Catching Hell: How Those in Hell Want to be There

Christianity teaches that if we return God’s Love, He promises eternal bliss. This bliss is called Heaven. However; on the opposite side of this teaching lies Hell; a place of misery, constant torture, and anguish reserved for those who place themselves opposite the law of God.

Most atheists ridicule the idea of Hell, regarding how ridiculous it would be for an all-loving God that creates us so that He might share His pure love with us, yet if we don’t reciprocate it, are sentenced to a fiery dungeon to be tortured by demons for eternity.

I grant that this version of Hell doesn’t exactly sound like it would fit the plan of a God understood to be so loving. God is supposed to be just and fair. How would it be fair to sentence someone to unending torture for a lifetime of sin which at the longest is only about 80 years?

This idea presents a glaring obstacle for most people who debate the existence of God. If God spitefully sends His enemies to Hell, how can it be said that, in actuality, He loves them beyond measure? How can someone profess their love for someone who they also will their unending affliction?

A common argument from atheists is that the doctrine of Hell seems like an idea that religion uses as a tool to control unruly people rather than a reality for those who are unbelievers. While it’s clear that Christianity doesn’t budge on the existence of Hell, I think some may misinterpret poetic imagery presented in the Bible, causing severe misunderstanding of our possibilities for eternal destinations.

While nearly every religion believes in a version of hell, what does Christianity say that Hell is?

The mental image that most people have when thinking of Hell is no mystery. A fiery chasm which is most likely in the center of the Earth where there is “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Jesus mentioned Hell more than He mentioned Heaven. Undoubtedly, He believed in Hell and desperately worked to ensure people didn’t go there. He compared it to Gehenna, a trash dump near Jerusalem where refuse, feces, and dead bodies were burned. Not quite where I’d think about buying real estate, let alone real estate where I’d be spending eternity.

We know that Jesus spoke in powerful imagery and parables, but what does the church say that Christ literally means by His powerful words when warning of the reality of Hell? The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 1035, ” The Church affirms the existence of Hell and its eternity. Immediately after death, the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell, where they suffer the punishments of Hell, eternal fire. The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.”

So, the church teaches that anyone who separates himself from God through mortal sin and dies unrepentantly must suffer the pains of Hell. These pains are eternal fire with the chief punishment of separation from God, the source of love.

Here the church tells us that we go to Hell by committing a mortal sin. Committing mortal sin is a choice, making it sound like Hell is a choice, but would anyone in their right mind choose eternal condemnation? To clarify this doctrine, we must first define our terms. What is a “mortal” sin?

What is a mortal sin, and how does one commit it?

The term mortal sin gets thrown around frequently in the Catholic Church. However, It’s not entirely convincing that the average person knows what mortal sin is. Typically, people will end up on two ends of the spectrum, either thinking just about everything qualifies as mortal sin or nothing does.

People say things like, it’s just casual sex between consenting adults, God wouldn’t send someone to Hell for that! God made me this way, He knows I’m only human, getting black-out drunk most weekends is just how I cope. I’m a good person; it’s not like I’m a murderer. This logic is dangerous for a couple of reasons. Both scenarios place themselves as the primary authority of good and evil. This self-adjudication is New Atheism; there is a God and He thinks precisely as I do. It also demonstrates an extreme level of pride by saying, “I’m not bad; it’s those other people that do XYZ; THOSE are the bad people.”

On the other hand, you have people who are gravely ill and miss mass and think if they don’t get to confession, they’ll surely be sent to Hell. Or that if they see someone of the opposite sex and recognize their attractiveness that they’ve just committed the sin of lust. After hearing these thoughts, I get slightly teary-eyed because it shows some people have flawed views of God’s love for them; they imagine God is on bated breath, itching to pronounce the words of condemnation against them.

Upon review of what constitutes a mortal sin, the Church asks us to consider three things. Does the sin constitute a grave matter? Was there full consent, and was there full knowledge that the sin was mortal?

Grave matter is determined by the level of disorder present in the act and the void of love caused by the action. In other words, does this action demonstrate a complete rebellion against God and disrupt the dignity He bestowed upon His creatures? If someone stole 5 dollars from someone else, this would be vastly different than if they were to rob someone at gunpoint, strip them down, and steal everything they own. The second scenario more gravely damages the dignity of the victim, which in turn more gravely offends the one who bestowed upon them a necessity of love and respect. This action also creates isolation through the offender’s determination that their desire to take supersedes the victim’s right to their property.

A second scenario would be eating unhealthy foods because someone has low levels of self-control versus someone who uses drugs with a disregard for themselves because they’ve reached such a point of self-hatred they even deny themselves the respect they deserve. One is problematic, yes, but the other represents a complete and total denial of God’s love by denying their personhood’s sacredness. To hate ourselves is also to hate the one who made us, and it is evident how one can start to create their own Hell on earth.

Next, the criterion of full consent is essential because it would be unjust to hold someone liable for something unintentional. Important things to consider would be whether or not the sin was committed due to addiction, mental illness, or coercion.

Determining full knowledge ensures that to be culpable, the individual is fully aware that what they are about to do will completely separate them from friendship with God. In other words, the person knows that God desires me to act this way but I don’t want to because my way is more enticing. God honors our free will; He will not force himself upon someone that doesn’t want a relationship with him.

The criteria for mortal sin ensures that it is completely and totally a choice of the will. An individual cannot accidentally separate from God. God doesn’t work on formalities but instead considers our intent, and if we intend to banish him from life, then He submits to our desire.

Mortal sin is anything that we choose to replace God. 

After considering these points, we can establish that mortal sin separates us from God, and mortal sin is a choice. But if this is the case, why is Hell depicted so tortuously? Why would someone’s choice be such misery for them? If God graciously allows us to choose a life with him or without him, no strings attached, why is existence without him portrayed so “hellishly.” Giving someone what they want doesn’t seem like it would cause them to burn with anguish and regret for all eternity.

How does doing life our own way become so hell-ish?

To understand how an existence apart from God becomes hell, we must first establish what we give up when choosing a life apart from God. God is Love, and choosing a life without God is to choose a life without love. The Gospel teaches God’s entire purpose for creating us was so we may receive his love and requite it.

The problem with sin is that it results from the delusion that one’s happiness resides in the service of self. When one places themselves as the objective of their happiness, it puts other people as secondary to their happiness, which means that wounding others for the sake of self is justified.

However, part of God’s love and desire for us consists in participating in His nature; He requires us to serve him through loving and serving His creatures, which are extensions of himself. In this, we find Christ’s teaching to love God with all of our hearts and to treat our neighbor as we would be treated. The perfect expression of our love towards God is to love others to the total capacity for the sake of God.

Happiness lies in this participation of God’s nature through love. God is wholly fulfilled within himself, and we add nothing to him. Further, God gains nothing from us; His Love is unconditional. To practice this Divine Love, we must also love those around us with the expectation of earning nothing. Possessing and sharing this Divine Love results in our highest capacity for human fulfillment.

Contrarily, unhappiness is the result of a lack of human fulfillment; caused by sin. In sin, we reject God’s gift of Love and replace it with our love of self. This love of self is fed through acquiring anything that may temporarily fill the void left by the Love of God. Instead of overflowing with God’s Love, we take and try to fill ourselves with whatever we delude into believing will bring us happiness. Anything and everything but God. Instead of accepting His Love and letting it fill us to the point that it explodes forth from us, we reject it and take whatever we can to the point of implosion. Explosion spreads an essence while implosion annihilates it. Unironically, the hole left by the expulsion of God from the soul is so expansive that it devours all it encounters in a vampiric fashion.

Again, one may consider, “Well, that sounds terrible, but who would choose such a life,” but we see people who have chosen this way of life all around us. We find the foundation of our culture in trying to fill ourselves with things, fame, power, money, and sex, to the point of implosion.

Imagine a man who struggles with greed. He rejects his value from God-given dignity, so he places his value on how much money he acquires. In his mind, the search for money is all that matters because it gives him his worth. He spends long hours away from his family working or researching future investments. He ignores the need for his presence in his family and justifies it with the excuse that “He’s just trying to give them a better life.” He earns more than most people, but no amount’s ever enough. He chases the carrot in front of his face with reckless abandon. He loses his family because they refuse to compete with his search for wealth. He is now left with a larger hole. No God and no family. He starts undertaking unethical business practices to increase his gains. He starts lying and cheating, doing anything he can to maximize profit. He now loses his friends because no one can trust him. The hole gets bigger. His greed gets bigger. He starts getting involved with organized crime or bribing officials. He then is caught and loses all the wealth he acquired through bargaining away anything in his life with real value. He realizes he’s thrown his entire life away for nothing and despairs. He commits suicide.

This hypothetical story is no strange tale. Greed can be substituted for anything, but the point remains the same. This self-annihilation is a consequence of attempting to fill the bottomless pit left in the soul by rejecting God with anything but him. Being aware of our state of soul and our motivations are of the utmost importance while we are fortunate enough to change on this side of eternity.

Persistence in the rejection of God’s love IS the eternity of Hell.

Most people who choose to live in their own Hell are unaware of the doctrine explored above. Unfortunately, ignorance is not bliss; but there is a chance these souls realize the unintentional Hell they’ve been themselves through in their disorder.

Luckily for all of us, God is waiting for us to realize our mistakes so that we might repent so that He may draw us back to himself and gift us the happiness He has planned for us. However, some individuals wish to persist in their errors despite being given chances to repent, and this is where the eternal nature of Hell becomes very real.

Martin Rowson, a columnist for “The Spectator,” disagrees with Theism on many facets. He states that “even if God now came down in fiery splendor and proved beyond question his, her, its or their existence, I still wouldn’t believe in him(God),” and, “I don’t like…unchanging and unyielding rectitude and infallibility.” Further, he claims he doesn’t like the absolute nature of truth by stating, “I don’t like the way He(God) takes a previous contingency from a few thousand years ago and concretes it into certainty.”

This opinion is dangerous to hold. In short, even if God revealed himself to Mr. Rowson, he would not serve him. He would rather live in “un-reality” than in God’s reality. We are never given the authority to judge a person, but we can certainly judge ideology, which is the precise type shared by all in Hell. “I will not serve.”

Another well-known atheist, Stephen Fry, revealed a similar disposition. When asked what he would say to God if they met, he responded, “How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil.”

Rowson and Fry find their rejection of God based on the shared notion that they don’t like the way God does things and their way would be superior. I sympathize with their deluded opinions, but we would be God if we were to completely comprehend the massive intricacies of why God does things the way he does things. Faith requires humility because there are some things we won’t understand, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways… As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

All people can have mistaken ideas about God, which is part of our fallen nature, and luckily for us, God is constantly trying to show His goodness to us so that He might win us over. However, if we continue to reject His advances, we start to risk the possibility of an eternity without Him.

Mutability and immutability of the soul.

The eternal nature of Hell is a broad obstacle to many who ponder its existence. An argument of atheists and even some Christians ask, how can God send His own child to Hell? How can He ignore the cries of the damned? Even the worst parents wouldn’t do something this vindictive, and a loving parent wouldn’t punish their child like that, no matter the crime.

These are logical and understandable arguments; however, they are slightly off-base. As examined above, the road is Hell is freely traveled and chosen by those who persistently and willfully reject friendship with God. In Revelation 16:9, we read, “They were seared by the intense heat, and they cursed the name of God, who had control over the plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.” This passage illuminates the disposition of the damned. They are not unaware of the truth nor the fruits that friendship with God would bring. They see him clearly, and the vision of His goodness causes them great pain. This clarity from God’s light reveals what they are and how their choices have rendered their souls deformed and abominable; their hatred burns for God more intensely than when they were on earth.

One might think, well, even so, after the damned spent a few millennia in constant torment, why wouldn’t God give them a chance to re-think their choice and repent? Why do they have to stay in their choice for eternity? The answer is that when we die, we remain fixed in whatever state we die in.

As humans, we are composites of mind, body, and spirit. For this reason, God has such affection for us. In us, He intended to do the unthinkable, to merge flesh and spirit (pure energy, pure intellect) so that we might become material monstrances. Also, for this reason, Satan has so much hatred for us. He hates that God would give such a low-value form such an exalted place in the spiritual hierarchy by undergoing the incarnation.

