On Hell

Friend-Of-This-Blog (FOTB) Eaton Rapids Joe posted a succinct yet pithy contemplation on Hell this past week (here).  It was both useful and timely, as it had mirrored some thinking I had been doing on the subject as well.

The consideration - as mentioned by ERJ - is that we as humans have badly misinterpreted Hell in a way that allows us disregard its full impact.

Hell as a location in Scripture, includes the following characteristics:

1)  A place of unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43)

2)  Where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die (Mark 9:48)

3)  Where Satan and the fallen angels are exiled too (Matthew 25:41)

4)  A place of suffering where we are conscious of ourselves, alone, and without God (Luke 16:  22-26)

The last point is where I would argue the misunderstanding manifests itself.

Over the years authors have happily filled colored within in lines of the first three points:  Dante's Inferno does a splendid job of giving an imaginary view of the bare description we have.  And Jonathan Edward's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" will sober up almost anyone about the brevity of life, at least for a time.  And even in our modern era, Hell has become a place of entertainment scenarios (The Doom Franchise, the Escape from Hell series, the movie Event Horizon).

But what, really, is Hell?

From Scripture, it is clear enough that it is a place of tremendous - tremendous in "beyond our current capacity to comprehend" - place of suffering.  Most importantly, it is the one place where God is not.

The first point people can shrug off - "I can suffer" they say, perhaps not comprehending that it is suffering without end.  After all, people "know" pain.  But the second point remains something few of us can really comprehend.

The term "Common Grace" is something that has fallen out of use and something that today I would argue even many Christians do not fully understand.  It is simply that goodness of God that manifests itself in our daily lives to all people, whether saved or unsaved.  "God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust" says Christ in Matthew 5:45. It is His love for His creation that is meant to demonstrate to a world that may not otherwise know Him that He is there and He loves us.  Rain, sun, flowers, rabbits (my favorite) - all of this come from the Hand of a God that clearly says He desires no-one to perish eternally.

What happens when that presence is totally removed?

It is a hard thing to visualize in our lives.  Pale imitations might be when our parents both pass away and they are no longer there or a divorce where our former spouse no longer is in the picture at all or where a former friend completely cuts us off.  But even those are not completely accurate because we still have the memories of them to guide us.

What if every good thing and the very presence that underlined all of it was gone - not just for a little while, but for all eternity?

Alone. Completely alone.  Without anyone and without even the former things that were good, although we did not know them as such.

Randy Alcorn in his book Safely Home gives us a brief hint of this in the view of a nameless character (in the book, it is clearly Mao Tse-tung):

"Thirst without water to quench it.  Hunger without food to satisfy it.  Loneliness without company to alleviate it.  There was no God here.  He had gotten his wish.  On earth he'd managed to reject God while still enjoying His blessings and provisions.  But it was excruciatingly clear now that God was the author of good.  He could not have it both ways, not here.  No God, no good.  Forever.

He had wanted a world where no-one else was in charge, where no order was forced upon him.  He had finally gotten it.  He had secretly wondered if there was something beyond death but if he went to hell, he fully expected to rule there.  Yet here there was no king, for there were no subjects.  Only one prisoner - himself - in eternal solitary confinement.

He missed the sound of laughter.  There was no laughter here, nor could there be, for laughter cannot exist without joy or hope.  An awful realization gripped him.  There was no history here.  No story line.  No opening scene, no developing plot, no climax, no resolution.  No character development.  No travel no movement.  Only a setting of constant nothingness going nowhere.  Excruciating, eternal boredom. Nothing to distract him from the torment of the eternal now."

This is Hell, the true reality of it:  God's presence fully removed and with it removed, all that was good in the world. Not one single thing of goodness, in a place where only Satan and the fallen angels were originally intended to inhabit.  Made only more awful by the fact that each one will know that they were the ones that condemned themselves to this.

I do not know how communicate this in a way that would make sense.  Only that to dwell on the horror of such a place is enough to drive me to my knees.