Hell: Who, If Anyone, Deserves It?

From the popular Christian pastor John Pavlovitz:

I was brought up believing that hell was real, though later in life I’d grown skeptical. It seemed like an idea incompatible with a loving God and with the very idea of Grace.

I’m not sure that hell exists, but today I admit to being strangely hopeful.

Today, for the first time in my life, I cling to the idea that somewhere beyond this life, there is a place where horrible people pay for the atrocities; where the evil humankind unleashes upon this world is returned to them in kind, and they are finally made personally accountable—where they feel the pain they have inflicted while here.

Today it feels like this world has failed the good people, and maybe hell is the only chance there is for things to be made right.

Because if there indeed is a hell, it will be surely getting more crowded after today.

If there’s a hell, it should be probably filled with people who claimed faith in Jesus, while trying to strip the sick of care, the terrified of refuge, and the vulnerable of protection—and reveling as if this was a righteous victory.

If eternal damnation exists, it should be the wages of men and women who put children in cages and told us with a straight face that it was like summer camp. It should be for those who called terrified children crisis actors.

If there’s a forever place saved for people with hateful hearts, it will house those who treated sexual assault as irrelevant, defending the accused and demonizing the accusers.

And if there’s a hell, it should be packed to the rafters with Christians who chose to turn the other way or to be silent as they watched it all happen.

All decent people hope to have some form of punishment visited upon evil people, but I have to say that I’m both surprised and disappointed to see this; I had come to view Pavlovitz as a person of great humanitarianism, mercy and compassion.

The concept of eternal punishment meted out for crimes committed in this lifetime is itself the product of a cruel and demented mind.

This from Bertrand Russell:  “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.”