What is Hell?

Talking with friends the other night, the Twilight Zone came up as a topic. I remembered one episode where the main character got all the girls he wanted, won every time he gambled, and partied every night. He thinks he is in heaven. At the end of the show, he is becoming tired of it and makes a comment about being so bored that he is ready to try Hell out. The clincher line was, “Where do you think you are now?”

Lewis somewhat endorses this picture when he writes The Great Divorce. Of course, Lewis deliberately puts his book in the time when people are waiting for judgment, not the place where they go after the final judgment. Still, I remember his characters being able to create giant mansions, and doing so often, whenever someone got too close to them, or offended them. Then, as Lewis develops his plot, we find that the mansions are but vaporous, and do not even keep out the cold hard rain.

All of which leads to the question, “What is Hell?”. According to the speculations of men, it is many things; according to the Bible it is a place of torment without end. Jesus describes it as a place where we do not die, but neither is the fire quenched.  In other words, a place of eternal torment.

Many people do not want to believe in a place of eternal separation from God. They want to believe in the Fluffy God who will simply forgive and forget everything with time. But this is not at all the picture given to us in the Bible.

God is a God of mercy; they see this and heartily endorse it. But God is also a God of justice, and this they tend to forget. God loved the world so much, the Scriptures teach, that he sent his only Son, that whosoever believeth should find everlasting life. Man cannot make himself right; this Christ did perfectly in giving his body to be sacrificed. There is salvation for all who believe, and that means all, even to the worst among us. What about those who refuse to receive what Christ has done, who refuse to believe?

One of my favorites Lewis analogies comes up here. We essentially are saying to God when we believe, “thy will be done.” Christ has died for us. It is the will of God for us to receive him as Savior and Lord. In this sense, we are agreeing with God, “Thy will be done”. But what about those who will not believe? What happens to them?

Many Christians have fallen from the truth because they try to imagine a God of grace somehow expressing grace and in the end the humans live as in a fairy story: they lived happily ever after. But that is not a all what Christ would teach us. If we will not say to God, “Thy will be done”, he will, in the end say unto us, “Thy will be done.” Thus, we have a God of mercy, but also a God of complete justice. It was altogether merciful and justice for God to completely overlook our sins because Christ himself took those sins and died for them on the cross. He tells those of us in the end, if we will not accept his mercy, “thy will be done”. 

If I may borrow from Star Trek, the Prime Directive to Christians becomes an order to spread this good news to a lost world. Now is the day of salvation. Now is the very time to find mercy, a mercy that shall last throughout eternity. It is our path out of this morass; the only path left to us. Let us say to Him, "Thy will be done,” lest we find ourselves someday listening to Him say, “Thy will be done.”