosing Hell their whole life (as mentioned previously), Hell is punishment but God does not himself punish anyone in Hell – he does not stand there with a whip to punish those who just didn’t believe the right thing. Hell is the natural consequence of us rejecting God our entire lives, and God gives us over to what we want – life without him. It is a poignant reminder of human finitude that we cannot be totally rid of God until, after we have died, he finally gives us just that.
Finally, even the existence of Hell testifies to God’s love for his creation in that he allows them to either choose him or not to choose him. God does not force people into Heaven who do not want to go – even Heaven would be Hell for someone who wanted to be apart and autonomous from God. J.P. Moreland compares just such a man to this experience: have you ever been at a party, where someone is more handsome than you, funnier than you, and more intelligent than you – and you hated being around that person? How much worse then, for that person, to be in the presence of God himself? It would be tortuous. Hell also demonstrates the essential worth and dignity that all humans have in the eyes of their creator, even if they choose to not enter into a relationship with that creator. God could annihilate those who do not choose him, that is erase them completely from existence (even their soul) as a sort of spiritual “mercy-killing” or to not waste space for those who did not choose him. But he allows everyone his or her choice, to choose God or to choose himself (or herself).
- Richard Niebuhr “The Kingdom of God in America”
Among the objections voiced against Christianity, this one is, in my experience, one of the most popular. Any objection to Hell strikes me as being made on two levels; an intellectual level and an emotional level. We object on an intellectual level because the existence of Hell does not seem to jive with a good and just God, but we also react on a visceral, powerful emotional level as well. The Bible says that God is good, and Christians seem to parrot the phrase “God loves you” or even “God is love.” How can we possibly reconcile these two extremes of love and Hell?
First and foremost, I want to make sure we are all on the same page when we say “Hell.” Just as the media has incorrectly spread the message that in Heaven people become angels and are reunited with their friends and family, so it has also spread the message that Hell is a torture chamber beyond even the cruelty of Auschwitz attended by demons and devils with cloven hooves. Both images are incorrect. As an interesting and significant aside, neither devils nor Satan “rule” Hell. There is no King of Hell, it is a prison. And while Satan may be the biggest and baddest prisoner in there, he remains a prisoner all the same subject to the power of God.
More to the point, however, no one ends up in Hell apart from his or her choice in the matter. Hell is not where people go because they just didn’t believe the right thing and play by God’s rules. God is not capricious, He is not a spoiled child with infinite power who throws a tantrum when people don’t do what He wants and so He throws them away to be tortured forever.
“’Son of man, say to the house if Israel, ‘This is what you are saying: our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?’ Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.’ Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11-11)’”
Clearly, the choice to either die or not die (that is accept or reject God) is a choice we make, or don’t make, and a choice we are responsible for.
God’s intent for His creation was life, not death; relationship with Him, not separation. Yet people decide to turn away from God and, in so doing, pave their own way to Hell. God does send people to Hell, but those who go are those who have said their whole life, in thought, word and deed, that they will not live the life God has prepared for them which is, by the way, better than the life anyone could make on his or her own. As C.S. Lewis remarked, “The gates of Hell are locked on the inside.”
Those who go to Hell are given exactly what they want; life apart from and without God’s love, light, goodness, hope and direction. Life without God. And if you turn away from the source of all light, life, goodness and hope – what you are left with is very bleak indeed. God is loving, indeed God is love, but we here in America are only willing to accept the soft virtues of compassion, tenderness, tolerance and mercy and do so in a highly sentimental way. We forget that God is also the hard virtues as well; He is just, moral, righteous and holy.
Therefore, Hell itself is not defined geographically (like a place) but relationally (like a relationship between two people). Those in Hell are, from that point on, removed totally from any relationship with God. And while God sends people into Hell who have essentially been choosing Hell their whole life (as mentioned previously), Hell is punishment but God does not himself punish anyone in Hell – he does not stand there with a whip to punish those who just didn’t believe the right thing. Hell is the natural consequence of us rejecting God our entire lives, and God gives us over to what we want – life without him. It is a poignant reminder of human finitude that we cannot be totally rid of God until, after we have died, he finally gives us just that.
Finally, even the existence of Hell testifies to God’s love for his creation in that he allows them to either choose him or not to choose him. God does not force people into Heaven who do not want to go – even Heaven would be Hell for someone who wanted to be apart and autonomous from God. J.P. Moreland compares just such a man to this experience: have you ever been at a party, where someone is more handsome than you, funnier than you, and more intelligent than you – and you hated being around that person? How much worse then, for that person, to be in the presence of God himself? It would be tortuous. Hell also demonstrates the essential worth and dignity that all humans have in the eyes of their creator, even if they choose to not enter into a relationship with that creator. God could annihilate those who do not choose him, that is erase them completely from existence (even their soul) as a sort of spiritual “mercy-killing” or to not waste space for those who did not choose him. But he allows everyone his or her choice, to choose God or to choose himself (or herself).
posted by Brian at 10:49 AM
2 Comments:
This is just typical of the way you theists 'threaten' your own believers into eternal damnation by a supernatural being. Incidentally, both concepts here still unproved. Your entire response focuses primarily on this 'threat'. You can explain the meaning of god in any way you choose; the bottom line is your contradictions of this definiton scompare to your line of questioning. To add another supernatural being (now an enemy of god - the devil) into this equation is really becoming quite absurd. Atheists do not beleive in the existence of god, so how do justify the introduction of another anti-hero!???
Thanks for your post Deangelo, and welcome to the discussion!
As to your post, I don't quite follow what you are trying to say. I don't see any threatening in what I said, nor do I see a contradiction.
Quite simply, the Bible asserts that we have a choice to make, and that choices have consequences. If we choose to remain apart from that which is good, holy, light, life and pure - then the result will most assuredly be unpleasant to say the least. Jesus says it is a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth," a place without comfort or satisfaction of any kind.
Apart from which the problem of the "addition" of another supernatural being, as you put it, is hardly a willy-nilly or ad-hoc assertion (which seems to be what you are implying). The existence of the devil has been testified to by both the scriptures and the church for some two thousand years, long before such complaints were ever made, so I don't see how belief in Satan's existence can be contrived as ad hoc.
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