Give up "Hell" for Lent
The idea of "eternal conscious torment" disgusts, and even traumatizes, many. Unfortunately, it feels like it is synonymous with Christianity, even though it is (gasp!) not in the Bible! Hayley and Vince point us toward alternative Christian beliefs about eternity and morality.
SPEAKER NOTES
Give up Hell for Lent
Stories to start
Hayley - In my experience growing up, the threat of hell was used as a subtle fear tactic to encourage good behavior
- Which was a big wrestling point for me because on one hand you have God that loves freely and forgives - I was really encouraged to have a relationship with this Jesus (gift of evangelicalism) -
- and yet somehow that loving God sent bad people to hell to suffer forever
- Will suprise no one that I was an over thinker as a kid— spirals of how bad is bad? Am I really forgiven? What about my Jewish best friend? Or my gay friends?
- I’m grateful that even early on it wasn’t something I just accepted, it was something I really questioned. The pull of the love of God always felt stronger than the possibility of hell
- Felt like a rebellion in some ways to not just accept hell as a place of torment;
- and yet the mere possibility of it was still really frightening.
- And it was an added weight to needing to evangelize, especially to people my own age (definitely encouraged in my church community)
Vince - witnessing in Christian friends crippling anxiety behind all of their relationships... because of the fear of hell — couldn’t be themselves
Context / scope today
- Our practice during Lent for the past few years has been giving up unhelpful and incomplete beliefs
- This week’s topic will have some overlap with next week’s topic on giving up Christian supremacy
- For those of you who have more harm associated with this stuff, if it helps you know what to expect…
- This week: am I going to hell?
- Next week: are my non-christian friends going to hell?
Unhelpful
Vince
- What we’re giving up for Lent today is “Hell as Eternal conscious torment”
- as a place you might go after you die,
- as a motivator for morality in life
- Even though this is what's popularly understood to be “Biblical” or “orthodox”, people are often shocked to learn it is not in the Bible (which is why we rarely talk about this)
- What is in the Bible about the afterlife?
- three tiered universe — heavens above, land of the living here, realm of the dead below (because that’s where we bury our dead) — ALL dead, not just the bad (that idea in our concept of hell came later in history, not from the Bible)
- Today we know we don’t live in a three tiered universe, we live in a cosmos (we know that if you go up you don’t reach the gods, you get to space and the earth revolving around the sun… and if you go below, you get the earth’s core, not the realm of the dead)
- But three tiered universe can still be evocative and helpful metaphorically - who cares if it’s not scientifically accurate? — we lift our eyes to the sky praying for God’s help (like we sang today) — we feel dragged down to the pit when we face despair or death
- a consistent longing for a cosmic justice in the afterlife, because of course not all injustices feel accounted for in life
- the hope that some Hebrews held to, which shows up in the Bible is: the resurrection of the dead, the great day of the Lord, the age to come, when all who have ever lived will be raised and judged by a faithful God, even if justice was not seen in life…
- the NT writers would eventually call Jesus “the first fruits” of this resurrection
- (resurrection is not just for Jesus, but for all — it’s about cosmic justice, not glorifying an individual)
- That way of talking about hope absolutely feels helpful today!
- three tiered universe — heavens above, land of the living here, realm of the dead below (because that’s where we bury our dead) — ALL dead, not just the bad (that idea in our concept of hell came later in history, not from the Bible)
Hayley
- I Listened to a lecture from professor Meghan Henning this week — what a way to spend a morning at a coffee shop, just a casual hell lecture. If you want to do a nerdy deep dive, I can post the link in discord.
- She talks about how in ancient writings there was a longing for cosmic justice and we do have some sense of a longing for “punishment that fits the crime”
- A funny text that Dr. Henning references is a text from Lucian, who was writing in the 2nd century, who presented the afterlife as the rich turning into donkeys and carrying the poor on their backs for 250 years
- Sounds similar to Jesus’ parable in the Bible of the poor beggar Lazarus and the Rich man who die and have reverse fortunes in the afterlife
- Helpful to note that she says asking the question “who made hell?” Is like trying to untangle a giant knot —
- There are so many influences of different cultures and writings alongside the Bible that we miss when hell is over-simplified as “biblical”
Vince
- So why do we all reflexively assume that eternal conscious torment is in the Bible?
