Is Hell for Real?
Is Hell Real?
Here is the objection:
In order to believe in Hell, you'd have to believe: That “sky-God” created humankind and orchestrated a scenario where every human person is deserving of eternal punishment as a result of being born. That the Bible’s creation story is to be taken literally – that there were an actual Adam and Eve who ate a piece of forbidden fruit which resulted in a sin-condition that has caused God to be so angry that he desires his children go to Hell like an abusive parent. What kind of loving figure would create and then send someone they loved to a place of eternal punishment? But wait, the Christians have a solution. To avoid this scenario, God sent his only Son, Jesus, to die on a cross as a blood sacrifice to rescue people from his own wrath. Let’s just be honest. This makes no sense. A loving father would not knowingly create a system where his children would be eternally tormented and separated from him. If this is the type of God you believe in, then I choose Hell because whoever oversees that place is more morally just than your God.
BTW: Hell was not even invented until Dana wrote about it in the 1300’s and has been used to scare people into behaving a certain way ever since.
Response:
In order to believe in Hell, you have to believe in a loving God. Hell is a place that God created for those who reject His love and therefore do not want to be with Him. God is not an abusive Father and does not force anyone who rejects his love and kindness to be with him. The mischaracterization of God that is presented in the question is a typical strawman tactic used by deconstructionists to portray God as a maniacal monster while never really dealing with the complexities of reality.
Heaven exists.
The Bible explicitly teaches that Hell is a real place to which the wicked/unbelieving are sent after death. We have all sinned against God (Romans 3:23). The just punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Since all our sin is ultimately against God (Psalm 51:4), and since God is infinitely glorious, the punishment for sin must also be infinite. Eternal Hell—the second death—is the punishment we have earned because of our sin.
Hell was not invented by Danta but was a concept in the Old Testament and even within Greek mythology. For the Greeks, Hell was called Tartarus and was believed to be a place of fire in an underworld state, ruled by Hades. In the Old Testament, the Israelites identified Hell as Sheol. When Jacob hears of his son’s supposed death, he states, "I shall go down to my son a mourner unto Sheol,” (Genesis 37:36). Sheol means pit or destruction, and it connotes the place where those who had died were believed to be held until a time of judgment. It is most likely the origin of the concept of the Catholic Church’s purgatory, a place where the dead dwell until God’s judgment. The prophet Daniel wrote about Heaven and Hell, describing them as having an eternal nature “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt,” (Daniel 12:2). There are many passages in the Old Testament that speak of Sheol and a place where the dead eternally reside, but it is Jesus in the New Testament that gives us our best understanding of Hell.
Indeed, our modern concept of Hell is not as concrete in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament, but the argument that Hell evolved as a false idea used to control people would be ignoring that Jesus is who taught us most of what we know about Hell. This makes sense because Jesus is fully God as the second person of the Trinity. Jesus gave us our most defined descriptions of Hell and spoke more about it than he did Heaven. Jesus described Hell as a place of eternal fire and punishment, “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” (Matthew 25:41) and “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life,” (Matthew 25:46). Jesus clearly believed in Hell and taught that it was a physical place that was not pleasant. Jesus did not speak of Hell as a figurative place, or as a metaphorical concept. Hell was real to Him and therefore should be understood a truth for us today.
In the Epistles of the New Testament, Peter talks about Hell as a place. In a moment of irony, Peter is writing a warning for the church to avoid deception by false teachers who “will exploit you with fabricated stories,” (2Peter 2:1). Peter writes, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment,” (2Peter 2:4). In the book of Revelation, John, is given a vision of a future moment when God’s final judgment will occur, and both death and Hades are thrown into eternal separation from God, because there will be no death in Hell of Heaven, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire,” (Revelation 20:14-15). Suffice to say, the early church believed in Hell as an actual place.
Now that we have briefly established that there is a Hell, and that Jesus and the disciples believed that Hell was an actual place, the better question is “What has happened that deconstructionists want to jettison the clear teaching of scripture and claim that only a cruel God would create such a place as Hell?”
The simple answer is we have abandoned good theology and Biblical reading. We have re-created God in our image and desecrated the Biblical image of God. Deconstructionists, prefer to use terminology describing God as loving, caring, nice, and forgiving. Here we agree. These could be considered as attributes of God, though I am not sure I have ever tried to describe God as nice. The division occurs when good Biblical theology also recognizes God as a God of justice, righteousness, grace and truth. To remove Hell we must remove these attributes from God. Hell exists because there are some individuals who will never surrender their will to God and will therefore always live destroying themselves and others. There are behaviors and ways of thinking that are contrary to God’s will and therefore are not permitted in Heaven. What would the deconstructionist ask of God, that the sovereign Lord force a person to change? Or would true love allow that person to simply be quarantined to a place specially set aside for those who reject God?
