Hell (see also Good & Evil/Pain & Suffering)
I don’t understand how God could send anybody to hell forever and ever. (II Thes 1:9)
If God knew that so many people would reject him, why did he make us? (Mt 7:13-14)
So why doesn't God just extinguish evil souls instead of sending them to hell? This would really be spiritual death and not as painful, and we wouldn't have to worry so much about God being evil (or would we)? Secondly, why does no religion in the world teach the annihilation of souls?
Are there different degrees of punishment in Hell? (Mt 11:24)
What's the nature of the suffering of those in Hell?
So why do I ask this? What exactly do I mean? The other day I was wondering if the damned are actually properly punished. It was something that had never occurred to me before. I had just assumed that they are. After all, that's what you're taught as a Christian. But then I realized -- how can you really suffer from the punishment you've been sentenced to if you're not actually remorseful, and don't care about God? After all, shouldn't part of the suffering in Hell be the realization of your guilt and shame? And the bible does say that this will be the destiny of those who reject God: "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dn 12:2) But can one be ashamed if they're not remorseful? The worst sinner of all is Satan, and this is what the bible has to say about his fate: "But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you: 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?' ... but you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch, clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a dead body trampled underfoot." (Is 14:15-17, 19)
Well, let's look at Judas. Obviously, to some extent he was sorry, since he was so overwhelmed by what he did that he killed himself. And before he did that, he went back to the religious leaders and gave them their money back, since he thought it was loathsome. (This in itself is an interesting question, this change from thinking something desirable and attractive [betraying Jesus] to thinking the complete opposite, to the point of feeling like you could never be forgiven.) So where is he now? The biblical text isn't very encouraging: Jesus said that it would have been better if Judas had never been born (Mt 26:24), and Peter, in Acts, says the last word on Judas, "May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it." (1:20) So the bible never directly says that Judas went to Hell, but I think it does indirectly. It also makes sense given that the direct cause of his death was suicide, which is giving into the temptation of despair, which is pretty much the worst sin you can commit. After all, Judas knew that Jesus was all about forgiveness -- was he put off from asking for it because of what Jesus had said - "It would have been better for that man if he had not been born"? So it's kind of weird that Judas was so remorseful that he thought he couldn't live with himself anymore or the guilt, and that he'd rather die (it's too bad that he didn't decide this, ie, decide he'd rather die than ever betray Jesus before he betrayed him, instead of realizing the hard way afterward [again, it's an interesting question as to how and why this happens]), and yet he didn't repent enough to the point that he could ask for forgiveness, forgive himself, and leave the despair behind forever. Instead he decided to condemn himself forever. I can only imagine that the suffering of those in Hell is similar -- this weird mixture of regret and guilt on one hand, and yet unrepentance and self-condemnation on the other. The sensibleness of this lies in its irony: sin itself makes no sense (at least not to the spiritual mentality, although perhaps it does in a dog-eat-dog world), and so it makes sense that its punishment, this strange mixture of regret and nonrepentance, also makes no sense. In this sense, Hell is nothing more than the continuation of sin, in all its senselessness.
I'm sure you've seen it before -- I heard Rick Warren put it this way: that he'd seen plenty of people cry buckets of tears over their sins, and yet, they keep going back to it. There's no true repentance. It's like an addiction. On one side the person wants to get out, on the other they can't, or don't want to. Couldn't the argument be made that if they really wanted to, they'd leave it all behind? But even small-scale sin is like this; it doesn't have to be a full-blown addiction. It's the battle inside that St. Paul talks about in Romans 7:14-25.
Now continuing with that interesting line of thinking I mentioned earlier, about how people seem to only be able to repent after they've committed a sin, instead of before, you almost have to wonder if at least part of the time, it's so that they can have their cake and eat it too, like a fake kind of repentance. If they had to do it all over again, they would. Meanwhile, the bad feelings, the regret and remorse, it's just a show to convince themselves that they wouldn't have done it if they had only known what they know now (ie, what they ended up learning the hard way). But that's not what's interesting -- the thing that's interesting is the person who really regrets some wrongdoing afterwards, when they could just as well have been averse to that same wrongdoing before they became a partaker in it, as with what happened to Judas. They weren't afraid of the guilt earlier -- now they can't live with it. It's eating them up. But previously, though they knew it was coming, they disregarded it. I think this is a big a reason why people avoid sin when they avoid it, and I know it's a big reason why I try to avoid sin -- it's because you don't want to have to live with the guilt afterward. A clear conscience is an expensive thing to maintain, but how else can you breathe easy?
Another interesting thing is that Satan actually loves to make us feel guilty. First he tempts us, then pushes us over (with our permission, of course), and if he can, he'll try to get us addicted and stuck in a rut. Then we're really trapped. But that's not all. Probably the funnest part is raking the coals over us again and again, ie, poking us and making sure our consciences give us no rest, in hopes of making us give in to despair. What's even more interesting is that I think this is actually very tricky, since it has to be just the right kind of guilt and regret. It has to be the same kind that made Judas feel unforgivable, not the kind that brings someone to repentance and wholeness. Like I said, this must be very tricky (although Satan is no doubt an expert on it), and it'd be interesting just to see what his methods are. I'm only giving the barest sketches of an outline here, but Satan must have stacks of manuals on this stuff.
