How Can A Loving God Consign People to Hell?
When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for Faith. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.
In approaching the subject of hell it is important to distinguish between liking or disliking something and judging whether it’s right to do. For example, adultery may be pleasurable, but most people would agree it’s wrong.
Hell evokes a visceral response. People react strongly against the mere idea of hell. So how do we get beyond that? People have to try to set aside their feelings and judge whether it is a morally just or morally right state of affairs, not whether they like or dislike the concept. And it’s important to understand that God hates hell and hates people going there - the Bible is very clear: God says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ez. 33:11).
J.P. Moreland says, “God is the most generous, loving, wonderful, attractive being in the cosmos. He has made us with free will and He has made us for a purpose: to relate lovingly to Him and to others. We are not accidents, we’re not modified monkeys, we’re not random mistakes. And if we fail over and over again to live for the purpose for which we are made - a purpose, by the way, which would allow us to flourish more than living any other way - then God will have absolutely no choice but to give us what we’ve asked for all along in our lives, which is separation from him.”
It’s wrong to think that God is simply a loving being - especially if you mean ‘loving’ in the sense most Americans use that word today. We tend to care only for the softer virtues like love and mercy and forget the hard virtues of holiness, righteousness and justice.
The essence of hell is relational - Christianity says people are the most valuable things in the entire creation. If people matter, then personal relationships matter, and hell is largely relational. In the Bible, hell is separation or banishment from the most beautiful being in the world - God Himself. It is exclusion from anything that matters, from all value, not only from God but also from those who have come to know and love Him. And it’s a natural consequence of people living a life where they say, “I don’t care if I’m separate from God, I want to do things my way,” and then they are given their desire for all eternity by being separated from God forever just as those who love God are given their desire for all eternity, to spend it with God.
Because we will have both body and soul in the resurrected state, the misery experienced will be both mental and physical. A great deal of suffering will be due to the sorrow from the final, ultimate, unending banishment from God, His kingdom and the good life for which we were created in the first place. People in hell will deeply grieve all they have lost.
But doesn’t Genesis tell us that when God created everything He called it good? He obviously created hell, but how could He possibly think that hell is good? Hell is not part of the original creation; think of it as God’s fallback position. God was forced to make hell because people chose to rebel against Him. When people founded the United States, they didn’t start out by creating jails - they would have much rather had a society without jails. They were forced to create them because people would not cooperate - the same is true for hell.
I believe it was Christopher Hitchens who said that for him heaven would be hell. How could this be? Have you ever been around someone who is unbelievably good looking, extremely attractive and a lot smarter than you? When you’re in a social situation someone wants to listen to him, not you. Suppose you don’t care for that person but are kept in a room with him for 24 hours a day for 30 years. That would be an unbelievably difficult experience. Now multiply those qualities ten thousand times, and that’s a little bit of what God is like. He is real, real smart. He’s very attractive. And He’s much more morally pure than we are. And if people do not fall passionately in love with Him, then forcing them to have to be around Him forever - doing the kinds of things that people who love Him would want to do - would be utterly uncomfortable.
Each day we are preparing ourselves for either being with God and His people and valuing the things He values, or choosing not to engage with those things. So yes, hell is primarily a place for people who would not want to go to heaven.
So people consciously choose hell? Not exactly, they don’t consciously reject heaven and choose to go to hell instead, but they do choose not to care about the kinds of values that will be present in heaven every day.
I knew a college professor and his wife who were unable to have children. They opened heir hearts and their home to foster children. They created a home most kids would envy. As he explained, it wasn't about being showy but creating a place a child would want to stay and want to invite friends, a warm environment they would immediately call home. A young girl, early teens I think, came to live with them once.
They lavished her with love and affection. Her biological mother was a drug addict and prostitute, living in a dirty extended stay motel with her pimp/boyfriend. But the professor and his wife imposed rules of conduct and behavior on her like any good parents would. In particular, they felt like she was too young to have a boyfriend. She found this intolerable. She chose to return to the squalid conditions of her mother and boyfriend.
