10: Hell on Earth?

One of the more interesting things folks will say to me is: “I’m not religious or anything, I just hope that being a good person is enough.” To which I always want to say . . . “enough for what?” . . . avoiding the punishment of burning in the eternal fires of some kind of imaginary hell?

Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Everyone in this class is at least seven years old. Did you know that seven is the age of accountability? That means that if by seven years old you haven’t received Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you will be on fire in hell forever while worms slowly eat your flesh for all eternity.”

I wish that was the only thing my second-grade teacher ever said about hell. But no. Not only did she remind us of this often, but in Bible class at our Christian elementary school she drilled down. She sat on a stool in front of cardboard ABCs and a cartoon caterpillar calendar with her hands serenely folded in her lap. In a calm but rigid voice, she plumbed the bottomless pit of hell and didn’t hold back. Speaking slowly with ominous foreboding, she asked us to close our eyes and imagine the worms . . . imagine the slow and painful torture that awaited anyone who failed to ask Jesus into their heart. Imagine the horror of begging for the sweet release of death that would never come to stop to the torment. This is forever, kids, and forever never ends. Ever. Did I mention forever?

That year, my days consisted of learning about math and language, and thinking about eternal conscious torment. My afternoons included chasing Olympic dreams at my local gymnastics center. And my evenings were spent doing everything I could to avoid homework—and panic attacks.

Around this same time, I began to learn about the Rapture. This was supposed to be “good news,” but for an eight-year-old already living in almost constant existential crisis, the idea of Jesus unexpectedly beaming his followers up to heaven sounded just about as terrifying as the hordes of insatiable zombie worms that were waiting to feast on my face. Oh, and heaven was forever, too. After someone compared heaven with “an eternal worship service,” I couldn’t figure out which sounded worse . . . eternal fire or an eternal sing-along.

I began to realize that my main fear wasn’t simply the concepts of heaven or hell. It was eternity. I was absolutely petrified of living forever . . . no matter where I ended up. Trying to wrap my prepubescent mind around a timeline that never ends—or even worse, God’s timeline never having a beginning—was too much for my yet-to-be developed frontal lobe to process.

As the years went on, this fear and panic became my new normal. Laying my head on my pillow at night, I would come up with creative scenarios to distract myself from thinking about hell and eternity. As a creative kid with a wild imagination, I learned from a very young age to use that resourcefulness to escape the haunting contemplations my mind often imposed upon my consciousness. Some nights I was an Olympic gold medal–winning gymnast who ran around the arena smiling and waving before jumping into the arms of my firm but kind and fatherly coach. (Cut me a break. It was the eighties and Mary Lou Retton was adorable.) Other nights I was someone interesting and offbeat, like Punky Brewster or the plucky, yet-to-be-discovered future member of the A-Team.

No matter which fantasy I employed, sometimes it wasn’t enough to stave off the impending panic. Thoughts of eternity would slowly materialize like an electric current shooting from the bottom of my feet out the top of my head. Accompanied by instant sweat, rapid heart rate, and chills that flooded every pore, I would squeeze my eyes shut and jump out of bed with an adrenaline rush that could wake the dead. Pacing the room and shaking my hands, I would beg God to please, please make it stop. Eventually it would, but the dread of wondering when it would happen again never did.

Snatching a Friend from the Pit of Hell

As a child, I would occasionally be allowed to attend “big church” with my mom and dad. There was something warm and heavy about big church. Something reverent. Seriousness and sobriety filled the air, but it wasn’t dry or unfeeling. It was electric yet constrained. Alive. I felt something in that place I didn’t feel when I was in Sunday school class or youth group. I associated that feeling with the presence of God.

