Why we really believe in Hell

I sat down with an old friend at McDonald's eating a 140 calories cookie with a decaf coffee. Entering the calories on MyFitnessPal I discovered that Canada's Mcdo cookies are far less caloric than our American counterparts : ) Bob also had a coffee. He looks like Adam Sandler and as he dug into his muffin (far more caloric) I studied him, like a hawk, analyzing the wrinkles on his face.

No I did not do that! It was a much needed social relief for me as well. Middle aged fathers and husbands often find themselves friendless and this was one friend (who also was a father) continued to invest in his friendships, a skill I realized I had just let go by the wayside.

We started talking about Hell. Bob knew me from the days that I started this blog. I was a vociferous student of the Bible, generous to beggars, keen on evangelism and a man of much prayer. I was a hurricane of youthful, biblical fury. He knew me like that. Now that we sat face to face after almost two decades Bob struggled to understand how far I had come in my spiritual journey.

I do not believe in Hell anymore. He was curious. Did not Jesus speak often about Hell, even more so than Heaven, as the saying goes. Did He not mention that place of eternal fire and deathless worms? 

"Bob" I said, sipping on my coffee, pretending to look wise, "why do you even need to believe in Hell? What purpose does it serve?" He paused in a long silence. He understood where I was going. The question completely sidesteps the "But the Bible says so" argument. It makes you stand to realize that perhaps these "beliefs" we so naturally believe are maybe no so much divine as they are really human borne.

There's something in our psychology that is ancient. We want to be the chosen ones, the favored ones, the good guys - we're better than the rest. In the days of tribal warfare, we wanted to justify the horrors unleashed on our neighbors. Roman conquests were powered by the notions that Romans were favored, better, superior. Colonial powers and the nations that became rich and powerful through slavery, dispossession of entire continents, and the robbing of wealth from weaker nations, fully embraced this psychology. We see the after thought of this mindset in the continued occupation and dismemberment of the Levantine population known as Palestinians. 

They are the other, the Blues, the Greys, the Orange, the non-humans (I am deliberately using colors that have not been ascribed to the rainbow of human skin). It's not a hallmark of one people. This is an infantile social trait of humankind - they are going to Hell, and us not, we take pleasure in that.

Sure, I can talk about Gey-Hinnom - the word often spelt "Gehenna" that Jesus used to speak about we translate often into "Hell". I can say that it literally was a wadi (or gully) named the "the wadi of Hinnom - Hinnom being perhaps an ancestral owner of that parcel of land?) that ran close to Jerusalem, a place were their waste and garbage was thrown. I imagine back in that day, all waste was compostable! They threw their refuse into it - and there it smoldered and decomposed, "where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched"

It seems to me that this was not a place of eternal life, backwards, but annihilation, destruction, a return of whatever the stuff thrown in the valley, back into it's primordial elements. What if it was eternal punishment but simply the snuffing out of a person's life - they don't want to spend eternity with God, no problem, poof they're essence returns to the Universe. 

All these arguements skirt the real issue - why do we even want to believe in Hell? If you believe as do I, that Jesus gave us the most supreme and complete picture of who God really is that you kind find on this planet - how does Hell even fit into that? It's one of those Biblical Acrobatics you must do mentally to break down the cognitive dissonance.

Here is God - Jesus presented - not the God who demands sacrifice from you, but the one who gladly lays down His own for you, He makes the sacrifice, not you. Here is God - not the one you must look to and beg for your life, but who empowers you, who honors you, who puts the sandals on your feet, His regal thobe on your shoulders, and His crest-ring on your hand. Here is God - don't serve Him, fool, how can you, such a worm of a man, even think you have something to offer - let Him serve you, sit you down, wash your feet sullied by all the dirt of your thoughts and actions of the paths you've traversed.

He wants all to be saved. His sacrifice was for all. Why are we still looking at our fellow human beings as if they are different, less important, less human, less good than we? Why have we cut humankind, the image of God as it is written, and parceled it out into different countries, religions, races, tribes, ethnicities - why not embrace this fabric of diversity and realize that we all need to eat and sleep and live in dignity and live together, rebuilding not a Babel of Capitalistic grandeur, but a paradise on Earth where people live in harmony with one another and nature. 

The rest is infantile emotions. Hell. Heaven. Us. Them. I'm special. They're not. 

God favors you very much. Yes. He does. I mean it. But it does not mean He favors that dude over there any less. Bob was pensive, he wanted to agree. 

"Perhaps", I said, "we should read the Bible afresh, especially Jesus' words. You know? Throw away all these concepts we absorbed without knowing and really listen to His words again." 

He could agree with that. 

Stay tuned for more to come on this thread.