- I’m so glad you asked! You know what it’s time for? Another history corner with Vince. (5 years ago, my co-founding pastor Kyle excellently walked us through this history, so maybe you’ve heard this before…)
- It’s a story of poor translation choices
- So, the original writings of the Bible are in two languages -
- Hebrew for the Hebrew Bible (or OT) and Greek for the NT.
- And in those original languages there are 4 different words that English Bibles today might translate to our word “Hell” (4 different words! But just 1 English word for all four)
- The vast majority of the references are:
- Sheol (in the Hebrew Bible) — the Hebrew concept for that realm of the dead below (again, all the dead, not just the bad)
- Hades (greek NT) — the Greek concept for the realm of the dead (again, all the dead)
- Just a handful of references for the two other words
- Tartarus (greek NT) — one reference — part of Greek mythology — a prison within Hades reserved for the Greek Titans, or according to the one reference in 2 Peter in the Bible: for fallen angels
- Gehenna (greek NT) — the one of the four Jesus most used — it was actually a specific place in his context — a valley outside Jerusalem considered unclean because it had been a place where child sacrifice by burning had taken place in centuries past — became a metaphor in Jesus' day for talking about wickedness — a metaphor, not a metaphysical place — but this is where all the fire imagery starts
- The vast majority of the references are:
Hayley
- And in ancient Judaism death was viewed negatively overall, any kind of death for any kind of life
- Another term that’s used sometimes with Sheol, sometimes on its own is “the pit”
- See this in the psalms, going down to the pit is linked to suffering (suffering in present life OR referring to death in general)
- Interesting that even though it’s a place where all the dead go we still have early negative views of Sheol and the pit because you just didn’t want to experience death— spiritual or physical, especially a premature death
- General mindset: In life, you could follow wisdom and live a life of flourishing, OR you could follow the path of the wicked and experience death
- Right, so not eternal heaven vs eternal hell; life vs death.
- What happened over the course of centuries to muddle that though was,
- through three major efforts to translate the Bible, all 4 of these different words all ended up being translated in the first English Bibles as the word “hell”
- First, even before Jesus, there was the Septuagint (Where the Hebrew Bible was translated to Greek - so that the whole Bible could be read by greek speakers)
- This one turned all the uses of “sheol” into “hades”
- So now there were just three words
- Then several hundred years later, there was the Vulgate, which translated both the Septuagint AND the New Testament from Greek to Latin
- This one turned all of the remaining three Greek words into the Latin word: inferno
- so now there was just one word
- That word “inferno” is where things get especially dicey.
- It is perhaps most well known from Dante’s Inferno (from the Renaissance poem The Divine Comedy.)
- Dante’s Inferno is a parable describing 9 circles of inferno: Places of eternal suffering
- So there’s a key turning point toward hell as eternal conscious torment
- Modern scholars point to Dante’s Inferno, not the Bible, as the source of what most people today picture in their minds when they think of hell
- Finally, hundreds of years after the Vulgate, we get the first English translation, the King James Version, which translated “inferno” to our word: “Hell”.
- So in the first English translation of the Bible we had 56 references to Hell
- In the last thirty years, translators of the Bible have recognized these errors,
- and so the most recent English translations of the Bible, only use the English word “Hell” at most 14 times
- and in the best cases they have just left the original Hebrew and Greek word in - to try and help with the confusion
- However, with hundreds of years of conditioning behind us, the confusion is not easily undone.
- So that’s today’s history corner on why we imagine hell as a fiery place of eternal conscious torment, even though that’s not in the Bible
Hayley
- Meghan Henning’s work I referenced earlier is really fascinating to me because she focuses on “what does hell do?” Not just “where does it come from?”
- It is helpful to understand the way we end up with eternal conscious torment as an afterlife option, it’s also helpful to understand what hell does— for Jesus’ original audience and audiences over time
- If we look to the times Jesus is using the rhetoric of judgement or Gehenna— the rhetoric of hell — it’s to persuade people toward ethical action
- Like Matthew 25: there’s judgement language of separating out sheep and goats, those who inherit the Kingdom of God and those who are cursed
- BUT it’s tied to an ethical command: the righteous are the ones who feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and visit those in prison
- Set against these commands is what we’d refer to as hell
- Henning calls it using visual vocabulary— rhetoric that is powerful and persuasive makes use of imagery that is memorable and has significant consequences
- We have experience with our own visual vocabulary: once we have that imagery of firey torment, it’s really hard to get it out of our heads
- But the emphasis of Jesus’ rhetoric is on care for the other- that’s the use of a depiction of judgement and suffering, to bring about greater care for the other
Yeah, again it shows up in the Bible as a metaphor for the purpose of teaching and persuasion, not a metaphysical space.
- Exactly. BUT because of our context of hyper-individualism, instead of leading to care for the poor and justice for the marginalized, the threat of hell has transformed into personal shame and guilt.
- This is not typically rhetoric now that brings about an increase of feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and in prison, though that was Jesus’ intent.
- Instead we have an increase in micromanaging behaviors or damning entire people groups
All that to say: if “eternal conscious torment” is a sticking point for you —
- if it’s hurt you
- If it seems morally gross to you
- or if it’s a reason you just can’t get behind faith or church —
- you’re actually in good company within Christianity.
- You do NOT have to believe in eternal conscious torment in order to be a practicing Christian.
- The “hell” you’re rejecting is not something Jesus or Paul or early Christians believed in,
- It’s not something many Christians all over the world throughout history have believed in.
- It is part of the Western World’s story of Christianity —
- it just seems like you have to believe in it if you’re a Christian because of the dominance of White Western culture.
Good (but incomplete)
As a result of the unhelpfulness of “hell”, most people in an urban, cosmopolitan place like Chicago, will default to different opinions around eternity and morality.
In wider secular culture today, the afterlife stuff is decentralized, and so, instead of "fear of hell”, the default thing we put our belief in to motivate morality, is psychology.
- And this is SOOO much better in so many ways
- We can demonstrate scientifically that fear and obligation as a motivator is good for short term aims but inferior to desire and love as a motivator for long term aims
- ESPECIALLY when thinking about child development —
- we recognize now the actual psychological trauma the concept of ECT can cause, and has caused many
- (and if not trauma, then certainly damage and confusion)
- This has helped us as a culture leave behind a lot of unhelpful versions of religion
- AND within religion, it’s improved things a ton!
- There can be a fear around letting go of hell as a legitimate eternal threat because then what will motivate good behavior? What will be the moral compass?
- But so many who inherited “hell” have now deconstructed it (Some of us are doing that right now!)
- Fear of hell can't be how God operates, especially if “God is love” supposedly!
- We have improved so much at developing pictures of faith for kids or ways to read the Bible for kids that AREN’T SOLELY built on the premise of: “do you want to go to heaven or hell when you die?”
- This is relieving the immense pressure put on kids and releasing fear as a motivator
- All of that is so good! Psychological understanding around development and motivation has given us this.
BUT, while an upgrade over “fear of an afterlife in hell”, putting our belief in psychology alone to motivate morality is inevitably incomplete.
- Because while it offers a much kinder and saner way to speak to “sinners”
- It fails to to say enough to “the sinned against”
- All of us know the experience of being sinned against at some point or another in our lives
- Some of us, because of inequity and systemic injustice, know the experience unfairly more than others
- The thing that “hell” and talk of an “afterlife” has going for it is…
- To the oppressed, it gives the feeling of a proportionate response to their experience of being sinned against.
