What the Actual Hell?

Sunday Soul Care for March 12, 2023

Welcome to hell! The topic, that is.

In last week’s Sunday Soul Care I launched my almost-40-and-thinking-about-the-afterlife party, and this week we’re looking more specifically at hell (it’ll be fun, I promise!)

Whenever I write and talk about spirituality, I try to hold the tension between sharing my specific beliefs (mostly to show what it looks like to figure things out in real life) and holding back and respecting everyone’s right to believe and process on their own.

Except when it comes to the Eternal Conscious Torment view of hell. This I will preach against from the mountaintops until I am blue in the face. 

It’s kind of ironic: I used to want to save people from hell. Now I want to save people from believing in hell.

So without further ado let’s get into what the hell is wrong with hell (I mean the puns here are just ripe for the picking you guys I can't help it).

Thought

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is the belief that hell is a physical or metaphysical place where some people will go when they die. Their souls are eternal (cannot be destroyed), and they will be conscious the whole time (fully aware and sensory) as they endure infinite torment (unending pain). *side note: there are other Christian views of hell called universalism (all are saved) and annihilationalism (people who go to hell simply cease existing) that you can research if you’re interested.

In ECT, which is likely what you were taught if you have an evangelical background, the only way to stay out of hell is to ask God to forgive your sins through the blood atonement of Jesus, and to invite Jesus to come and live in your heart. The end! (If you’re Calvinist). Or, keep working hard so you don’t lose your salvation! (If you’re Wesleyan/Arminian). 

For many of us, this view of hell was unquestionable. It was assumed as being THE understanding of hell present from the very beginning of the Bible and from the beginning of Christianity. It was just true, and we have to accept God’s truth about hell whether we like it or not, right?

The entire framework of evangelicalism is built with this view of hell at its center.

Christ saves us from hell, and we must tell everyone! So, we will structure our seeker-friendly churches, children’s programs, camps and VBS, missions organizations and self-help publications to convert as many people as possible.

Even the word “evangelical,'' which means to share the gospel, or the good news, implies that there is a need for good news; that there is something terrible from which we hope to be saved. 

I believed in hell. I believed it and asked Jesus into my heart as quick as I could once I heard about it. I even liked believing in hell because it meant that there would be retribution for all the Hitlers and Castros and human traffickers and child abusers who have done horrible things on this planet and died without consequence. 

But I was uncomfortable, always, that having justice for the Hitlers and the Castros of the world meant that my Mormon friends and my third grade teacher and my aunts and uncles would have to suffer the same level of punishment as violent and genocidal madmen. That trouble my innate sense of justice, though I didn’t think I was allowed to trust anything innate at the time.

Out from under the umbrella of Christianity, I can see the logical flaws of this view. How is eternal punishment a just consequence for crimes committed within time? How is a one-size blanket of the harshest level of punishment justice for people who have committed crimes of varying impact?

This is an abusive view of God.

And, whoever God is, I don’t do “God works in mysterious ways” as a copout for excusing abusive theology anymore.

As I mentioned last week, I don’t use the Bible to corroborate much anymore, but it is helpful to understand where my beliefs were formed in the first place, and seeing the Bible disprove a belief is helpful to the part of my psyche that will always reflexively look to the Bible for authority.

What does the Bible say about hell?

While some passionate bloggers warn of 162 mentions of hell in the New Testament, my research shows that Bible scholarship generally accepts only 12-13 mentions of something close to the burning fire description of hell. Gehenna, the word Jesus uses most, was an actual place, the Valley of Hinnom, that served as the city dump of Jerusalem. Filled with constant fire to burn the trash and wild animals scavenging for food and fighting over food (hence the gnashing of teeth). According to Dr. Wil Gafney, Gehenna eventually becomes a metaphor for judgment beyond just its literal location. Again… you can do your own research on the words if you’re interested.

For a theology that’s shaped the entirety of Christianity, 12-13 metaphorical mentions is not a lot to go on. 

However you view the Bible or interpret these passages, it reveals that talking about hell wasn’t an emphasis for Jesus or for the biblical authors.

In fact, for the first 500 years of Christianity (FIVE HUNDRED YEARS… let that soak in), the dominant view of hell was universalism: that Jesus’ death on the cross saves everyone from hell. To me, just the fact that so many people believed in universalism for so long gives me reasonable doubt.

So how did we start believing in Eternal Conscious Torment at all?

I found this article by Brazen Church on Medium to be a super helpful and informative history of how ECT entered Christianity, and how it’s been mistakenly understood as the only accurate understanding. 

In summary, a 2nd-3rd century theologian named Tertullian introduced the idea of hell as a place of eternal torment for the wicked, including all the people who disagreed with him (lol typical). Augustine (also Latin author, came a century or two later but studied in the same geographic area as Tertullian), is widely thought to have cemented the concept of eternal conscious torment. Augustine, one of the most influential theologians in Christianity, was known for his harsh views in general, condoning lots of Christian-led massacres and violent crusades. A self-proclaimed hater of studying Greek, he still translated it and stated that hell wasn’t just for the unrighteous, but for anyone who wasn’t a Christian in their beliefs, even babies.

Then, when Jerome created the Latin Vulgate, he used a poor Latin translation of the Bible that had been influenced heavily by Tertullian and Augustine. The Latin Vulgate became the most widely used version of the Bible in Christendom. Even though universalism was the most widely-held view of hell up until that point, the widespread use of the Latin Vulgate spread the ECT view as the most dominant beyond. As the article summarizes:

“Had our old English Bibles been translated directly out of the Greek instead of Latin, it’s very probable that the doctrine of eternal torment would never have found its way into our modern Bibles and theology at all. Many of these doctrines were strong-armed into the Church through major dissension and even bloodshed, with intolerant, oppressive Church leaders insisting that they were “led by the Spirit” on such matters.”

Add in the fire and brimstone “sinners in the hands of an angry God” sermons and revivals going viral in the Great Awakenings in America, lots of politics and patriarchy, and eventually you get to Billy Graham and what we know now as modern day evangelicalism and the version of hell that you and I were taught as the absolute truth.

That’s all the info I needed to outright reject this view of hell.

The lack of common sense and the presence of reasonable doubt, combined with learning the history of how beliefs develop over time is enough to make me wholly uninterested in devoting any more energy to this view.

And let me tell you… what a difference it makes when you can look at people and not fear for their eternal destiny.

Not believing in hell has allowed me to live with more grace and less fear. It has allowed me to see not-Christian people as more than salvation projects, and to actually enjoy them and all they have to offer as humans.

In a few weeks we’ll look more at what justice looks like when you shift what you believe about hell. I still want to believe that there will be some sort of payback for the world’s bullies. But maybe there’s payback that is actually fair and doesn’t mean people have to boil in lava for eternity because they never even heard about Jesus in the first place.

Affirmation

Believe in whatever the hell you want

(Except maybe not in hell.)

Reject abusive theology

And don’t be afraid of the scary stories

You were told by dead men

Who liked to scare children into obeying.

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Fun fact—researching all of this about hell last year was the thing that made me realize I was ready for deconstruction to be a smaller part of my life, and that I was ready to focus more energy on the future instead of the past.

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See you next week as the Afterlife Crisis party continues. I can only imagine what we’ll talk about then…

Joy