Questions of Faith

Someone asked, “Is hell really a place and why would a loving God send anyone there?”

A story might help answer this important question.

Someone asked God, “I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.” God showed the man two doors. Inside the first was a huge round table with a large pot of vegetable stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They were famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles. It was possible to reach into the pot of stew and to take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, “That is hell.”

Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was a huge round table with the large pot of wonderful vegetable stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well-nourished and plump, and were laughing and talking.

The man said, “I don’t understand.” God smiled and said, “It is simple. Love requires only one skill. The people in heaven learned early in life to share and to feed one another while the greedy only think of themselves.”

The hell of hell is the absence of love. Those who go to hell are miserable because they have rejected the commandment to “love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” We could turn the question around and ask, “Why should God force someone to love the Almighty if they have rejected to love God when they were on earth?”

The existence of hell is not very appealing even for people who affirm its existence. No one likes the idea of many people suffering judgment in the life to come; however, the “Good News” of the Gospel requires that there be “Bad News.” Why would Jesus die a cruel death to save humanity if everyone is going to be saved no matter what they did and what they believed?

Is hell a place? In a three-story universe of heaven, earth and hell, hell is located under the earth. In the Lazarus and the rich man story, Jesus has heaven and hell as places separated by “a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” We do not know exactly where hell is, but it is a place.

Who goes to hell? Not one innocent person will go to hell. Hell is God’s answer to the fundamental injustices of this life. Many murderers, rapists and other people wreak havoc in the lives of others and never experience judgment in this life. These people are never held accountable for what they did here on earth. We know that hell is God’s answer to serious evils.

Without hell, justice would never overtake the unrepentant tyrants responsible for murdering millions of people. Perpetrators of evil throughout the ages would get away with murder, rape, torture and every kind of evil.

This doctrine of the eternal punishment of sinners is rooted firmly in Jesus’ teachings. He spoke of hell more than he spoke of heaven. In fact, Jesus more than anyone reveals the love of God to the world; yet he spoke more about hell than any other person in the Bible. As followers of Jesus Christ, we cannot be faithful to our Lord and not speak of this stark reality.

The apostolic witness of the New Testament echoes Jesus’ weighty words on this topic. Paul speaks of a time of “wrath and anger” awaiting those who reject the truth (Romans 2:8). He declares that those who do not obey the Gospel “will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
God did not create people to go to hell, and the Almighty did not create people to sin. God wants everyone to be saved. We cannot blame God if someone chooses to reject God’s love.