There is no hell

You’re going to hell!” The words dripped with a violence, barely contained. “Repent of your wickedness,” a voice called again from the middle of a mob holding placards. I didn’t appreciate these words being directed at my wife and I.

We were spending a weekend in Las Vegas on our way from the breathtaking vistas of the Grand Canyon to the colossal beauty of Yosemite Valley. We weren’t there to gamble, drink, party—in fact the hotel we stayed in didn’t have a casino or smoking area attached, for which we were thankful. We’d heard Vegas was a great place to get luxury accommodation for a cheap price (most guests spent money on alcohol and gambling, enabling the hotels to offer cheap accommodation). And it was interesting to see this cultural landmark up close—the glittery attractions designed to draw your eye and hopefully loosen your wallet.

“The end is near,” the man shouted. The phrases were a bit cliched and less of a sermon than a pointed rant. There was nowhere to escape as we descended an escalator and this group of people stood at the bottom. People around us looked unconcerned at the threats of eternal punishment. Some were looking at the small group and laughing; most were pretending to ignore them and quickly hurried past. A thousand things ran through my mind. The man didn’t know anyone he was shouting at or why we were there. Some of us were just having a look, others going out for a family dinner (Vegas also has cheap all-you-can-eat food options). How could he be sure they were damned?

“Jesus loves you, mate . . . and everyone here.” That was what I wanted to say to him . . . but I didn’t. I chickened out. Instead, we got off the escalator and kept walking like everyone else, pretending to ignore him as he kept shouting.

telling the truth

What if I told you that hell isn’t real? At least not in the way it is depicted in popular culture, as a burning torture chamber, staffed by demons and populated by the bad, the evil, the “unsaved” and well, anyone who doesn’t agree with certain Christian ideas.

You might be OK with the idea of people like Hitler or Stalin going there. It gets a bit tricky when we start wondering about less obviously evil individuals. What about a sex slave who was sold into the profession as a child? What about someone who is usually decent but cheats on their wife? What about someone who lives as well as they can but doesn’t believe in God? Now it’s becoming more uncomfortable. If Christians claim that God is love, then does burning people forever who don’t believe in Him make Him loving?

What about a sex slave who was sold into the profession as a child?

Not all Christians believe in the version of hell I’ve just painted. Even in Jesus’ day there were disputes about the afterlife. I’d like to provide an alternative story by looking a little into where the concept of hell came from and perhaps supplying an alternative.

It is beyond the scope of this article to give an overview of the theological arguments about the doctrine of hell. Theologians, authors and others have been exploring ideas of the afterlife for thousands of years. In recent years, a number of mainstream Christians have debated and discussed the existence of hell. Rob Bell was rejected by many evangelicals after his book Love Wins questioned the doctrine. Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle wrote Erasing Hell in response (full disclosure: I have not read either books). The movies Hell and Mr Fudge (2012) and more recently Come Sunday (2018), both based on true stories, bring the debate onto the screen, albeit in a dramatised fashion. Clearly, the matter isn’t settled. My point is that the “traditional” understanding of hell is not as universally accepted a Christian doctrine as some may have you believe.

Platonism and Greek philosophy

The questions surrounding death and the afterlife aren’t new. Every in history had some explanation for what happens when we die, whether it’s the Egyptian Duat, the “Happy Hunting Grounds” of Native Americans or the Hindu cycle of reincarnation. After all, man of us wonder what happens after we die, so it shouldn’t surprise us that the ancients likewise thought about it, too.

The concept of hell, as commonly understood, is trying to solve a significal logical problem—the immortality of the soul—a concept that came into Judaism and Christianity via Greek philosophy. Plato was a key philosophical figure in this introduction and Platonism as a broad set of concepts is so embedded in Western thinking that we don’t realise it’s there. Unsurprisingly though, many of the answers Platonism offers don’t bring comfort—just more questions. It may be comforting to think that my dead loved ones are somehow guiding me from the great beyond. If this world is filled with so much pain and suffering, then surely eternal life must be better than this.

What comfort would it bring my dead relatives to see me suffer on earth while they (presumably) lounge about in heaven, playing golf and strumming a harp?

But what about the bad people—those who kill and abuse and manipulate and don’t seem to get their own back in life? Shouldn’t they be punished in some way to pay for their “sins”, to balance the scales? It may sound good to have a mechanism to punish evildoers but the existence of an eternal hell creates problems. Who gets to decide who is forgiven and who is condemned? What comfort would it bring my dead relatives to see me suffer on earth while they (presumably) lounge about in heaven, playing golf and strumming a harp?

And perhaps most confusingly, why is there so much conflicting evidence in the Bible as to the exact nature of the afterlife?

sweet dreams (are made of this)

Though the existence of hell is seemingly ambiguous in the Bible, there IS plenty of evidence to suggest that a person who dies is in a state similar to sleep. “But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more. As the water of a lake dries up . . . so he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake or be roused from their sleep” (Job 14:10-12), as one biblical author puts it. God Himself told Adam and Eve, “For dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19).

For me personally, the concept of hell where people suffer for eternity does not match the loving God I believe in. Taking the words of the apostle John very seriously, I believe that “God is love”. Jesus Himself says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

We don’t know what eternal life looks like and we have to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that the Bible doesn’t paint a full picture

We don’t know what eternal life looks like and we have to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that the Bible doesn’t paint a full picture. The ancients had a very different image of the afterlife than what we have received from medieval Christianity. It certainly doesn’t look like floating on a cloud in a toga playing a harp.

In reality the Bible is much more interested in speaking about how to live your life well on this planet than what happens to you in the afterlife. It is much more concerned with your life on earth now than your future life post-mortem.

However, the Bible does speak to the longing we all have for the brokenness we experience daily to be mended. The end result is this Earth renewed and restored to a place without death and tears and pain. That is the vision the prophets and authors of the Bible describe. In the same way, we should look at how to bring the restoration and joy of the promised renewal to this current life we live.

Many people reject belief in God or reading the Bible because of what they think Christians believe about hell. I’m inviting you to revisit the Christian faith and consider what a relationship with a just, loving, eternal Being who cares about you and doesn’t want to burn you forever in hell might look like.

We could all use more peace and restoration—especially angry street preachers in Las Vegas.

If you’d like to learn more about the truth on hell, check out this article. If you’d like to find out more about heaven, read this.