Really Believing in Hell (Keith)

Hey Keith
Interesting analysis, and I think you are right on some of the negative effects (speaking as a person who continues to wrestle with the pragmatic consequences of my own beliefs as well). The distinction between belief and 'really really' belief is an interesting one for me... and one that I would get caught up with in thinking about hell. For example, in the past (and sometimes even in the present), I would get caught up on the sense that I felt I only somewhat believed in God, but didn't really really believe in God... and that my lack of belief (in the 'really really' sense) would send me to this dreaded hell. Similarly, in so much as our conceptions of who goes to hell involve a sense of orthodoxy, or really really orthodoxy, I (somewhat uselessly) have spent a good deal of my upbringing trying to distinguish between the really really believers from the believers, and similarly what category I fell into.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the 'belief' v. 'really really' belief distinction when it comes to God as well... though perhaps not on topic.

pb

Peter B: You are anticipating exactly where I hope to go in an upcoming post.

Hey, Keith,

I think you're definitely on to something. I have had the parallel thought in many instances: these Christians don't really believe in God. If they did they wouldn't (whatever).

If you *really* believed in hell, you'd be tormented, crying, having nightmares, just like if folks really believed in the living, loving God, they'd be... well, loving.

The philosophical entertainer and former episcopal priest Alan Watts once said that if people really and truly believed that there was sucha being as Satan and demons that were after them to cause their damnation to hell, they would spend their lives on their kness in prayer and in church and not be able to function in society.

budcath, that is a very interesting comment and I have not considered that angle before. Is then the implication that folks don't actually "really really" believe in hell, or do they believe in traditional hell and they are unable to cope with the consequences of being unable to satisfy the "list" of requirements?

To throw another spin on this entirely, how would a Calvinistic or deterministic position affect the conversation? Is there comfort in the idea that one is chosen "out of hell" and would that necessitate one to spend his life on his knees praying?

The whole reason i became a Christian 20 years ago this month was a fear of going to hell. My jump into faith in Christ was for 'fire insurance' which was not really authentic looking back today. It was fear-based and not out of love. It was very selfish of me.

i personally believe a lot of life lived out today on earth is a living hell at times. i think about the genocide in Darfur, the human trafficking, the hunger and poverty, Hitler and what he put anyone who did not meet his specifications of what a true human being was through by the concentration camps and gassing them. Even my daily grind of existing with Chronic Lyme Disease, and NOT really living is a real living hell a lot of the time and i am a Christ-follower.

My understanding of hell is that Jesus was talking metaphorically about it referring to the garbage dump where everyone's garbage was taken. i just do not believe it is a real place where people go when they die, burn for eternity, and gnash their teeth for eternity b/c they did not 'receive Jesus into their hearts, confess their sins, and become born-again'. i think all those scriptures are not being taken in their historical, cultural, and religious contexts Jesus was speaking about/to. i could totally be wrong but this is where i have come in my personal journey.

Enjoying your thought-provoking posts!

Happy New Year!

Warm Regards,

EP

Having been indoctrinated as a child and also having been sexually abused by a priest when I was a little girl, I can assure you that the latter rather than the former caused me much more pain throughout my life.

I can call myself a recovering catholic, and work through dismissing the doctrine (which if you think about it is a really hard sell no matter the victim's age) but I will never ever forget what that priest did to me, how it made me feel, how the bishop and his cronies minimized then denied my truth....

If you've never been sexually abused by a priest you could never fully understand the pain. Working through this is difficult -- now THAT is hell!

Virgil,

Echoing the post above me, I would just add that I have yet to me a Calvinist who wasn't among the elect. Some of them are tortured about it and constantly worried for their election, but in the end they wrestle some sense of "assurance of salvation" out of God.

I attended a fundamentalist Calvinist church for about two years and this was my experience. It never totally sat right with me and I guess from the way I behaved you might say that I never really believed it. This particular church was among those with a "remnant" mentality, preaching that there were no other true churches in the area. I don't know if any of you are familiar with Harold Camping and his Family Radio business, but a bunch of people at this church had a radio show and a few worked at the station. They later condemned Camping as a heretic when he started his "end of the church age" campaign and started a church to try and prove him wrong.

The odd thing is that there was a particular man who was involved in some street preaching group that said something like "Jesus or Hell!" and all of your other favorite turn or burn slogans. Maybe they thought they were just supplying the call for God and God would turn them from a-burnin'. In any event, I think the main way that this particular group dealt with the doctrine of Hell is by saying that in God's justice, he doesn't love all men. He hates the reprobate and loves the elect. This theology was supplied with some serious linguistic gymnastics and an over-reliance on the King James Bible's archaic language being understood as if your next door neighbor today wrote it. Texts that support neighbor love are easily rationalized away as applying to only the church (which is of course only the elect). And the pragmatic result was, like I said before, the mindset of being the last remnant, which is a fancy theological way for saying "we don't care that much about what happens to everyone else."

There was a woman who attended from out of the area fairly frequently who had a couple of sons, both of which were killed on different occasions. When her last son was shot by a man trying to rob him, the preacher gave a sermon trying to warn everyone about hell and telling us all that Kente was there now burning and wishing he had known Jesus, all in front of the grieving mother. (Just in my own defense, I had lost almost ALL of my respect for this church after a few months but I attended with my now fiancée's family and could only socialize with the pastors kids, also among the non-elect). This pastor liked to yell and carry on and pound on things- in retrospect the man was bizarrely insecure. Needless to say, this woman did not darken the door of that particular church frequently after her son's death.

Anyway, this brings up an interesting point- the "s/he is in Hell" sermon at the funeral. I attended a more moderate Baptist church that did sermons for non-Christian family members. The pastor I was close with always said that he had to speak the truth about that person's most likely eternal destiny. The most "comforting" way that he did this was by having a typical alter call at the sermon after proclaiming the good news of penal substitutionary atonement in some form or another, a call which was let to go to the machine time and time again by those listening. Any other experiences?

Korey January 3, 2009 3:44 PM Interesting thoughts. I too cannot deal with comparative analysis between hell and profound earthly suffering, but after watching the 70s movie "Like a Thief in the Night" on a sunday evening at my church at a young age I was thoroughly disturbed for many months. I would have near anxiety attacks whenever I was alone. I in all honesty think that the scariest movie I've ever seen in terms of its impact on me.

It's interesting you should mention this. I have all four movies on DVD (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet), and whenever I've had occasion to mention that they're actually decent films, and probably much better than the "Left Behind" movies, I never fail to get responses from people who say how "A Thief in the Night" terrified them as kids.

Maybe that's one reason I haven't shown them to my granddaughters. (That, plus I have some reservations about the pre-tribulation rapture + premillennial dispensationalist doctrines.)