Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 37, No. 2, Summer 1998

Healing and Hell: The Contradiction STEPHEN J. CHINLUND ABSTRACT: There are apparent contradictions within New Testament texts concerning everlasting punishment for some, as opposed to the ultimate reconciliation of people in God. It is here argued that we should affirm the latter for theological reasons. Incidentally, there are major pastoral benefits from this affirmation. There are further social and criminal justice challenges which we may also welcome with thanksgiving.

Some inmates in a New York State prison were organized in a group designed to help its members recover memories of the positive ways they had behaved in the past and even to discover good things they were doing in the present. It was a difficult undertaking, but there were dramatic breakthroughs. Michael, for example, seemed happy to be a member of the group, but he said, "I've never done anything good my whole life." I pressed him, but he held firm and then said, "I've been headed for hell since the day I was born." On a hunch, I asked him if he had any younger sisters. He said he did. "Dolores. Four years younger. She was the baby in the family." I asked him to remember when she was beginning to bloom into womanhood. He smiled and said he could remember. "Did you ever look out for her when the guys started coming around?" He said, "Oh sure. She was shy. I'd walk her to school. I got in a couple of fights over her." "How did she feel about that?" "She liked it. She was scared." "So, you were a good brother to your sister?" "Yeah." "Can you say it yourself?" Then he said, "I was a good brother," and he burst into tears. He seemed as surprised as the rest of us by his tears. He said he could not ever remember crying. Much later, in another group, an inmate made a remark like Michael's about being bound for hell. We talked about it and many in the group said they felt the same way. They had done so many bad things, they said, that they were permanently with "the bad group," the ones going to hell. The Reverend Stephen J. Chinlund, M.Div., is Executive Director of Episcopal Social Services of New York City. 137

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Long before I started working in prison I was unable to accept the belief in everlasting punishment for anyone. People doing harm to others were invariably victims themselves. The cycle of abuse, passed from generation to generation, has been well documented over the years, most recently by Alice Miller in her Drama of the Gifted Child, and by many others. Why should God continue the cycle? It seems central to the Good News of Christianity that the radical grace of God will ultimately include us all. If God is going to consign some people, even those just over the line, to everlasting torment, then the affirmation that heaven is like a club for good guys is neither Good nor News. Tribes and nations have always treated their people that way. I am not urging that we change our historic views about hell just because it would be psychologically better for us. I urge it because there can be no gospel if there is hell. Iraneus, Gregory Nazianzus, Origen, Berdyaev, Dostoevsky and others through the centuries have argued for this position on its own merits. They have so persuaded me that I did a study of the references to everlasting punishment in the New Testament, excluding the Book of Revelation. I did not exclude any passages on the ground of modern biblical scholarship. They fell into three groups: first there was a set that seemed to say we will all be together, each of us a mixture of good and bad;1 second, was a group that seemed to say there was a division that could never be bridged;2 third, a list of ambiguous passages, not clearly of either group.3 I concluded that the first group seemed to fit best with Jesus's whole life, his healing ministry, his embrace of prostitutes, tax-collectors, Samaritans, and other outcasts. The second group seemed aimed, often with anger and a fiery rhetoric, at the smug and self-righteous rich who enjoyed looking down on others. The only times Jesus spoke of an eternal separation it was to emphasize the danger of greedy selfishness and believing that "we are clean; they are unclean." So I reject, as hyperbole, seemingly theological references to everlasting punishment or separation. Affirming a universalist position fits with my own experience of inmates. I have yet to meet one—and I have met thousands—who has enjoyed committing a crime. They are all people in pain. For almost all, the pain is increased by memories of the pain they have inflicted on others. The agony of those memories is so intense that they try to deny it, cover it with bravado, or claim to have forgotten it, but it is never very far from the surface. The same is true even of those who are compulsive. They do their crimes to try to satisfy some excruciating inner agony, only to wake up from a momentary high to a pain even worse. They say, in various ways, "When I was a child grownups beat me. When I die, God will beat me. So is it a big surprise that in the years in-between I will beat people up?" We do not talk about theology much in the group sessions in prison, but eschatology seems to be much more than a matter of opinion. One man had

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"Headed for Hell" tattooed on his arm. He said he believed it. It came up in more than one session. Finally, the group began to talk about how each would act if they really believed God would greet them in heaven and love them and give them an unimaginably wonderful new life. "I would feel like maybe I should begin to behave myself; "I'd have to get my tattoo removed"; "I feel like I'm softening up inside"; "I don't like it. I wouldn't be tough enough to take care of myself in the yard or the street." Michael continued to grow and develop, and did so in spite of his ingrained belief about hell. When I have preached the Good News, including our ultimate embrace by Jesus, there were always two or three who felt obliged to argue. I will always remember one woman who went to the trouble of making an appointment with me so she could say, "It would be very nice if what you said was true, but the Bible says that some people will burn in hell forever and that's what I believe." She pursed her thin, pale lips together with sadistic determination. I knew her story a little and was sure she was thinking of her divorced husband. She felt she had been rejected and she hated him. I wished she would let my love or anyone's lift her out of her bitterness into a new life, which would lead her to soften her views about hell. A terrible sadness, anger, and violence have been created out of the doctrine of hell. Young people who have delighted in their sexuality have been threatened. Even little children sucking their thumbs have been threatened. Many people have been milked of their life's savings to pay for prayers to help guarantee entrance through the pearly gates. We all have angry, hurtful feelings from time to time, but that does not give us permission to project them onto a ferocious God. Focusing on the gifts of God, and celebrating the times we have used those gifts, we can nourish ourselves, claiming the strength God intended us to have, be fortified for hard times and ready for the great heavenly banquet where we will share in God's joy. The Old Testament YHWH was a God in competition with other gods. Only as revelation continued did the Hebrew people recognize Him as the One God. From the very beginning there was a competitive tendency, one which lasted for centuries. The Creation story makes it clear that God created the world out of nothing. There was not, as in Babylonian and other myths, a god of chaos or nature who was supplanted by a god of order. It was important to the people of God to insist the Creation was good, always, from the beginning, and that it emerged unified and harmonious from the hand of the Creator. We claim as Christians that God and His justice and mercy will ultimately triumph. If one questions how His mercy will triumph even though many people appear to be separated from Him forever, one is simply told, "that is a mystery." One could make a similar case for justice. If everyone is ultimately to be brought into reconciliation with God, then what happens to justice? It is hard to imagine how justice will be satisfied if Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Idi Amin are ever to enjoy some sort of union with God.

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But how can we judge? What torments did those experience who resorted to mass murder? We do know of some so brutalized in childhood it seemed inevitable they would ultimately commit murder. They were not free; they did not choose to be separated from others. Even more, they did not choose to be separated from God. How can one brought up with love, good example, patience, and forgiveness be judged by a just and merciful God on the same basis as one who was beaten every time he opened his mouth or tried to hug someone? Such a God would not only fail to inspire worship, he would surely cry out for correction to bring him up to the place of human compassion. Some question the need for the saving crucifixion of Jesus Christ if all are ultimately saved. They argue it was only because everyone before Him was headed for damnation that He was sent to die to save some. The question is puzzling, for there is no necessity that the atonement be effective only for some. On the contrary, there is strong biblical affirmation that Christ died for all. The Atonement was not a rescue mission for a few, in a fundamentally flawed Creation, but an expression of the relentless love of God that reaches even into the darkest shadows to draw all into life and love. There is nevertheless a powerful reality in the fear of hell. It can take several forms: 1. The immediate remorse when faced with a deed that cannot be undone. A murder or even a cruel word which is never forgotten may give the one who does the deed a taste of hell so severe as to bring on breakdown, even suicide. This may be below consciousness as with some professional gangsters and hit-men. There is growing evidence, however, that the most stone-faced sociopaths are covering up the anguish of sensitivities quite within the normal human range. That is a living hell. 2. Deathbed remorse when there is no more time to attempt restitution or even express regret. One can only dimly imagine the sharpness of such pain, the recognition of a life lived harmfully instead of lovingly, with no chance for correction. There one might experience the torments of eternal death in a moment rather than everlastingly. In this state, there is surely some sense of anticipation, however unconscious, which clouds the mind and heart, and drains the energy of one trying to deny the truth of a wasted life. Deathbed hell may be experienced unconsciously for years before physical death approaches. 3. There may even be some sort of pain after death as one contemplates choices that could have been made differently on earth. Even an allpowerful and merciful God could imaginably allow such pain to be present for a period of time. Biblical affirmations on this matter are unclear; there is rather a healthy agnosticism or ambivalence about any fixed details of life after death. All three of the types of hell listed above are compatible with the God of the Gospels. All are frightening. To the extent that we are motivated by fear they

