“You Can’t Love Jesus and Believe in Hell”
Spoiler: Yes, you can, and you should
I appreciate the viewpoints of those outside my Catholic Christian tradition because they allow me to learn more and dig deeper into my faith. I’m also doing this new thing of evangelizing whenever possible, since as a Christian, it’s my obligation to do so. We may never know when a moment of evangelization may be the receiver’s last. May the Lord give me the grace and the virtue to evangelize in the most charitable and gentle way possible, so that I may reach the ears of all who are willing to hear.
I stumbled across Dan Foster’s article, entitled “You Can’t Love Jesus and Believe in Hell: How the Threat of Eternal Damnation Does not Create Lovers of God.”
The purpose of my response is to address the reality of hell. In this response, I will also provide some insights as to how the knowledge of hell can better inform and even deepen our relationship with God.
Ditch the notion of hell?
Hell is one serious topic that many people, Christians and non-Christians alike have a hard time wrestling with, and that’s okay.
I will have to push back on Dan’s idea of “ditching the notion of hell altogether” as he has stated in his article. His argument for this idea can be summarized as follows:
Death is death. Yet, most Christians seem to believe that death really means living forever — in the fires of Hell, presumably in a perpetually regenerating immortal body. The idea of eternal punishment in Hell can only exist through pushing the consistent meaning of words like “death, destruction, and perish” beyond their semantic limits and reading between the lines to invent concepts that are nowhere explicitly taught in scripture.
What can we conclude from all this? Jesus had his own unique take on the afterlife, and it absolutely doesn’t align with the fiery, eternal torment version of Hell that often gets tossed around by evangelicals.
He didn’t believe it, and he definitely didn’t go around spreading it like gospel truth.
Period.
While I agree that the topic of hell shouldn’t be the main bullet point of “the good news,” I still think that without mentioning it altogether, it nullifies the power of the true good news, which is:
Jesus Christ died on the cross, descended into hell, but rose again on the third day, and has ascended into Heaven where He sits at the right hand of The Father, where He intercedes on behalf of His people.
Now, take out hell and everything after that. What does that leave us with?
Jesus dying on the cross. The end.
If He didn’t descend to hell, Jesus is just another healing guru that just died, but as Christians, we should know better. He’s not a guru. He’s God incarnate. He died on the cross to show us that hell has no victory. Sin has no victory. Death then, has no sting for those who believe in Him.
He died on the cross to give us hope of victory over sin and death.
The removal of hell removes the saving power of the cross as well as the need to repent, the comessage that many people tend to forget.
Repentance brings us to relationship with God
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
1 Peter 2:24, ESV
He died to sin so that we may also die to sin and live to righteousness— that’s repentance. Jesus preached repentance during His ministry on earth. He started His preaching by saying “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).
Perhaps we need to get a grip of what sin is in order to repent from it. Sin is our free choice to turn away from God. God allows it because He gave us the free will to either choose or reject Him. Perfect love comes out of free will. Perfect love is not forced, so God gives us a free choice in either turning to Him or away from Him.
Living a life that is in communion with God is a life lived in His sanctifying grace, but we have to turn away from our sinful ways and repent.
Hell is for sure in the Bible.
Okay, so what about Dan’s point about hell not being explicitly mentioned in the Bible?
The idea of eternal punishment in Hell can only exist through pushing the consistent meaning of words like “death, destruction, and perish” beyond their semantic limits and reading between the lines to invent concepts that are nowhere explicitly taught in scripture.
On the contrary, here are a few instances where hell is taught in scripture:
The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:22–23, NRSV-CE)
The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Laz’arus in his bosom.
Jesus taught this particular parable to teach us a lesson on repentance in this life. The rich man in the parable suffers torment in Hades for not repenting from his lavish life and ignorance of the poor man. Why would Jesus teach about Hades if He didn’t believe it to be a reality?
The Fury of Fire (Hebrews 10:26–27, NRSV-CE)
For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.
Paul (or whoever you believe to be the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews) teaches that those who sin after receiving the knowledge of God are liable to judgment, described here as a consuming fire for the adversaries. This lines up with the common description of the fires of hell. “Consuming” implies the eternal nature thereof.
