"The H Word: Questions about Hell"
By: Dr. Gregory S. Neal
A man dies and goes to hell. When he gets there a demon processes his paperwork, checks him in, takes his passport – because he’s never going to need that again – and then takes him on a tour of the facilities. During the tour, he’s told that all new arrivals get to select the room in which they’ll be spending their first thousand years; but choose wisely because, once chosen, they can’t change it until the next thousand years.
The first room the man is shown has everybody writhing in pain, boiling in oil … yes, kind of what you’d expect to find in hell. “No thank you,” says the man, "that doesn’t look too nice."
The second room has everybody standing around, and there are huge speakers on either side of them loudly blaring death-metal rock music into their ears. “I don’t think so. I’m not fond of rock music.”
The third rooms finds everybody being attacked by mosquitos. “Nope. I’m allergic to mosquitos,” says the man.
The fourth room reveals people being attacked by rats. “Yikes! Rats give me the creepy-crawlies. Next, please.”
In the fifth room a bunch of people were found standing on their heads, each with a pillow under the heads. “That’s not too bad,” said the man, “but I get headaches, so I’ll pass.”
The sixth room finds a bunch of people standing around in excrement up to their waists, but each of them has a cup of coffee and Crispy-Crème donuts are being passed around. “This looks acceptable” says the man.
“Are you sure?” asks the demon. “Once you’re inside, you can’t change it for a thousand years.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I like coffee and donuts, and I think I can manage to stand in that muck for a thousand years.”
“Ok … in you go!”
The man wades into the vile sludge. It’s gross, it’s warm, and it stinks. He feels it’s sliminess against his skin, and he doesn’t like it very much, but at least it doesn’t go any higher than his waist.
The man receives his coffee, selects a donut, and begins to drink and eat. “You know,” he thinks to himself, “for this to be Hell, it isn’t so bad.”
About 5 minutes later a demon swoops into the room, settles down into the muck, pulls out a bull-horn and announces:
“Ok … coffee break is over! Everybody … back on your heads!”
Yeah … Hell. We’re going to talk about Hell. “But, Greg, most Methodists don’t ever talk about Hell.” No … we don’t, but lots of other Christians do. Many of our more conservative fellow Christians spend a great deal of time talking about Hell. They really take pleasure in identifying all of the people whom they don’t like – people with whom they disagree, who don’t look like them or talk like them or act like them or love like them – and asserting that all of them are definitely going to Hell. I’ll never forget the people from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, protesting at the 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas – and again in 2012 and 2016. They protested us, carrying signs that purported to tell us how much God hated us, and that we were all hell-bound. They didn’t even bother telling us to repent … that wasn’t their purpose. They just wanted to make sure we knew that we were going to Hell for the unpardonable sin of saying that God loves everybody. Imagine that.
No … Methodists don’t often talk about Hell. And, in that, we’re well in line with the Bible because, believe it or not, the Bible doesn’t talk much about Hell, either. “But … I thought that’s what it was about!” Nope.
Heaven is mentioned 622 times in the Bible. Hell is mentioned just 15 times, and Hades gets just 12 mentions, some of which are duplicates of the Hell references. Indeed, of these few references several are duplicates, being found in both Mark and Matthew.
The Hebrew Bible doesn’t talk about Hell at all. In the Hebrew Scriptures the dead don’t go to Hell; they go to Sheol, which is usually described as a resting place, a place of sleep, a place where those who die go to sleep alongside their ancestors. It’s not a place of punishment or of torment. It’s a place of quiet peace. Conceptions of Hell in Jewish thought didn’t start to evolve until very late in the Biblical period. It wasn’t until the Greeks, lead by Alexander the Great, invaded and took over Palestine that the Jews began to adopt the Hellenistic concept of Hades as a place of torment for the morally corrupt. By Jesus’ day, popular Jewish conceptions of Hell had evolved into a rich collection of allegory and metaphors, but with very literal literal imagery.
On the east side of Jerusalem you'll find the Kidron Valley; it divides the Temple Mount and the rest of the Old City, on the west side of the valley, from the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane on the east side. On the south and southwest side of Jerusalem there’s another valley – the Hinnom Valley – which is just to the west of the old City of David. The Hinnom Valley, also galled “Gehenna” in the Aramaic of Jesus’ day, was the place where some of the Kings of Judah – Ahaz and Manasseh, specifically – had offered Child Sacrifices; this tragic activity, recounted in 2 Kings 21 and elsewhere, cursed the valley for future use. Indeed, as a result it wasn’t used for anything except as a trash pit, where they would burn the city’s overflow of rubbish. It was a filthy, disgusting, smelly, and smoking … well, hell. When people in Jesus’ day talked about punishment for those who were morally corrupt, they used the metaphor of the trash heap in the Hinnom Valley to illustrate its horror. And that’s what Jesus is saying here:
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to Gehenna, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into Gehenna, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. (Mark 9:44-48)
These extreme references are among the few instances where Jesus appears to be speaking about Hell. In its context, however, it’s clear that Jesus is not actually teaching about Hell but, rather, is using a commonly accepted metaphor and the literary device of semitic hyperbole to make his point: it is better to separate yourself from those things that cause you severe moral and spiritual trouble than to risk being thrown into the trash-heap of all eternity.
