God and Hell

It’s been a few months. I can’t believe you’re still subscribed to this thing. Thank you very much for your loyal support.

Welcome, again, to another little series I decided to write. There could very well be two or three or four parts to this. Maybe five. Definitely not six, but seven? It could happen. It’s a pretty big subject. Let’s get into it.

One of the toughest topics of faith to have a conversation about surrounds the concept of Hell. I’ve brought up some of the objections to God’s goodness before. This one is more than fair:

“If God is a God of love, why would He create a place like Hell?”

It runs parallel with other conversations about free will. For instance, we may ask, “Do we really have a choice about God if He just throws us into an eternal torture chamber after we reject Him?” and wonder what kind of God would craft the universe in such a way in the first place.

One easy answer to that last question: No. And that’s the point. Why would God make a world without revealing the path to Himself as the obviously “good” one? Honestly, how could He? He did not hide the path to paradise in coded manuscripts and forgotten secrets, watching with mischievous delight as his creatures struggle to find some secret knowledge to punch their ticket in. If you trust His word, the reality of His offer is pretty clear: we get an eternity with God or an eternity in Hell.

“But, come on, isn’t that sort of deceptive? He isn’t really giving us a choice!”

Not quite. God makes Himself to be the endgame because, if He were to offer us an eternity of anything else, we would always end up miserable. He cannot give us love, life, beauty, joy or any other good thing outside of Himself because, outside of Himself, those things simply do not and cannot exist. He is those things. He can’t make those things an endgame in themselves because He will always be, at the very least, the necessary engine they run on.

Even now, though it is fallen, the universe only exists because He made it and maintains it. He’s pretty remarkable, and He’s left you a choice to roll with Him or not (by the way, He really wants you do).

So, if you think the whole system with Hell is rigged because God hasn’t left any better options than Himself, the One who is Life Itself, then you truly don’t understand who it is you so desperately want to reject.

God isn’t Coercive

God is a lot of things, but He’s not coercive. Pretend you’re selected to participate in a race. Let’s say I offer you the choice between a rusty, used tricycle and a brand new McLaren to use in the race, and tell you that you get to keep the McLaren if you win with it. Am I being coercive or forceful? Am I tricking you? The only reason for doubt comes in thinking the choice is too easy or too good to be true, and that it’s all a trick.

God is offering us the choice between Himself and Hell (everything He is not). He is the McLaren. No strings attached. The only fool who chooses the tricycle does so out of ignorant pride, perhaps thinking either the race is rigged or that he legitimately has the ability to win a race against fast steel with his own human legs peddling as hard as they can.

That Pride is the root of sin. Ultimate foolishness is displayed by the one who insists on running this race through life totally on their own. They trust nothing but their own devices. They love nothing but themselves. They refuse genuine Life. For those such as these, Hell exists. Not necessarily as a prison to be held and tortured in, but as a fish who really thinks dry land is a lovelier place to be. But can we really expect a fish to know the difference between a torture chamber and the freedom of dry land and air? Like men in a place without Living Water, it simply wasn’t made to be there.

This is why some theologians describe Hell not as a place the Foolish are “sent” to receive punishment, but as an existence they inevitably create for themselves.

CS Lewis describes these individuals as those who have rejected everything but themselves. Their wish is granted for the man, “to live wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there.”

A fish cannot live wholly in himself. It needs water.

Men cannot live wholly to themselves. They need God.

This is why Christianity constantly pushes repentance.

The Way Out

The fish metaphor is stupid, but it works, so I’ll keep using it: the fish cannot get back to the life it was meant to live (in other words… not die) without flopping its slimy tail-end back around and into the water it came from.

Humans, made in the image of God, cannot get on with true Life (and away from Sin or Death), without turning around and clinging to the One who they were designed to be with.

God is good. I mean, really, good. He made a world out of Love, with its chief inhabitants designed in His own image. He also designed the world in such a way that it relies on Him for its own existence. And thank goodness for that, because otherwise it really would not last without Him. He is Life itself. There is no life without Life.

Because He created a world built to run on Life, yet with the ability to reject Life, it inevitably has a function of death. There has to be an alternative if the creatures in His world are truly free.

So where do they go, in the end?

The fish learned to call it Hell.