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would be strong deterrents in us to destructive behavior. There is, however, increasing questioning of the degree to which we are motivated by fear in the positive thrust of our lives. We know we can be moved to strike out or hide or become alcoholic or take any of a number of negative directions out of fear, but it is impossible to prove the opposite, that we are motivated by fear to do good. The two types of hell that seem contrary to the Gospel are everlasting death and everlasting punishment. Each of us is moved by a mixture of motives. The life of anyone is a combination of good and bad, no matter how one defines those terms. Does that mean that the group being saved would consist of all who are more than fiftypercent good while everyone below that, or some other mark, will burn eternally? No parent or friend would settle for such a debased notion of love. In fact, it is not a question of "settling" at all. A real parent is devoted to a child, no matter what. Even friendship, forged in good times and bad, is not easily broken by neglect or foolishness. As Christians, our sense of mystery about God must not be "I don't know how He could be that horrible and still be God." Rather it should be, "I don't know how He can be that merciful and loving and still be just; that mystery is beyond me." What of a man who had killed and hurt and torn life apart, but had said "Jesus!" as his last word in this life. He may have meant it chiefly as a curse, but surely there was a trace of consciousness of goodness calling out the name of the Lord? Is that enough to overturn a life of cruelty and place him with the saved? This sort of question cannot be evaded by leaving the judging to God. It is important whether we believe there might be anyone left out, even when we leave the decision to God. Is it not better to acknowledge that His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts, and in saying that it is a mystery beyond us to try to imagine how a just God can be that merciful? We affirm a mystery if we believe that some will be damned to everlasting punishment, but it is a mystery too low for God, making Him unworthy of worship. Our ethical and spiritual decisions are crucially important. That is the point being made in the passages in which Jesus seems to be saying that there will be some great, final, irreconcilable division. It is important we hear Him. Our souls' health depends upon our hearing Him. We can all do better and be better if we allow Him to strengthen, nourish, and love us. We are justly frightened that He has made us free and will let us twist and turn, with certain time limits, in the loneliness and estrangement which we bring on ourselves. But He will not leave us there forever. Finally, at the end of all things, God will once again be all in all. Even those who foolishly ran away from Him in this life will be reconciled to Him in the end. So the Gospel remains as ever: Believe and repent. Your salvation draws near. It is your destiny to be one with God. He has sent His Son to save you and His will will be fulfilled. Give yourself, then, the joy of believing. Work

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out your salvation now so that you may be glad, fulfilled in the life in Jesus Christ, using His name in the largest, most mystery-filled way. Delight in the first fruits of the heavenly banquet where all will be one. References 1. Passages indicating ultimate Reconciliation: Matthew 5: 44-47; Luke 6: 27-28; Matthew 7: 22; Luke 11: 13; Matthew 18: 14; Luke 15: 3-7; John 10: 16; Acts 24: 15; Romans 8: 21; Romans 14: 11; I Corinthians 3: 15. 2. Passages indicating permanent Separation: Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17; Matthew 5:17-20; Matthew 8:12; Luke 13: 38; Matthew 10:15; Matthew 11:23; Luke 5:12; Matthew 24:51; Matthew 12:32; Mark 3:39; Luke 12: 10; Luke 16: 19-31; Luke 17:34; John 15:6; John 17:9; II Thessalonians 1: 8-9; Acts 2:40. 3. Passages of Hyperbole: Matthew 1: 1-18; Matthew 7:3; Luke 6: 42; Matthew 23:24.