Understanding Hell
But my growth wasn’t a straight line in the right direction. As my ability to think expanded, I heard ‘Hades’ mentioned in Scripture, yet my understanding may have been more in line with Greek mythology than with God’s Word. How could I still get this so wrong? Even though I hadn’t yet read the Iliad, my head-space regarding the afterlife may have been more in line with Hades being a brother of Zeus, who operated as the guardian of the afterlife who ushers people into hell, even as I definitely understood that hell was also a place of suffering. Almost like the cartoons which depict St. Peter as being the gatekeeper of heaven, I placed Satan in Peter’s position, yet in the mirror world.
I somehow never understood hell Biblically until I heard RC Sproul connect the dots of Scripture. Don’t get me wrong. I knew Psalm 139, and how clearly it states, “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.” Yet I functionally inserted an asterisk onto that verse – somehow thinking that the poetry discounted meaning, when the opposite is true.
I remember at another time being explicitly told, I don’t remember how old I was, that hell was the absence of God. In that same vein, I also remember being taught explicitly that hell is what happens when God removes the blessing of His presence, because He is the One who holds evil in check. That may be on the right track, yet I understood that without God’s presence, Satan somehow reigns. I understood incorrectly – Satan never reigns; he is always on God’s leash. Remember Job?
When God removes His blessing, all that remains is His wrath. His wrath. All that remains is God’s wrath (Romans 2:4-11). His blessing is given right now, in this world, which allows us more opportunity for repentance; to return to Him (2 Peter 3:9). But once we die – what then? Well then the cement of our hearts is set – in that state, we face God without ever having removed ourselves from our assertion that we know better than Him.
What about the phrase, “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” in Matthew 13? My immature thoughts imagined that was a picture of being remorseful after death; about no longer having the opportunity to repent, yet wanting to. Again, my ignorance was showing. Weeping is suffering, sure, but what about the gnashing? We bare our teeth at our opponents, even in this modern world. Pick a sporting event, any sporting event will do but perhaps professional wrestling is the most easy to see: opponents bare their teeth at each other. We show our teeth to our enemy. This is not remorse – it’s a fight.
CS Lewis put the nail in the coffin when he said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it.” (The Problem of Pain, 1940.)
I think this is why so many people fear death. For those people who don’t know Jesus, they know intuitively if not specifically, that dying is a meeting they have put off. Remember how anxiety is about not doing something that you know you need to do? The more you avoid a thing, the more anxiety grows. For the non-Christian (or those who say they are Christians yet don’t obey Jesus), the fear of death and dying is a long-postponed meeting with God. And if God is not already loved and a dear friend, then He is the mortal enemy.
Whatever we love now, we will keep loving. If we love what God loves, God is slow to anger and quick to forgive – He knows us; our limitations as well as our hearts (Numbers 14:18). He loves us so much that He exchanged His perfection for our sin, while we were still His enemies (Romans 5:10, John 15:12-13, Matthew 5:43-48).
On the other hand, if we hate what God loves, we need to remember that God has an unwavering commitment against evil. That is His wrath. We are saved from God, to God.