What do you think about hell? Does it exist, and if so, who belongs there? Over 70% of American adults believe in heaven, but barely half believe in hell. When many people think of Satan and hell, they picture an imaginary lair governed by a cartoonish tyrant in red tights. On an episode of the NBC hit show about heaven called The Good Place, the lead characters visited the bad place (hell) for the first time. Their hell included a bunch of really annoying people: the first person who flossed her teeth in a shared office space, the first white guy to put his hair in dreadlocks, the first man to ever send an unsolicited picture of his nether regions, and people who say whiny things like “I need a vacation from my vacation.”
We Christians need to understand how insane this hell business sounds to most people in the world. They hear us saying three things: that God created everything, and He knows everything, so He must have created hell knowing that most people were going to end up being tortured there forever. Our justice system has a word for that: premeditated. In this view, God didn’t merely allow for hell; it’s part of his Master Plan. I would venture to guess that this concept of hell is one of the three most common theological reasons why people walk away from Christianity, and it may be a stumbling block for you as well.
How do we make sense of hell? A good place to start is by exploring what Jesus said on the subject. He spoke more about hell than everyone else in the Bible combined. Jesus spoke incessantly about the fires of hell. You might ask, Do I have to believe that hell is a place of fire? And to that I say, not necessarily. It could be that Jesus meant hellfire literally, or it could be just a metaphor. But before you breathe a sigh of relief, know this:
If hellfire is a metaphor, it symbolizes something far worse than just fire.
To understand hell, you have to grasp two concepts: sin and eternity. Christians believe people are made to build our identity around the love and presence of God. Basing your identity on anything else other than God – even something good like family or religion – is akin to sin because eventually it will tear you apart.
Sin works a lot like an addiction does: according to the law of diminishing returns. As time goes by, you need more and more of the substance, but you feel less and less of the satisfaction. You begin to see other people as pawns in your game to get whatever you want, and you turn on those who stand in the way of your addiction. You isolate yourself. You go into denial. You lose touch with reality. That’s how sin works.
More than any other substance or highest good, Jesus warned people that their love of money could land them in hell. He said “The love of money is the root of all evil.” And if you ever wonder why he and the Pharisees couldn’t get along, it wasn’t just about religion. Luke 16:14 says it was because the Pharisees loved money. When you love money, you’ll always need more of it, but every time you get more of it, you’ll feel less and less satisfied with how much you have. That’s the nature of sin.
The second concept you have to understand is eternity. Christians believe that, after our bodies die, part of us lives on. If we are addicted, and we see the way addictions worsen over time, what does that look like in eternity? CS Lewis illustrated it well:
Now there are a good many things I should not worry about if I’m only going to be alive for 80 years or so, but which I better worry about if I’m going to go on forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are getting worse so gradually that only a few people will notice. But they might be absolute hell in a million years…Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others…but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no ‘you’ left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud… (from God in the Dock)
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he warned about the fires of hell. Instead of appreciating money, you love it, and you hate those who stand in your way of it. Increasingly, your interactions with people become more and more about money – you value others based on how much of it they have, and you value yourself based on how much of it you have. And slowly, all your thoughts and interactions with others begin to revolve around money: how to get more of it, and how to protect what you have. The Christian idea of hell isn’t that of an angry God sending people there, it’s just a man who counts his money so often that one day he wakes up without a name, without an identity, without hope, forever and ever.
The quote from Lewis ends this way: “There are only two kinds of people–those who say ‘Thy will be done’ to God or those to whom God says in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”
Biblically speaking, hell is a freely-chosen identity based on something lower than God, going on forever. Just like addicts who are so deep in their addiction that they can’t imagine life without their substance of choice, those who are in hell can’t imagine their existence elsewhere.
Can you see in yourself the tendency to build your identity around something other than God? Maybe it’s money, or maybe it’s your career. If your career ended tomorrow, would you still be yourself? If you lost everything you had, would you know who you are? Or maybe it’s marriage. If your spouse left you tomorrow, would you still be someone? If you’re single and ready to mingle, but you never get married, who will you become? Looks and youth can be idols, too. If, God forbid, you have a terrible accident tonight and your face is forever scarred, would your identity be disfigured too? Whatever that thing is for you, can you at least begin to see how it functions like an addiction, and how, in eternity, it could have the potential to become an all-consuming fire that could lead you to hell?
At some point we all have to ask ourselves, “What’s it going to take for me to stop being ‘the athletic man’ or ‘the popular man’ or ‘the successful woman’ or ‘the beautiful woman’ or ‘the family man’ or ‘the trophy wife’ or ‘the Super-mom’?” What will it take for you to smash your idols, to declare, “I am not my money, my looks, my marriage, or my career”?
Avoiding hell is not about being scared enough to go to church, to behave, or to do and say all the right things. It’s about accepting that your true identity is found in Christ and that, by his grace, you are a child of God.
Author’s note: I took parts of this reflection from a sermon I delivered at The Story in 2017. Watch the full sermon here.
