Eyre Lines

The topic du jour today in the blogosphere seems to be Hell. This blog post covers most of my feelings on the subject, but I’ve also recently read an analysis which goes through the Biblical references distinguishing between Sheol, Tartarus, Hades and Gehenna (which I can’t now remember the location of) and laments them all being translated as “Hell”, whereas they are radically different places.

Mark 9:44-8 bears some of the responsibility; “where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched” seems fairly terrible until you appreciate that it refers to the rubbish dump of Ger Hinnom (“Gehenna”)  just outside the city walls of Jerusalem, and specifically to a place where bodies were sometimes dumped. It’s an ignominious resting place for your mortal remains, but not, Biblically, a place of torture. The worms and the fire were regarded as eternal (though I gather the place is remarkably free of rubbish, corpse-worms and fire these days), not the fact of being cast there – after all, the worms and fires would do their job fairly rapidly, and you’d be dead anyhow. Not so wonderful in a culture where there was a belief in resurrection as something closer to physical resuscitation, of course.

As I most definitely don’t expect anything remotely like a physical resuscitation, what happens to my body after it’s stopped maintaining consciousness is a topic of supreme irrelevance to me…

However, all of these treatments, correct as they are in saying that this concept of Hell is severely lacking (by which, in my polite English way, I mean just plain wrong and damaging to boot), do not address one of the standard arguments, that of the holiness of God. In this argument, God cannot permit anything sinful and unholy to join with him in heaven because of his nature as holy and perfect, because however loving and just he may be, it would be contrary to his nature to allow this. This does not have the difficulty of postulating a power greater than God, nor does it attack his omnibenevolence, his mercy, in the same drastic way.

Granted, annihilation would be more merciful than would be an eternity of punishment, and actually annihilation fits far better with the majority of the Biblical texts than does an eternity of suffering. But actually, I do not anticipate complete annihilation, and I do not anticipate it on the basis of my mystical peak experiences of union (or near-union) with the divine.

A component of this is the feeling of being a little like a moth drawn to a candle, which if it flies a little too close will be burned to dust – but what is in danger of extinction is those aspects of the self which are not in complete conformity with God’s will, with God’s mercy and yes, with God’s holiness. I think of this as the “refiner’s fire” of Malachi 3:2 (NLT) “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes.”

I am entirely willing to be refined, or bleached, in the fullness of time – indeed, I am trying so to live life that the minimum amount needs to be refined or bleached away. I am, in the words of Step 5 (of the Twelve Steps), entirely ready to have God remove all my defects of character. It may hurt – it is entirely likely to, as some of my defects of character are things I am very attached to, but I look forward to it and pray for it (which is Step 6…).

I agree there is no Hell as it has been popularly conceived, but the Catholic concept of purgatory? That’s a different matter.

(For those who aren’t aware of it, the title refers to “From Hell and Hull and Halifax, good Lord deliver us”. There’s nowt wrong wi’ Hull or Halifax…)