To a number of persons, hell
is a literal place of fire and brimstone, of unending
torment and anguish. To
some too, it is a symbolic description of a condition or state.
For centuries now after Jesus
death and that of his apostles, a fiery hell of excruciating torments has been
envisioned by religious leaders of Christendom as the certain destiny for
sinners, an idea that is still been popularized by some other religious groups
today. According to US.NEWS & WORLD REPORT “Christianity may have made hell
a household word, but it doesn’t hold a monopoly on the doctrine. The threat of
painful retribution in the afterlife has counterparts in nearly every major
world religion and in some minor ones as well.” These “minor ones” includes
Hindus, Buddhist, Muslims, Jains and Taoist, who believe in hell of one sort or
another.
However, hell in this modern
era seems to have acquired or rather metamorphosed into another image in modern
thinking. “While traditional infernal imagery still attracts a following”
continues U.S News & World Report “modern visions of
eternal perdition as a
particular unpleasant solitary confinement are beginning to emerge, suggesting
that hell may not be so hot after all.”
This is not surprising, the
Jesuit journal La’Civitta Catholica’ observed: “It is misleading…..to think
that God, by means of demons, inflicts fearful torments on the damned like that
of fire.” The journal went on: “Hell exists, not as a place but as a state, a
way of being of the person who suffers the pains of deprivation of God” The
late Pope John Paul II in 1999 added his voice to the growing trend of modern
thinking of hell when he was reported as saying: “Rather than a place. Hell
indicates the sate of those who freely and definitely separates themselves from
God, the source of all life and Joy.” As to the images of hell as a fiery
place, he added: “They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life
without God.” Referring to the Pope’s comment, church historian Martin Marty
said: “People wouldn’t have taken him seriously.” Had the Pope described hell
in terms of “flames and a red –suited devil with a pitchfork,”
These changes are not the
confinement of Catholics but equally shared in other denominations, such as the
report by the doctrine Commission of the Church of England stated: “Hell is not
eternal
torment, but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is
opposed to God so completely and absolutely that the only end is total
non-being.”
The Catechism of the UNITED
States Episcopal Church defines hell as “eternal death in rejection of God.”
The U.S News &World Report observed that a growing number of people are
promoting the idea that “the end of the wicked is destruction, not eternal
suffering ….
contend that those who ultimately reject God will simply be
put out of existence in the “consuming fire” of hell.”
Although the modern-day trend
is to get faraway from the stains of centuries old fire and brimstone mentality,
many has continued to adhere to the belief that hell is a literal place of
torment. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A was reported as saying: “scripture clearly
speaks of hell as a physical place of fiery torment.” According to The Nature
of Hell, prepared by the Evangelical Alliance Commission, it states that: “hell
is a conscious experience of rejection and torment……There are degrees of
punishment and suffering in hell related to the severity to sins committed on
earth.” One wonders where in the hemisphere, hell can be located.
Finally, from the foregoing,
it appears that most main stream religions are trying very hard even though
with great difficult to extricate themselves from the falsehood of “a fiery and
hot hell” doctrine. If not, why the looming inconsistency abouthell? An
implicating evidence that “hell isn’t hot after all?”
Could God be said to be fair
and equally righteous with every sense of Justice of hire the devil and his
demons, who are his sworn enemies to torment rebellious humans, who equally
might have been deceived by these same demons? Could an eternal fiery torment
be justifiable as punishment on imperfect-born but rebellious humans?-Romans
6:23; 12:5,6; John 5:28-9;