Let's have a Hell of a time!

Warning: I'm going to talk about Hell in his blog post. I understand that's a touchy subject, so I probably run the risk of offending a lot of people who believe in God and also a lot of people who don't. But hey, if I'm going to offend people, why not be an equal-opportunity offender? Let's get down to business!

And by business, I mean that I'm going to blog about why I think that a loving God and Hell are not totally incompatible concepts. Now this is a concept that sounds odd, even to people who believe in God, which is probably why the last sermon you'd hear in any progressive church these days would be about hellfire and damnation. Funny thing about that is until around sixty years ago, that wasn't the case. We seem to, suddenly, feel like we have some divine right to being alive and, well, not burning for eternity.

Okay, since that's the mindset of society nowadays, let's go with that one. God exists, people die. People who accept and believe in him go to Heaven. But what about people who don't? They go to... Hell? If God exists, there's no way he'd let something as horrible as Hell exist, right? Well, let's take a moment and see what Google Image Search has to tell us about what the contemporary view of 'Hell' is. Apparently, it's like the end of 'The Black Hole,' but less confusing.

The narrative here is a lot clearer than the end of that movie.

Where did we come up with this image of Hell? Well, according to the gospels Jesus said there would be a 'furnace of fire' and 'weeping and gnashing of teeth.' So... that's kinda awful. Because he also says that anybody that rejects God goes there. Wow.

Good thing that's probably not what Hell actually is.

But wait, Jesus said it! It's in the Bible! Well, that's true. He also said faith was a mustard seed, and trees don't typically sprout from people's chests during Sunday worship.

See, Jesus loved himself some metaphors. They're everywhere in the sermons he delivered. Just like mustard trees haven't decimated church-goers, people who reject God won't start snapping their jaws repeatedly and sinking into lava. Jesus was trying to get across a point – Hell is a place of indescribable eternal torment, and this metaphor was a good way to get across to a bunch of desert nomads that they didn't want to be there.

So Hell sucks. It's probably not literal fire, but it still sucks. That still doesn't answer the original question though – why would God send anyone there? Well, I'm going to say that he doesn't.

90% of the people reading this blog just made this face.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that nobody goes there. It's just that God isn't forcing them. Which means... to go to Hell... a person would have to choose it. Well nobody's that stupid. Hell should be almost empty, right? Like mostly death metal fans with an IQ below fifty?

Let me switch gears here for a moment. I don't feel like writing a novel at the moment, so let's take it as a foregone conclusion that good things come from God. Trust me, it's in the Bible somewhere. Google it like I should have if you don't believe me. Now this world has some terribly sucky aspects to it, but there's a lot of good in it too. People's basic goodness, love, happiness, friendship, laughter, the feel of sun on your skin, the taste of a juicy burger with bacon, Mountain Dew, etc – if you take the above statement as truth, all that exists because of Godly influence.

Now someone can totally say, 'screw God' and completely disown him, letting him know that he/she has no need for him or belief in him. But that person still is going to run into good things, because they're unavoidable. The police will still help you nail your mugger even if you don't pay your taxes, and you'll be grateful for it.

You might also notice that in this example, the knife made you bleed whether or not you believed in it.

So good is unavoidable. Even if our words or actions say we don't need God, we're going to run into it. But then we die and God goes, 'Sucker! Now you're gonna pay ALL the back taxes for the good I didn't owe you! Burn!' Well, back up... like I said before, I don't think God sends anyone to Hell.

See, we say in life that we don't want anything to do with God. So we die, and he honors that decision. We had to put up with all of his 'good' crap for our entire lives, and now we finally get the chance to get along without it. So we end up somewhere where God is completely absent – and by extension, anything good.

That is Hell. The complete absence of good and something that we actively chose. It's frankly unimaginable. I was going to use a metaphor to try and describe it, but if 'lake of fire' is the best Jesus can do, I'd better not even try.

Actually, here's a screenshot of the unanimously agreed 'worst site on the web.' This at least ought to be close.

So that's it, huh? An eternity of that? That's torment beyond imagination. Even if a person inadvertently chose it, they would see the error of their ways almost immediately, right? Hell can't be eternal... right?

Well, while I believe God basically owns us and he can do whatever he wants with us, I do find it tough to swallow that he'd let us stay there for eternity. I'd like to think that there's some second chance... but I'm not writing about that just yet... in fact, I'd be very interested to hear other peoples' thoughts on that. Comments section below. Debate, flame and tear away!