This is analogous to the person who chooses a life apart from God. This young lady consciously chose to live in squalor because she refused to submit to authority in her life. She valued her "freedom" and the ability to do as she pleased, even at the cost she incurred.
By the way we live our lives we’re either preparing ourselves for being in God’s presence and enjoying Him, or we’re preparing ourselves for an existence where we try to make ourselves the center of the universe and we have no interest in being with God or the people who love Him.
Many wonder about children and hell. For one thing, in the afterlife, our personalities reflect an adult situation, so we can say for sure there will be no children in hell. And certainly there will be no one in hell who, if they had the chance to grow up to be adults, would have chosen to go to heaven. No one will go to hell simply because all he or she needed was a little more time and died prematurely.
Moreover, in the Bible children are universally viewed as figures of speech for salvation. In all the texts where children are used in regard to the afterlife, they’re used as pictures of being saved. There’s no case where children are ever used as pictures of damnation. Besides, Scripture supports the idea that those who die before the age of accountability go to heaven.
Does everyone suffer the same in hell (Hitler vs. pretty decent person)? The short answer is no, they don’t. The Bible teaches there are different degrees of suffering and punishment. In Matthew 11:20-24 Jesus denounces the cities where his miracles were performed and yet they did not believe. He tells the cities of Korazin and Bethsaida that Tyre and Sidon will not suffer as much as they on the day of judgment. He assures Capernaum that Sodom will have it better. Jesus is saying that people will be judged in accordance with their deeds.
So too we see that there are different degrees of reward. Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 25:14-30 in the Parable of the Talents. Paul agrees in Romans 2:5-6 (…every man according to his deeds) and in 1 Cor. 3:11-15 (…and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work). Solomon also points it out in Proverbs 24:12 (…render to man according to his work). So shouldn’t the converse be true?
Remember, if God really does let people shape their own character by the thousands of choices they make, He is also going to allow them to suffer the natural consequences of the character they’ve chosen to have. And those who are in worse shape personally will experience a greater degree of isolation and emptiness
But why are people punished infinitely for finite crimes? Those who question the traditional doctrine of hell have a fundamental misunderstanding of one or more of the following: the nature of God, the nature of man, or the nature of sin. God is holy and perfect. He is undeniably just, and His nature demands that he deal with sinful people who persist in their wicked ways. God cannot abide sin, and He will not. Any offense against an absolutely holy God, no matter how trivial it may seem, is a serious offense. We have forgotten the essential nature of the very God we begrudge for holding us accountable.
The length of punishment is not a function of the length of time it took to commit a crime. It is a function of the seriousness of the crime. One can pilfer small office supplies over several years. A murder can be completed in seconds. And the ultimate “crime,” or sin, is rejecting God. Interestingly enough, no one ever wonders about the fairness of eternal reward for a finite life led in obedience to God. That never seems disproportionate.
So why not force everyone to go to heaven or snuff out the wicked? Christ’s atoning death on the cross demonstrated man’s intrinsic value. Forcing him to go to heaven against his will or annihilating him treats man as instrumentally valuable, as a means to an end. Eternal separation from God, which is what hell is, is morally superior to either. As J.P. Moreland says, “Hell will forever be a monument to human dignity and the value of human choice. It is a quarantine where God says two important things: I respect freedom of choice enough to where I won’t coerce people, and I value my image-bearers so much that I will not annihilate them.”
How can hell exist alongside heaven? Wouldn’t those in heaven mourn for those who are suffering forever in hell? J. P. Moreland says, "I think people in heaven will realize that hell is a way of honoring people as being intrinsically valuable creatures made in God’s image. Many times a person’s ability to enjoy something comes from growing older and gaining a more mature perspective, and we can expect a fullness of spiritual maturity in the afterlife." For instance, a young child is often unable to enjoy a gift if he perceives that another child's gift is better. However, when he is older, he is able to enjoy his gift irrespective of the other's. Or perhaps think of a family member in prison. That does not occupy every second of the family’s mind. Knowing their family member is incarcerated does not stifle their enjoyment of life.
