This post is part of our ongoing “Ask The Pastor” series, where you can write in to ask anything to our Lead Pastor, Rev. Jason Coker. To submit your own question, click here to go to our Ask Anything page.
Hi, Does your church believe in eternal conscious torment in hell? Or is there hope/faith that Jesus’s love never fails or never stops?
~ Jordan
Hi Jordan,
Our church doesn’t have a position on this, but I’m definitely not a fan of the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment in hell. The idea that God would inflict an eternity of torture on anyone – even the worst among us – seems entirely antithetical to the revelation of God’s true nature in the person of Jesus Christ.
Christ did refer to a final judgement in several times, most vividly in Matthew 25:31-46. In that passage, Christ warns that those who fail to help the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned will face “eternal fire.”
It’s important to understand that Jesus most often uses the word “Gehenna” (usually translated into English as hell) when talking about final judgment. Gehenna (also known as the Valley of Hinnom and Topheth) is an actual place where ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to the Assyrian god Molech. The prophet Jeremiah condemned them for this in very strong language (Jeremiah 19):
Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind; therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter.
From that time forward, “Gehenna” became a figurative way of referring to God’s judgment. That’s why it comes with the imagery of burning; because Gehenna is where children were burned to death to satisfy the desires of wicked men.
So Jesus’ use of Gehenna isn’t so much a teaching about the nature of hell as it is a teaching about who is and is not subject to judgement. Jesus isn’t answering the question, “What’s hell like?” (ETERNAL FIRE!). No. He’s answering the question, “Who will be judged on the day of the Lord?” and he uses the common idiom of Gehenna to drive home his point.
So what’s his point?
In Matt 25, Jesus seems to be saying that those who refuse to help the poor, the hungry, and the prisoner shall be just as guilty as those who practiced child sacrifice.
Yikes.
With this teaching, Jesus was challenging the prevailing notion that people were comfortably “in” God’s will by virtue of having the right ethnic identity. He’s saying, It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish, it matters how you treat the most vulnerable among us.
Now, I think this teaching challenges Christians today in a similar way, who often think they are “in” God’s will by virtue of having the right doctrinal identity. Today, Jesus is saying to Christians, It doesn’t matter if you’re BaptistReformedCatholicEpiscopalianMethodist…it matters how you treat the most vulnerable among us.
Doesn’t that just sound like Jesus? By the way, this pairs nicely with John the Baptist’s words in Luke 3:7-17.
Still, that does not tell us anything about the nature of God’s final judgement. Is it really a fire of some kind? Does it last forever? I think it’s important to ask the question: What kind of Divine justice should we expect from the God who revealed Godself in the person and work of Christ – you know, the one who said we shouldn’t murder our enemies, but bless them instead?
As for me, on my best days I tend to be a Universalist. Most days I am an Annihilationist.