The Justice of hell
Is hell just?
Yes and no. Ultimately, the answer is entirely dependent upon one’s definitions of hell, eternity, and justice. The traditional concept of hell—as eternal conscious torment, endless separation from God, and even annihilation—coupled with the traditional western concept of justice as punishment or retribution, turns hell into the greatest injustice of all time.
I have heard it said that traditional hell is about getting exactly what we deserve and in this way, people argue that hell is the ultimate justice. So, part of the problem, then, is how we define eternity. If eternity is endless time, stretching on into the infinite forevers—and assuming no one can leave hell—then traditional hell is unjust.
Think about this: even if Hitler himself were sentenced to 100 years of torture for every person he ever hurt directly or indirectly, this would not be a blip on eternity’s radar. So even if one argues that justice really is torment, punishment, payback, revenge, eye-for-eye etc. all punishment and so-called “justice” on earth, comes to an eventual end. There is actually a very big difference between punishing Hitler for billions of years and punishing him for all eternity. Even in the western legal system we talk about the punishment fitting the crime. We talk about the goal of rehabilitation, though we don’t always work toward that goal. We lock people up so that they hopefully do no further damage, but we actually expect prisoners to be treated humanely, or at least, again, that is the goal. Wouldn’t there come a point in endless time, when God had to relent and agree that Hitler had had enough punishment? That he had learned his lesson?
Even if one argues that Hitler, of all people, will never learn his lesson and that it actually is some kind of justice to punish Hitler for all eternity, I would have to ask, why would God give the same punishment to a five-year-old girl who did not believe in Jesus when she was raped, murdered, and sent to hell, as to Hitler? Surely that is unjust.
The traditional notion of the inescapable and endless nature of hell is emphatically unjust. Not to mention that this is not a definition of justice I can espouse. This kind of revenge-justice turns God into a cruel bastard whose love and mercy go out the window at the first sign of a lack-of-faith. If God’s justice is remotely like the western-legal-system’s justice, we are all completely fucked and God is the most reprehensible judge of all time.
I prefer to think of God’s justice as discipline toward to the goal of rehabilitation and reconciliation. God, in God’s wrath, allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions so that we learn from those consequences about what is healthy and what is not healthy (or “right” and “wrong” if you prefer more black-and-white terms). God, in God’s mercy, also removes some consequences so that we don’t always have to learn the hard way. Sometimes we learn from a place of freedom, from the removal of shame, from the love and acceptance emanating from God toward us and inside us.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. In this verse, justice is equated with forgiveness.
Psalm 71:2, 19 & 20 In your justice, rescue me and deliver me… your justice reaches to the heavens… you will restore my life again. True, godly justice is about deliverance and restoration.
Micah 6:4, 5 & 8 I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you… that you may know my righteous / just acts…Act justly and love mercy. In this passage, justice is redemption and mercy.
Isaiah 30:18 Yet The Lord longs to be gracious to you, therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the lord is a God of justice. God deals justice by showing grace and compassion!
Worst case scenario, God’s justice is discipline. God’s justice is also grace, forgiveness and even the (anti-retributive) nullification of consequences, especially the consequence of shame.
Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In other words, you do not need to feel ashamed of yourself. God’s grace covers over your whole multitude of sins (see 1 Peter 4:8).
God-the-parent did not send his son to die in order to exact retributive-justice upon Jesus for our sins. Jesus’ blood cleanses, purifies, and washes away the sins of the world, which, again, reveals a different kind of justice. Let me demonstrate this from the Bible.
Romans 3:21-26 But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
How I understand this passage (as taught to me by Pastor Santo Calarco), is that there has never actually been a punishment for sin. God left sin prior to Jesus’ death, unpunished. Failure to comply with Old Testament law—the ten commandments, the sacrificial system, the whole Torah—was left unpunished. This reveals God’s righteousness apart from the law. This reveals God’s true justice. Righteousness and justice have the same root word in the Greek, dikaios, Anything we read in the Hebrew Bible that sounds like retributive (western) justice, should be re-interpreted through this lens. For example, God’s wrath in the Old Testament is God’s discipline—it means we suffer the consequences of our actions and decisions (see my post about wrath in the book of Romans).
Sin is a disease which warps our minds until many of us are actually deluded enough to believe that God would rather punish us than forgive us! Jesus’ death—the God-human’s surrendering to our sin-consequence of death—brought about healing from the disease of sin and consequence of death.
If we misunderstand the justice of God as punishment instead of forgiveness, with some patient-discipline in there, we also misunderstand hell!
While God disciplines those he loves, Hebrews 12:6, God does not punish anyone. Discipline has the goal of bringing us to repentance and change. This is the distinction between punishment and discipline. And a punishment that is never-ending (as hell is implied to be) is by far the worst and most unjust kind of quasi-justice I’ve ever heard of.
Parents discipline their children because poor choices can have some really awful consequences (consequences are not retributive punishment because their end goal is learning from experience). Why would God who is our unconditionally loving parent, opt to punish any children for all eternity? Hell is only just when we understand justice as discipline, compassion, grace, mercy, forgiveness, toward the rehabilitation, reconciliation and the redemption of the person. And hell is only just if a person is not “stuck” in hell for all “eternity.” I will address this in my next blog-post: the eternality of hell.
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