Hell. Is it too much?

 

Hell. Is it too much?

Let's just say that it is. This one opinion alone gets paraded around like a kicked dog by atheists when they want to stick it to the Christian…Nah, nah, nah, boo, boo, Hell is tyrannical.

And this comes from this notion that on Earth, offenses are temporary, Hell is forever, therefore Hell is tyrannical.

So in walking this out with an anti-hell apologist, (not name calling or trying to sum them up to give credit to this nameless, genderless internet person,) I proposed that unless a more just solution is offered, then all we are doing is complaining. It becomes the ever famous argument of, “Wah! That's not fair!” In fact the question was posed, “Why isn’t absence from heaven punishment enough?” But that got me thinking. Can we critically evaluate Hell?

Firstly, let's grant the request that absence from heaven IS enough of a punishment. There is still a little snag. Jesus plans on reigning over the new Earth and the new Jerusalem for 1000 years. So out of necessity, let's move the non-hell-non-heaven people out to Mars and consider how things might go.

People who miss heaven, according to the bible miss heaven for one reason. Lack of faith in Jesus’s propitiation. Propitiation is a 10-dollar word for saying, “he paid for me.” But in that group, those who reject the propitiation, there are all manner of people. “Good” people, “bad” people, malicious people…and keep in mind there is a uniform aspect about this group of people. Whether by choice or not, there is a general disregard for faith. 

So Mars is filled with people while Earth is also renewed and filled with renewed people. If I can take the liberty here, I would say that the ratio of people who did bad in life would be just about the same between New Earth and Mars. The difference is that by the spirit of God, those on Earth are changed, in the twinkling of an eye and no longer desire “bad” things. Those on Mars, they are still living in that futility.

All the things that make life challenging, all the corruption, all the envy, all the deceit, all the selfishness still persists. So we could scheme how Mars would shake out. The haves would do everything they could to oppress the have-nots for gain and power. 

If the goal of sending people to Mars instead of Hell was to alleviate some injustice, all we’ve done is ensure that all present Earth wrought injustice, continues…forever. Which sounds comfortable but not at all like a solution.

God can see everyone’s intentions, so maybe he could just send all the genuinely bad people to a different planet. This way they can get what they deserve from each other while also allowing the people who just want to get along to…get along.

But then what we are arguing for is certain people to face justice while the rest of humanity just gets ignored? Which seems to be at least part of the problem with Hell in the first place. So then how is that actually justice? Won’t the people sent to planet justice say the same thing? That they aren’t bad from a certain viewpoint…? 

Any attempt to explain how this could be justice is just going to invoke meritocracy. But this same group also holds that by merit there is no mistake worthy of Hell. So on one hand they seem to want to get rid of “bad” people…on the other hand they don’t want any measurement that could place them in the “bad” people crowd…which is what motivates the dissonance against Hell in the first place. But we can move on and let this play out a bit. 

As those who just want to get along…go along, more and more of them would be removed from this ignored Mars planet and be sent to the justice planet because day by day they would fall to their impulses. Mars would eventually become vacant. So what we need isn’t justice. Justice wont fix what ails us. What we would need is renewal. A fix for our impulses. No doubt in time the industrious nature of humanity will manifest itself in products, goods, and services on planet justice and it would likely be observed that what the believers got, this renewal, new Earth, new Jerusalem, could be observed via telescopes. Shoot, it wouldn’t be a shocker for a confederacy to arise, attempting to reach back to Earth to get some of that renewal. 

If that doesn’t sound familiar, Genesis details a similar story about the tower of babel, but lets just say that this is coincidental and keep it pushin.

What this all points to is that what we need is renewal. As a basic function of being able to critically think, we should be able to discern that there is something in us that needs fixing. 

So lets reexamine Hell through this truth. We need renewed. Those that believe this seek after Jesus, those who don’t are sent to Hell. There remains this just/unjust paradigm that gnaws at us still upset that this seems to be too heavy of a penalty for too light of an offense.

Now however, we are working with some new ideas. What would happen if we ran our thought experiment again? Those who don’t seek renewal get sent to Mars…meritocracy dictates separation of bad people to planet justice and the get-along-crowd go to Mars…blah, blah, blah…there is NO difference. 

We could do this a million, trillion times and get the same results. What a person needs is to recognize that they need renewal. A fixing of our impulses so that we can truly get along. The bible calls that love. Jesus himself requires that we love God and love our neighbor as yourself. We suck at it, but that is the goal. Jesus offers this renewal now. By the Holy Spirit we can be made new right now, the old man has died.

But is Hell still going to be there? Yes! Would not the justice planet be just that, where all the fires you set consume you. Where all the worms consuming all the rottenness of this life could feast till their bellies burst. Where those who truly wished not to see could receive the darkness they so desperately wanted. 

There is no third option. This is the propitiation that Jesus offered that was previously rejected. Justice, having its way, would remove all the go-along-get-along people from our fictitious Mars and one-by-one every last person would be removed to the justice planet. Without renewal, this is inevitable. So is Hell too much? For those who refuse to recognize their need for Jesus to grant them renewal…not at all. They are themselves the same Hell they claim is unjust. Such a broken position should be celebrated when it is cast into the lake to be destroyed.

Chatgpt Summary: The author critiques the common argument against Hell as unjust, stating that without a better alternative, objections are just complaints. They propose a thought experiment where those who reject faith are sent to Mars instead of Hell. Over time, corruption and injustice persist, and Mars eventually mirrors Earth’s past problems. Even separating "bad" people onto a separate planet leads to the same issues. The author argues that humanity’s real need is renewal, not just justice. Without renewal through faith in Jesus, people would inevitably fall into self-destruction. Hell, then, is not excessive but the natural consequence of rejecting this renewal.