hell.fire.and.brimstone

I am not comfortable with hell. I am not comfortable with people who believe that others are going to hell. I am not comfortable with a God who will send people to hell. I am not comfortable condemning people to hell.

The three year old I live with woke up in the middle of the night and eventually told mom that there was a fire in her room (she had just learned that day about what to do when there is a fire, and contrary to what her father and I have being doing when the smoke alarm goes off, it is not actually stand and wave your arm like she told her mother). Interestingly enough, she woke up with a fever and said that there was a man with a pointed nose and fire coming out of his mouth. Weird. Maybe a dream. Maybe signs of a spiritual realm. I do not know nor do I claim to know.

I once said that maybe heaven and hell are not so much physical places of torment or bliss for an “afterlife” but rather they are related to story. Heaven being having a voice in the grandeur story and scheme and hell being… Dying alone, unnamed, and seemingly without worth in Africa.

I wonder of if Jesus’ prayer for “heaven on earth” was in part due to the seeming presence of “hell on earth.” My mind cannot comprehend life-shattering earthquakes in China or governments cutting off humanitarian aid in Zimbabwe or what it would have been like to be naked in a concentration camp. Although I can write about darkness and have and probably will write more… The reality of physical torture is beyond me (though I could tell you of other personal sufferings: tears, heartache, etc.).

I do not like violence or find it particularly holy or just. Perhaps this is why I squirm when imagining hell as well. Why would our loving, great, merciful God allow such a thing? Who in their right mind would choose heaven over hell? Who in their right mind would choose to struggle with same sex attraction? Who in their right mind would choose to go through the painful torture of abortion? Who in their right mind would choose to have a failing marriage? Who in their right mind would choose… And the list goes on. I cannot look at this world without seeing through broken glasses.

Why (the hell?) would Christ “descend to the dead” if not to abolish death?

What happened in that stanza of the creed?

If it is about “whosoever believes in me” who is in? Do I say who believes and who doesn’t? Do I know who believes and who doesn’t? What does it mean to “believe in Jesus” anyhow? Is my Muslim friend who views him as a prophet “in”? Did the Jews, who experienced “hell on earth”, but did not believe in Jesus, have a sentence to hell?