For a lot of people, a schmackdown objection they have to Christianity is the issue that, post-our horrible struggles here on Earth, the supposedly omnibenevolent, so-called all-loving God of Christianity gleefully sends people to their demise in a fiery afterlife just for not believing in him. This post is aimed, as you guessed it, at vindicating the God of the Christians, and to help you to really understand the concept of hell, and why it actually makes good sense. I’ll be using the NET translation, with NRSV where unapplicable. 

There are a couple stages we need to go through before we get to Hell – by now, everyone and their dog knows the story of Adam and Eve, but only a select few nerds know the story of Satan himself. There are two interpretations I have found of his story. The first one is more clearlty supported by scripture and more popular, but I think the second one actually makes great sense. Either way, the one you decide to run with won’t really matter since the cause of the fall is practically the same for both. 

Stage 1: Where it all began, the story of Satan 

As we know, the angels and the heavens were created before the Earth. What were they doing? It’s not very clear, but we do know that at some point all the angels, including Lucifer/Satan, existed together in harmony, given that for there to be a ‘fall’ there needs to have first been peace. 

Ezekiel 28:12-19 starts by addressing the King of Tyre, but as the text progresses it shifts to a more symbolic language that theologians intepret to refer not just to the human King, but the spiritual forces (Satan) behind him. It reads: 

““Son of man, sing a lament for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: “‘You were the sealer of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, the ruby, topaz, and emerald, the chrysolite, onyx, and jasper, the sapphire, turquoise, and beryl; your settings and mounts were made of gold. On the day you were created they were prepared. I placed you there with an anointed guardian cherub; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked about amidst fiery stones. You were blameless in your behaviour from the day you were created, until sin was discovered in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I defiled you and banished you from the mountain of God – the guardian cherub expelled you from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom on account of your splendor. I threw you down to the ground; I placed you before kings, that they might see you. By the multitude of your iniquities, through the sinfulness of your trade, you desecrated your sanctuaries. So I drew fire out from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth before the eyes of all who saw you. All who know you among the peoples are shocked at you; you have become terrified and will be no more.’”” 

Using similar reasoning, Isaiah 14:12-15 (NET) backs this interpretation up: 

“Look how you have fallen from the sky, O shining one, son of the dawn [Lucifer]! You have been cut down to the ground, O conqueror of the nations! You said to yourself, “I will climb up to the sky. Above the stars of El I will set up my throne. I will rule on the mountain of assembly on the remote slopes of Zaphon. I will climb up to the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High!” But you were brought down to Sheol, to the remote slopes of the pit.” 

Along with Revelation 12:7-9: 

“Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon [Satan], and the dragon and his angels fought back. But the dragon was not strong enough to prevail, so there was no longer any place left in heaven for him and his angels. So that huge dragon – the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world – was thrown down to the earth, and his angels along with him.” 

And lastly, Wisdom 2:24 (NRSV): 

“But through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it.” 

These verses give us great insight as to what happened, and why it happened. Note that the name ‘Lucifer’ is a Latin name, traditionally understood to mean “morning star”.  

Interpretation 1: 

Ezekiel tells us that the ‘morning star’ was the ‘signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty’. Isaiah tells us that Satan gave in to this pride and decided he wanted to become, not just like God, but God himself. According to Revelation, Satan managed to convince a third of angels (clarified in Revelation 12:4) to rebel with him, but they were defeated by Archangel Michael and his angels and, according to Luke 10:18, Satan fell ‘like lightning’ to the Earth.  

Interpretation 2: 

Provided the same verses, some speculate that the devil was not directly envious of God, but rather, was envious of humanity. I found a video of a Priest who said that: 

“God showed the Angels some semblance of his plan for the world and that the destiny of the human person is to be elevated and glorified in a remarkable way above the Angels. Satan won’t stand for that so he rebels and goes to war, not against God (the devil knows he’s a creature he knows he can’t beat God), he goes to war against us. His conflict is against us. Why us? We’re the creatures God loves the most so he can’t accept the plan that God has for us because in all reality you and I are rather puny and weak in comparison to the Angels.” 

I actually think this interpretation, although not the most obvious, makes the most sense. Angels are defined as spiritual, created intellects with intelligence and will. They are also personal and immortal. If Angels possess intelligence, why would they go to war with God? They know they can’t win. It makes much more sense for them to attack something they think they have a chance of beating (i.e., us). I also struggle to see how Satan was able to convince a whole THIRD of the angels to fight God but, hey, what do I know?

In either sense, both great sins have the same source – pride. 

From pride stemmed the desire for self-deification – the desire to be God, either in entirety or to have his will supersede God’s. From pride, envy formed – either Satan was jealous of God’s position and thought he rightfully deserved his place, or he was angry at the joy of man, and decided he wanted to ruin it. I would argue that pride is probably the greatest sin, because with it comes at least envy, wrath, and selfishness. It also paints Satan in a direct parallel opposite to the character of God. Revelation 12:12 tells us that Satan knows that ‘his time is short’ and effectively plans to drag all of God’s creation down with him.  

But to where? 

Stage 2: What is hell, and why does it exist? 

The next step is to understand what exactly hell is.  
First, like we did before, let’s look at the verses referring to Hell, explicitly, in the Bible. 

1. Matthew 25:41: 

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels!’” 

2. Matthew 13:50: 

“and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

3. Mark 9:43: 

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, to the unquenchable fire.” 

4. Revelation 20:14-15: 

“Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.” 

5. 2 Thessalonians 1:9: 

“They will undergo the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his strength.” 

6. Matthew 5:22: 

“But I say to you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subjected to judgment. And whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will be sent to fiery hell.” 

7. Matthew 10:28: 

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” 

8. Matthew 18:9: 

“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into fiery hell.” 

9. Luke 10:12-14: 

“I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town! “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you!” 

From all these verses, we might draw a couple of conclusions. 

1. Hell is a sentence, a judgement. 

2. Hell might contain some sort of ‘fire’. We aren’t certain what kind of fire this is though, since fire as we know it is at least a merely physical phenomenon. The Bible isn’t one hundred per-cent clear on the metaphysical state of the damned post judgement. We should also note that verses 3, 6, 7, 8 use ‘Gehenna’ in their original language.  
   • Gehenna, or the valley of Hinnom, is an actual valley in the city of Jerusalem. In Israel’s past, it was used as a place of child sacrifice. From the reign of Josiah onward, it was used as a garbage dump where the fires burned the refuse continuously. Jesus used it as an illustration of the final judgment of the wicked. 
   • Further, provided that the first two verses are taken from passages where Jesus is speaking in parable, and so maybe metaphorically, it could be said that the fire might not be literal, although the experience in Hell may be analogous to it. 

3. Hell is intended for the Devil and his angels. Satan does not rule hell, he is to be punished inside it with the rest of his subjects. 

4. In whatever way Hell will ‘materialize’, it will be inherently destructive for its inhabitants. 

5. Whatever this ‘fire’ is, it will not preclude the target’s ability to think, as there will be ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. 

6. Hell is a place where God is not. Of course, he knows what’s going in there, but its inhabitants remain separated from his presence. 

7. Based on Luke 10:12-14, there may be levels of judgement/“punishment” in Hell, given that ‘more’ implies a relative scale. 
   • Dante’s Inferno illustrates this concept in a fascinating way, check it out! 

Pretty morbid, eh? 

Well yeah, it would be – and here’s why. 

It is within the human nature to search for good.
We look for things we enjoy, that make us feel nice, laugh, smile and more. In fact, even when you do something wrong, I’d argue that you did it because it, or something related to it, felt right to you at the time, although you may have known it was wrong.  
If this is true, it is clear to see that in attempting to do ‘wrong’ things, we are going about looking for something ‘good’ in an incorrect way. i.e., we are looking for some perversion of something good. For example, serial killers do objective evils, however to them, they find some sort of enjoyment in these evils. They do not do evil for the sake of evil itself, but in search of some sort of perverted good (enjoyment, but through murder) or perverted route to good.
From this, we can note that good can exist without evil, but evil cannot exist without good, given that evil is, by nature, a perversion of what is good. 

Now, think for a second, what would you get if the source of infinite goodness removed himself from the presence of humans who, by nature, desire good? 

Hell – fire or not – a truly torturous existence. 

Hell is a place in which good does not exist. The ‘concept’ is still there in the memory of its inhabitants, but there is no sort of material ‘source’ from which good can be drawn.  

Everything that makes someone good comes from God. Every expression of goodness is by necessity an expression of his nature (as we are made in his image), and so in Hell, due to an absence of God, there is nothing left of you that makes you good. 

In saying no to God, we are saying no to the infinite good, and therefore to the only thing that could make us truly happy – since it is common knowledge that materialism only brings finite, temporal joy. 

I’ll speculate here, but all this could mean that one can still sin in hell, since Jesus affirmed ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ and therefore some level of consciousness in Hell. Therefore, Hell is not necessarily a punishment, it’s a self-inflicted state. 

To summarize, the experience of “eternal separation” from God is pretty much hell. Fire or not, removing God creates Hell for a creature that is ordered toward searching for good. Hell is for people who desire to put themselves on an equal level, or above, God. God is a gentleman, and he gives those people exactly what they want insomuch as it is possible. Hell may be a way of him saying “fine, as you rejected my love for your eternity [your whole life], I will also reject you for mine” or CS Lewis put it much better in ‘The Great Divide’: 

“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.’” 

Stage 3: Common Objections 

I think I’ve answered the majority already, but these are some that I’ve missed out: 

1. How can God give an infinite punishment for a finite crime? 

I’ve already made an argument that it’s not accurate to say that Hell is a God-inflicted punishment, but rather a self-inflicted one. The infinite/finite issue is a fair question, but a few points can be made. 

• The length of time it takes to commit a crime is not necessarily equal to the period of time one would be punished for. This is quite clear even in our judicial systems. You could kill a person in five seconds, but in most countries, you’d be put behind bars for much longer than that. 

• As already stated, Matthew 13:50 alludes to some level of consciousness in Hell, which may provide evidence that sinning may continue in Hell and, as a result, ‘continually lengthen’ the period of one’s stay. 

• It can also be proposed that rejecting God may be the ultimate sin. If you reject the infinite, ultimate source of good, what are you left with? What more can he give you, if not himself? 
  

2. Christians believe you have to believe in Jesus to get to heaven, right? What about all the indigenous people that have never heard of Jesus? Are they automatically condemned? 

This, funnily enough, was the exact question that made me become an atheist in sixth form. Surely, not every person has heard the Gospel, right? Mark 16:15-16 is pretty clear that you need to believe in Jesus to go to heaven, right? What about everyone else who, through no fault of their own, are effectively condemned to hell just because they happened to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s horrible! 

Time to read again: 

1. Exhibit A – Old Testament Evidence: Job 

Most people have probably heard of Job and his tale, but I’m not here to talk about that today. The point I’ll make is quite simple. Job wasn’t a Jew, he wasn’t a Christian, but God proudly spoke about him to Satan in Job 1:8: 

“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a pure and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil.’” 

God is clearly proud of Job, and if Job had died at the moment God was speaking, it’s hard to make a case that he would have gone to hell. Note that God says that ‘there is no one like him on the earth’, implying that the point of this story is not to tell us that we can be like Job without God since God concedes that Job is literally one of a kind, given that it is a story about trusting God in the midst of suffering. The Historicity of Job and the Old Testament is a topic for another time. 

2. Exhibit B – Gospel Evidence: Luke 12:48, John 9:41, and John 15:22 

Luke 12:48 reads: 

“But the one who did not know his master’s will and did things worthy of punishment will receive a light beating. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked.” 

John 9:41 reads: 

“Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.”” 

John 15:22 reads: 

“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” 

I think these quite heavily imply that those that lack knowledge cannot be fully blamed. The more you are blessed with, the more that will be demanded from you. Common sense, right? 

3. Exhibit C – Pauline Evidence: Acts 17:26-28 

“From one man he made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope around for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” 

From this verse and God’s nature, it can be argued that God has providentially ordered it such that those who would hear the gospel are those who would have the best chance of responding to it, and those who never hear it are those who had the ‘lesser’ chance of accepting it. 