C.S. Lewis said hell doesn’t have veto power over heaven. In other words, people in heaven will not be denied the privilege of enjoying their lives just because they are consciously aware of hell. The soul is big enough to have an unperturbed sense of joy, well-being, love and happiness, while at the same time having a sense of grief and sadness for others. Those are not inconsistent states in a person’s life. It’s a mark of a person’s character and maturity that he’s able to have those states at the same time. We do it all the time already in this life. We'll certainly have the maturity/ability to do so in the next.
Why didn’t God create only those He knew would follow Him? First and foremost, God cannot actualize a contradiction. Man’s free will and a world without evil are contradictory states, since free will necessarily includes the freedom to reject God. From beginning to end, Scripture tells the unfolding story of God’s desire to have a relationship with man and how that can be achieved. God’s desire is that we love Him as He loves us. That has to be a free choice. As paradoxical as it sounds, no one can come to truly love God without the absolute freedom to reject Him.
J. P. Moreland adds a different avenue to consider and states that if He created only a handful, maybe God could have created people who through their free choices chose Him. But once God starts to create more people, it becomes more difficult for Him to just create the people who would choose Him and not create the people who wouldn’t. The fact is, we are influenced by observing other people. For example, perhaps you move or don’t move during your childhood. Maybe you would have had a Christian neighbor in one scenario, but not in the other.
When God chooses to create somebody, he or she has an impact on other people’s choices and it might be that they have an impact on their decision whether or not to trust Christ. To maximize the number of those who will trust Him, perhaps God allows ancestral chains that have nonbelievers in them. When God is making these judgments, His purpose is not to keep as many people out of hell as possible. His goal is to get as many people into heaven as possible.
Why doesn’t God give people a second chance? Hebrews 9:27 says explicitly that people are destined to die once and then face judgment. But if God really loves us, why not give people a second chance? This assumes God didn’t do everything He could do before they died, and that is fallacious. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us God is delaying Christ’s return to give everybody all the time He possibly can so they will come to Him. If all a person needed was a little more time to come to Christ, then God would extend their time on earth to give them that chance. There will be no one who died prematurely that would have otherwise accepted Christ.
A second chance would make life before death utterly irrelevant. The simple fact is that this life is the test, this life provides all the information and incentive we need. If people saw the judgment seat of Christ after death, it would be so coercive that they would no longer have free choice. Any ‘decision’ they made would not be a real genuine free choice. They wouldn’t really be choosing God, His kingdom or His ways - nor would they be suited for life in His kingdom. They’d be making a prudent ‘choice’ to avoid judgment. One more thing to note: God sufficiently hides Himself so that people who want to choose to ignore Him can do it. This way, their choice of destiny is really free.
Isn’t reincarnation at least more rational than hell? Reincar-nation is incoherent. If you tell me you are contemplating the number 2 but it’s an odd number, I’d tell you, “You may be thinking of 3 or 5, but not 2, because one thing that is essential to it is being even.” It’s not essential that I am 6’05” or that I have blue eyes, but it is essential to me that I am human. Reincarnation says that I can come back as a dog or an amoeba. If that’s true then what’s the difference between being Bobby Tucker and anything else? There’s nothing essential to me. But just like being even is essential to the number 2, being human is essential to me - and reincarnation says that what is essential to me really isn’t essential after all.
But more than anything, we know reincarnation isn't true because there’s an expert on the question, Jesus of Nazareth. He’s the only person in history who died, rose again, and spoke authoritatively on the question, and he says reincarnation is false, that there is one death and after that comes the judgment. Instead, Jesus taught about the reality of hell; in fact, He discussed the subject more than anyone in the Bible.
For a more detailed defense of the traditional doctrine of hell: