The Problem With Hell

Every Christian ought to sit quietly for an hour and think about hell - its foreverness, its remorse, its darkness, its torment. They should think about relatives, friends, neighbors, men everywhere who will soon be there. They should think about it long enough so that they will never be able to live normal, routine, complacent Christian lives again.

-William MacDonald

There are several reasons I don't believe in Hell (at least as a place of eternal torment for those who do not become Christians) but one of the biggest is the affect of this doctrine on those who sincerely believe it. I've seen more than one of my friends an emotional wreck over the idea of their loved ones burning in hell forever. Once they really think about it, about "its foreverness, its remorse, its darkness, its torment", it breaks their hearts. How could it not? I marvel that Christians are able to cope with this belief. Never mind complacency - just to function in this world with the knowledge that some people you love will suffer for eternity is a herculean task. I don't know how people can sleep or laugh or work or worship God while believing in Hell. I really don't know how it's possible.

I think most people cope with Hell by ignoring it - effectively not believing in it. But there are also those who do think about it - who believe in the sense that it changes the way they live their lives. I admire these people for their honesty and their courage, but I don't like the ways this belief affects their lives. For example:

1.The significance of hell is so great that it overshadows all other concerns. What are social issues, ethics, abundant life, even our relationships with God next to the horror of eternal torment? If our actions can affect the eternal destiny of those who would otherwise burn in hell, how can we invest our energy in anything else? (What would be better: ending world hunger, or saving one person from eternal torment? Pascalian wagers abound.) Thus converting others to our religion becomes our raison d'etre as Christians, and community, spiritual growth, and concern for others (beyond their eternal destination) become secondary concerns at best.

2. This can lead to an "any means necessary" approach to evangelism. If souls can be saved through deception, emotional manipulation or scare tactics, how can these things be bad? Hell houses are a result of this mindset, taken to the extreme. Most Hell-believers will feel that such an overt attempt to "scare the hell out of" sinners goes too far, but many have no qualms about making converts through less brazen forms of manipulation - emotional "worship" services, spiritual parlor tricks, dishonest marketing, hidden-agenda friendships, and so forth. I once worked at a week-long children's camp where the gospel (that is, a plea to believe in Jesus and be saved from hell) was presented at every opportunity - generally about four times a day. To me, this seemed like a desperate and unscrupulous attempt to nag, scare, or brainwash small children into joining our religion. To other staff, it was taking seriously our mandate to save souls. In short, people burdened with the responsibility of rescuing others from hell often resort to tactics that they would consider unconscionable if applied to any other end, even (or especially) the missionary efforts of another religion. I admit that not all who truly believe in hell give in to this temptation, but surly all must feel its pull.

3. Given the prevalence of any-means-necessary evangelism, it's no surprise that far more children become Christians than adults, and that child-like trust and gullibility are often conflated with faith. This misconception leads to a distrust of rationality and critical thinking (a.k.a. "the wisdom of this world"), and the idea that doubting "God" (or anything that claims to be of God) is a weakness or a sin.

4. If God has given us some responsibility for "winning souls", then we must be able to tell which ones need to be won. We may not be able to say definitively whether another person has fulfilled the criteria for salvation, but we need to at least know definitively what the criteria is. This leads to a compression of complex and nuanced Biblical teachings about faith and works, eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven into a very simple, clear-cut and dogmatic understanding of what salvation means and how it is acquired - something along the lines of praying a prayer. This thinking not only misses the complexity that these concepts (as I understand them) were meant to have, it denies the possibility of such concepts being complex. Shades of meaning, ambiguity, and deliberate unclarity about matters of salvation are luxuries that hell-believers cannot afford.

5. Of course, if the method of obtaining salvation must be clear and beyond doubt, this requires not only the Bible to be infallible (I don't have a big problem with this view) but also our interpretation of the Bible (I have a big problem with this view). Few Christians will say in so many words that their interpretation of the Bible (or their pastor's, or whoever's) is infallible, but many act as if it is. Because if it's possible that we're mistaken about what the Bible says about salvation, then it's possible that all our efforts to "witness" have been in vain. It's even possible that we ourselves are hell-bound. Surely God wouldn't let this happen. (Experience has taught me to be suspicious of "Surely God wouldn't" arguments.) My concern is that once we decide that there are certain things God wouldn't allow us to be wrong about, it's easy to lengthen the list.

6. If you believe that God has made the method of salvation clear and obvious, you've got to explain why lots of people don't go for it. The easy explanation is that they're blinded by sin. I won't dwell on this point (which I've discussed before), but I see some pretty big problems with believing that anyone who disagrees with you is lying, corrupt, confused or ignorant. And as with the last point, once you believe that everyone else is blind to the truth about salvation, you have to wonder if they're blind to truth on all sorts of other issues which seem clear to you.

7. Not surprisingly, people who believe that they escaped eternal suffering through a single decision made when they were four often have some anxiety about the possibility of other decisions they've made or will make negating their salvation. Thus it becomes necessary to stress that only this one act has eternal, irrevocable consequences. No other choice or behavior, however willful, however cold-blooded, and however often repeated, can undo the decision you were prompted to make way back when you still believed in Santa Claus. Of course, someone who prays a certain prayer today may feel differently tomorrow, or 20 years from now. So why does a single decision, so often provoked by emotion and fear (or "the prompting of the Spirit" to the less cynical) and generally made at a very young age, make the difference between heaven and hell, regardless of anything - anything at all - that happens afterward? This seems absurd to me. But more importantly, reducing salvation to escaping hellfire through a single act of repentance trivializes all our other acts, for example, our treatment of those in need. (Which Jesus seemed to think was a big deal. Note that he doesn't say "I was hungry and you used the promise of food to lure me in for a sermon.")

I could probably go on, but this post is already too long, and I've been working on it (or putting off working on it) for over a month. I should say in closing that my criticisms are primarily against a very conservative view of hell and salvation - essentially, pray-the-prayer-or-burn-forever - and that there are various conceptions of hell that are less susceptible to these criticisms. I trust the reader to determine how well a given concept of hell avoids these problems. If you'd like to share how you deal with the problems I've mentioned, if you'd like to hear my opinion on a certain view of hell, or if you think any of the problems I've listed aren't problems, I'd love to hear from you.