Pastor: “Lately, I Hope There Is a Hell”

This from Pastor John Pavlovitz: If there’s a hell, it will be for professed Christians who pretended to care about “life” while making this place a living hell for so much of it.

I disagree, and I have to say that I’m surprised to hear this from him.  I think there is something profoundly wrong, morally, with those who believe in everlasting punishment, inflicted for behavior, regardless of how heinous, in one lifetime.

I like Bertrand Russell’s perspective on this subject.  Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of his 1926 lecture “Why I Am Not a Christian“:

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

Christ, certainly as depicted in the Gospels, did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching—an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence.

You do not, for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane towards the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation.