Hell Is No People

(That's a play on Jean-Paul Sartre's famous line. Free culture!)

It's easy to populate hell, at first.

Stir in one cup of Hitler, a few tablespoons of Pol Pot, add a dash of fresh Manson, sprinkle some Osama on top, and cook over brimstone for, well, eternity.

The world has seen no shortage of evil perpetrated by selfish humans. I could easily add more "ingredients." They wouldn't even have to be mass murderers or serial killers. Plenty of people have produced plenty of evil actions. It happens every day.

But I'd like to suggest that not a single person deserves hell, at least not if it's defined as everlasting torment. Not bin Laden, not Adolf. Not the misguided Crusader who raped and pillaged his way through the Holy Land. Not the Soviet leader who sent millions to their death in labor camps. Not the serial kidnapper-murderer.

Only a warped sense of justice allows for another being's lifetime of maliciousness to be punished with an eternity of pain. Any punishment that becomes everlasting... have you even really considered it?

And I don't mean "considered it" as in, "imagined what it would be like to burn forever." Nobody but the most myopic literalist would argue that an actual lake of fire burns bad people, always. That's just silly and brainless. But even hell as a place at all, or as a state of mind, breaks down pretty quickly no matter what shape the punishment takes. Un-ending, un-endable pain, of any type, is not a just consequence commensurate with the crime.

No matter the crime.

I'll even take this one step farther. If there is a Satan, even it doesn't deserve hell. I don't care what it did to "earn" hell. It didn't deserve it. Eternal punishment isn't just something you mete out, if you're the one doing the meting. It's cruel. It's actually worse than the original crime.

One step farther still. Yes, that means I believe God's worse than Hitler, if hell is Adolf's final destination.

The last stop on this theological rabbit hole is to conclude that if God sends souls to hell, then God is more evil than Satan.


(I suppose this explains why I have to tune the Bible out when it promises hell for certain individuals.)

It's entirely possible that I suffer from a lack of perspective. I have the enviable luxury of talking about hell in purely philosophical terms, with the fortunate detachment that comes from never having to deal with the murder of a loved one. I don't have the life experience of someone whose son, whose sister, whose parent was killed. I never survived a genocide; I don't have a pastful of trauma to sort through. Nobody has ever hurt me very badly, and I'm lucky that way.

But is there a way for a person to perform enough evil to deserve an eternity of torment? I can't think of one. I welcome all enlightened answers to that very real question.


P.S. As I eliminate hell, my vision of heaven takes a hit as well. That's the next post in this series, I guess.