Hell was created because God gave humanity an amazing gift called freewill. Freewill enables us to reject God’s love and sovereign rule over our lives, at least temporarily, or embrace the joy of a life lived in submission to God’s authority. The ripple effect of rejecting God’s authority is clear in scripture. Immediately after the exile from the Garden, the book of Genesis records the first human homicide (Genesis 4). Following that, Lamech brags to his wives that he had killed men for simply wounding and injuring him, (also Genesis 4). By the time we arrive at Genesis 6 humanity is so evil that God’s righteousness cannot bear to see the suffering that humanity is causing one another because love has boundaries. Hell exists because love has boundaries.
Boundaries exist because of love. In the Genesis creation story, the water has a boundary, the nighttime has a boundary, the land has boundaries, and even the different species have boundaries. When Adam and Eve sin, they are excommunicated from the Garden because love has boundaries. God’s love will not allow Adam and Eve to live forever, eating from the Tree of Life, but living in a sinful state. You and I live with boundaries that we set because we love others. Because I love my children, I do not let them play ball on the busy street. Because I love my wife, we agree to the sanctity of marriage where we “forsake all others.” Because God is holy, he cannot abide with the desecration of sin. The boundary between us and God is for our protection (see Exodus 19:22-25). Heaven is where God is and in Heaven there can be no sin. Therefore, Heaven is for individuals who have been made pure, not by their good works, but by the atonement of Jesus on the cross. We can argue the system and be angry with God for creating a system, but I am not so arrogant to believe I could invent a better system than the omnipotent God.
Heaven and Hell are eternal because that is the nature of the beings created in the image of God. We were made to live forever. We did not get to choose our longevity, but we do get to choose the location where and with whom we will spend eternity. We can choose to be with God or without God. Those who are with God must become pure and holy; their sins must be eradicated. There is only one way to remove sin, the atonement of Jesus.
Sin has eternal consequences. If God is a God of justice and righteousness, then he cannot simply overlook sin. Sin is not permitted in Heaven. The never-ending nature of God’s justice is directly related to the infinite and eternal nature of God's grace. When we sin against an infinite God, we create an infinite debt. An eternal, infinite being was needed to bear the weight of an infinite judgment. God in an amazing act of love, paid the price for our sins. God did not suddenly become an unrighteous God but instead met the requirements of justice on behalf of his creation in a divine act of love. This act of love is a gift that is not forced upon anyone. Every single human can accept God’s gift of love or reject God’s gift of love. When we reject God’s gift of grace, we are rejecting God’s presence and Lordship over our lives. What kind of loving God would force anyone to be with him forever, when they don’t want to be transformed by Grace and live in the presence of God?
The problem is not a misunderstanding of Hell or a lack of belief in Hell, but rather a misunderstanding of Heaven. Heaven is less about a place and more about a person, namely Jesus. Heaven is the place where we get to be in the presence of God. Heaven is where we shall fully submit our will to the Divine will of God and behave as Jesus commanded. It is a place where we are willingly changed into the fully human being that God intended us to be. But the transformation by grace is not forced upon anyone. It is an invitation to a Divine party for people who want to submit to God’s will, forever.
I am glad there is a Hell, though sad that I have loved ones who reject God’s gift of grace. Heaven will not be Heaven if children still fear sexual predators, if women must live with concern if they take a morning jog by themselves, if people are in bomb shelters because someone thinks that they need more land or power, if hatred is permitted and all the other sinful nature desires, we wrestle against exist. I am glad there is a Hell and Heaven where we must submit to the authority of God to be in the presence of God. If there was not a continued transformation in the behavior of those God welcomes into Heaven, and I am just speaking of my personal thoughts and struggles with sin, it would not be Heaven. It would be like what we experience here on earth, a continued battle between good and evil. But Heaven and Hell are the promise that one day the battle will be over.
Personally, I am excited about Heaven. I long to see my sister and father again. I desire to walk with my sister again, not in her cancer-riddled body, but her new Heavenly body that is immortal. I long to enjoy another conversation with my father about God’s word and the beauty he found in the scriptures. Mostly, I am looking forward to hearing the Heavenly Father’s voice say to me, “Well done. Welcome to your eternal home.” I am so looking forward to Heaven, not because I am good, but because Jesus was very good. I am saved by faith, not by my works or my ability, but by the grace of God. If Heaven is real, Hell must also exist for those who do not want to experience the joy of being with God.