One of Jesus’ references to the Greek abode of the dead – Hades – can be found in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16, where the rich man is depicted as being in Hades while Lazarus is by Abraham’s side in heaven. Because he is in agony, the rich man asks God to send Lazarus to give him water for his parched tongue. However, his request is denied: "you had good things in your life, while Lazarus had bad things; now, Lazarus gets good things and you get bad things." Many people like to focus upon the agony suffered by the rich man in Hades, but that's not the point of the story. The point is that the rich man asks God to send Lazarus to warn his brothers about the bad things that are coming their way if they also in up in Hades. God replies that they had the Law and the Prophets to warn them about their fate, but they ignored them … and that they wouldn’t believe even if someone were to rise from the dead. In other words, the point of this parable is not to teach about Hell or Hades but to establish that people would still reject the message of God’s love even after having it demonstrated to them through the Resurrection of Christ!
Throughout his ministry, Jesus used several commonly accepted ideas to get his points across without, at the same time, endorsing any of those ideas. For instance, in some of his parables Jesus refers to slaves and slavery; in no way should these references be thought of as endorsing the institution of slavery. Similarly, his use of metaphorical references for Hell are not endorsements of, or teachings about, Hell. Rather, in every instance Jesus is using these metaphors to make other, far more important points.
There are several other Biblical references that are sometimes thought of as addressing Hell. One of the most important is the Lake of Fire as described in the Book of Revelation, chapters 19 and 20. The setting is the end of time, where all evil – inclusive of Death and Hades, both of which are poetically personified – is tossed into the Lake of Fire, where they are eternally consumed. One possible alternative translation for “eternal” here is “totally” or “completely.” Death, Hell, Evil … they are all annihilated in that Lake of Fire. Far from being a place of perpetual, everlasting torment, the Lake of Fire is depicted as the entrance to a state of non-existence.
My point is that most modern concepts of Hell do not come from the Bible but are rooted in Greek and Roman culture as well as in European literature from the mid-10th Century AD and later. Indeed, most of the depictions of Hell that are popular today come from Dante’s Inferno, the first part of his classic Divine Comedy. Like much of the Bible, that book wasn’t intended to be read literally; rather, it’s a long allegory detailing the Christian’s journey toward God, with Inferno focusing on identifying and rejecting sin within the self. The author never intended for his readers to interpret any of its imagery about Hell as being literally true.
If most of our cultural imagery regarding Hell is either non-Biblical in origin, or misinterpretations of the few actual Biblical references due to our not comprehending the metaphorical and allegorical nature of those references, then how can we understand Hell today? Do we even want to? I know I don’t. The Bible doesn’t; Jesus doesn’t; the apostles didn’t. In my opinion, it’s an entirely unproductive subject that far too many preachers have used to try and frighten people into submission to their authority. In reality, it comes down to questions of power, control, manipulation, and privilege.
I don’t believe in a God that eternally tortures people for finite errors, mistakes, infractions, or failings … no matter how bad those might be. It doesn’t seem just, right, or in keeping with what we know about God throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t sound like the same God who, because of the depth of love, became incarnate in human flesh in order live among us and die with and for us. I just don’t buy it. I’m more interested in helping people to become salty, preservative influences in this world. I’m more interested in helping people to spiritually grow in Christ and grow in their relationships with others.
Regardless of how we understand the Biblical and cultural references, one of the critical elements common to Gehenna, Hades, Hell, and the Lake of Fire is that they all illustrate the idea of separation from God. Being separated from God by our own action or in-action is a form of living Hell. We are good at making life a living hell for us and for others. Acting as if God is distant, intentionally trying to distance ourselves from God, ignoring God or the needs of others, all are hellish experiences which lead to nothingness. Fundamentally, for me and for many people, Hell in the here-and-now is living our lives separated from God. An eternal Hell might be understood as complete, total, and final self-separation from God … which, many philosophers say, is non-existence. Think about that Lake of Fire metaphor for a moment: when Death and the Devil are tossed into that lake in Revelation 20, they are consumed entirely; they are reduced to ash and the wind blows the ash away. What is being described is non-existence, and perhaps that’s another way to think about Hell … self-separation from God leading to “dust in the wind.”
As I said, we are so very good at making life in the here-and-now a living hell for ourselves and others. When we disregard, disrespect, and fail to love God and our neighbor we are building not the Kingdom of God but a Kingdom of Hell on Earth. We won’t have to worry about going to Hell when we die if we’ve already made everything here – our lives and the lives of others – a living hell. And yet, that’s what we so often do … and that’s the Hell I’m worried about.
Now, I’m sure that some who hear or read this will pitch a fit and try to consign me to the depths of hellfire for daring to deny a burning, suffering, torturous Hell. Have at it … if it makes you happy. I’ll take solace in knowing that you’re not God, and neither am I, and that God loves me just as much as God loves you. And it’s God’s love that rules, in the end, and for all eternity.
© 2021 Dr. Gregory S. Neal
All Rights Reserved
As a popular teacher, preacher, and retreat leader, Dr. Neal is known for his ability to translate complex theological concepts into common, everyday terms. HIs preaching and teaching ministry is in demand around the world, and much of his work can be found on this website. He is the author of several books, including Grace Upon Grace: Sacramental Theology and the Christian Life, which is in its second edition, and Seeking the Shepherd's Arms: Reflections from the Pastoral Side of Life, a work of devotional literature. Both of these books are currently available from Amazon.com.