Summary: Questions: 1. What is hell like? 2. Is hell forever? 3. How can a good God send people to hell?

It is captivating to watch the movie industry and their fascination with spiritual issues — twisted as they may be at times. There are any number of films dealing with angels, the spiritual world, and even heaven and hell. One of the most graphic of these was the film Ghost starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. They play the characters of Sam and Molly, an upscale Manhattan yuppie couple who have moved into their first apartment. They have it all. But as they return home one night, Sam is mugged and killed in what, at first, appears to be a robbery attempt. The intense chemistry between Sam and Molly makes his death feel profoundly tragic. But Sam’s “ghost” rises from his body and justice must be done before he is allowed to leave this world for his appointed place in the afterlife. In some of the most graphic scenes I have ever seen, Sam’s murderers individually meet their demise in the movie, and at the time of their death, shadowy demons appear from the underworld and commence to drag their screaming victims into hell to meet their doom.

While the secular world seems more and more interested in the spirit world and the afterlife, the church is often astonishingly silent. We talk about morals, and even how to succeed in this life, but we say very little about heaven, and almost nothing about hell. We are supposed to be people of another kingdom and rooted in eternity, but we spend too little time thinking about any world other than the one in which we now live. At the same time, people outside the church are concerned with what eternity will be like. They want to know about heaven, and they want to know about hell. For many, the very idea of hell seems mysterious, but incongruous with the concept of a loving and merciful God. Some even walk away from the Christian faith because they don’t like the idea of a God who would send someone to hell. Bertrand Russell, the atheist, was fond of saying, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that he believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.” He is not alone in his objections.

I would like to address these issues today, and try to answer some of the main questions that people have about hell and God’s justice. There are many questions people have, but one of the most central questions is: What is hell like? To put it in simplest terms, hell is separation from God. It means that for all eternity we will live apart from God and all that is good. Those in hell will be banished from the presence of the most wonderful and loving being in all the universe. They will also be excluded from everything of value and beauty, and everything that ultimately matters. They will live in a crush of people, but be terribly alone. They will be plagued by desire and know nothing of fulfillment. Hell is living forever in the presence of shame, regret, anguish and conscious failure. Never again will a person experience a meaningful relationship or know anything of love.

Jesus described hell in this way: “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42). He also said, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (Mark 9:47-48). Obviously, Jesus wanted us to avoid hell at all costs. It is full of fire. But the kind of fire Jesus spoke of is not the kind of fire we know. He is speaking metaphorically. If it were an actual fire, the people in hell would be consumed and it would be over quickly. But he is speaking of the reality of existing apart from God in the most appropriate terms available in human language and experience. We speak of “burning shame” in much the same way, only hell is burning shame without relief. The suffering produced by unforgiven sin and shame is worse than a literal flame, for there is no end to it.

Anyone who has known deep, personal moral failure knows something of what hell feels like. Anyone who has lost something of great value in life knows something of what hell feels like. Anyone who has suffered from great feelings of inadequacy and inferiority knows something of what hell feels like. Anyone who has felt the searing pain of personal rejection and the loss of significant relationships knows something of what hell feels like. “The worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” It is living with the eternal pain of what could have been. It is living with the eternal suffering of knowing what you should have done, but were not willing to do. It is the eternal torture of knowing that you spent your life on things which had no lasting value. You lived out your days self-centered and self-indulgent — addicted to pleasing yourself. And now your choices are fixed. You are the slave of your passions and your peevishness. You lived life in the shallows. You avoided God. You despised what was good. You were angry and unforgiving. You were sated with selfishness and filled with apathy toward things that really mattered. And now you do not have the strength, or the appetite, for values or moral goodness, the deep things of life, and friendship with God, therefore you are separated from it all forever. Isaiah the prophet asks, “Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?” (Isaiah 33:14). This is what hell is like.

The second question people often ask is: Is hell forever? The short answer is yes. Once you are born, you live forever. We were created to be immortal beings. The question is, “Where will you live forever?” It is all up to you. You can live in the presence of God forever, or away from the presence of God forever. It is all about choices. The reality is that the choices we make in this temporal world have eternal consequences. As Dallas Willard says, “I am now leading a life that will last forever.”

Let me illustrate that with a story. When Sue and I were in college we were a part of a street evangelism team. We went into the inner city and talked to people in bus stations and on the street. The male students went into some of the bars and flop houses. A flop house is where alcoholics went to sleep off their drunk. They were charged $1.00 per night to sleep in a rank smelling, filthy room filled with metal bunk beds — often without mattresses. One night, as we went to talk to some of the men in a flop house, I met a man named Frank and began talking with him about his relationship with Christ. He was open to what I was saying. He wanted a new life. I took him to church on Sunday evening, and afterwards I asked him how long it had been since he had been home. He told me it had been a long time. He had a wife and children. I asked him if he wanted to go home and he said he did. So we got in the car and drove to his house. I was expecting it to be in a rundown part of town, but it was actually a very nice home in the suburbs. When his wife answered the door she was a very attractive and pleasant woman. I explained that I had been talking with her husband and he wanted to turn his life around. She welcomed him home, and I drove off back to school. But the next weekend Frank was there in the bar again. His wife wanted him home. His children wanted him home. He wanted to be home. But the choices he had made over time would not allow him to stay home. He was now incapable of being where he belonged. As hellish as his existence was, he kept choosing it over his beautiful family and home.

