What Hell Is Really Like

I date my conversion to Christianity from January 3, 1976, but I actually toyed with the idea about five years earlier when a well-meaning friend introduced me to Christ. My infant faith soared for about a week, until my agnostic father shot it down by assailing me with questions for which I had no answers. One of those questions was, “Why would a loving God inflict pain and torture on some of His creatures for all eternity?” I had to admit that it did not make any sense. What I did not know at the time was that this view of Hell finds scant support in the Bible. [1]

The image of Hell which too many Christians uncritically accept envisions a place where unbelievers and the wicked are tortured endlessly. I will refer to this vision as the “traditional” view of Hell. For Christians, this picture of Hell—and what it says about God—should be deeply troubling.

After all, the New Testament tells us that God is a loving Father. According to the first letter of John, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8 and 4:16) Jesus told us to “ ‘love one another, just as I have loved you.’ ” (John 15:12) Could a just God—much less the loving and compassionate God we see in the New Testament—impose everlasting pain and torment on anyone? Only the most compelling Scriptural evidence would convince me to say “yes.”

This is not to say that God must, or will, let everyone into Heaven. If Heaven is to be a place without crying or pain, [2] then God may have to exclude those who selfishly insist on hurting others, or Heaven would cease to be Heaven.

But what purpose does God advance by inflicting pain and torment upon those He has excluded? Torturing the damned will not make Heaven a better place. To the contrary, He would cause unnecessary grief for those in Heaven who care about some of the condemned. Could you be happy in Heaven if you knew that someone you love was being tortured in Hell?

However, before I go further, let me frankly state that I am not a clergyman. I am a lawyer. As such, I bring a slightly different perspective to this discussion. The law follows a rule which I believe is useful in interpreting Scripture—the doctrine of pari materia (which is Latin for “on the same subject”). Simply stated, it says that we should interpret laws so that they are consistent with each other, so long as they address the same general subject, or have the same general purpose. [3]

This principle recognizes that lawmakers do not deliberately enact laws that conflict with each other, so every effort should be made to avoid such conflicts when interpreting the law. I believe a similar rule makes sense in Biblical interpretation: we should interpret verses, whenever possible, so that they are in harmony with one another. A corollary is like it: if two verses appear to be in conflict, then we are interpreting at least one of them incorrectly.

With this in mind, let’s take a detailed look at the verses that talk about Hell, either explicitly or by implication. . . .

Beyond Blind Faith is available on Amazon.com.

[1] In this essay I only discuss what the New Testament says about Hell. The Old Testament talks of Sheol, rather than Hell, and says little about the nature of Sheol except that it is a place for departed souls. See Genesis 37:35, 42:38, 44:29, 44:31; Numbers 16:30, 16:33; Deuteronomy 32:22; 1 Samuel 2:6; 2 Samuel 22:6; 1 Kings 2:6, 2:9; Job 7:9, 11:8, 14:13, 17:13, 17:16, 21:13, 24:19, 26:6, 33:18; Psalm 6:5, 9:17, 16:10, 18:5, 30:3, 31:17, 49:14-15, 55:15, 86:13, 88:3, 89:48, 116:3, 139:8, 141:7; Proverbs 1:12, 5:5, 7:27, 9:18, 15:11, 15:24, 23:14, 27:20, 30:16; Ecclesiastes 9:10; Song of Solomon 8:6; Isaiah 5:14, 7:11, 14:9, 14:11, 14:15, 28:15, 28:18, 38:10, 38:18, 57:9; Ezekiel 31:15-17, 32:21, 32:27; Hosea 13:14; Amos 9:2; Jonah 2:2; Habakkuk 2:5.

[2] See Revelation 21:4.

[3] See 53 Texas Jurisprudence 2^nd, “Statutes,” Section 186, page 280, as quoted in Cheney v. State, 755 S.W.2d at 126. See also Black, Black’s Law Dictionary, “pari materia,” at p. 1004.