So for no apparent reason as I was eating lunch today I started thinking about the concept of Hell. Particularly as I have learned about it since the time I was a child. My view of Hell that I remember and I am sure resonates with many others evolved in the following way.
Young child stage: If you are a bad person (i.e. don't listen to parents) you go to hell.
Hell at this stage was a place for naughty children. It was obvious that you didn't want to end up there because you would be on fire forever..
Late childhood/Early Adolescence: If you do more good than bad you can avoid Hell.
This understanding of hell was more of a cost/benefit analysis than anything else. I weighed the good I felt I was doing and the guilt I felt about negative actions to decide about behavior.
Early Christian Mindset: During my early days as a Christian (and sometimes still) I thought about hell as a place for "those people" and I thought about it A LOT, it seemed like much of what I heard in church was about knowing Jesus for the sake of avoiding Hell. I felt like because I had accepted Jesus I was OK, even if I screwed up on occasion. Those going to hell were the people who didn't think like I did and I needed to spend a bunch of time telling them about Hell so they would accept Jesus.
Currently, I worry less about hell in terms of eternity and who will or wont be there based on my presumptions, because the problem with presumptions is that we presume to know much more than we really do. One of the things that I find a lot of (Christian) people struggle with(including myself at times) is the "Who is in, who is out" mindset towards eternity. Many want Hell to be a justification for their perceived sacrifice and piety, basically saying, since I believed the right things and was "good" and you weren't I need to know that someday there will be payment for you and your bad actions. In reality, this whole mindset reeks of bitterness and personal revenge, both of which Jesus cautions against.
As opposed to the previous views on Hell I think about this, one of the most common definitions of Hell is being separated from God. That says a lot if you really think about it. There are many ways that people are separated from God here and now, not only in the context of eternity. Broken relationships, families, lives all exist here and now and that causes many people to be separated from God. War torn countries, poverty, discrimination all currently existing conditions that seem pretty Hell-like to me. If we are really so concerned about Hell, let us work to bring little bits of heaven in as many places here and now as possible and let our Heavenly Father sort out eternity.
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My thoughts and fears of hell have evolved along a similar pattern. As a kid, I was always afraid of going to hell, even though I was a Christian. I just wanted to be sure I was safe. I was also scared of a lot of other things too.
As a teenager, I continued to have occasional fears of going to hell, because some Christians would ask me if I was "100% sure." I've never been 100% positive of anything in my life, but I'd answer yes to this question anyway.
Lately, I've been a little more open about this fear, and I think others have it too. I recently read a book called The Last Word and the Word After that by Brian McLaren, which I actually thought was a terrible book. I really like his other books (A Generous Orthodoxy, Adventures in Missing the Point, The Story we Find Ourselves in).
However, before reading McLaren's book, I read The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis, which I thought was fantastic (and might have spoiled me for McLarens book), and find it more and more possible that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. Hope no one finds that phrase too cliché.
-Alex Smith
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