Summary: Hell is not a place of eternal torment in the next life. Hell is a tool of purification, both in this life and the next.

Shownotes

I first encountered hell in church. I was in the second grade Sunday school class and my teacher explained my options to me. I could receive Jesus into my heart and live forever in a wonderful place called heaven or I could reject Jesus and spend eternity in a fiery place of torment called hell. Guess which I chose?

This simplistic view of the afterlife is not what the Bible describes at all. But what does it describe? This is not an easy question to answer. It is difficult to paint a clear picture, partly because in the New Testament ideas about the afterlife were fluid and developing. Not only that; thinking about hell is unpleasant. It is tempting to deal with hell by ignoring it.

But as much as I would like to turn Jesus into a heavenly Mr. Rogers, he doesn’t fit the bill. Jesus warned of danger, both in this age and the age to come. Still, it’s not like he went from city to city preaching fire and brimstone. For every teaspoon of hell there is a quart of heaven. But that teaspoon is essential. 

I have undergone a massive shift in the way I think of hell. In this chapter I’ll describe the shift, first by looking at the world “hell,” then by examining two major images of hell in the Bible (shadows and fire) and finally, I’ll tell you why I have come to love hell. 

The Word “Hell”

The word “hell” is a clumsy translation of several different words used in the Bible to depict the afterlife, none of which mean what we mean by “hell.” The word hell comes to us from the Old English “hel,” or “helle,” which was the nether world, a place where the wicked were tormented after death. The Online Etymology Dictionary calls hell “a pagan concept fitted to a Christian idiom.” Wikipedia makes a similar remark: “The word was used to transfer a pagan concept to Christian theology and its vocabulary.” 

Why has the church been so eager to adopt this pagan term? I suspect it to be an issue of power. When the church and state were united, the terrors of hell were useful to keep the peasants in line. To mount a revolution against the King/Pope was to mount a revolution against God. You might improve your earthly lot for a few years but what would that compare with an eternity in hell? Best to shut up and hoe your corn. To this day, many Christian groups use hell as a big flaming stick to keep people in line.

In spite of its pagan origins, most people today think of hell this way. It is the alternative to heaven, the place where bad people go to spend eternity with the Devil and his demons. It is part of the Plato-Dante cosmology I described in the last chapter. It would be a big step forward to stop using the word “hell” completely and begin instead to use the Bible’s own images. Two of the most common are shadows and fire.

Land of Shadows

Put yourself back in the ancient world. The earth is a flat surface and “the heavens” are a dome overhead. When your loved ones die, they are buried beneath the flat surface. What’s it like down there? Muddy! Murky! In the Old Testament, this underworld is called Sheol. It is not a happy place. Everyone, without exception, goes to Sheol when they die. The only way to stay out of Sheol is not to die. No one wants to be in Sheol.

When a cloud vanishes, it is gone, So he who goes down to Sheol does not come up. (Job 7:9)

For there is no mention of You in death; In Sheol who will give You thanks? (Psalm 6:5)

I have been reading Greek mythology lately. What amazing stories! The Greek underworld is very much like the Hebrew one. It is sometimes called Tartarus

but more commonly is called by the name of its ruling god, Hades. I was surprised to find this term used by Jesus to describe the afterlife.