By creating us in His own image, He gave us the capacity to reason and choose with our spiritual faculties of memory, intellect, and will. Our memory stores and provides data, our intellect judges the data, and our will chooses what we determine to be the best choice.

Our spirit is attached to a material body that exists within a temporal realm, a realm that is subject to time. We understand time to mean the rate at which matter is acted upon by exterior forces. We can observe this truth by surveying any material object and considering that it had different properties at a previous time and that it will have different properties at a future time. Thus, it exists temporally (within time). We call things that exist temporally “mutable,” meaning that they can be changed when acted upon by outside forces.

Contrarily, things outside the material realm are unchanging, and we call things immutable. Spiritual entities have different degrees of immutability, yet, the basic idea is that objects that exist atemporally don’t change like objects made of matter do.

As mentioned earlier, our spirits are linked with our bodies, making them mutable as long as they are attached. Our spirits rely on our senses to gather information with which to make rationalizations. Dissimilarly to purely spiritual beings, our knowledge isn’t purely infused into our natures; we must rely on an ever-changing flow of data. This data is constantly being collected, processed by our senses, and then received by our spirits to make judgments. Since the world around us is continuously changing, the data we are sensing is constantly evolving, forcing us to adjust our decisions and change our minds. However, when we die, our spirits can no longer use any new data from our senses, resulting in our spirits being fixed in their judgments based on the data collected when they were alive. They become eternally fixed because they cannot receive any new information to change their minds and make new rationalizations.

This concept can be broken further by examining a couple of examples.

Example A: An individual observes suffering in the world. Their intellect receives the data and reasons that whoever created this world and allows suffering must be evil. Therefore this creator deserves to be hated. The will receives this judgment and determines no further processing is required, and decides to either disbelieve in a creator or hate the creator. This person dies. The intellect is disconnected from the senses and receives no new data to judge, resulting in the will remaining with its choice to hate God. Their spirit continues in its hatred for all eternity.

Example B: Everything that happens in example A occurs again. However, this person observes someone in immense suffering act joyfully and kindly. They observe that the suffering person seems much happier than most people who aren’t suffering. This individual then reasons that suffering may have some transcendent, transformative power, and when painful circumstances are accepted, they can positively and profoundly change the suffering person. They then think God allows suffering because He is so benevolent that He can bring beauty and goodness out of the most unpleasant circumstances. This process of rationalization results in them deciding to love the creator. This person dies. They remain in their choice to love God and enjoys eternal bliss and friendship with God.

Considering how our choices affect our eternal disposition can help clarify the notion that God pronounces his condemnation against souls who would give anything for a second chance. These examples also define, in essence, what Hell is. It extends God’s mercy to those who hate him by allowing them an existence apart from him and not forcing them to love him.

The creation of Hell begins on earth.

The most miserable people already live their lives in Hell. The only difference between an earthly hell and the eternal Hell is that those on earth can choose to leave.

We know of these people who are living in their own Hell. They live entirely for themselves, consuming the world’s pleasures but receiving no satiety. They think that all their painful circumstances are someone else’s fault or God’s fault. They hate. They hate their brethren, and they hate God. They hate themselves. Death will offer them no relief but only intensify it. They will be reminded of God’s love for them at every moment by their own existence. This will remind them of their eternal state apart from them and causes unimaginable pain.

The souls in Hell burn with remorse, not with holy repentant remorse, but with remorse for their existence and curse God for constructing them. They relive every choice that distanced them from God and resulted in them being removed from what ultimately fulfills them. They are surrounded by those who are equally filled with spite, self-pity, and searing hatred for everything good.

Hell is a choice. It is a choice to hate true goodness and true love. It is a choice to prefer ourselves to others. It is a choice to seek the creations of God rather than to seek God himself. It is a choice made at every moment to either build the kingdom of ourselves or to build the kingdom of God and it is clear those in Hell want to be there.

May God’s light permeate the minds of all men so that we may see Him as the source of all goodness, resulting in our unending desire for His Love and friendship