4. Exhibit D – Pauline Evidence: Romans 2:12-15 

“For all who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous before God, but those who do the law will be declared righteous. For whenever the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things required by the law, these who do not have the law are a law to themselves. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, as their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or else defend them…” 

This is more or less a mic drop. Paul tells us that the law is ‘written in [our] hearts’, implying that we all have some sort of instinct telling us right from wrong, societal conditioning or not. Those who ‘perish apart from the law’ will be judged according to their response to that conscience and knowledge. 

There could be more passages, but I think these were the clearest. 

However, 

This does not provide you with an excuse, or a ‘way to heaven without God’. Under Christian teaching, the only reason why anyone can make it to heaven is precisely because of Jesus’ sacrifice and reconciliation. Should a person be declared righteous at judgement and allowed into heaven without hearing the gospel, the debt of their sins have been paid by Jesus on the cross, and his grace ‘covers’ them. The reason, I think, that the Bible or Jesus don’t explicitly tell us what happens to those who haven’t the chance to hear the gospel, is precisely because we might become complacent. It might swing the other way, and we would effectively render Jesus’ sacrifice as useless.  

I should also point out that my intention with this post is not to reduce Jesus’ sacrifice to a ticket to heaven. Although that is included for the faithful who remain faithful, Jesus can very literally change your life if you give your life to him! 

I watched a podcast episode featuring Joe Heschmeyer and Matt Fradd, and Joe said something that stuck out to me. I’ll summarize: 

“The reason hell doesn’t make sense to modern man is because he has no idea he is anything less than great [or at the very least, good] …do you deserve to be the President? [I don’t think so.] Well, do you deserve to go to heaven, a place of perfect, eternal bliss? [Does anyone?]” 

Special Stage: Does Heaven = Hell? 

I was debating whether to actually include this section. I watched a discourse between an Atheist and a Catholic about a month ago on the Christian concept of heaven, and I thought that the Atheist brought up some interesting objections that most people don’t actually think about, and so I decided to basically dump the objections here along with a mix of some of my, and the Catholic’s responses. The last one is really good! 

Objection 1: Might Heaven not become boring? If we have finite minds, might we not just get bored of the experience, or run out of things to do? 

Not necessarily. Provided there could be activities provided by an infinitely creative mind, is it not possible that we may never run out of things to do? In the case that there is repetition, that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Some people enjoy some repetitive, simplistic things. 

Objection 2: Ok, but what about the idea that you can’t leave? Can’t that be characterised as slavery? If not the idea that you can’t leave, what about the idea that you are induced with surroundings that you would never want to leave? 

I don’t think that’s necessarily a form of slavery. For example, if we use an analogy of a person who wants to commit suicide, oftentimes, we would say that they are making the wrong decision, although it may seem right to them. Even in the horrific case that the decision may seem like the correct one to some (i.e., euthanasia), who are we to say that? We aren’t God, we don’t know the future, and a person in heaven isn’t suffering, like one in a critical state of health. 

Objection 3: Sure, but what about free will, the Christian concept of free will means that we can do anything we want to, right? Regardless of if it’s right or wrong, if you can’t sin in heaven, doesn’t that mean you don’t have free will? Isn’t that some form of slavery? 

No. Free will isn’t being able to do whatever you want – it’s just having the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.
It doesn’t necessarily follow from that that I can do anything I want to. No matter how hard I want to, I couldn’t breathe in Space without a source of oxygen, or I couldn’t fly, it’s contrary to my nature. Free will is therefore dependent upon the nature of the agent that is exerting it. A person in heaven wouldn’t be able to sin because it would be contrary to their nature – i.e., they would never want to, and the reason they would never want to is because they would have a complete conception of good and evil. [As said earlier,] a person who commits evil does it not out of a desire for the evil itself, it’s out of a desire for some malformed good. Now, pleasure is a good thing, but it can become a bad thing depending on whether or not it is exploited, and how it is achieved. Therefore, in heaven, we would be able to clearly see and understand evil for evil, and therefore never choose it – similarly to how God doesn’t do evil. It doesn’t mean God doesn’t have free will – it’s just contrary to his nature. He understands evil for exactly what it is. 