Here is the objection:
In order to believe in Hell, you'd have to believe: That “sky-God” created humankind and orchestrated a scenario where every human person is deserving of eternal punishment as a result of being born. That the Bible’s creation story is to be taken literally – that there were an actual Adam and Eve who ate a piece of forbidden fruit which resulted in a sin-condition that has caused God to be so angry that he desires his children go to Hell like an abusive parent. What kind of loving figure would create and then send someone they loved to a place of eternal punishment? But wait, the Christians have a solution. To avoid this scenario, God sent his only Son, Jesus, to die on a cross as a blood sacrifice to rescue people from his own wrath. Let’s just be honest. This makes no sense. A loving father would not knowingly create a system where his children would be eternally tormented and separated from him. If this is the type of God you believe in, then I choose Hell because whoever oversees that place is more morally just than your God.
BTW: Hell was not even invented until Dana wrote about it in the 1300’s and has been used to scare people into behaving a certain way ever since.
Response:
In order to believe in Hell, you have to believe in a loving God. Hell is a place that God created for those who reject His love and therefore do not want to be with Him. God is not an abusive Father and does not force anyone who rejects his love and kindness to be with him. The mischaracterization of God that is presented in the question is a typical strawman tactic used by deconstructionists to portray God as a maniacal monster while never really dealing with the complexities of reality.
Heaven exists.
The Bible explicitly teaches that Hell is a real place to which the wicked/unbelieving are sent after death. We have all sinned against God (Romans 3:23). The just punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Since all our sin is ultimately against God (Psalm 51:4), and since God is infinitely glorious, the punishment for sin must also be infinite. Eternal Hell—the second death—is the punishment we have earned because of our sin.
Hell was not invented by Danta but was a concept in the Old Testament and even within Greek mythology. For the Greeks, Hell was called Tartarus and was believed to be a place of fire in an underworld state, ruled by Hades. In the Old Testament, the Israelites identified Hell as Sheol. When Jacob hears of his son’s supposed death, he states, "I shall go down to my son a mourner unto Sheol,” (Genesis 37:36). Sheol means pit or destruction, and it connotes the place where those who had died were believed to be held until a time of judgment. It is most likely the origin of the concept of the Catholic Church’s purgatory, a place where the dead dwell until God’s judgment. The prophet Daniel wrote about Heaven and Hell, describing them as having an eternal nature “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt,” (Daniel 12:2). There are many passages in the Old Testament that speak of Sheol and a place where the dead eternally reside, but it is Jesus in the New Testament that gives us our best understanding of Hell.
Indeed, our modern concept of Hell is not as concrete in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament, but the argument that Hell evolved as a false idea used to control people would be ignoring that Jesus is who taught us most of what we know about Hell. This makes sense because Jesus is fully God as the second person of the Trinity. Jesus gave us our most defined descriptions of Hell and spoke more about it than he did Heaven. Jesus described Hell as a place of eternal fire and punishment, “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” (Matthew 25:41) and “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life,” (Matthew 25:46). Jesus clearly believed in Hell and taught that it was a physical place that was not pleasant. Jesus did not speak of Hell as a figurative place, or as a metaphorical concept. Hell was real to Him and therefore should be understood a truth for us today.
In the Epistles of the New Testament, Peter talks about Hell as a place. In a moment of irony, Peter is writing a warning for the church to avoid deception by false teachers who “will exploit you with fabricated stories,” (2Peter 2:1). Peter writes, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment,” (2Peter 2:4). In the book of Revelation, John, is given a vision of a future moment when God’s final judgment will occur, and both death and Hades are thrown into eternal separation from God, because there will be no death in Hell of Heaven, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire,” (Revelation 20:14-15). Suffice to say, the early church believed in Hell as an actual place.
Now that we have briefly established that there is a Hell, and that Jesus and the disciples believed that Hell was an actual place, the better question is “What has happened that deconstructionists want to jettison the clear teaching of scripture and claim that only a cruel God would create such a place as Hell?”
The simple answer is we have abandoned good theology and Biblical reading. We have re-created God in our image and desecrated the Biblical image of God. Deconstructionists, prefer to use terminology describing God as loving, caring, nice, and forgiving. Here we agree. These could be considered as attributes of God, though I am not sure I have ever tried to describe God as nice. The division occurs when good Biblical theology also recognizes God as a God of justice, righteousness, grace and truth. To remove Hell we must remove these attributes from God. Hell exists because there are some individuals who will never surrender their will to God and will therefore always live destroying themselves and others. There are behaviors and ways of thinking that are contrary to God’s will and therefore are not permitted in Heaven. What would the deconstructionist ask of God, that the sovereign Lord force a person to change? Or would true love allow that person to simply be quarantined to a place specially set aside for those who reject God?
Hell was created because God gave humanity an amazing gift called freewill. Freewill enables us to reject God’s love and sovereign rule over our lives, at least temporarily, or embrace the joy of a life lived in submission to God’s authority. The ripple effect of rejecting God’s authority is clear in scripture. Immediately after the exile from the Garden, the book of Genesis records the first human homicide (Genesis 4). Following that, Lamech brags to his wives that he had killed men for simply wounding and injuring him, (also Genesis 4). By the time we arrive at Genesis 6 humanity is so evil that God’s righteousness cannot bear to see the suffering that humanity is causing one another because love has boundaries. Hell exists because love has boundaries.
Boundaries exist because of love. In the Genesis creation story, the water has a boundary, the nighttime has a boundary, the land has boundaries, and even the different species have boundaries. When Adam and Eve sin, they are excommunicated from the Garden because love has boundaries. God’s love will not allow Adam and Eve to live forever, eating from the Tree of Life, but living in a sinful state. You and I live with boundaries that we set because we love others. Because I love my children, I do not let them play ball on the busy street. Because I love my wife, we agree to the sanctity of marriage where we “forsake all others.” Because God is holy, he cannot abide with the desecration of sin. The boundary between us and God is for our protection (see Exodus 19:22-25). Heaven is where God is and in Heaven there can be no sin. Therefore, Heaven is for individuals who have been made pure, not by their good works, but by the atonement of Jesus on the cross. We can argue the system and be angry with God for creating a system, but I am not so arrogant to believe I could invent a better system than the omnipotent God.
Heaven and Hell are eternal because that is the nature of the beings created in the image of God. We were made to live forever. We did not get to choose our longevity, but we do get to choose the location where and with whom we will spend eternity. We can choose to be with God or without God. Those who are with God must become pure and holy; their sins must be eradicated. There is only one way to remove sin, the atonement of Jesus.
Sin has eternal consequences. If God is a God of justice and righteousness, then he cannot simply overlook sin. Sin is not permitted in Heaven. The never-ending nature of God’s justice is directly related to the infinite and eternal nature of God's grace. When we sin against an infinite God, we create an infinite debt. An eternal, infinite being was needed to bear the weight of an infinite judgment. God in an amazing act of love, paid the price for our sins. God did not suddenly become an unrighteous God but instead met the requirements of justice on behalf of his creation in a divine act of love. This act of love is a gift that is not forced upon anyone. Every single human can accept God’s gift of love or reject God’s gift of love. When we reject God’s gift of grace, we are rejecting God’s presence and Lordship over our lives. What kind of loving God would force anyone to be with him forever, when they don’t want to be transformed by Grace and live in the presence of God?
The problem is not a misunderstanding of Hell or a lack of belief in Hell, but rather a misunderstanding of Heaven. Heaven is less about a place and more about a person, namely Jesus. Heaven is the place where we get to be in the presence of God. Heaven is where we shall fully submit our will to the Divine will of God and behave as Jesus commanded. It is a place where we are willingly changed into the fully human being that God intended us to be. But the transformation by grace is not forced upon anyone. It is an invitation to a Divine party for people who want to submit to God’s will, forever.
I am glad there is a Hell, though sad that I have loved ones who reject God’s gift of grace. Heaven will not be Heaven if children still fear sexual predators, if women must live with concern if they take a morning jog by themselves, if people are in bomb shelters because someone thinks that they need more land or power, if hatred is permitted and all the other sinful nature desires, we wrestle against exist. I am glad there is a Hell and Heaven where we must submit to the authority of God to be in the presence of God. If there was not a continued transformation in the behavior of those God welcomes into Heaven, and I am just speaking of my personal thoughts and struggles with sin, it would not be Heaven. It would be like what we experience here on earth, a continued battle between good and evil. But Heaven and Hell are the promise that one day the battle will be over.
Personally, I am excited about Heaven. I long to see my sister and father again. I desire to walk with my sister again, not in her cancer-riddled body, but her new Heavenly body that is immortal. I long to enjoy another conversation with my father about God’s word and the beauty he found in the scriptures. Mostly, I am looking forward to hearing the Heavenly Father’s voice say to me, “Well done. Welcome to your eternal home.” I am so looking forward to Heaven, not because I am good, but because Jesus was very good. I am saved by faith, not by my works or my ability, but by the grace of God. If Heaven is real, Hell must also exist for those who do not want to experience the joy of being with God.
Recent
Archive
2025
August
September
2024
Categories
no categories
No Comments