The Kindness of Hell

In the eternal ages behind us God created a species of being called angels. These spiritual creatures come in various sizes and styles. Some are three times the size of a normal human being. Some come with wings – two, four, or six. Some can only be described as looking like an alien beast from a science fiction movie.

They have varying authorities and different functions. Some are archangels with significant power and responsibility. Some are tasked with ministering to God directly, extolling the magnificence of his glory and the wonder of his love. All were created to serve God and the race of humanity that would follow far into the future.

With the passage of eons of time, one particular angel began to entertain the arrogant assumption that he was uniquely fashioned to undertake a much larger role in the kingdom of God. He was unquestionably beautiful and adorned with jewels that were both stunning and rare. He was extraordinarily gifted to rule and in the ministration of his dedicated empire he was almost godlike. He was known throughout creation as The Shining One.

Gradually this self-awareness that he was exceptionally qualified to manage far more than he had been given gave birth to an ever-darkening self-importance that blinded him from seeing the truth. Although he was a created being unequal to the Uncreated Creator, he nurtured the impulse to challenge God by deceiving a cadre of his fellow angels into believing he was divine. In their unimaginable irrationality that assaulted all they had ever known and witnessed, they accepted his claim that he was superior to God and joined him in his rebellion.

These heavenly spirits once both welcomed and enjoyed the presence of God. Yet, when iniquity gripped their souls their perceptions and preferences about God were darkened and they longed to turn from his face. They rejected all the truth they knew so they could entertain falsehood, and once fouled by the lies they embraced, they could never return to the rectitude they knew before. They were sealed in their heinous wickedness and set about the overthrow of the God who gave them life.

The preposterous coup was summarily crushed. The angel whose brilliant countenance had been compared to a morning star was plunged into a pit of absolute blackness, along with his defeated minions. This newly created chasm of darkness would now be the abode of these rebels and all those who would follow them into insanity. God would call it hell.

This pit was not a prison but for a select number of higher echelon angels whose authority would have to be crimped until end-time measures could unfold. For the others, hell was a place from which they could come and go. These angels, which are known as demons, joined the chief architect of this evil empire in traversing to and from and in and through earth as though it were a kind of unrestrained playground. In this world the adversary had a right to influence the course of events, and he took advantage of his first opportunity in a garden of spectacular beauty inhabited perhaps by two of the most gullible human beings the world has ever seen.

God is light and in him and his kingdom there is no darkness. In this light God can be seen for who he is. His righteousness is open and obvious to all. Yet, for angels who rejected all his truth and transparency for a lie, his light – any light – is a constant source of distress reminding them they preferred their own self-centeredness over the highest good of the kingdom. For them, the light of God is an enemy from which they want to hide more than anything else in life. In their shame and disgust they find refuge in a pit of darkness crafted by the mercy of God just for them. There they can conceal the malignancy of evil that continues to fester within them so they can deceive themselves and their comrades about who they really are. Only from the light of incendiary sulfur can they navigate this otherwise dark underworld.

There is no pathway to extrication for these demons. This abyss is a forever home. The author of the book of Hebrews explains this dynamic. It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. (Heb 6:4-6 NIV)

This abyss also became the destination for all the unredeemable mass of humanity who looked up and saw the unmistakable evidence of God in the heavens, who looked within and felt the undeniable presence of the Almighty, who looked at the world around them every day and couldn’t escape gnawing on the question What is the meaning of life? – and still – refused to bend their self-will long enough to admit their God-consciousness was always pointing to a kind and merciful king.

For people who have lived and died on earth and go to hell, Jesus described their experience as one that would include weeping and gnashing of teeth. It would be an endless combination of sorrow and anger – yet not directed at themselves, but at God. This will not be a gloom that comes from the reevaluation of a life lived horribly wrong, but a self-despair centered in the moroseness that comes from absolute hopelessness. This is the wretchedness that could have been avoided long before if only different choices were made when confronting the obvious truths of life.

The debate about hell starts with an admission that it actually exists. Of course, atheists will never admit that hell is real because God isn’t real. Neither can universalists agree that hell is real because of the illogicality of a loving God consigning anyone to never-ending torture. So, if you are neither an atheist nor a universalist, then the discussion becomes an examination of the very nature of the existence of a lost soul.

On one hand is the view that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. On the other is the idea that hell is a holding cell before it and those it holds are tossed into the lake of fire and are annihilated.