Objection 4: Right, but doesn’t that directly contradict the idea of Adam and Eve, along with the biblical idea of Angels? If Adam and Eve didn’t understand evil for what it truly is, how can they be blamed? Also, how could they sin if you say we were created perfect? Doesn’t sin require some sort of internal temptation? Further, if Lucifer knew exactly what evil was in heaven, how on earth (pun intended) did he sin? 

I would say that Satan, Adam and Eve had enough understanding to be culpable for their actions because I would say that sin incorporates two or three components: an intellect, nature and maybe but not necessarily external source of temptation. Purity does not entail an impossibility of sin, it just means a lack of a predisposition/tendency toward it. So…

1. A person with intellect, and a non-tainted nature can sin if they understand evil well enough, and still choose it. For example, if we take Satan’s example, no one tempted him, and he had a pure nature with intellect. He had a choice between serving God and serving himself. He chose himself, and the necessary consequence of his actions was to suffer. Whether he regrets it or not, I don’t know, but considering (under Christian theology) he’s still working, I doubt it. 
2. In the case of Adam and Eve, these had an intellect, and a pure nature, but also had an external source of temptation. If you look at the Hebrew used in Genesis 2:7, the word ‘nÿshamah’ is used to describe the breath of life that is infused into man. When this word is used in Job 32:8, it is said that ‘there is a spirit in man and the [nÿshamah] of the almighty gives them understanding’ implying that the ‘breath of life’ that was infused into man at the beginning carried with it some level of intellect. They understood sufficiently to choose well, and they chose wrong, and the necessary consequence of their action was heavy. 
3. If we take Jesus’ example when he was tempted in the desert, Jesus was pure and saw evil clearly for what it truly was, and knew exactly what evil was in its essence. He wasn’t deceived by appearance, which was why he never chose it. 
4. If we take ourselves in heaven, we will know exactly what evil is (like Jesus did), and therefore will never choose it. In heaven will know evil better than Satan did, seeing that we might know God better than the angels did. We will have a better reference point. Those who are in heaven will have resisted evil well enough down here, won’t they be able to do it in heaven? 

Objection 5: Even if that’s the case, how will fairness be adjudicated? If other people get better things, it’s weird to say that everyone will be equally, supremely happy? 

Sure, but this may presuppose some level of envy in heaven. Heaven is a gift, not something earned. You shouldn’t feel envious if you receive something you don’t deserve and someone receives better, considering you’ve been treated fairly. See Matthew 20. If you consider what we’ll receive like a wage, where I get paid £5/hour (that I haven’t earned), and the next guy gets £50/hour (that he hasn’t earned). I will still eventually get the same things he does, just at a delayed rate. 

Objection 6: All that taken into consideration, if there’s no suffering in heaven, how will we feel we think about people that we care about who ended up in hell? Won’t we feel bad? Doesn’t that contradict the idea of no suffering? 

Not necessarily. [As I said earlier in this post, there will be nothing ‘good’ left of those in Hell to miss or to feel sorry for]. We might not necessarily be rejoicing in people’s suffering as they are sent to and suffer in Hell, rather, we will be grateful to God for his justice. It would be a sin for us to love creatures more than the creator, and love is to will the good for another. We would be effectively hating justice if we did that and it’s actually a disordered compassion to not want justice for criminals. There do exist some people who actually don’t want criminals to be punished for their actions! 

To be honest, the answer to most of these objections are founded on a presumption that heaven can be accurately concieved with a normal human mind. Although the following may sound like a cop-out, it’s difficult to project our current selves, ideas, and complications onto something that we, by nature, can’t fully comprehend. However, it’s good to flesh these things out in discourse. 

All in all,

Since we also struggle to comprehend Hell, pretty much exactly because we are continually decieved by ourselves and Satan about the nature of sin, it’s easy to be convinced that no one deserves to go there. I completely understand that the traditional societal perception of Hell seems irrationally barbaric, but hopefully this post has helped to show how you can understand it in light of the Christian message and history, and how it actually makes good sense if it and verses about it are interpreted properly and in good context.

If you made it here, you’re an absolute nerd, but thank you for reading, and God bless! Let me know what you thought in the comments!

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