Hilton Head Island, SC – May 28, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 5:21-22;18:7-9; Revelation 20:11-15
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” – Mt. 18:9 (RSV)
It might be assumed by most people that hell is mentioned often in the Bible. It is mentioned occasionally, but not often. In fact, the word “hell” occurs only six times in the Old Testament, though the word is frequently found in the New Testament. Jesus talked about hell on several occasions, as you heard from our first scripture reading, from the Gospel of Matthew.
Here is a very short history of hell. The concept of hell did not originate with the Hebrews in Israel. Instead, it came from somewhere east of there, probably from Persia, or what is now the modern nation of Iran. (In terms of recent history, that may seem appropriate.) Apparently the idea first sprang out of what is called Zoroastrianism, a religion founded by a man named Zarathustra. He believed there were two gods, a good god and an evil god. They were perpetually in conflict with one another over the souls of all the people on earth. The evil god took captured souls with him to hell, and the good god welcomed his redeemed souls into paradise.
When hell finally made it into the Hebrew Bible (and it did so very late), as I said it is mentioned only six times. The word “devil” never appears in the Old Testament, although the figure of “Satan” is found in the opening two chapters of the Book of Job. However, Job is an outlier among all biblical books. Its origin likely also was from Persia, and the basis of the story is really old, maybe from 3500 or 4000 years ago.
The Old Testament Jews did not believe in an afterlife of either bliss or punishment. Instead, they believed, like the Greeks, that when everyone died, they went to a shadowy existence in an underworld. The Greeks called this nebulous underworld “Hades” (which is not really synonymous with “Hell”), and the Jews called it Sheol, which literally means “The Pit.” If this does not sound very definitive to you, I suspect it was not meant to be definitive. In early religious history, few people wanted to commit themselves with great conviction to what happened after death.
It can reliably be deduced that the notion of hell, the devil, and Satan (literally “The Adversary” from the Persian or Farsi language) did not gain widespread acceptance until what is called the Intertestamental Period. That lasted from about 300 BCE to the birth of Jesus. In other words, “hell” didn’t gain much of a foothold in biblical religion until the beginnings of Christianity. Jesus talked about hell and the devil, as did the apostle Paul, and other writers of New Testament epistles. But hell and the devil are particularly major factors in the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation.
Hell became even more popular in medieval Christianity, if we can ascribe “popularity” to such a loathsome idea. Virtually all the Protestant reformers believed in hell, and said so in their writings. Martin Luther, for example, wrote extensively about hell and the devil. We have a popular illustration of that in Luther’s most famous hymn, A mighty fortress is our God. The first stanza says, “For still our ancient foe/ Doth seek to work us woe/ His craft and power are great/ And armed with cruel hate/ On earth is not his equal.” The third stanza observes, “The prince of darkness grim/ We tremble not for him/ His rage we can endure/ For lo, his doom is sure/ One little word shall fell him.” Among his many writings, Luther said that once Satan confronted him directly. The passionate German was so incensed by his adversary that he threw an inkwell at him. There can be no doubt that Luther and the other reformers considered hell and the devil to be genuine spiritual and even physical phenomena.
Fundamentalist preachers from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries have tried to scare the hell out of people by warning them they would end up in eternal punishment in the realm of Satan if they did not mend their ways. The threat of hell has been a major tool in evangelical Christianity for attempting to round up passengers to get aboard the Gospel Train.
I tell you all these things for a reason. It is to declare an unshakeable conviction that the proclamation of hell, for all its undeniably historical unavoidability, is a hopelessly flawed notion. I strongly suspect that Jesus truly believed in hell, although I also greatly regret that he did. Every writer of every New Testament book also believed in hell. Nevertheless, the very concept of hell simply makes no sense. And any belief or doctrine that makes no sense should be rejected by everyone who seeks an authentic life of faith.
But why is the very idea of hell nonsensical? Whatever else the notion of hell may be, it is ultimately based on the concept of everlasting punishment. It is that fatally flawed idea which cannot truly be affirmed by anyone seeking a reasonable and reasoned belief-system. There are no sins or crimes that could possibly justify hellfire forever. Juries convict people of terrible crimes, and judges consign those convicted criminals to judicial sentences of varying lengths, including life in prison without the opportunity of parole. But surely no fair-minded judge, if they had it within their power, would ever consign anyone to everlasting torture in everlasting flames, no matter how terrible the crime may have been. Such a punishment does not fit any crime.
Why, then, would anyone imagine that God could allow anyone to burn forever in hell? The very idea is as horrible as hell itself, if there were a hell, which there isn’t!
