“Let me imagine a man entering heaven without a change of heart. He comes within the gates. He hears a sonnet. He starts! It is to the praise of his enemy. He sees a throne, and on it sits one who is glorious; but it is his enemy. He walks the streets of gold, but those streets belong to his enemy. He is in an enemy’s house; for he is at enmity with God. He could not join the song, for he would not know the tune. There he would stand, silent, motionless; till Christ would say with a voice louder than ten thousand thunders, ‘What dost thou here? Enemies at a marriage banquet? Enemies in the children’s house? Enemies in heaven? Get thee gone. Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire in hell!’ Oh! sirs, if the unregenerate man could enter heaven… he would be so unhappy in heaven, that he would ask God to let him run down to hell for shelter. There must be a change, if [you] consider the future state; for how can enemies to God ever sit down at the banquet of the Lamb?” - Charles Spurgeon
If there was a short list of topics to stray away from in Christianity with the hope of keeping people from feeling uncomfortable, hell and judgment would both sit near the top. Pay close attention to the pH in a room the next time someone brings up the rightful wrath of God. Watch as eyes dart to the ground when eternal judgment and damnation are uttered. The discomfort rapidly becomes palpable and the tension can be cut with a knife.
There is a reason why hell is not considered appropriate dinner conversation at most parties.
I do not intend to change anyone’s mind on the decorum of conversation, but I want to offer a different perspective. Our comprehension of hell has often been informed by a top-down perspective. Most of us have been taught about eternal separation from God from the perfect angle: that of God! What is hell? It is a complete and utter, irreconcilable disconnection from the One who cannot be in the presence of sin without justice. Hell is the abandonment of hope as God’s cup has run out of grace and mercy upon the unrepentant. Put simply and succinctly: hell is torturous punishment for those that have rebelled against God.
All of these statements are true, but we tend to assign the best of motives to man and the more deleterious of motivations to God. We see hell as a form of divine overkill from a cosmic stepdad. Our deepest sympathies are stirred for the poor, ignorant soul that may have just been too undereducated or free-spirited to have learned about the golden ticket to heaven. We picture friends or family members who have never asked God for forgiveness but have never killed anyone. (I’m not sure why we always jump to murder by the way). Therefore when we picture hell, we see a depiction of something akin to abandoned orphans that long for an opportunity to be adopted by God, finally receiving the gift that they so rightfully deserve.
The problem with our understanding of hell is not that the facts are untrue - many of the previous descriptions of hell are accurate (separation for God for rebellion, torment for the unrepentant, etc.). The most ardent issue is that we have evaded a huge blind spot. Here is where Charles Spurgeon comes in. Hell is not filled to the brim with sad, penitent philanthropists, it is populated by haters of God that chased after autonomy and self-satisfaction. Sin is no social faux pas. Rebellion is not a simple misunderstanding. Rejection is not based upon too little information.
The image that Spurgeon painted from his pulpit in the eighteenth century is a poignant one for me. If you had an enemy that you hated with every fiber of your being, it would not matter what was offered alongside him, his very presence would ruin the prize. As a kid, I remember the public pool getting shut down for the day on a number of occasions because a kid couldn’t get out of the water before they defecated in their mesh swimsuit. This one, small detail made it a disgusting proposal to swim. Everyone left until the accident could be remedied. Likewise, your favorite meal would be tainted if a toenail found its way onto the plate (even the smallest toenail).
Both of these illustrations should be graphic enough to make you cringe. But they are nothing compared to the idea that someone with no interest in God would be satisfied with an eternal paradise entirely intended to glorify Him. The most beautiful details of heaven pale in comparison to the beauty of the One that everything is set around. For an unrepentant person to pull out a get-out-of-hell-free card before death (if that were possible) would not lead to a tearless and painless eternity, but a never-ending nightmare where their enemy is being worshipped at every turn. Heaven would, in a very real sense, be hell to the one who does not love the Person to whom heaven is focused around.
Let us not be so foolish as to think heaven is a continuous trip to Six Flags and let us not be so naive as to think that our neighbors, friends, and family that do not have any interest in Jesus now would have anything but compounded misery and hatred in heaven. Heaven is heaven because it is forever rotating around the Son. Hell is hell because it is absent of the One from whom all goodness, love and light glow out of.