Why does hell intrigue so many people? Why are they drawn to this macabre topic? The arts have never been shy about it. Some of history’s greatest prose, poems and paintings depict scenes of hell. Our modern era hasn’t escaped its influence either. Can you think of any aggressive ‘metal band’ that isn’t preoccupied by hell and all its accessories? (Demons, death, skulls, bones, blood, burning). It’s not just metal bands that sing, or should I say ‘scream/growl’, about this topic either. Black Holes and Revelations, the multi-platinum release by the award-winning pop band Muse, had a ‘Warning’ on the front cover regarding ‘moderate impact coarse language and/or themes’. Here is an excerpt from the opening track entitled ‘Take a bow’.
You will burn
You will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell
You’ll burn in hell
Yeah you’ll burn in hell
For your sins….
And our freedom’s consuming itself
What we’ve become
It’s contrary to what we want….
Take a bow
The lyrics of ‘Take a bow’ talk about corruption and people’s crimes against the earth and one another. What causes a secular band like Muse, whose members are in no way ‘fundamentalist Christians’, to write about offensive themes like hellfire and burning for sins? I thought our modern, sophisticated society had done away with those old-fashioned ‘fundamentalist’ concepts. Why do they still get a mention?
Most everyone has an opinion about hell. And while we may not agree on the details or even if it really exists, there is one intriguing factor we all have in common: everyone has a desire to believe in it. The life of Hitler, who is by no means history’s most evil dictator but the most publicised, demonstrates this well.
Hitler plunders Europe and causes immense suffering. He systematically tries to wipe out an entire race. His godless Nazism murders and displaces millions. And then as the Allied armies close in on his bunker in Berlin he quietly ends his life. That can’t be it! There must be a hell! The thought of him secretly dying and escaping justice does not wash with us. This reaction is not just reserved for diabolical dictators; it surfaces when we hear of child rapists and sadistic murderers. Even though our modern minds don’t want to believe in hell, we can’t stop desiring it if evil is obvious and unfair enough. We instinctively know that evil deserves hell. Some things just can’t be left unpunished.
Our desire for hell is really a desire for eternal justice. So what does this mysterious yearning tell us about ultimate reality? Could this desire have an objective satisfaction like our other innate desires, as that great Oxford Don C.S. Lewis pointed out? We feel the desire of hunger, and what do we find? Food exists to satisfy the desire. We experience the desire of sex, and what do we find? Sex exists to satisfy the desire. So if we have a desire for eternal justice, shouldn’t we expect to find an omniscient, eternal being to administer and satisfy it? It seems ‘God’ is the objective satisfaction of our desire for just reward. Someone must have the authority to put what is good and perfect in heaven, and what is corrupt and evil in hell.
Eternal justice must be universal and perfect, without the slightest concession for evil. How could we trust it otherwise? Perfect justice must deal with the smallest speck of corruption, not a single thing can be overlooked. And this is where things get close to home. Hitler‘s evil was obvious, but what about ours? Are our hearts pure and totally clean? Are there any black spots? A perfect, good, omniscient being would not measure evil in quantity like us, but by quality, or essence. Perfect justice or holiness sees evil/sin as a deadly poison. The amount is not important. It all twists, it all corrupts, it all must be dealt with. The hard truth is this: in a perfect justice system all of us fall short.
We desire eternal justice, even under the weight of its judgment, because we know deep down an eternity without it would be hopeless – corruption without limits and evil unrestricted and unpunished. Eternity in the hands of perfect justice means an eternity in the hands of that which is good and holy. And that’s a future with a hope, ‘and hope does not disappoint’.
But hope in eternal justice is not the only transcendental desire we have. We also desire eternal love. The noble love song is still the holy grail of pop music. Musicians sing about a higher love, a love that will ‘never let you go’, a love ‘that’s forever baby’, but none of them actually practise or experience what they sing about. Indeed, no one demonstrates the opposite of eternal love more than musicians! They are famous for their fickle, unfaithful, fad-like relationships. Our heart’s deepest longing seems to be a love that no human can give us; a love that’s out of this world; a love we can only sing about but never really experience.
There’s nothing the human heart wants more than pure love, love that comes from goodness, love that never ends. Even writing these words about such a love causes my heart to leap. It’s the sort of love that inspires stories, songs, poetry and prose. It’s the sort of love we would cross the universe to find. But what if it found us? What if it came to earth and walked among us?
There has been no one like Jesus Christ. All religious leaders acknowledge his perfection. Jesus shook the world, split the timeline and affected humanity like no other. Anyone who denies this is either ignorant or dishonest, or both. There has never been a purer example of humility and compassion than Christ. He showed us eternal love, not with a poem or a song, but with His life. Jesus’ life was divine; it matched His claim that he was the Son of God. But it wasn’t just His life; it was His death and subsequent resurrection that proved it. Jesus made it clear that He came to die. His mission was about hell and justice as much as it was about love and compassion. He came to pay a debt. He came to satisfy eternal justice. His death wasn’t for anything He did, it was for us, for humanity and what we’ve done. Our hands are blood-stained and our hearts are poisoned, and deep down we all know it. We need a saviour.
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. – C.S. Lewis, The problem of pain, chap. 8, p.130
Love divine dressed itself in human skin and humbly entered our world through a stable in Bethlehem. He lived and taught here. Perfect love then walked to Calvary to meet perfect justice on a Roman cross. We must do more than passively accept the facts about the ‘godman’, we must actively respond. We must take down our rebel flag and let ‘the truth’ (see John 14:6) enter our heart, and save our soul. To ignore Christ is to shut the door to eternal love and personal justice. And to shut that door is to open another, to hell. Hell is not just a fitting place for evil dictators; it is existence totally outside love and justice. Hell is eternity alone, outside Christ.