If God knew that so many people would reject him, why did he make us? (Mt 7:13-14)
So why doesn't God just extinguish evil souls instead of sending them to hell? This would really be spiritual death and not as painful, and we wouldn't have to worry so much about God being evil (or would we)? Secondly, why does no religion in the world teach the annihilation of souls?
Are there different degrees of punishment in Hell? (Mt 11:24)
What's the nature of the suffering of those in Hell?
So why do I ask this? What exactly do I mean? The other day I was wondering if the damned are actually properly punished. It was something that had never occurred to me before. I had just assumed that they are. After all, that's what you're taught as a Christian. But then I realized -- how can you really suffer from the punishment you've been sentenced to if you're not actually remorseful, and don't care about God? After all, shouldn't part of the suffering in Hell be the realization of your guilt and shame? And the bible does say that this will be the destiny of those who reject God: "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dn 12:2) But can one be ashamed if they're not remorseful? The worst sinner of all is Satan, and this is what the bible has to say about his fate: "But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you: 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?' ... but you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch, clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a dead body trampled underfoot." (Is 14:15-17, 19)
Well, let's look at Judas. Obviously, to some extent he was sorry, since he was so overwhelmed by what he did that he killed himself. And before he did that, he went back to the religious leaders and gave them their money back, since he thought it was loathsome. (This in itself is an interesting question, this change from thinking something desirable and attractive [betraying Jesus] to thinking the complete opposite, to the point of feeling like you could never be forgiven.) So where is he now? The biblical text isn't very encouraging: Jesus said that it would have been better if Judas had never been born (Mt 26:24), and Peter, in Acts, says the last word on Judas, "May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it." (1:20) So the bible never directly says that Judas went to Hell, but I think it does indirectly. It also makes sense given that the direct cause of his death was suicide, which is giving into the temptation of despair, which is pretty much the worst sin you can commit. After all, Judas knew that Jesus was all about forgiveness -- was he put off from asking for it because of what Jesus had said - "It would have been better for that man if he had not been born"? So it's kind of weird that Judas was so remorseful that he thought he couldn't live with himself anymore or the guilt, and that he'd rather die (it's too bad that he didn't decide this, ie, decide he'd rather die than ever betray Jesus before he betrayed him, instead of realizing the hard way afterward [again, it's an interesting question as to how and why this happens]), and yet he didn't repent enough to the point that he could ask for forgiveness, forgive himself, and leave the despair behind forever. Instead he decided to condemn himself forever. I can only imagine that the suffering of those in Hell is similar -- this weird mixture of regret and guilt on one hand, and yet unrepentance and self-condemnation on the other. The sensibleness of this lies in its irony: sin itself makes no sense (at least not to the spiritual mentality, although perhaps it does in a dog-eat-dog world), and so it makes sense that its punishment, this strange mixture of regret and nonrepentance, also makes no sense. In this sense, Hell is nothing more than the continuation of sin, in all its senselessness.
I'm sure you've seen it before -- I heard Rick Warren put it this way: that he'd seen plenty of people cry buckets of tears over their sins, and yet, they keep going back to it. There's no true repentance. It's like an addiction. On one side the person wants to get out, on the other they can't, or don't want to. Couldn't the argument be made that if they really wanted to, they'd leave it all behind? But even small-scale sin is like this; it doesn't have to be a full-blown addiction. It's the battle inside that St. Paul talks about in Romans 7:14-25.
Now continuing with that interesting line of thinking I mentioned earlier, about how people seem to only be able to repent after they've committed a sin, instead of before, you almost have to wonder if at least part of the time, it's so that they can have their cake and eat it too, like a fake kind of repentance. If they had to do it all over again, they would. Meanwhile, the bad feelings, the regret and remorse, it's just a show to convince themselves that they wouldn't have done it if they had only known what they know now (ie, what they ended up learning the hard way). But that's not what's interesting -- the thing that's interesting is the person who really regrets some wrongdoing afterwards, when they could just as well have been averse to that same wrongdoing before they became a partaker in it, as with what happened to Judas. They weren't afraid of the guilt earlier -- now they can't live with it. It's eating them up. But previously, though they knew it was coming, they disregarded it. I think this is a big a reason why people avoid sin when they avoid it, and I know it's a big reason why I try to avoid sin -- it's because you don't want to have to live with the guilt afterward. A clear conscience is an expensive thing to maintain, but how else can you breathe easy?
Another interesting thing is that Satan actually loves to make us feel guilty. First he tempts us, then pushes us over (with our permission, of course), and if he can, he'll try to get us addicted and stuck in a rut. Then we're really trapped. But that's not all. Probably the funnest part is raking the coals over us again and again, ie, poking us and making sure our consciences give us no rest, in hopes of making us give in to despair. What's even more interesting is that I think this is actually very tricky, since it has to be just the right kind of guilt and regret. It has to be the same kind that made Judas feel unforgivable, not the kind that brings someone to repentance and wholeness. Like I said, this must be very tricky (although Satan is no doubt an expert on it), and it'd be interesting just to see what his methods are. I'm only giving the barest sketches of an outline here, but Satan must have stacks of manuals on this stuff.