So it was with great hope that, at nineteen, I entered the same sanctuary I had hundreds of times before—but this time with a singular purpose—to save my friend from hell. After graduating from high school, I had taken a hostess job at Chili’s and befriended Christina, a food server I worked particularly well with. “You can double-seat me,” she would say. “In fact, just feel free to fill up my tables as fast as you can.” With the manager breathing down my neck to seat all the tables as quickly as possible, most of the servers shooting nasty looks if I filled their sections too quickly, and hungry customers griping that they weren’t being seated quickly enough, my job was a stressful balancing act.

Christina was a party girl, but she was different from my other coworkers. She never tried to shock me with stories of her wild life, nor did she clam up and presume that if she cussed in my presence, she would melt the poor puritanical Christian girl like the green witch in The Wizard of Oz.

When I learned that my church was hosting a production of a traveling Christian drama on heaven and hell that toured all over the world, I saw a chance to help my friend meet Jesus. I’d heard stories of people being so moved by the production that the altars were flooded after it was over. This was it. This was the perfect opportunity to share the gospel with Christina. Surely she wouldn’t be able to resist the persuasive depictions of heaven and hell. Surely she would realize how quickly this life is over and how important her life-and-death choices would be now. Surely she would give her heart to Christ.

On the day of the performance, Christina met me in the lobby, and we found our seats. Excitement and anticipation hung in the air as the lights faded to black. Under a red-toned hue, Sandi Patty’s “Via Dolorosa” was sung as Jesus staggered down the middle aisle carrying his cross. Tears misted my eyes as I watched the depiction of my Savior stumbling to his death—the Savior who meant more to me than heaven or hell. Surely he had it all figured out and I would one day realize that my anxiety had been unnecessary. I snapped to attention as the music suddenly changed to a frantic, drum-driven beat. Regular people just like me began hitting Jesus, whipping him, mocking him, and spitting on him. My breath caught in my throat as I imagined the significance of this. I—a sinner—nailed Jesus to the cross. It was my rebellion that put him there, and his great love and mercy that ordained it to happen.

Enter the villain. With a maniacal howling cackle, the devil emerged from his fiery pit to join the abusers in beating Jesus and nailing him to the cross. The devil’s face was covered in black-and-white makeup, making him look more like a member of the band KISS than the prince of the power of the air. Thus was my conception of hell and the devil: a raving-mad Gene Simmons look-alike emerging from a red-lit block of dry ice with an evil laugh that rivaled that of Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

After Jesus was crucified, he rose again, giving the devil and his gang of demons quite the butt-kicking across the stage before ascending into heaven, where everything was made of white fabric and aluminum foil and everyone wore baggy, floor-length white robes and just kind of stood there for all eternity. For the remainder of the play, we watched person after person find themselves at the shiny tin gates after their untimely deaths. I was on the edge of my seat awaiting the fate of each eternal soul. Would Jesus appear, give them a big hug, and usher them behind the mysterious big white curtain? Or would the devil emerge laughing from his scarlet pit and drag them to hell like something from an Ozzy Osbourne video? Either way, the devil seemed to be having a ball in hell.

I don’t remember exactly how the altar call went. Maybe the pastor said something like “With every head bowed and every eye closed, I want to ask if you know where you’re going if you die tonight.” There was an intense energy in the air as the altar was practically overrun. At one point, the pastor asked us to pray for those who we knew had not made Jesus Lord of their life. Then we were prompted to ask the person next to us, “Would you like me to walk down to the altar with you?” It took all the brass I had to whisper the question to Christina. I imagined she was deeply moved and simply needed a little nudge from a loving friend. I slightly opened my eyes, expecting to see tears rolling down her face. Instead, she was quiet and peaceful, respectfully keeping her eyes closed and her head bowed. “Oh, no thanks,” she politely whispered back.

How can this be? Did she miss the part about burning in hell forever? Did she not believe the devil when he announced that he had inspired all the beer commercials on TV? Did she not think that spending eternity in a white-draped, metallic room being hugged by Jesus sounded great? Apparently, she didn’t. We left quietly as Christina thanked me for inviting her.

I couldn’t figure out why Christina was so unmoved while so many others were captivated and persuaded. I’m sure there are many Christians today who once walked the aisle at a showing of a similar church production. I’m sure they went on to develop a more nuanced theology of heaven and hell. But for many years of my life, my picture of hell mirrored that of this drama.

Love Wins

Even though my understanding of hell wasn’t exactly fleshed out, most progressives have a different view of hell altogether. In his book Love Wins, Rob Bell suggests that perhaps, rather than being a physical place, hell is simply the literal experience of evil on earth.[1] In other words, hell is the wounds left behind by genocide, rape, and murder. Ironically, this progressive idea of hell is partially true. Every time we turn from the truth of God, we introduce hell into the world. Every time we call evil “good” and good “evil,” we create little pockets of hell on earth. But that’s not the whole story. The Bible teaches that hell is also an actual place.

The denial of a literal place called hell is now common among progressive Christians, but back in 2011, it was incredibly controversial. Rob Bell incited a firestorm (pun intended) with Love Wins. In the introduction, Bell writes,

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.[2]

Like Bell, Brian Zahnd claims that hell is at odds with Jesus’ teaching. He writes,

Jesus certainly did not lay the foundation for an afterlife theology that claims all non-Christians go to hell. This has become a common way of thinking about heaven and hell—“Christians go to heaven; non-Christians go to hell”—but it is not based on anything Jesus ever said![3]

Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr goes even further to describe the view of God as a being who inflicts punishment and doles out rewards as unhealthy, “cheap,” and “toxic.” He writes,

Jesus tells us to love our enemies, but this “cultural” god sure doesn’t. Jesus tells us to forgive “seventy times seven” times, but this god doesn’t. Instead, this god burns people for all eternity. . . . Most humans are more loving and forgiving than such a god. We’ve developed an unworkable and toxic image of God that a healthy person would never trust. . . . Why would you want to spend even an hour in silence, solitude, or intimacy with such a god?[4]

So is Richard Rohr correct in saying that a view of God that includes punishment and reward is evidence of a toxic mind in need of deep healing? Or is this nothing more than a manipulative trick—a type of spiritual gaslighting—meant to make one question their mental health if they disagree with him?

His view certainly helps explain the appeal of universalism to those who reject the idea that a loving God would reject those who reject him.

Universalism: The Way We Would Do It

Many modern Christians have some serious misconceptions about hell and the afterlife. Some of our views of hell have been shaped by Dante’s Inferno of the Middle Ages, others by the fire-and-brimstone preachers of the first Great Awakening, and still others by a vexing second grade teacher or a traveling church drama. So it’s not difficult to understand why universalism has become such an attractive alternative for so many Christians who struggle to reconcile the goodness of God with his supposed “torture chamber.”

There are several different understandings of universalism, but put most simply, it’s the belief that all human beings (and in some cases, even fallen angels) will be saved and spend eternity with God. Some in the progressive Christian paradigm deny the idea that sin separates us from God altogether, rendering any need for a meaningful “salvation” unnecessary. A view that adopts more Christian language is called universal reconciliation, which holds that while Jesus is the only way to salvation, all humans will eventually be reconciled to God through Jesus. William Paul Young holds this belief and calls it universal salvation,[5] and Nadia Bolz-Weber calls it Christo-centric universalism: “I confess that I am a Christo-centric universalist. What that means to me is that, whatever God was accomplishing, especially on the cross, that Christological event, was for the restoration and redemption and reconciliation of all things and all people and all Creation—everyone.”[6]

Universalism was first suggested by church father Origen (possibly echoing Clement of Alexandria) in the third century, although there is much scholarly debate on exactly what he believed about universalism and how ardently he defended it. There is even debate about when, precisely, his teachings were deemed heretical. I’ll leave those debates to the scholars. But in his two-volume history and interpretation of universalism, The Devil’s Redemption, scholar Michael McClymond traces the doctrine from Origen in the early third century to influential theologian Karl Barth in the mid-twentieth century to today. Dubbing it “the opiate of the theologians,” he notes how universalism has gained momentum in the last five hundred years and “fits the age we inhabit.” He points out, “It’s the way we would want the world to be. Some imagine that a more loving and less judgmental church would be better positioned to win new adherents. Yet perfect love appeared in history—and he was crucified.”[7]