The established view held for millennia by the faithful is the eternal damnation theory. Here, hell is a realm of darkness illuminated only by pits of sulfurous fire. Demons of indescribable hideousness viciously ravage lost souls to the point where the entire cavern of desolation resounds with the excruciating screams of the doomed. Unquenchable thirst drives the despairing to near madness while the putrid stench of never-ending death convulses them as they gasp in vain for the smell of anything else. In this prison from which rescue is impossible, the damned are transfixed by a frenzied rage against all they remember about God. A defiant state of hysterical hostility towards truth and righteousness reinforces their severe indignation at the divine judgment that has condemned them to perdition.

Their titanic hatred for God is matched only by the overwhelming realization that their confinement is endless. In their hopelessness they are utterly consumed with grief. Yet this is not the heartache that comes from acknowledging sin and the need for a Savior, but the shameless remorse that comes from having lived a self-absorbed life that was cut too short. Just like Judas before them, the accursed recognized the beauty of the love of a holy God but could not embrace the humility needed to receive his life. The substitute was an existence of unceasing agony enflamed by an arrogance that can never be subdued.

Juxtaposed against this conventional theory is annihilation. This theory resolves the incongruity of a God of love inflicting eternal suffering upon a soul that has been alive more or less for eighty years by terminating the soul in the lake of fire described in the book of Revelation. Satan and his demonic hosts and all of the damned are absolutely exterminated in a nuclear furnace so intense it can incinerate even spiritual essence. The lost are not just lost to God, but they are lost even to themselves, obliterated forever from all reality, including their own. They simply cease to exist.

I have two problems with the annihilation theory. First, if God’s endpoint for evildoers is indeed obliteration in the lake of fire, then why must the damned wait in a tormentable hell until they are destroyed in that lake? Why have the damned suffer at all upon death if annihilation is their destiny? Wouldn’t it be more loving of God if the damned met their inevitability as soon as possible to forego needless suffering? After all, the suffering they must endure until they are destroyed has no rehabilitative power whatsoever.

Second, if God has always intended to utterly annihilate evil, why did he allow Satan and the fallen angels to roam the universe after their rebellion? Wouldn’t it have been wiser and better to have rid the world of the Father of Lies and the Prince of Darkness before Adam and Eve first stepped into the Garden of Eden? Annihilating the architect of evil immediately upon the discovery of his wicked self-will might have prevented the debacle of human decadence and the everlasting ruin of tens of billions of people.

Since God did not annihilate the heavenly host that turned against him, and since it appears that upon death the lost are cast into a prison of darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and where annihilation is not part of that reckoning, then I’m led to believe that annihilation is only a theory and not a reality.

I think the answer lies in my speculation that spiritual essence is eternal and is therefore indestructible. Once God creates spiritual essence within an angel or a human being it cannot be vaporized. It lives forever either with God or apart from God.

This explains why the Bible makes the point that hell was created for the devil and his angels. They needed a place of their own where they could spend eternity concealing their corruption in a domain of impenetrable darkness. If annihilation were an alternative, then God would not have needed to create a special place where they could remain.

Finally, the elephant in the room returns: the fires of hell. I’ve already established that the weeping and gnashing of teeth that occur in hell are not because departed spirits are being tortured by fire, but because these spirits must face forever the pain of rejecting truth. They are not experiencing wrath but self-inflicted chastisement. Their supreme selfishness forever prevents them from ever wanting to repent, or to even consider that they are in fact transgressors of the highest order. Yet in this locked-in syndrome they still cannot blank out the truth they understood and rejected. And this is the source of their pain – the truth about who they were while they were alive on earth and who they could have become with the grace and mercy of a loving God.

So, for what purpose is the fire? Could it be that God, in his infinite compassion, interjects a distraction to alleviate to some degree the agony the lost are experiencing? It’s like salve on a wound that never heals. The salve lessens the sting but can’t remove the pain. I call this my theory of compassionate mitigation. Somehow the kindness of God is exhibited in the deepest reaches of spiritual depravity to lessen the unthinkable horror of rejected truth. If my son were subjected to perpetual agony – an agony of his own making that had nothing to do with judicial recompense – I would do everything in my power to diminish his anguish. I would expect nothing less from the Father of Light and Life and his love for his own.

And that brings me back to the title of this post. How can the existence of hell be an expression of divine kindness? If spiritual essence cannot be extinguished, and if that essence is malevolent and impervious to any correction, and if that essence recoils from and despises all things holy and divine, and if in the presence of God that essence experiences immense misery and dread, then how can a loving God condemn such a being to live eternally in a kingdom of righteousness where the supreme happiness of God is the wellspring of all that lives? With astonishing magnanimity, God grants the damned the utmost desire of their hearts – to live separated from his love and light – so they can dwell in a pit of unspeakable revulsion and terror. This is the burden borne by God’s love. He sends them into darkness because it is their highest good and their dearest yearning.