Jesus describes it as the towns dump (Genenna). John in Revelation 20 describes it as “a lake of fire.” Is it really full of fire? Does it stink? What does a place without God look like? If God is light, life, our guide, love, kindness, patience, freedom - then is hell dark, dead, always lost, lonely, hard, where we are living as an impatiently frustrated slave to self?
If God is eternal (forever young), then life in hell must be somehow out of our time, (forever old). We are told it exists forever, but the punishment within seems to have different degrees. “It will be worse for you than for Sodom…” How can there be degrees of not-God? Is it degrees of darkness, of pain, of length of time before disolving into nonhumanness, of frustration, of stink?
The real question is, “Why?” Why doesn’t He find another way? What other ways are there? Annihilation maybe – but then God is no longer just, or a liar. Sin must be punished. Let Someone else take our hell for us? He did that. Tell the world to repent? He did that too. Give more time to give us more chance to escape? He is doing that now. There seem to be just two choices. We can say “God’s will be done,” or wait for God to say “Your will be done.”
CS Lewis (of the Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters fame) wrote, "a man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam... the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end... the doors to hell are locked on the inside.”
What do you think?
By Dan Cooley
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment