Ben Cartwright, February 1, 2001
The concept of hell has long been a part of many religions� worldview, but hell does not exist, and I�m going to tell you why.
Most religions believe that God is just, and �just� is just another way of saying �fair� or �equitable.� In other words, you can rest assured that God is going to do the right thing, no matter what the situation. It is crucial to understand the meaning of the word �just� before saying that God is just. I say this partly because I have heard so many people assert that God is just, but not really understand what �just� means. People, you can�t say that God is just if you don�t know what �just� means. Words are useless unless they are defined. Now, I know many people who say that God is just for the same reason that they believe the earth is young� it�s in the Bible. Simple enough. Believe whatever the Bible says� throw everything else out. But if you say �God is just� simply because that is a phrase in the Bible, but you do not attach a meaning to the word �just,� you have effectively said nothing at all.
When people who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible tell me that God is just, I often ask them about the many times in the Old Testament when God would send his armies in and command them to kill everyone, including women and children. Was this action fair to those people? Did they get what they deserved? The response I get is often that we do not understand what justice really is, and that it is presumptuous of us to think that we can label God�s actions as �just� or �unjust,� when the Bible clearly tells us that his actions are always fair and equitable. We can�t see the whole picture, they tell me. God can. Yet I am not comforted. Let me say this here, and let me say it clearly: if we do not understand what justice really is, then we cannot say that God is just. It doesn�t make any sense to ascribe an adjective to someone or something if you do not understand what the adjective means. If I say, �My car is fast,� but I don�t understand what the word �fast� means, what have I said? I have said nothing at all. It sounded like an assertion, but it wasn�t, because there was no meaning attached to it. Now, you may understand what the word �fast� means, and therefore attach a meaning to it. When you see that my car is a 1985 Yugo, you may say to me, �Your car isn�t fast.� I will respond, �Yes it is.� You might say, �But it has a top speed of 50 miles per hour,� to which I will respond, �So?�
In crucial issues such as those regarding God, we must be sure to define our terms and then apply them as they are defined. We must not change our definitions of terms based on God�s behavior. It�s not fair for me to say, �God is loving,� and then when you say, �But he flooded the whole world,� I respond, �Well, you just don�t understand what love is.� Of course I understand what love is. The problem is, you have redefined the word to match God�s actions, and are no longer using it the way it is commonly defined. You are falling into the trap of saying, �Love, justice, goodness, etc. are defined by God�s actions. They do not have definitions except by comparing them to what God does.� In other words, �Since we know that God is just, �justice� is defined by whatever God does.� This is circular and nonsensical. The fact is, we do not know that he is just unless everything he does is fair and equitable. This can be tested. The opposite cannot.
Now, I�m not going to get into the reasons that we believe God must be fair or just in this article. Most religious literature asserts this, as well as most philosophers. If God is to be who we think he is, he must be certain things, and one of those things is fair. If it turns out that he isn�t, we can all be shocked, but since I am here going to argue primarily against a Biblical conception of hell, I need only argue against what the Bible says about it. The Bible makes a great mistake by containing both the idea that God is just and the idea that a substitutionary sacrifice was made by Jesus. These two concepts are mutually exclusive (they cannot both be true), because the nature of being �just� means you give people what they deserve. If Jesus is sacrificed for people�s sin, and because of this God does not give people what they deserve, then he is not just. He might be really nice, or kind, or forgiving, but he is not just. We might like the idea of not getting what we deserve, but we must stop calling this �justice,� because it isn�t. �Justice� is when you do get what you deserve.
All that said, let�s delve into the central issue of this article, which is the concept of �hell.� The Bible says that hell is a place of eternal torment. It is a place of eternal punishment for sin (sin is basically rebellion against God which is passed down from generation to generation� see my article called �Original Sin & Children Going to Hell�). If God is truly just, fair, and equitable, there can be no such place, and I�m going to tell you why.
In order for justice to be in operation, punishment must fit the crime. If I am a judge, I cannot sentence you to 50 years in prison for stealing chewing gum. This is not fair. Nor can I make you serve a night in jail for murder. Neither of these is fair, even though the latter example gives far less punishment than is deserved. This is often misconstrued as some sort of �nice justice,� in which the judge lets the person off the hook, much as God supposedly does when people believe in him. If you believe in God, you get off the hook for hell, which is certainly a nice gesture, but not just if what is deserved is hell.
But do we deserve hell? Let�s think about this for a moment. People are ostensibly born in sin, which separates them from God. God is perfect, and he can�t dwell with imperfection (Why? I have no idea. Why God can�t choose to dwell with imperfection or choose not to let people go to hell has never been answered to my satisfaction. After all, if he is all-powerful, he can do anything he pleases!). Because of this, there must be a sacrifice to cleanse the person from their sin (Why? Again, I have no idea. It sounds just like other sacrifice-demanding gods of the time� see the web site on creation myths for more information). If a sacrifice is not made, that person cannot dwell with God, so if he dies before accepting the sacrifice that Jesus made, he must be sent to hell. Biblically, hell was �prepared for the devil and his angels.� God never intended for people to go there. Oops!! If that�s true, hell represents the greatest cosmic blunder of all time!! To me, the least God could have done if he were truly bound by this �I can�t hang out with people who sin� thing (which he wouldn�t be if he were truly all-powerful) would be to have made some third option that wasn�t hell, but also wasn�t heaven. Why not? If I can think of such a simple solution, why couldn�t he? Am I to believe that I am smarter than God? I think not (although I anticipate being accused of this for writing articles like these).
Okay, so we don�t choose to follow Jesus in our life� this means we deserve eternal torment? Of course not. I assert that even Adolf Hitler, as evil as he was, does not deserve eternal torture. Eternal punishment is not a fair punishment for any crime, especially the crime of �not believing in Jesus.� What sort of crime is it not to believe in God anyway? To me, a person�s belief in God is determined by several complex factors, making it difficult to see how much of a choice they really had in the matter to begin with. Certainly, we all underestimate the power of the environment in which we are reared. We see ourselves as free-thinking, free-choosing beings, when so often we are just a product of our past (I�m sure you, the reader, are the exception).
Let me sum up: we can see that hell clearly is not a fair punishment for anyone. So either God is not just, or hell does not exist (if we are using the Bible as our holy text, these are our only two options� if not, there are a host of other options, but I still do not believe in hell in any God-scenario). Of the two, I would opt for hell not existing rather than believing that God is not just, but one of the two must be rejected, because the two are mutually exclusive.
There. Now, don�t you feel better? I know I do. Once I discovered that hell could not possibly exist, it took me a long time to really believe it in my heart. Now I am free, and my hope in writing this article is that some other people who live in fear of hell can also be free� not by believing a certain thing, but by realizing that it does not exist. It�s not easy to stop believing it, because you don�t want there to be the slightest possibility that it�s true and that you might end up there. Don�t worry. It doesn�t exist. It can�t. Not if there�s a loving God up there, and if there isn�t, there�s still no hell. So relax. Think for yourself. Don�t be intimidated by religion. Embrace life. Yada, yada, yada.
Thanks for reading.
Epilogue:
Another way to look at this issue is to see God, prior to creating the universe, but supposedly able to see all of the future laid out before him. If he looked out over history and saw that the ultimate result of his creating Adam and Eve would be that over 75% of the world would be eternally tormented, why wouldn�t he stop and rethink his plan? Doesn�t he care about all those people? Apparently not, because he still chose to create. He saw that billions of people would eternally suffer, yet he still set the process in motion. If I am to believe all the assumptions that are made about God (he can see the entire future, he is all-powerful, etc.), then I certainly must come to these conclusions. The way I see it, if God saw all this and still set the process in motion, he is not a good God at all.
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