- It has an answer to the “will there ever be justice?” question
- It may be a flawed answer (as we’ll discuss more on Mar 24th when we talk about giving up “retributive justice”)
- But it is an answer — it says: yeah, the people who harmed you are going to hell for eternity.
- Yeah I think psychology alone can feel incomplete because it doesn’t feel as weighty or anchored
- And while that can be freeing, I think it’s inherently easier for those who have more privilege to simply let go of hell and use psychology as a motivator instead
Alternative
So a better alternative
- has to have some kind of eternal stakes, like “hell”,
- but unlike “hell”, has to motivate morality by love rather than fear, like the psychological revolution has taught us.
And this is where so much good work is being done by contemporary Christian scholars today
- There are actually lots of different constructions
- of “the eternal”
- or of “the moral destiny of the universe”,
- or of what’s sometimes called “eschatology” by theologians
- that are all viable Christian alternatives to eternal conscious torment
- With names like
- Universal Restoration
- Reconciliation through Purification
- Relentless Love
- These alternatives then lead us to use the English word “hell” differently than “eternal conscious torment”, for example…
- Hell as the experience of broken relationship in a world of interconnectedness
- Hell as excruciating remorse born of honesty and empathy after having caused harm to others
Hayley
- Presentations of tensions between current circumstances and ultimate justice have brought me hope-
- Terms like the Now/not yet; new heavens and earth —
- emphasis on what happens now matters AND will be more fully realized in something to come
- We do need an ultimate redemption to inspire us
- Like Jesus’ original rhetoric that is meant to inspire acting in just ways,
- what we do can contribute to or alleviate others’ experiences of hell on earth
- Rhetoric of compassion, an arc of justice, should ideally be able to lead to justice now and be anchored in a fuller picture of justice to come
- Like Jesus’ original rhetoric that is meant to inspire acting in just ways,
- Back to Meghan Henning’s work: the visual vocabulary of pictures of hell we’ve inherited are vivid, but the violent imagery is not helpful.
- We need different non-violent pictures of justice because we are constantly surrounded by images and experiences of violence
Rather than recommend one specific alternative,
- we’ll point to a book of essays for you to learn more about many of these alternatives
- Deconstructing Hell edited by Chad Bahl
- Including an essay by Henning
- We’ll put in Resources Channel
And what we will say now is the through line for these satisfying alternative beliefs about eternity and hell:
- The picture of God behind them is not suspect, not blind, not split-personality, not gaslighting us about love (like, no, it really is loving for me to torture people for all eternity!)
- This God is consistently loving, trustworthy, faithful, and we can therefore trust our best intuitions about what love is.
- We can trust our best picture of an all-loving God that doesn’t come with fine print regarding eternal torture
- Also I do want to say, so much of the threat of hell is tied to sins that are behavior based
- But some of us may have been told that we are going to hell solely because of our existence and who we are
- So if you are someone (or there’s someone you love!) who has been told that hell is inevitable because of who you are, I am so sorry
- I hope and pray that you have experiences of a God of love and of community that help to heal that wound
- to know that you have firm ground to stand on to reject that claim and to know you are fully loved
Experiment / prayer
Again: our Mealtime prayers
- Presenting you with a God who is not threatening you with Hell,
- But inviting you into a tradition of love
- Even if you haven’t stated yet, jump in today. God isn’t mad! Start now!
- My family forgot to do the Mealtime Prayer last Sunday, so we did it Monday. And God wasn’t unhappy with us.
Prayer with others or a devotional life can feel awkward and hard for Christians in liberal contexts —
- past models you’ve been exposed to may feel cheesy or disconnecting or untrue
- These 5 minutes of reading, reflection, and a prayer practice are, we hope, an antidote to those feelings.
Again: receive prayer this Lent — today if this topic resonates with you!
- Together as a unit.
- Personally with our prayer team, or one of the two of us, before you leave today — especially if you feel something as I pray now.
Resources reminders: Deconstructing Hell, Bible for Normal People podcast episode and lecture from Meghan Henning (other resources from previous weeks - like Nadia Bolz Weber’s work - are also in the resource channel)