What the Hell?

The artist has to ask questions in order to create. It is from the questions that the creative life emerges. Artists ask themselves what if questions, and then proceed to ask everyone else if what has come out of their questioning is really art.

Writers of fiction do this all the time. C. S. Lewis asked what God’s reconciling work would look like in a land populated by mythic creatures, and produced The Chronicles of Narnia. Stephen King asked what kind of world people would create if most of the human population was wiped out by a plague, and produced The Stand.

It occurs to me that some of the folks in the Christian world who take a great deal of heat are the ones who ask some difficult what if questions, like: What if God’s love is broader and more generous than we’ve imagined? Or, What if our dominant views about the atonement are limited and not really true to our scriptures? They usually start by asking themselves those kinds of question, and then they ask the rest of us, “What do you think—is this Christianity?”

One of the questions that always intrigue me is about Hell. Suggesting that our traditional views about Hell could be flawed usually creates a firestorm of outrage. People ask if God really assigns both the genocidal maniac and the nominal slob who never amounted to much to the eternal and fiery tortures of Hell, and some folks respond as though the idea of countless multitudes screaming in agony forever is comforting.

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once said something to the effect of, “It’s not that I don’t believe in Hell. It’s just that I don’t want anyone to be there.”

The idea of Hell—at least, the idea of Hell as a tortuous place created to take in all who deserve to go there—has its problems. First of all, the Bible doesn’t speak with a singular voice about Hell. There are multiple images related to where dead people go: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna. We are even told in The Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “descended to the dead” (some versions say “Hell”), causing us wonder what he did while he was there.

But, secondly, we struggle with some other problems as well. Since, according to Revelation 20:10, the devil ends up being tossed into the lake of fire and is tormented forever, we have to wonder: So who torments everyone else? Is it God who receives the worship of the faithful dead with one hand, and stokes the fires of Hell with the other? And he does this forever?

And we’re not really sure what it is that qualifies us for Hell. Is it our behavior, or our belief?

Here’s an example: The 20th century poster boy for pure, maniacal evil is Adolf Hitler, most folks would agree, and we would consign him to the most distant and painful corner of Hell available. But what if, just before he died (and if his girlfriend shot him in the head rather than Hitler committing suicide, just to keep things simple), he repented of his great transgressions and asked God to forgive him and then put his trust in Jesus? Wouldn’t he now be in heaven with all the saints and angels? I suspect that most Evangelicals would vote yes on that.

But if right belief is the ticket to Heaven, then wouldn’t the six million Jews that died as Hitler’s command be languishing in Hell? After all, their belief system would probably not include Jesus. So, really, based on that thinking, we can’t condemn Hitler to Hell for his actions, only for his lack of belief.

I understand that not all people, including Evangelical Christian people, would think that things worked that way. However, the questions should still be asked, and it is, in my view, the vocation of theological artists to do the asking. And when the artists ask everyone else, “What do you think—is this Christian?” we should all stop and say, “Well, I’m not sure. But maybe we should go back and check things out.”

The artist might be wrong, and answer to the question might occasionally be “no.” But the mere act of asking, when the question runs cross-grain to traditional thinking, should not result in a heresy trial.

And if someone asks if there really is a Hell, and even if we believe there is, our response ought to be a tearful one that says, “Yes, but I do wish it wasn’t so.”

On Suicide

I need to take a brief break from my series on heresy to comment about something else.

I am saddened by the death of Rick and Kay Warren’s son, Matthew, and I pray for them. A lot of people have offered condolences and prayer, and I am grateful for those thoughtful responses. But I am also horrified by the hateful social media comments that some people—Christian and non-Christian alike—have so quickly unleashed, like scorpions out of a demonic fire hose.

This tragic situation has also caused some other people to share their personal grief about losing someone to suicide, not only in an attempt to empathize with the Warren family, but also to ask some very real and painful questions about what happens when human beings voluntarily end their lives.

Does God abandon them for all of eternity?

There was a time in the history of the Christian church—both Catholic and Protestant—that a doctrine about suicide insisted that there was not hope for salvation for a person dying in such a way. After all, murder is a grave sin, right? But a murderer can later repent and seek God’s forgiveness. But a suicide cannot do that. It’s too late.

So, a genocidal maniac can kill untold numbers of people and then confess and repent just before the hangman’s noose snaps his neck, and he gets an eternal get-out-of-jail free card (even though his victims might have been denied that opportunity). But the person suffering deep pain, depression, and hopelessness is denied such grace? There is clearly something wrong with this way of thinking.

The Roman Catholic Church has changed its doctrine on the subject. Pity, compassion, and prayer for the mercy of God are the proper responses rather than the insistence on eternal condemnation. Most Protestants take the same view. I’m sure there are others in the mix holding on to the old view. You can hear from some of them on Twitter and Facebook.

The apostle Paul says something very important about human death and how it relates to God:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ 
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39)

We speak of Jesus as one who has “abolished death” (2 Timothy 1:10), and we see death as an inevitable event for all people, but an event that has lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15:55).

In the death of Jesus, God destroyed the power of death to have the last word. Death, by whatever means, has lost its sting. There is no deathly power that can trump God’s love. Even death by one’s own hand.

O God, who by the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, destroyed death, and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that your servant Matthew, being raised with him, may know the strength of his presence, and rejoice in his eternal glory; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer)