The eCrozier

Vincent Cunningham, writing in The New Yorker, offered a provocative piece last month on the history of how we understand Hell, or some version of a punitive afterlife. Personally, Hell would be the Cincinnati Reds confined for eternity to last place (12 days until pitchers & catchers report to Spring Training! Hope springs eternal, as they say). But I digress. Cunningham’s piece covers the waterfront (or Lake of Fire, if you need a different metaphor) of scholarly, pop culture, and historical thinking on Hell.

While the whole article was fascinating, I was especially drawn to the part about his own former pastor. Cunningham recalls how his pastor a while back announced he’d “studied the Hebrew and the Aramaic and the Greek [of the Bible] and had concluded that the words most often translated as ‘hell’ referred to a more general afterlife, or, at worst, to the daily, inward suffering that accompanies a willful persistence in wrongdoing.” The congregational response was swift and angry. Presumably, they didn’t like the idea that there wasn’t eternal torture awaiting other people (they were confident, apparently, such a fate wouldn’t befall them). The pastor was soon forced out of the congregation for his alleged “heresy.” But he landed on his feet and started a new congregation preaching that God shouldn’t be viewed as “a petty torturer.” Alas, his new congregation soon after closed its doors and referring to that outcome, Cunningham concludes: apparently “assured salvation couldn’t keep people in pews.”

And this last observation raises interesting questions for me: Is Hell (or the idea of Hell) a necessary motivation for people to practice their faith? If our salvation is “assured,” then do some people conclude about church: “Why bother?” Do we need God to set up a quid pro quo, that is, we show up every Sunday, get our sacramental assurance, keep our noses clean, and then God has us covered? Do we understand faith as an “eternal life insurance policy” rather than as an invitation to practice the very heart of God?

Social psychologist Azim Shariff has observed that a belief in Hell “does compel people rationally to act in ways which will avoid the wrath of a punitive God who can punish you.” So, it seems, literally “scaring the Hell” out of people is a failsafe method of crowd control, maintaining social order, and getting people into pews.

Except none of that is the Gospel of Jesus. He’s in the salvation business, not the condemnation business (read: John 3-16-17, if you doubt, heck, read the whole Gospel).

This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in a literal Hell. I do. I just believe Jesus isn’t in the business of sending anyone there. I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said: “Hell is where you have to do what you want to do.” So, people by their own volition consign themselves to Hell by refusing to accept the gracious gift of mercy and forgiveness from God. Jesus will honor our wills, but God never stops offering that gift, even after death (read C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce for a wonderful allegory about that). So I ask: Why wouldn’t we want now to begin a life eternally given over to the very heart of God? Some won’t. Nevertheless, today is still the first day of the rest of our eternal lives.

+Scott