Populating Hell
… is not really my business. I recall one of my college professors who said that it was very liberating for him when he realized that it was not his responsibility to figure out who was going to be saved and who wasn’t. That’s basically my position. I tend to apply 1 Corinthians 2:9 (eye has not seen, etc) to the other side as well. We don’t really know. I suspect that when we do know what God has done, we will understand that to be just.
But raising the questions is a good thing, in my view. I’m not going to comment on Rob Bell’s forthcoming book which I haven’t seen. I just don’t find the advertising for it offensive. If you can’t discuss the questions it raising openly and reasonably, it’s time to learn.
I want to link to two friends who have made intelligent and challenging comments on this issue, Bob Cornwall and Allan Bevere. Both are thoughtful and challenging.
I’ll also link to a story I wrote that I hope challenges some thinking about hell, Hell Fire and Damnation. Yes, I’m using a popular story to plug something I wrote. 🙂
I hope the Socratic method is not used in the afterlife in the way you portray it in Hell Fire and Damnation. I’d be answering many of those questions, “How should I know?” or maybe a less aggressive way of saying that. It’s not just in discussions of the afterlife, but anything theological that I’m often reminded that I know of no way that a human being can know anything directly of the non-physical side of reality. Each one of us is utterly dependent on the quality of revelation we’ve received, mostly indirectly, to take our best guess as to what is beyond the physical universe. God? A creator God or not? A micromanaging God or not? A vengeful God or not? Shall we define God as the ultimate good things even atheists can agree on, love and truth? Can that God be vengeful? Personally my favorite definition of God is that God is whatever answers when I call out, “God help me!” If that’s not true, then what hope is there?
God is whoever and whatever God is, independent of what I believe. Lots of people are less interested in that than in arguing that the revelation about God they’ve received is the only plausible possibility, especially if that God is the traditional Christian God that about a billion people believe in, all the same way, consistent with the conservative, more or less literal way of reading the Bible as revelation from God, not just the men who wrote it. Could they all be wrong, even wildly wrong?
I have to remind myself that as much as images of Hieronymus Bosch paintings come to my mind when I hear Hell discussed, those images are not in the Bible. In the gospels, Hell is a smoldering garbage heap where the fire never ceases, but that’s a long way from a torture chamber intended to cause maximal pain to whatever survives this life but is unwelcome to be anywhere near God. There are a lot of possibilities for what that might be like metaphorically. Yet so many believers want to talk only about those Bosch paintings, as if being saved from something that bad is the only way to have proper gratitude to God. Otherwise we are heretics and infidels, they say, bound to be tortured in Hell forever, deservedly so, for believing something other than what true believers believe from their perfect revelation, as contradictory and contrary to reality as it can be. I’ve been scared by such conviction, though not so much lately. There really are problems with traditional beliefs, enough to make them not so scary eventually.
I would be disappointed if my afterlife were as colorless as you portray in Hell Fire and Damnation. There can’t be a mistake? Oh, really? I remember having a fantasy once about being treated poorly in the afterlife because of confusion about my identity. My last name in this life is not the name of my biological father. Could that be a source of confusion? What about people who have exactly the same name? My last name is not that common, yet there are multiple people in the US with the same name, as Google has shown me. People can believe in a perfect God, omnipotent, omniscient, and all the rest, but that’s not the only possibility.
The second half of that fantasy involved my fighting my way to God to complain about the mistake His minions had made. That has a parallel in real life. Traditionalists can say I know nothing of God. I beg to differ. Just ask Her.
Is God so much love that a vengeful God is impossible, that any talk of punishment in the afterlife is an anthropomorphic error? Maybe, but can’t a mother tiger combine love and vengeance in defense of her cubs? If some of those cubs are leading the others astray, is it love to save the majority and drive away the biggest troublemakers? Can troublemaking persist in the afterlife? One can say that God should transcend how animals express love, even human animals, but what if such a transcendent love is impotent? What if it takes venegeance to get anything done?
Is a God who loves too much to be vengeful, even the ironic vengeance you write about in Hell Fire and Damnation, similar to how Twilight Zone episodes always punished pride with irony, is that God’s love too transcendent to be worth much? Is there in fact interdependency that we have with God? Is there something in it for God that requires vengeance if threatened?
I don’t know, but it makes me uncomfortable to hear people say they have come to their own answer on this, for universalism or against it, for punishment in the afterlife or against it. Is there any reason for anyone to make amends for anything in the afterlife, for the sake of healing that person or many other people? Maybe not, maybe it’s best just to forget everything negative that happens in this life. After all, if people are bad, it’s often because they were taught to be bad, even those obnoxious people who say everyone who disagrees with them is going to Hell. Maybe punishment is appropriate for a few troublemakers who knew better, but not for the vast majority.
I don’t know. I hope God does. Maybe She’s winging it as much as some of us are. I just know that I’m drawn to God, that my prayers and questions are answered in a variety of ways. If I wind up punished for that, I’ll be surprised, but I’d have to admit in that case that I was very wrong. I’d have to give justice its due. Scary, but I go to God with that fear, and it’s better.
Interesting thoughts …
I would emphasize that Hell Fire and Damnation is a product of my imagination, and not at all a proposal of what is real. I’m of the “eye has not seen” persuasion, in other words, I don’t know.