Hell is something I’ve thought about a lot. This is unsurprising, as we Catholics are among the most morbid of people. I mean, we invented Gothic and Memento Mori, have several churches made of bones (the largest being built from over 40,000 human skeletons), and amongst all the “once-saved, always-saved” Christians, we’re the branch that believes that Faith alone is not enough to save us; we have to show our love of God through our works (James 2:17), or we’re Hell-bound. But I’m getting far afield. However, it does warrant a disclaimer that the Church has very little in the way of firm teachings regarding the exact nature of Hell, and for a very good reason; nobody ever comes back. As such, everything that follows is strictly my own opinions, not some Catholic canon.
Firstly, it strikes me that the idea most people have of Hell (what you could call the “Hollywood Hell”) is pretty much wrong in every degree. People tend to picture it as a “place God casts you into after you die if you’ve been a particularly evil person, where you are tortured by demons for eternity amidst hellfire”. Frankly, I put this up there with the “little red goat-man in tights” Devil idea when it comes to unhelpfulness.
For one, God wouldn’t “cast us” into Hell. God is love, and always wants the best for us. As such, we have to “cast ourselves” into Hell by our choices. This is a key distinction, as the onus must always rest squarely on us. If Heaven is a place of full communion with God and the saints, reserved for those who love Him and keep His commandments, God won’t force us into such a state if our actions have proven we don’t desire it. Think of it like a friend inviting you to a party. He comes by every day and reminds you, but you keep telling him you’ll get back to him, or you’re busy now. Eventually, the day of the party will come, and he’ll stop asking. Your avoidance becomes rejection, and he’ll understand you didn’t want to be a part of it, and he’ll leave you alone, out of respect to your wishes.
And that aloneness is the real key to Hell.
See, the idea that Hell involves physical torture has always struck me as a little absurd. You don’t have any body left, how are you feeling pain? Where are you getting burnt? How are the demons torturing you? You’ve left the “book”, and are now in the dimension of the “reader”, outside of time. And, refusing to “go to God’s party”, the only option left for you is solitude. For Eternity. No senses (no body, remember?), no stimulations, just you in the void.
Alone.
To tie in another fallacy of “Hollywood Hell”, we picture it as only for the evilest of evildoers; the Stalins, Maos, and Pol Pots. We “good people” could never end up in Hell, right? Why, we’ve never even killed anybody! In reality however, the one path to Hell is a rejection of God’s invitation, and it doesn’t take a genocide to achieve that. See, just as all virtues tie back into Love, all vices tie back into Pride, the cardinal sin. The only reason you would “reject God’s invitation” is because you see your own plan as better; Disagreeing with the necessity of the commandments, saying that “as long as you’re a good person, that’s enough”, with “good” being by your own definition; This is effectively replacing God’s judgement with your own, the ultimate Pride. And that’s exactly the “freedom” Hell allows you; it’ll be just you and your ego for all eternity, after all. God loves you, but if you ultimately love yourself more than Him, He won’t force Himself on you. Like a father letting His children go, He’ll leave you to it.
And where do the demons fall into this? Well, C.S. Lewis described the demons in the Screwtape Letters as gaining great pleasure from the suffering of humans, and I believe this is 100% the case. Satan has always hated humanity and desired to corrupt it; we are God’s greatest creations after all, what could be better than watching untold numbers of us rot in sensory deprivation, clinging to our tattered egos in eternal, selfish misery? It would give demons the kind of sick pleasure we get in seeing our greatest enemies fall from grace, to see God’s beloved in such a state. I picture Hell as full of little “pockets” of individuals “floating” in solitude, spectated by demons feeding off their suffering, as a way of alleviating their own perpetual torment of separation.
And that’s essentially my view of Hell. A place of eternal solitude and emptiness, where those who couldn’t bring themselves to love God sit and stew, trapped in a vicious cycle of hatred by their own choice. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love”.
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