I just read a good article by John Piper: How Willingly Do People Go to Hell. In it, he challenges C.S. Lewis’ statements about hell: that “all that are in hell choose it” and “all God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”
John Piper makes very good arguments to show that hell is so horrible that no one could possibly want it. He argues, “What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable.”
He also argues that God does not just send people to hell, but he throws them:
God does not just “send,” he “throws.” “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown (Greek eblethe) into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15; cf. Mark 9:47; Matthew 13:42; 25:30).
The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.
I don’t know too much about why C.S. Lewis said what he did, but my guess is that he was trying to illustrate how a loving God could allow people to go to hell. So Lewis concludes that people choose hell themselves. I think Piper and Lewis are headed the same direction, Piper is just being more accurate as he goes. People don’t choose hell, they choose sin, and sin’s consequence is hell.
This still preserves the fact that people have a choice, which seems to be Lewis’ intent. And in fact, the people who wind up in hell are making that choice (to choose sin) up until God finally throws them in. And then, even in hell, though they want desperately to get out, they still are incapable of choosing to turn from their sin.
One other thing, the descriptions of hell that Lewis portrayed (for instance, in The Great Divorce) are pretty ordinary. No fire. No gnashing teeth. Just ordinary people who can’t stand each other – kind of like the hell that Sartre described (“Hell is other people”). Piper might mistake this for being less horrible than hell really is, but I doubt C.S. Lewis was trying to downplay the torment of hell. In fact, his descriptions emphasize how hellish people’s thoughts already are, revealing the torment they unknowingly experience without God even now on this earth.
Sin is intertwined with its consequence; so much so that through sin, hell bleeds out of its gates and into our world. Only Christ’s sacrifice could break the bond we had with hell through our sin, so that we would instead be grafted into Christ’s Kingdom. And now, through Christ’s righteousness living in us, heaven overflows its gates and brings light to earth, even now.
Richard Venable
Hell is the ultimate separation from God. If you think of each sin as a brick, and a mortal sin (1 John 5:16) as a cornerstone, each one stolen from the bridge of innocence or trust of a person in the kingdom of God, building a wall around yourself, you slowly isolate yourself from God and the people around you. The mortar dried, and you have no ability to tear down the wall, because your own hands are useless against the dried mortar, and you don’t have any tools on your side. The more you sin, the further from the children of God you get, so you start stealing bricks from other sinners so you can build a staircase over your wall. The problem is, the other sinners steal from you, so you start building walls to block them out as well. The vicious cycle continues, and the walls only get bigger and stronger, and the feeling of no way out only increases. A single repentant cry out to God, and an effort to change your ways allows the walls to come crumbling down allowing you to once again join God in his glorious kingdom. However, there are still all the bricks that you stole from those people. You must seek to make amends to them, rebuilding the bridge of trust. Of course if the damage to their bridge was big enough (for example, you bombed and completely destroyed the bridge), you might not be welcomed anywhere near that person or his/her bridge again, but you should work to help others rebuild their bridges, because
Everybody’s buildin’, big ships and boats,
some are building monuments others just jotting down notes.
Everybody’s in despair every girl and boy,
but when Christ the redeemer gets here,
all God’s children gonna jump for joy…. sorry, got distracted.
Haha… Quinn the Eskimo. There’s nothing better than quoting Dylan in blog comments.
Yeah, Daniel, that’s a good picture of how sin just continually separates people more and more from God, and with each sin their hearts are harder and harder. Thankfully God can break through even the hardest hearts.