Fire and Brimstone (Revelation 14:9–11, NRSV-CE)
And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also shall drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
Yet another example of eternal torment of fire and brimstone. This one’s self-explanatory. Note that the “smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.”
A friendlier view of hell?
If you’re reading this, I pray that you never get to see the depths of hell. I’d be a terrible Christian if I ever wished hell, even on my enemies.
But let’s for a second remove the dramatic vision of fire and brimstone. What is hell, then?
Hell is the eternal separation from God. That’s it.
We can only speculate what that’s like — to be forever removed from communion with the God who loves us so dearly. I imagine it to be a state of confusion, anger, disorientation and isolation that lasts for all of eternity. Imagine not being able to love or feel love. Now multiply that feeling times infinity.
But what loving God sends people He supposedly loves to hell?
He does not send people to hell. In fact, God our Saviour “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4, NRSV-CE)
So how do people end up in hell, anyway? Well, they end up in hell through their own pride.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart, and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord. In the pride of his countenance, the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.” (Psalm 10:3–4, NRSV-CE)
There are many times here on our time in earth that through our pride, we live as though there is no God, just as the psalmist says, and in a way — we experience that prefigurement of hell on earth. We all start to think of all of our good achievements as our own and not of God’s, who without Him, we “can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18 ESV)
Our pride and haughtiness make us feel superior to those around us — and in this case, God to who is superior above all. We praise ourselves and reject God, making idols of ourselves. We are god in our eyes. We tell God we don’t need Him in our sin.
God always makes His love known
Despite our feelings towards God, He still makes Himself known in many ways. He is still the essence of being that sustains our life. Every breath we take is a breath given by God. He gives us the food, shelter, and clothing we still need. He’s in the smiles of our children, He’s in the hearts of all who help us and love us…I can’t speak to every grace that He gives us — it’s infinitely more than what we can comprehend.
He also shows His love by allowing us to wander in our sin. I know He’s let me wander in mine…and by allowing me to wander, I’ve seen firsthand the earthly consequences of sin.
By wandering in gluttony, I’ve seen firsthand the effects of overeating in my health. Lack of control over food leads to lack of control of my own impulsive emotions. By wandering in porn addiction for well over a decade, I’ve seen how despicable, isolating, and divisive sexual sin is. I’ve seen how it’s separated me from my own family many times, and how it’s perverted the original image of goodness in which God created me.
In our sin, we live in a version of hell on earth. Sometimes, He lets us wander in sin in order to show us the pains and sufferings of being separated from God. Let me emphasize that this act of wandering is not an act of God, but of our own.
It’s not so much that we need to be accepted by God, but it’s more of a matter of us accepting God. In our pride we reject Him, but in our humility we receive Him back into our hearts.
God is a loving Father who only wants to save us from living this reality of hell, but we can only receive Him if we humble ourselves and make that choice to turn away from sin and turn to God instead — that’s repentance. The love we experience from this relationship with God will allow us to overcome sin and flourish as His beloved children.
Dan, if you’re reading this, I really appreciate your honesty. I appreciate your vulnerability not only with this article, but with your publication in general. I see the perspective of those unchurched, and I really feel for you all. There are Christians in the church who don’t live up to the call that Jesus commands us all to live, and in their cowardice, drive others out of the church by fear. Perfect love casts out fear, and they should have been living an example of love. That’s what a lot of Christians get wrong — they are inclined to evangelize through fear, and as such, Christianity as a whole gets labeled as a fear-based religion.
We can’t just leave out the reality of hell, however.
Hell is an ugly topic, but you know what? It should be. It should leave a terrible taste in our mouth, but at the same time, without knowing hell, we wouldn’t know the peace and the grace that comes from a relationship with God, which is the main thing that we should all strive for.
I agree that hell shouldn’t be made the talking point. Relationship with God should be, but bear in mind that we can only form this relationship by “turning away” or repenting of our sin. The love from God is the most perfect love, and that love is infinitely greater than the hells we experience in our sin.
Can you love Jesus and believe in hell?
Yes. True repentance will bring us closer to God’s love — and that should be the main talking point.
