Regards,
Joey D
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Hey there, Joey! I'm actually in a fairly similar place to you, Hell-wise. (I mean in how I understand the place.)
Like Satan, whom I talked about here, Hell is only sparsely (and inconsistently) described in the Bible. Most of the concept we have of hell actually isn't Biblical at all, but comes from works of fiction like Dante's Inferno. This hasn't stopped some religious groups from discussing it gleefully in their tracts and even Hell Houses, Haunted House type performances that are set up to try to literally scare people to accept Christianity.
More on that later.
The Old Testament doesn't deal in afterlife very much. Eternal life, at least to the culture the Old Testament was written for, was interested mostly in descendants, with one having their name carried on by children, grand-children, etc. (Interesting aside, this MIGHT be a societal basis for some homophobia... if you spend all your romantic energy on a relationship with no chance of children in a worldview like this one, you are not only risking your own immortality, but that of your ancestors. I never thought of that before.) When it did talk about after-life implications it spent most of its time dealing with the concept of Sheol, a land of the dead-type place that had far more in common with Hades from Greek Mythology (a place where ALL the dead went, rather than just the bad people) than Hell as we understand it today.
Enter Jesus, and questions of afterlife started becoming more important. The "Hell is Real" people love pointing out that Jesus himself refers repeatedly to Hell in his teachings. This is true... sort of. Remember those sparse and inconsistent references I talked about earlier? Jesus never really seems to feel the need to go into any great detail about "the fire" as he referred to it, though he does speak of it as a given.
The one real exception in this seems to be the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, from Luke 16:19-31. In this parable, Jesus talks about two men, a rich man and a poor beggar named Lazarus, who die on the same day. They enter the afterlife which is split in two by a huge chasm... on one side there is feasting, on the other, suffering. Lazarus is on the feasting side, the Rich Man suffering. The Rich Man calls to Abraham, (who is with the Feasters) to have Lazarus bring a drop of water to cool the Rich Man's tongue... but Moses says that both are receiving a balance to what they received in life, besides, due to the chasm, it is impossible.
This is, bar none, the most detailed afterlife description available to us. However, while it is often referenced by the Hell is Real camp, it isn't often actually told, for the following reasons.
1. The suffering component, which most modern Christians would equate to Hell, isn't actually presented as a punishment for sin, but rather as a Karmic balance to how well one had it in life, having, apparently, nothing to do with ones morality and behavior besides, MAYBE, charity. We have no tale of good deeds getting Lazarus to paradise, just the fact that he suffered in life, and the inverse for the Rich Man.
2. As a Parable, the point of the story is not a tour of the afterlife, but rather a condemnation of the attitudes of the rich. It IS pretty interesting that the Rich Man still thinks he should get to be able to order Lazarus around, even in death.
So while they are eager to name this as an instance where Christ talks about Hell, it is fairly widely acknowledged to be a Parable, a metaphor. Ever notice how, when the Biblical message SEEMS to be punishment for the wealthy for BEING wealthy, even the Bible Literalists seem to be all about some metaphor? But I digress.
As a Christian who views the Bible as an authority, I can't simply do away with Hell, but as a universalist, I also don't see it as a permanent state of being. Given the inconsistency of the Biblical account, I need to think about function... if hell does exist, what would it be for?
The most consistent message on that count is the purifying fire, a process like a smelter that removes the dross from the ore. I like that image, because as a good Reformed boy I believe that everyone is sinful in one way or another, and so the purpose of Hell becomes not a punishment, or act of retribution, but rather a cleansing process, removing the bad while leaving the good. And like any process, this is not permanent.
In the end, I try to dwell on it too much, BECAUSE it is so inconsistent and mostly reduces me to conjecture. While I do believe Hell exists in some form, it isn't particularly important to my theology.
But to some people, it seems to encompass ALL of their theology. I feel like those people LOVE the image of the afterlife presented in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, if not the Karmic feel of it, because it has those in Paradise and those suffering in clear view of each other, even able to shout back and forth to each other. To them, the joy of paradise almost seems to be the fact that they get to watch others suffer, as if Hell serves as Heaven's entertainment.
For starters, that was ABSOLUTELY not the Parable's point, but the stories modus operandi to allow the Rich Man to have his conversation with Abraham. For the rest...
A lot of people see religion as a life of sacrifice in the worst way possible. There are all these "bad" things we want to do but can't. We want to steal, we want to cheat, we want to have sex with whatever without thinking about who we hurt in the process. But we can't do that, because if we do, we'll be punished for it. So we may not get to do those things, but you all who do will be punished and that will be GREAT!
Ugh. This isn't a theology. This is a five year old making themselves feel better because they were told to take their hands out of the cookie jar.
And yet, this is the mind-set perpetuated constantly by the Hell is Real folks, a worldview where bad people get what's coming to them so you better watch out, where religion becomes a game of near constant supervision and judgement, where the motivator for nearly any action becomes not "Jesus loves me" but rather "Jesus will get you!"
But do you know the saddest part of all of it? The most painful irony of it all is that even if these people are right about how Hell works, the way they have gone about building their world around it means they are CONSTANTLY ignoring the commands Christ labeled the most important: love of God, and love of neighbor. Which means that if Hell is a just reward for unrepented sins, with no hope for those who defy God's commands, then they are almost certainly going there.
So I'll keep doing like I do and hope that I am right and they are wrong. For ALL of our sakes.
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