Hell, Heaven, and the God of Love: A Fresh Look at Judgment and Mercy

Unbelievable? recently featured a show about Hell with Australian apologist Dan Paterson and Catholic theologian Jordan Wood. Together they examined whether the traditional doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment is biblically and theologically defensible, and then shared their thoughts on alternative views such as conditional immortality and annihilationism. It was a fascinating discussion that encouraged me to revisit scripture and clarify my own thoughts about Hell.

Statute of limitations

We all share fundamental ideas about right and wrong, which C.S. Lewis called the Tao in “The Abolition of Man,” but also agree that there must be consequences when those moral standards are violated. Is there any human society where wrongdoing isn’t punished? I doubt it. Punishment, therefore, seems built into the order of the universe. Apologists argue that the objective, transcendent, and universal nature of good and evil support God’s existence, but overlook the fact that punishment provides them with additional evidence because it is also objectively recognized and universally practiced.

Hell, I would argue, is simply a linguistic placeholder for the most severe form of that punishment. Building on Anselm of Canterbury, I believe Hell can be ontologically described as a punishment than which none greater can be conceived. Unfortunately, while “hell” is a valid synonym for punishment, it’s rarely discussed in polite postmodern circles because it’s considered a form of rhetorical bullying. In Christian circles, though, it remains a hotly debated topic, not because there are questions about its existence, but because people are concerned about the temperature God has set the thermostat at.

In this country, we have a legal system that determines appropriate punishment based on the severity of the crime, ranging from community service to capital punishment. It allows for mistrials, appeals, and plea bargains. Jail sentences can be commuted, and convicts can be pardoned or paroled. However, when it comes to Hell, the process seems unfair and the punishment excessive. A single judge, without a jury of peers, issues a sentence that cannot be appealed or commuted, with no possibility of time off for good behavior. Is it fair that, after paying the ultimate price for the sins of the flesh by losing our biological life, our souls should face additional consecutive afterlife sentences? Is it fair to torture a spirit for a badly behaved body that already received the death penalty? Shouldn’t the statute of limitations expire when we die? These are essential questions that Christians must address if they want to be taken seriously. So, let’s peer into the abyss and see if scripture offers any clarity.

Everything on the line

Atheists deny the existence of Hell but find it a convenient hot poker with which to prod Christians. Christians, on the other hand, believe Hell is real and spend a lot of theological time debating what it’s like, with opinions ranging from a temporary timeout to a thorough roasting. Hell may not be a big deal for an atheist, but it’s a matter of Biblical proportions for a Christian because it highlights the stark difference between an eternity of weeping and gnashing and one of no mourning, crying, or pain.

St. Paul made it clear that salvation must be worked out with fear and trembling. While an atheist considers this a scare tactic, it seems that for a culture increasingly pro-choice in its politics, lifestyles, and sexuality, the heaven-or-hell fork in the road is the ultimate gift – the opportunity to make the most monumental choice any human being could ever make - the choice between heaven and Hell. 

Blaise Pascal famously urged us to view the decision about God’s existence as a wager, emphasizing the importance of considering the potential hellish consequences of making the wrong choice.

“Either Christianity is true or it’s false. If you bet that it’s true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you’ve gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it’s false, you’ve lost nothing, but you’ve had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it’s false, you’ve lost nothing. But if you bet that it’s false, and it turns out to be true, you’ve lost everything and you get to spend eternity in Hell.” (Blaise Pascal – Pensées, my emphasis)

For Pascal, gambling on God’s existence wasn’t a small side wager on a spiritual hobby horse but betting the entire farm on a lowly Jockey riding the foal of a donkey. 

Rearranging deck chairs

I find academic debates about the nature of Hell intriguing, but they can distract us from what truly matters. We often spend more time arguing over Hell’s feng shui than confronting the terrifying reality that, no matter what it looks like, it is still eternal separation from the Lover of our souls. Debating the accommodations in Hell is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship is sinking, so maybe we should spend less time worrying about the smell of Davey Jones’s Locker and focus more on helping others find a Jesus life raft.

Garden before Gehenna

One reason I believe people are confused about Hell is that they haven’t honestly thought about heaven, which is unfortunate because if you never consider gold-paved streets, you might miss your chance to exit the highway to Hell. The Bible helps us by dedicating its opening pages to a description of heaven, paradise, or the Garden of Eden. It depicts it as a perfect place made of “good’ things arranged in a “very good” way, where God dwells with creatures made in His image. It establishes the heights of heaven by which we can measure the depths of Hell. To grasp Gehenna, we first need to consider the Garden.

The competing Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation myths written around the time of Genesis made it impossible even to imagine a hell, because they lacked a perfect starting point to compare it with. They depicted a morally ambiguous universe, governed by morally ambiguous gods with morally ambiguous goals. They portrayed the world coming into existence through the antics of promiscuous gods involved in a celestial hookup culture or through the cold, calculated dismemberment of a fellow deity, reducing creation to an unplanned pregnancy or a body part trafficking operation. The idea of Hell was irrelevant in a world where the devil was already in the details. 

Ethical Infrastructure 

We exist in a tension between hoping to meet our Maker and worrying that we have spent too much time with His adversary. We hope to be welcomed into “heaven,” but fear that we might be heading to Hell in a handbasket. I find it interesting that almost everyone believes that good behavior in this life can, at a minimum, improve our chances of being tolerated in the next. While we tend to set that behavior bar very low, it at least suggests that we believe a moral ticket must be punched to get better seating in the afterlife. But why would we think the afterlife has a code of conduct? 

The rival ANE myths don’t help us here because it’s challenging to tell the good guys from the bad guys or distinguish vice from virtue in the “heavenly” realms they describe. Genesis, however, explains why we feel the need to clean up our act before we shuffle off this mortal coil. It describes an ethical universe built using only the finest “good” parts, assembled in an ecologically “very good” way. We sense that goodness has been baked into the world’s infrastructure, but then look in the mirror and discover a human being whose thoughts are only evil all the time. It is a realization that prompts even the non-religious to offer an olive branch to the universe before they start pushing up the daisies.

God created light, land, sea, plants, fish, birds, and animals, and declared them all good. At this point in the story, the world seemed to be self-sufficient, and it would have functioned quite well on its own. God, however, wasn’t satisfied with building a petting zoo. He wanted to invite friends over for a garden party. He didn’t simply want to go through the creational paces; He wanted to get His steps in with creatures made in His image. Since God is spirit, He needed intermediaries to bridge the gap between the immaterial and the material, the transcendent and the immanent, the Creator and His creation, so He scooped up some dust, breathed into it, and declared, “It is very good!” What could possibly go wrong?

Fire insurance

God gave us the gold standard of goodness by creating a “very good” world. However, God’s ethical statements were meaningless without creatures capable of choosing whether to follow His commands. Morality can’t exist in isolation; it needs beings with free will to choose between right and wrong. Therefore, God placed two consequential trees in the center of the Garden. The first, the Tree of Life, was available for Adam and Eve to eat from at any time, presumably allowing them to live forever in God’s presence. The second, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, was forbidden. God warned them that eating from it would lead to spiritual and physical death.

Eden had been firing on all cylinders, operating at maximum capacity, turned up to a Spinal Tappian 11. That is, until a snake threw a spanner in the works, the laborers questioned the Boss, and humans started fiddling with the goodness dial. Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, became bulls in a china shop and had to be escorted off the premises before they broke anything else – the humans God had created to be the life of the Garden Party became wet blankets, and God had no choice but to hang them out to dry in the wilderness.

It wasn’t an easy decision for God to cast out His image bearers because they were chips off the old Block. However, the serpent had fanned the flames of divinity, and those highly flammable chips began to smolder. God, not wanting those embers to turn into a wildfire fed by the oxygen of the Tree of Life, sent them into the wilderness with a fire-resistant sacrificial covering. God’s initial sacrifice established a fire insurance plan that would require humans to pay regular sacrificial premiums to keep their policy active. Sadly, over time, they failed to keep up with their payments, and the flames grew so fierce that God had no choice but to extinguish them. Humanity had reached the high-water mark of sin, leaving God with no choice but to formalize their separation by sending a flood. Humans had moved so far from God that they were already in Hell, and although Hell is often depicted as a fiery furnace, it might actually be damper than we think.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the Earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7)

God, however, couldn’t give up on creatures bearing His image, so He began rebuilding from the ashes by appointing a fire marshal who knew that only he could prevent forest fires.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:8)

Teetering on the edge

Once Noah and his family reached dry land and the animals were released from the ark, Noah offered a sacrifice, after which God promised He would never again destroy the Earth. Sacrifice would again become the key to preventing humanity from taking a satanic turn. It would be refined, codified, and formalized over time. The sacrificial system, which began on scattered altars across the Middle East, was later housed in a traveling tabernacle before finding a permanent home in the Jerusalem Temple.

Interestingly, God instructed the builders of the Tabernacle and Temple to decorate them in a way that would evoke memories of the Garden they had left behind. The rituals and sacrifices performed there constantly reminded them that keeping God close required the meeting place to be spotless, because, as we all know, cleanliness is next to Godliness. The good news was that even while the Temple was in the wilderness—where the devil roamed like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour—it still bordered on heaven, keeping alive the hope of someday returning to the Garden.

Escape clause

The Jews, while religiously meticulous, were spiritually sloppy and, as a result, God no longer took interest in their feasts, solemn assemblies, or sacrifices (Amos 5:21-24). The Holy of Holies was vacated. The prophets fell silent because the people’s hearing loss had become so severe that it bordered on complete deafness. God continued to read to His people from the book of nature and Holy scripture, but they no longer heard a word He said. As they drifted farther away from Him, they found themselves completely out of earshot, which I would argue amounts to living in Hell. Hell isn’t a place where the air is filled with a devilish din, but a sensory deprivation tank where one cannot even hear that still small voice. A situation which God found totally unacceptable, so He sent His Son, the final Word, to break the silence and heal those with ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to understand. Jesus, as it turns out, isn’t a Biblical byword but an escape clause.  

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Leaky cisterns

I think it would be helpful at this point to introduce Augustine’s view of good and evil. Augustine believed that evil has no independent existence of its own but appears as a privation or subtraction from the good. In the Genesis account, God created a “very good” world, which, unfortunately, Adam and Eve began to private. God couldn’t tolerate a Garden that leaked goodness because that would introduce evil, so He had no choice but to expel the broken cisterns before they caused a toxic spill. Sadly, we have continued in the tradition of our porous ancestors and find ourselves persistently leaking Living Water.

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)

Hell will be our destiny if we are running on empty, but Jesus can refill the tank. All we need to do is take a sip of the living water because when we do, it will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14)

Looking for love in all the wrong places

All religions acknowledge that humans are spiritually broken and in need of repair. They typically recommend a D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) sanctification project, which, while admirable, has a terrible historical track record of making us holy like He is Holy. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that the damage is so severe and the repairs so costly that we are in danger of being condemned unless we seek the help of a far more skilled Carpenter who is willing to pay the price. 

God is love, so Hell is less about failing to follow rules and more like cheating on the Lover of our souls. Jonathan Edwards delivered a famous sermon titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but perhaps a more fitting title would have been “Adulterers in the Embrace of a Grieving Spouse.” It makes sense that a God of love would respond passionately to those of us who, while still philanderers, truly seek reconciliation. God, however, can do no more than offer us “no greater love,” so when we respond with “no greater rejection,” we have essentially chosen to spend an eternity in a smoky singles bar full of people desperately looking for love in all the wrong places.

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com