Hell is a myth and you are Kenough

Growing up a religious kid, I spent most of my childhood afraid of the rapture. There wasn’t a lot of fear of death happening in my house, so dying seemed far away; therefore, the consequences of the afterlife seemed distant. Being left behind, however, was a very real fear. I imagined it would be like Home Alone but with demons chasing you instead of the Water Bandits. As I got into my teens and began to have those Barbie-level “Do you guys ever think about dying” existential crises, Hell became something to fear.

In adulthood, I wasn’t so sure. It was ultimately one of the reasons I left the priesthood.

As a father of three kids, they sometimes make me mad. They’ve even made me angry a few times. They’ve caused embarrassing moments, not listened when they should have, and done some downright dangerous sh+t. Not once during my time as a parent, when one of my kids did something wrong, was my reaction, “Damnit, child! That is the last time you sneak out of your room to steal Oreos after bedtime!” And then thought that the appropriate punishment was to set them on fire in a raging inferno where the worm never dies, and there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

But apparently, God does, according to a lot of Christians.

The conclusion is either that I am a better parent than God or that somehow as flawed human beings, we began to interject our understanding of a punitive justice system into our religious ideas. 

I think it’s the latter.

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s Reading: Matthew 13:44-52

I’m going to let you in on a little secret; do you know why the Bible is so confusing? Because Jesus never just said sh+t straight. He is either responding to a question with a question like, “Jesus, is this robe black or blue” and JC is all, “What color do you feel that it is, Rocky?” This dude allegedly invented everything in the cosmos and can’t answer a direct f+cking question on what color something is. But when he avoids answering questions, he is preaching in parables. Also confusing.

On this particular day, he is giving a parable about Heaven. The long and the short of it is that Heaven is pretty difficult to find; you have to be kind to your neighbor to get there, and it's somehow like a pearl that you would sell everything you own to purchase it but like pearls aren’t actually that expensive individually. Then again, I live now, and they lived way back then, so I don’t actually fully understand the historical value of a f+cking pearl, and now I am rambling but also confused.

Anyway, after going on and on about these things, Jesus asks the crowd if they understand what is going on, and they say “yes,” but they are lying.

What is supposed to be a cute sermon about how to get your little booty to Heaven so you can party with all your dead relatives and Castiel, well, it suddenly becomes not cute when Jesus gets extra weird with his metaphors. He then explains that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that catches everything it can and then sorts the little fishes out before tossing the rotten fish into a blazing furnace where they will be roasted for all eternity. Yay! 

Now, here is what is kinda weird about the way humans approach things like the Bible. Jesus is speaking in metaphor. Heaven is not a fishing net, and neither is it a pearl and just like the folks listening to that story the very first time, when asked, they said they understood this, we pretend to as well. Most of us get that Jesus is not speaking literally here. He is talking in code or whatever because he clearly doesn’t know how to human very well. Either way, I have never spoken with a pastor or heard a sermon preached arguing that Heaven is a literal f+cking pearl. Not even the once. No one thinks that when they die, they will arrive to find Saint Peter standing at a fishnet gate, even if that is kinda hot. The entire first half of the verse has been interpreted as a metaphor from its inception. Still, for whatever reason, the bits that folks think are about Hell are absolutely, quantifiably, without question, literal and true and if you question it, you are a heretic bound for an eternity in the very flames you refuse to profess. Or so I am told.

First, Jesus actually says Heaven in this verse but never says anything about Hell when talking about the bit we are told is supposed to be Hell. As a matter of fact, Jesus never once taught about Hell at all. Do you know why? Because it wasn’t even a word or concept that he would have been familiar with. And this is when things got a little muddy. Basically, when translating the Bible into other languages, there are just certain words that don’t translate perfectly. The translators and editors of the text basically just went, “F+ck it, that’s close Kenough,” with a lot of sh+t, leading to some absolutely horrific results.

Three words were all mushed together by the translators of the scriptures into one word, and that word became Hell, but the actual words used by Jesus are Gehenna, Hades, and Sheol.

Gehenna was a physical location in Jerusalem. It was a cursed place and became the location where they buried anyone they thought was evil. Think of it like a haunted graveyard. Everyone hated the place, and it was where you were sent if you committed evil in this world. You were an outcast in life, and now you would be an outcast in death too. Then you have Hades. Jesus spoke to a lot of Greek folks during his time in ministry, so when he spoke to Jews, he would say Gehanna, and when he spoke with Greeks, he would talk about Hades. The problem is, Hades isn’t really like Hell at all; it’s just the word for the afterlife, and Hades was the God of the Dead and not really like a devil or demon. Finally, Sheol is the Hebrew word for the afterlife or “place of darkness.” Again, it doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation because many Jews at the time believed that when you died, it was just lights out and you were done, no afterlife for you. 

Unfortunately, when all these words were combined into a theological soup, you get a scary eternally burning fire pit with an angry red demon with a pitchfork. But what if that isn’t at all what Jesus was talking about when he goes into these metaphor spells about fishnets and fire (new band name, swipe it while it's hot!)

Way back in the Old Testament, Zechariah 13:9 also talks about fire but takes a totally different approach to it. This isn’t a fire meant to be used for all eternity for torment; it was supposed to purify us like gold, “I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested, they will call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are My people.” Wait, a tick… the people being sent through the fire are God’s people? That can’t be right. Let’s go see what Paul has to say about this! “Now if anyone builds… with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:10-15)

Hold up, that’s the same thing! Not eternal punishment but eternal purification.

There are a number of verses that point to the idea of universal salvation. 1 John 2:2 states, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” The theology goes that, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” (Romans 5:18) Jesus descended to Hades after His death on the cross (Ephesians 4:9), and the book of Revelation says that Jesus is, “the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Jesus destroyed death and the place of darkness by way of His death and resurrection. He reversed the curse. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.” (Titus 2:11) and “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:6)

Hell has been used to control and manipulate for centuries, and it has caused many a rebellious teen to lie awake at night wondering if they would be burning for all eternity because they had some naughty thoughts. I’m here to tell you, you aren’t. If there is a God, and if that God is just and a loving Divine Parent, then the goal is never to cause harm to their children. The fire isn’t meant as a punishment; it's intended to help us grow. Because death isn’t supposed to be the end, it was designed to be the beginning of something new, like a seed that needs heat to germinate. 

Yet, this begs the bigger question. If the metaphors and descriptors that Jesus used about death and the afterlife were mostly physical locations and not metaphysical destinations, then what does that mean about our concept of Heaven? Is it possible that we got that all wrong is as well? Could it be that Heaven is also not some far-off distant place we aspire to arrive to like a destination, and instead, Heaven is something we are supposed to build right here on Earth by way of creating a more just and equitable society like the one Jesus described? 

Sh+t, now he’s got me doing the question thing too.