But here is how those who believe in hell have tried to get around that problem. They say that the devil is a fallen angel who tried to overthrow God, and that God and Satan have been going it hammer and tongs ever since the devil took his primordial tumble. That thought presupposes that an omnipotent God allowed an evil fallen angel to work permanently against the best interests of the human race, trying to lure all of us into his fiery domain of perpetual torment. But why would God allow Satan to tempt people into sins so great that hell is the only just result of their actions they deserve? Nobody deserves hell; nobody! Only distorted thinking permits mental space for such utterly unacceptable illogical and un-theological notions.
Several weeks ago I happened to encounter a couple I have known for thirty years from my previous pastorate at First Presbyterian Church. One thing led to another in the conversation, and Pat recalled a statement I had made in a sermon from way-back-when. She said I said, “No loving heavenly Father would ever allow any of His earthly children to burn forever in hell.”
I have no recollection whatsoever of having said that. But I can easily believe I said it, even twenty-five or thirty years ago when I was more theologically cautious than I am now. And so I’ll say again what she said I said: “No loving heavenly Father would ever allow any of His earthly children to burn forever in hell.”
The Apostles Creed was in the process of being adopted by the early Church over at least two centuries. When it was finally agreed upon by a strong majority of the leaders of early Christianity, it said this about Jesus: “He was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell.”
What, exactly, does that last phrase mean? It is impossible to answer with any certainty. Some Early Church historians say it refers to an obscure verse in the First Letter of Peter. There it says of Jesus that after his crucifixion and death, he “went and preached to the spirits in prison” (3:19). What that means precisely is anybody’s guess. But apparently many took it to mean that Jesus literally descended into hell after his death and before his resurrection.
For whatever it is worth (which admittedly isn’t much), I can accept that, provided that “hell” is precisely synonymous with “death.” If there is a hell at all, it is nothing more and nothing less than death itself. That means non-existence, the cessation of all consciousness forever, the permanent ending of life into permanent non-being.
It is possible that there is no life after death, no afterlife, no heaven, however you may choose to describe it. And if that is true, then that would be a just cessation to a wasted life of continuous bad choices of action and behavior. Permanent death would be permanent hell, when everyone had the possibility of living eternally with God. That idea seems feasible. I personally cannot subscribe to it, but I can imagine it. Death would be hell, when eternity with God was the other alternative God desperately wants to offer everyone.
Other people say that we can create our own hells on earth, and that also is certainly true. North Korea is hell. Syria is hell. The Central African Republic is hell. Hell would be an insistence on imbibing only liquids with a high alcohol content. Hell would be using only pills with hallucinogenic properties. Hell would be nothing but non-stop pleasurable activities of every imaginable variety. Hell even would be no food other than hot-fudge sundaes every meal. Hot fudge sundaes are heavenly, but if there were only hot-fudge sundaes, it would be pure hell. If there is a hell, it must be on earth, and in that sense there is a hell, and in that sense it is on earth.
People can and do create various kinds of hell every day. But those hells are not the hell that is either vaguely or graphically described in biblical or other religious writings or in Dante’s Inferno or in paintings by Raphael or El Greco. There is no hell anywhere like that hell, no inferno like that inferno. Shakespeare said that “hell hath no fury like like woman scorned,” but any such fury is outside the realm of hell, for there is no realm anywhere ruled by any devil or any Satan.
Hell is best consigned to cartoons in The New Yorker and other such publications. The hell of our imaginations is the only hell there is, and that is probably more than sufficient.
Nonetheless, let us give the inventors of hell the benefit of the doubt. They meant well by their highly defective theological construct. They thought it would frighten gullible people into better behavior. But wouldn’t it be better, as Lincoln said, to appeal to the better angels of our nature? Must we resort to fear to try to lead people to God? Can fear of hell truly lead anyone to the kingdom of heaven? Those methods are literally a hell of way to try to get people to do the right thing. And even if they work, which in very rare cases they might, they are still wrong. Hell is wrong; it’s a wrong idea spawned for the wrong purposes with the wrong kinds of intellectual and theological support whose very underpinnings are wrong.
Hell is antithetical to every sensible belief or concept to be found in the Bible or in any other religious source. A just God would never permit the existence of a physical or spiritual state of being in which there was nothing but perpetual agonizing punishment. God would never allow that. And if He did, we would have every reason to reject such a God and to take up the black flag of atheism or the red flag of mere humanism.
It may be that you have always believed in hell, and this sermon has done nothing to dissuade you of your conviction. That is acceptable to me, even if I don’t agree with you. In any case, I have no doubt whatever your belief about hell will not consign you to hell, since I am certain there is no hell to which anyone has ever been consigned.
In conclusion, thank God God is God. Therefore there is no hell.