Hell is Part of the Good News

“The main problem I have with Christianity, and religion in general, is the idea of Hell and how God could send people there.” I was recently on a panel at a youth retreat where this issue was brought up by a sophomore in high school, and it seemed to connect with many others in the room. It is a fascinating question. How do we reconcile the idea of a good God and the existence of Hell? A recent poll found that while 90% of adults believe in a higher power (80% called that higher power God), only 58% believe in the existence of Hell.

 
Talking about Hell is bound to spark people’s interest and provoke some strong responses. Many people refuse to believe in it, wondering how a good God could send people to hell. Others mock Christians for this silly and backwards idea. Christians themselves often struggle mightily with this idea, even feeling embarrassed or shy to talk about it. Images of sidewalk preachers and people with megaphones and hateful signs come to mind for many when Hell is brought up. So how are we supposed to make sense of Hell?

Part of the problem is that we in the West tend to think of Heaven as a reward for good behavior and Hell as a punishment for bad behavior. While there may be some elements of truth in that, it completely misses the point. We need to think of Hell primarily in terms of relationship, and only secondarily in terms of morality.

C.S. Lewis famously described Hell as a room locked from the inside. His point was that people in Hell are the ones that choose to go there, like someone stuck in a room that has been locked from the inside out. God does not send anyone to Hell. God creates human beings with free will and constantly seeks after us, but we have the ability and freedom to continually reject God. It is humans that send themselves to Hell by choosing to reject God’s grace.

Imagine a father who loved a child so dearly and constantly sought a good relationship with that child. But the child always rejected the love and relationship of his father. Would a good and just father then go kidnap the child and force the child to spend the rest of his life with him? Or rather, would a just father accept his child’s decision, respect his free will, and let him go where he has chosen, even if that hurts the father to see? At its most basic core, heaven is less of a place and more of a state: eternal communion with love itself. Hell then is eternity without God, who is Love itself. If a person chooses to reject God over and over again in their life, then a just God would respect that decision. Eternity is a continuation of what we choose here on this earth.

 
Morality comes into play in the fact that all relationships have elements of morality associated with them. It is just an inherent part of relationships. It would be wrong for a married person to cheat on his or her spouse. In the same way, every time you say yes to something, you are by definition saying no to other things. Saying yes to marrying my wife is also saying no to every other woman on earth.

 
There can be arguments and speculation about how many people are in Hell and how many will go to Hell. There can be debate on what exactly it means to reject God’s grace over and over again. But none of that takes away from the fact that Hell is indeed part of the Good News, the Gospel. God has given us free will and he respects our decisions to accept or reject his love and graces. We should be glad to have a God that wouldn’t force an unwilling person to spend eternity with Him. That is an act of love. If it is possible for a human being to continually reject God and want nothing to do with Him, and stay adamant and unchanging in that attitude, if that is possible, then Hell must exist. Having a God that truly respects our free will is good news.

 
A similar argument could be made that judgement is good news because it means that our lives and how we live have meaning. If there is no judgement at the end of our lives, then there is no meaning to the way in which we live while on earth. Lives that have meaning are good news.