It’s not difficult to understand why universalism is so appealing. No one wants to imagine their unbelieving friends, neighbors, and family members spending eternity in torment. It’s an easy fix to a troubling idea. But as much as it may bring comfort, I learned that it is not biblical, nor does it represent the historic witness of the church.

In his international, peer-reviewed theological journal article about the history of universalism, New Testament scholar Dr. Richard Bauckham noted,

Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated. . . . Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included some major theologians of the early church. Eternal punishment was firmly asserted in official creeds and confessions of the churches. It must have seemed as indispensable a part of universal Christian belief as the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation.[8]

Although universalism appeals to our modern sensibilities, it is not what the Bible teaches. As we discussed in the last chapter, God’s wrath for sin ensures that his followers will not spend eternity coexisting with sin. Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, we are invited into an eternal Kingdom that will vanquish sin and death forever.

Where in the World Is Hell?

A few years before Love Wins was released, I had been forced to grapple with my own simplistic beliefs regarding the afterlife. I learned that when the progressive pastor told me that, yes, he believed in the existence of hell, he had redefined that word too. He revealed in a later class that he believed hell was some kind of rehabilitation program, or possibly the consequences of our wrong actions that we experience here on earth. In keeping with the hopeful agnosticism he claimed in the beginning, he wasn’t sure, but he was hopeful that hell wasn’t what Christians had historically believed.

Given my simplistic and incorrect assumption that hell was a torture chamber and heaven was an eternal bore—you would think I would be all over that like jelly on peanut butter. So why wasn’t I? Why did it bother me to think that hell wasn’t real? Was it because I secretly relished the thought of unbelievers being tormented forever? Certainly not! In fact, I had experienced panic attacks over that very idea. Was it because the doctrine of hell was so deeply ingrained in my psyche that it gave some kind of “sick coherence to my world,”[9] as Richard Rohr claims? Is Rohr right that I need “deep healing” because I believe in concepts like reward and punishment?[10]

As I began to take a serious look at the historic and biblical view of hell, I learned that the biblical view of hell is a little more mysterious than I thought. There is a lot the Bible doesn’t reveal, but it does tell us that hell isn’t something included in the original creation that God called “good.” When God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1, hell was not a part of that. Like rust would not exist without metal, hell would not exist if it were not for Satan’s choice to rebel (see Matthew 25:41). In this way, Satan was the one who effectively unleashed hell on earth.

In the New Testament, hell is described as

Jesus himself described hell as

Notice how Jesus uses three different types of imagery to describe hell—fire and darkness and worms that don’t die. For fire and darkness to coexist, one would have to be taken as a metaphor. Literal fire would light the darkness, so literal darkness would not be possible in the presence of fire. This, along with the fact that hell was originally created for the devil and his demons (who are spirit beings and don’t have physical bodies to be affected by literal flames), has led many theologians to conclude that these three images—fire, darkness, and worms—are metaphors.

Dr. Norm Geisler and Dr. Thomas Howe write,

Both “fire” and “darkness” are powerful figures of speech which appropriately describe the unthinkable reality of hell. It is like fire because it is a place of destruction and torment. Yet, it is like outer darkness because people are lost there forever. While hell is a literal place, not every description of it should be taken literally. Some powerful figures of speech are used to portray this literal place. Its horrible reality, wherein body and soul will suffer forever, goes far beyond any mere figure of speech that may be used to describe it.[11]

But even if those terms are metaphors, that shouldn’t bring us any relief. It just means there aren’t words to describe how awful a place hell is. Theologian J. I. Packer describes hell this way: “Hell is . . . the negation of fellowship with the Lord. It’s the negation of pleasure. It’s the negation of any form of contentment.”[12]

Imagine an existence completely devoid of anything good. Without any passing feeling of peace or joy. No beauty. No hope. No love. Nothing to look forward to. Utter despair. Forever trapped within the torment of a bad dream. It’s difficult for us to imagine such a state because all of us, from the most hardened atheist to the most ardently devoted Christian, have no idea what life would be like outside of the presence of God’s goodness and love. We all experience God’s presence in the world. This is what theologians refer to as “common grace,” and we don’t even have a category for what it would be like to be conscious apart from that reality. This is what J. I. Packer refers to as the “heart” of the doctrine of hell. It’s life apart from the love and goodness of God and under the complete control and domination of sin. Packer remarked, “It’s difficult to talk about hell because it is more awful than we have words for.”[13]

As difficult as the subject is, it is often repeated that Jesus talked about hell more than anyone. He often used the word Gehenna to describe hell, which was a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, where ancient pagans and Israelites sacrificed their children by fire to the god Molech. God turned this cursed place, where sin and evil were unrestrained, into a place of judgment, calling it “the Valley of Slaughter” (Jeremiah 19:6). Recent scholarship points out that the Jews of Jesus’ time and place understood hell to be a place of punishment after judgment. There are examples in first-century Jewish writings in which the “furnace of Gehenna” is depicted as a pit of torment that comes after final judgement.[14] In other words, it didn’t simply refer to a valley where their ancestors did horrible things. Gehenna was understood to be hell. Jesus knew this, and if he wanted to talk about Gehenna in a different way than was commonly understood, he would have had to go out of his way to make that point. But he didn’t. He used the word Gehenna interchangeably with hell.

Jesus often taught theology by telling parables. One of those parables is found in Matthew 25, where he describes the Kingdom of Heaven being like ten virgins waiting for their bridegroom. Five are wise and five are foolish. The five wise virgins brought oil for their lamps, while the five foolish ones brought none. When the bridegroom arrives, the foolish virgins are out of oil. While they go to the dealers to buy more, the door to the wedding feast is shut. And once it is shut, it does not open again. So here we have Jesus—all-inclusive, tolerant, and never-judgy Jesus—shutting the door to his Kingdom. After this, he tells another parable in which he once again describes separating true followers from false ones—the false ones being cast into outer darkness. After these two parables, he teaches about the final judgment. Sheep and Goats. The sheep find eternal life while the goats are condemned to “eternal punishment” (verse 46).

These words were some of the final recorded teachings of Jesus before his arrest and crucifixion. He wanted his followers to know that there would be a final judgment. There would be eternal life and eternal punishment. The door to his Kingdom would one day close. He urges us to be ready. Despite the progressive Christian attempt to soften or reinterpret these teachings, I couldn’t shake the power of Jesus’ words.

And as I continued my research, I discovered that the earliest Christian sources agree with the New Testament. The nature of hell is debated, but three things are made clear. First, hell is eternal. Second, in hell souls are conscious. Third, hell is torment.

As I thought through the nature and justice of hell, I realized that I had been operating under some serious misconceptions about what hell is and why it exists. My guess is that many Christians, and a great many atheists and agnostics, also misunderstand what hell is all about.

Correcting Misconception #1:
People in Hell Are Repentant

When I was a little girl, I imagined that the poor souls “gnashing their teeth” in hell were unlucky victims who simply never got the chance to respond to God’s love. Like the beer-drinking teenagers whose car was run over by a train in the church play (yes, that was actually one of the scenes), the gnashing of teeth was the physical manifestation of their tearful grief and repentant sorrow over never having had the chance to give their lives to Christ. If only someone had shared the gospel before it was too late! But the Bible gives us a different picture.

Gnashing of teeth is written about several times in Scripture. In the Old Testament, it typically refers to something enemies do in rage and defiance of their foe. Lamentations 2:16 describes the enemies of Jerusalem taunting her by hissing and gnashing their teeth in joyful celebration of her demise. Psalm 37:12 depicts the wicked gnashing their teeth at the righteous as they plot against them. In Psalm 35:16, David characterizes those who gnash their teeth at him as “profane mockers” who rejoice when he stumbles. Even Job uses the imagery of the gnashing of teeth to describe God’s wrath (Job 16:9). In the New Testament, Acts 7 gives us the last moments of Stephen’s life, just before he goes down in history as the first martyr of the Christian faith. As members of the Sanhedrin pick up stones to execute him, they become filled with rage and “gnashed their teeth” (verse 54, NIV) at him.

This is hardly the picture of an innocent soul weeping in repentant remorse. It’s a snapshot of the active anger of an enemy. It’s the opposite of repentance and godly sorrow. Perhaps this is why C. S. Lewis famously wrote that “the gates of hell are locked on the inside.”[15] I don’t know if he’s right, but it certainly seems an apt description of the ongoing rebellion of those who are kept out of God’s Kingdom.

In this way, hell is not some kind of divine torture chamber in which God sadistically enjoys the torment of those who reject him. It’s God giving them their way. Hell is a place for those who reject God. And God will not force anyone into his Kingdom who doesn’t want to be under his rule. And he can’t let sin and corruption in the door, even for those who want the benefits of heaven but don’t want to turn from their sin to follow him.

Correcting Misconception #2:
The Devil Is in Charge of Hell

As in the church play that depicted Satan emerging from his eternal fire party to claim those souls who belonged to him, I somehow imagined that the devil was having fun in hell. With a red throne, a pitchfork, demonic servants, and endless supplies of human souls to torture, I pictured a devil who was quite happy to be king of the underworld in his inferno of misery. Have you noticed that just about every popular reference to the devil and hell in movies and television depicts him this way? From late-nineties Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate to Adam Sandler in the 2000 movie Little Nicky to more current titles like the television show Lucifer, the message is clear: The devil is sexy, smart, and the mayor of his hometown.

But this is far from the biblical picture of hell. When Jesus describes the final judgment in Matthew 25, he says he will separate people like a shepherd separates sheep from goats. When he depicts what will happen to the goats, he says they will depart from him into “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (verse 41). So it’s clear that hell was not created for people. It was created as a type of quarantine for evil—namely, the devil and demons.

Revelation 20:7-10 tells us that Jesus finally deals with Satan for good: “The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” In other words, the devil and his demons will not be ruling or tormenting anyone or having fun. They themselves will be tormented forever in this place God created just for them—hell.

Correcting Misconception #3:
Everyone Gets the Same Punishment

When I was a child, I had a babysitter who was a nasty woman. Not in the pop-culture way of defining female empowerment, but in the mean-spirited, harsh, critical, coldhearted way in which the word is typically used to describe an unpleasant person. She was not nice. She once scolded me for acting like a baby because I wet my pants while searching in vain for a bathroom in an unfamiliar house. She claimed to be a Christian.

I once read an article about a man who sold all his earthly possessions to take care of the homeless. Every day, he would walk into the streets, find the most destitute of human beings, bring them back to his small apartment, bathe them, feed them, and offer them shelter. His entire life was devoted to helping others. He was humble and kind. He was a Buddhist.

So how was I to make sense of the fact that, according to my beliefs, the nasty Christian was going to heaven while the benevolent Buddhist was going to hell? This was hard to figure out because, although I understood the concept of grace with my mind, my heart hadn’t gotten the message. Grace isn’t about being rewarded for doing and saying the right things. It’s not about getting what you deserve. It’s about not getting what you deserve. Grace is Jesus looking at every human and saying, “You deserve death because of sin, but I’ll take what you deserve and offer you the eternal life that I deserve.”

