Hell: Punishment?

Hell is often refered to by well-meaning believers as eternal punishment and God as a father who punishes.  I am not convinced that this is an aproach that works when we consider the scriptures on Hell.  There are two main reasons this argument seems inconsistant to me.  The first is my definition of punishment.  So far as I am aware, punishment is best defined as unpleasent treatment of an individual with the ultimate goal of correcting that individual's behavior.  Hell cannot be viewed as correctional because of it's finality.  There is no redeeming yourself in hell, because there is no return from hell.

Secondly, I would say that the relationship of God with a person who is already in hell cannot be defined as one of a father to a child, so that the father analogy falls flat.  While that same person is still alive, we could apply the father/child analogy to them, because while they are alive God is presumably presenting them with every opportunity to reconcile with Himself.  You could recall the image of the father of the prodigal son who goes out every day hoping to see his son return to him.

But again, because of its finality, hell seems to represent the enstrangement or disowning of any claims to sonship on the part of the condemned person. 

 

So if hell is not punishment, then what is it?  One of the keys to apologetics, I feel, is to keep in mind that EVERYTHING that exists outside of God exists for the purpose of glorifying God.  So in some way, Hell must glorify God.  This hardly seems likely given that God is the greatest imaginable good and hell is the worst thing imaginable. 

In one of his parables, Jesus tells the story of a wedding feast.  All the people on the invite list to the feast turn down their opportunity to attend, begging off for trivial matters.  At the end of the story, we are told that these people are "cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth."  In its way, I think this story is very revealing about both the nature and purpose of hell.  So far as I can tell from the scriptures, Hell is a place where God has completely removed his presence from those who exist there.  It stands as an eternal testament to what God isn't.  Those who exist there made the conscious decision to reject God and God obligingly removed Himself eternally from them.  They are getting exactly what they asked for.  In so doing, it glorifies God in the same way that darkness glorifies light: by contrast. 

Consider: if God had never created anything outside himself, there are aspects of His nature that would never have been made manifest: His creative power and his servanthood, for instance (he sustains and maintains all that he has created).  When man rebelled, it revealed even more about God's nature: his justice, his wrath, his patience, his grace, his longsuffering, and the love that was revealed through Jesus' sacrifice.

I am not arguing that God created with the intention of having man rebel, just that even through the worst of circumstances, God's nature shines all the brighter.

And just as the consiquence of choosing to accept God's forgiveness through Christ is eternal, so the consiquence of choosing to deny this forgiveness MUST be eternal.  Anything less trivializes Christ's sacrifice and consiquently cheapens God's nature.  

Does God Need Man?

                The “Merlin” television miniseries tells the story of the fabled wizard from his youth on to his reclining years.  The primary antagonist of the story, Morgan LeFay, is the embodiment of magic.  At the climactic ending of the series, LeFay is trying desperately to cling to her power and control over the people who fear her.  She appears in her fury and rants about the power she holds.  At this point, Merlin, and all the people present, simply turn their backs to her and ignore her ranting.  The instant they cease to believe in her, she fades away.

                In the classic story of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell has just swallowed the poison meant for Peter.  As she lies there dying, the story breaks the fourth wall and asks all the children watching these events to clap their hands and repeat “I do believe in fairies!”  The collective belief of the children revives the heroic Tinkerbell.

                In “The Neverending Story,” a boy named Bastion finds a book about a fantasy world that is being destroyed by a massive force called “The Nothing.”  As he continues to read, he is drawn into the story until he comes to realize that The Nothing is, in fact, the collective unbelief of an increasingly practical and unimaginative world.  Only by becoming part of the story can Bastion save Fantasia with his belief in the power of imagination.

                In the core rules of the popular “Dungeons and Dragons” role playing game, we find that magical powers are granted to people by various gods.  The gods themselves gain their power from the belief and worship of their numerous followers.  The more followers a god has, the more powerful that god is.  If everyone stops believing in a god, that god ceases to exist, and you can create a new god simply by convincing people to follow your made-up god.

                It is, indeed, a post modern idea that something exists simply because you believe it does.  The postmodernists claim that Muslims and Christians can all live in harmony, simply by respecting one another’s beliefs, despite the inherent contradiction.  What is true for me is not necessarily true for you.  Where, then, does truth come from?  Well as my salesmen friends like to say: truth comes from perception.  This would mean, of course, that nothing existed or had definition before an intelligent mind existed to define it.  If God was invented by man, this idea has some philosophical problems, because we presume that man came from somewhere which means there must have been truth and substance prior to consciousness.

                The immediate problem, however, is the TYPE of God we see in the Bible.  If man were to go about inventing gods, it seems logical they would invent gods that would justify their actions and beliefs.  Indeed, in most ancient cultures, the god of that culture was only as strong as the people he protected.  If the Asherites triumphed over the Jebusites, then the god of the Asherites was hailed as being stronger than the god of the Jebusites.  Long live the god of the Asherites.  Yet throughout the scriptures, the God of the Hebrews consistently gives his people into the hands of their enemies because of their rebellion. 

                Perhaps the Hebrews were just really poor warriors, but remiss to abandon their beliefs, they made up stories about God being disappointed in their behavior and punishing them?  This does not explain the continued existence of the Hebrew people, or the perseverance of the belief in this God.  Every god-centered faith from that era has died out EXCEPT for the Hebrew notion.  Why is that? 

                It is clear from the Biblical account that God created us for a purpose against which we rebelled; that He holds us to a standard we are incapable of living up to; and that in order to be reconciled to Him we must approach Him with humility, admitting our errors and our utter dependence on Him.  In every way, this God appears to hold the high ground and belief in Him seems to demand a drastic change in our lives and attitudes.  If God was a creation of my mind in order to accommodate my pre-existing notions and beliefs, why does belief in him demand such an alteration of my pre-existing notions and beliefs?