An Argument For or Against Hell!

A fictional expose’ aimed at Atheists and Agnostics

At a group of relatives I was speaking with, an Agnostic who presented to me a challenge about hell. It was to show the rest that he knew better regarding the Big Bang theory. His question dealt with hell and wanted to know who was sent there. Obviously he didn’t believe anything about God, eternal life, or even the very premise of Christ’s Passion. The idea of hell would indicate that he did not believe in this place of eternal death.

By asking me to explain something very few of the others knew nothing about, my answer would prove that my background would not satisfy him and make the Catholic teaching just another rule in Christian philosophy. My first response to his question was to answer with a question of my own. If there are people in hell what entity sent them? I purposely did not allude that God is that entity. I refrained from mentioning that God sends no one to hell until later when the discussion would take on an unbelieving attitude that will just deepen a theological theme that even many Catholics and protestant members as well can’t understand.

When the dialogue became deep I asked why would people go there? He answered because they were bad. If bad people ended up in hell by what authority has the position to send them there? Since he does not believe in God, eternal life, and the passion of the Son of God, who could make the choice to send bad people into hell for all eternity? What possible attribute from nothing has the knowledge or understanding of making a place for bad people?

I realized that the Holy Spirit in some fashion inspired this young man to seek a truth that he didn’t know immediately that there was one more carrot dangling in front of him to really find Christ was inside of him. His playing a game of hide and seek regarding God was going to impact his searching and find the grace of God touching the depth of his baptismal graces.

Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom: It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. (CCC 633).

The argument for the existence of hell is a positive entity that is real, everlasting into eternity, and has a one-way ticket, if you will, and no one there ever leaves.

Ralph B. Hathaway