When I looked at the Buddhist and the babysitter through the lens of grace, I understood that being a part of God’s Kingdom is not about earning our way in. It’s not about who gives away the most money or feeds the most homeless people or who’s the nicest. In the case of the Buddhist, it’s hardwired into his belief system to work off bad karma and enter Nirvana. But the prophet Isaiah tells us that we are so infected by sin that the good we do is like filthy rags (64:6, NIV). Romans 3:20 tells us, “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law” (NIV). It goes on to explain that the purpose of the law is to make us aware of our sin. We are all sick with sin, and Jesus is the only cure.

So what about the kindhearted Buddhist who bathed and fed the homeless? If he dies before he puts his faith in Christ, will he get the same punishment as Hitler while the nasty babysitter enjoys eternal bliss (assuming she was truly a Christian)? I don’t think so. And here’s why.

In the Old Testament, different sins incur different punishments. Some of those punishments are more severe than others. The greater the sin, the greater the punishment. Jesus echoes this idea at his trial and sentencing in John 19:11-12, where he tells Pilate, “The one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin” (NIV). In Luke 12:42-48, Jesus tells a parable about different servants receiving differing degrees of punishment based on what they knew about the master’s will. He concludes by saying “that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (verses 47-48).

In a shocking pronouncement of “woe” in Matthew 11, Jesus condemns two whole cities to a harsher judgment in the afterlife than Sodom. (Tell that to anyone who claims that Jesus was a tolerant and all-inclusive guru.) The Bible regularly speaks of sin and judgment with varying levels of severity and punishment. Learning and understanding this helped me make sense of what I read about the justice of God in the Bible. God is not unjust or simplistic in his judgments. He is perfectly holy and will deal with sin appropriately.

And as I was reminded by theologian Clay Jones in his book Why Does God Allow Evil? Compelling Answers for Life’s Toughest Questions, I, like many people, tend to gloss over the fallenness of humanity. I think of people who do good things as good people . . . those who bake cookies, play with children, and help their friends in need. But Jones points out that some of the greatest atrocities perpetuated by humans, including genocide, were mostly committed by normal people like you and me.

Even the Nazis had sweet grandmas who baked cookies for the youth rallies.

“Will Only a Few Be Saved?”

One of my fellow students raised this question in class one day. Is the idea that only a select few people will enter the Kingdom of Heaven realistic? Is it fair? Is it plausible? Interestingly, this is a question Jesus’ disciples asked him directly. We don’t have to wonder about the answer. Jesus responded, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). He goes on to describe the master of the house shutting and locking the door. Those who are outside will not come in.

Why, then, does Revelation 21:25 say that the gates of heaven will “never be shut by day”? Is this God’s way of saying, “The door is always open . . . it’s never too late”? As I reasoned through this, I read a bit further in that same chapter. The text lets us know that this great city has very high and sturdy walls. By nature, walls are constructed to exclude people who don’t belong inside. Who doesn’t belong inside? Verse 27 gives us the answer: “Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” In the ancient world, cities shut their gates as a security measure. But those measures won’t be necessary in the new heaven and new earth. There is no need to shut the gates because sin will have already been contained and dealt with. No one will be leaving hell to enter heaven.

In the end, I’ve come to see that hell is not only necessary, it is ultimately loving and just. If someone desires sin and corruption now, what would make me think he would desire to be separated from sin and corruption for eternity? If someone continually chooses to hate God and reject his gift of reconciliation in this life, what would make me think she will desire to be in his Kingdom forever in the next? And here’s something to ponder: If someone wants to bring their self-serving sin into heaven, what would it say about God if he allowed it in?

I’m about to say something unpopular. We live in a culture in which it is considered arrogant and even hateful to make dogmatic claims about reality. But if we believe the Bible is true—if we follow our Lord Jesus—we must affirm this alongside him: Heaven is real. Hell is real. And one day, the door will close.