What the Hell?

Read a good article on Heaven and Hell today. There's a shout out to Wesley in it, so you might want to check it out!


Here's the bit that I liked particularly (all in quotes, of course!):
Currently there is a good deal of discussion among Christians about the morality of hell: it is said that a good God would not condemn people to an eternity of torture. However that has been the belief of most Christians through most of Christian history. It seems to be supported by the Biblical account. The alternative seems about as bad: that God will force himself on people who do not want him.

Note that it is not necessary to say that God imposes hell as punishment. It may be the automatic (indeed logically unavoidable) consequence of rejecting God. It is not clear that God makes it intentionally unpleasant. It may be the nature of the people who are there, and the fact that they are finally given what they want: freedom from God.

Many criticisms of judgement suggest that it is arrogant to say that Christian ideas are true and others are false. "How can you be so arrogant to believe that Christians will go to heaven and everyone else will go to hell." As we will see below, most Christians don't believe this. However the idea that this is arrogant seems odd. We do not criticize mathematics teachers for saying that 2 + 2 is always 4, and that believing sincerely in 5 is not acceptable. Either there is a God or there isn't. Either Christ died to save us or he didn't. If he did, it's hard to see how it can be arrogant to say so. If he didn't, then Christians are wrong, but not arrogant.