Don’t we wonder why some people continue to live in hell here on earth? They could choose to live life so differently. They could stop making the choices that are destroying them. It would spare them so much pain and suffering. We wish we could make their choices for them. Sometimes we wish we could even control them — just to help them to avoid the hell they are creating for themselves. But they continue to make the wrong choices. If that is true here and now, why would we think eternity would be any different? The doors of heaven are open. The possibility of real life is available. But the bondage of sin is so great, and so powerful, that they cannot seem to break lose. What was true of the angels who gave up their position in glory to become demons and followers of the devil, is also true of us: “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day” (Jude 1:6).

Jesus described the final judgment by saying, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). Notice that the word eternal is used to describe both eternal life and eternal punishment. God will not force anyone to go to heaven, either now or in the future. But their choices are forever choices.

The third question that people often ask is: How can a good God send people to hell? Let’s be clear here. In the truest sense, God does not send anyone to hell — they send themselves. God gives us this wonderful — and terrible — thing called freedom of will. We choose how we will live here. . . and there. Our choices are being made this very moment — whether we will live with God or without him. To think that you are going to be able to say a prayer of repentance at the very last moment, after a lifetime of sin and selfishness, is a gamble you don’t want to take. A good God will let you do anything you want to do. He will not force you to live for him. He will not coerce you into making the right decisions. He will not forgive you when you do not want his forgiveness. You are a free moral agent. You are responsible for the direction and the quality of your life, both now and forever. It would be hell for those who rebelled against God all their lives to suddenly be cast into heaven. If they were placed in heaven, they would willingly ask to go back where they belong.

G. K. Chesterton wrote that, “Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.” God honors our choices and will not force us to choose him. He will allow us to stay away from him for all eternity. God did not create hell in the beginning. The earth was created as a paradise. Hell is a place prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). We might even say it was prepared by the devil and his angels. When the founding fathers went about the task of creating this great nation, they did not start by creating jails. They would have preferred to have a society without jails. But jails became necessary, because it was important to keep dangerous and evil people separated from the rest of society. God is going to protect his own. In heaven, God keeps watch above his own, but “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Revelation 22:15).

Why doesn’t God just force everyone to go to heaven? J. P. Moreland, who teaches at Talbot School of Theology, answers that question like this: “If God has given people free will, then there’s no guarantee that everybody’s going to choose to cooperate with him. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it’s dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end.”

Sometimes people feel that heaven will not be heaven if we are aware that hell exists and that some of our loved ones are there. But I believe there will be a sense in those who are there that as humiliating and painful as it may be, they still prefer it to heaven. Is that not the case with people here and now? People all around us prefer to live in their private hell over against surrendering their lives to God. Milton was right when he said, “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’” It will not matter how bad hell is, they will still prefer it to heaven. There will also be a sense in us that if there are people in hell whom we know, we will be at peace with it, knowing that they are exactly where they are supposed to be, and exactly where they ultimately want to be.

God hates hell and wants everyone to go to heaven. We know this because the Bible describes the heart of God saying, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Remember that Jesus wept over the people of Israel as he said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:37-38). He saw that the choices of the people of Jerusalem would destroy them and make their lives desolate. He wept because he wanted to save them from their sin and from themselves. But although he would hold out his arms to them, he would not overpower them — as he so easily could have done.

The problem of the human family is the problem of the will. We do not want to surrender to anyone, even God. The other day my daughter and her daughter were having a contest of wills. It was a matter of who was going to be in charge that particular day. After several attempts at getting through to the child through logic, and achieving no success, Lisa looked at her and said, “Now, Rachel, who is the mommy here?” Without any hesitation, Rachel pointed her little finger to herself. I suggest to you that reflected in what took place that day is the problem with the whole human race. Captured in that scene is the contest of wills between the Ruler of the universe and those who desire to be the ruler of the universe. God looks us in the face and says, “Now just who is God here?” And without hesitation, we defiantly point to ourselves. We want to be in charge. We want to rule. We want to be God. It is the story of the Garden of Eden all over again. Satan tempted Adam and Eve telling them that they could be like God. They could be in charge of their world. They did not have to surrender to God, they could exercise their own wills. They could have their own way. And so they did, and God allowed them to have their way — apart from his original plan for them. And so he will do for all of us. C. S. Lewis wrote: “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.”

The Lord says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Rodney J. Buchanan

May 19, 2002

Mulberry St. UMC

Mt. Vernon, OH

www.MulberryUMC.org

Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (May 19, 2002)

1. What have you imagined hell to be like?

2. What would be some positive aspects to the reality of hell?

3. Why do you think hell might be necessary?

4. Does God enjoy sending people to hell, or does he hate hell? Would you enjoy seeing some people go there?

5. How does a person end up in hell?

6. Read Matthew 25:46. According to Jesus, how long will hell last?

7. Why doesn’t God just do away with the bad people so there won’t be a hell?

8. What part does God’s gift of personal freedom play in all of this?

9. Do you believe in a literal fire, or that it is symbolic of some terrible reality?

10. How can God be good and still punish people forever and ever?

11. Is there hell on earth? Why don’t people attempt to escape hell on earth when the opportunity is there?

12. Read Matthew 25:41. Who was hell originally prepared for?