Is There a Hell?

Is there a Hell? The three faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam say a definite “yes,” just as they do about the existence of Heaven and a coming Final Judgment.

Heaven and Hell are as two destinations, the one of light and love, the other of darkness and hatred. And we are purportedly journeying toward one or the other right now. If toward Hell, God wants us to turn, and offers us constant opportunities to do so. If we will but turn to God, God will direct us to Heaven, God will see us home.

Hell is both a process and a state. It begins here and leads to a terrifying place beyond this life, which the Bible calls a lake of fire, into which we are thrown where we burn but never burn up. Yet that is also an apt description of hatred here, which is very close to the state of Hell. Hell is not indifference, for there is no fire in that. Hell begins here as the dark burning of the heart inflamed with the fuel of bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, jealousy, envy, self-pity and hatred. Hell is when you see what you want and cannot have it.

In “New Seeds of Contemplation,” Thomas Merton says: “Hell is where no one has anything in common with anybody else except the fact that they all hate one another and cannot get away from one another and from themselves. They are all thrown together in their fire and each one tries to thrust the others away from him with a huge, impotent hatred. And the reason why they want to be free of one another is not so much that they hate what they see in others, as that they know others hate what they see in them: and all recognize in one another what they detest in themselves, selfishness and impotence, agony, terror and despair.”

Hell is always of our own choosing, not of God’s. God wills that no one go to Hell, but that all turn and live (see Ezekiel 18:30-32). Hell is therefore the place we end up when we have constantly, willfully refused the appeals of God and love. It is not as if God flings us there in God’s righteous wrath; it is rather where we put ourselves, while God continues to love and grieve over us. Hell is not God’s final word to us, but our final word to God.

C. S. Lewis, in “The Great Divorce,” says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened” (p.72-73).

Hell is like a “black hole” we enter here when we lose the capacity to love. Hell is a state of silent misery, which we try to cover up and over with the pleasures and diversions of this life. We do this to no avail: our misery will eventually overtake us, our emptiness haunt us unto our final hours.

C. S. Lewis believed that Heaven and Hell remain end places of our continued choosing. He said that even should we die and go to Hell, we will still have opportunities to turn to God and choose Heaven.

Rob Bell says much the same thing in his recent book, “Love Wins.” He asks, how could God love you like a son or daughter one minute and then throw you into an eternal Hell of privation and torture the next? I believe it is beneath the greatness of God’s love to ever close the door forever to reconnection. As the Psalmist says, God is as present in Hell as in Heaven. And wherever God is, there is Love.