The cover story in this week's Time features the question, "What if there's no hell?" Seems that minister Rob Bell, a rising star in parts of the Christian world, is proposing that there really may not be such a place--that is, a place where God, presumably, punishes those who do not believeth in Him. And to his credit, Pastor Bell has enough intellectual integrity to say what frankly anyone should believe: "When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage. So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are."
That said, Bell's speculation is that a loving God would not and could not condone a place like Hell. And to that, I say, hell yes. The proposed existence of hell is untenable--if one believes that God is a loving being. Indeed, if God is perfectly comfortable with hell, then I'd go so far as to say that He's more nasty and vicious than Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot combined--and by a long shot. Why? Let me count the ways.
First, there's the massive scale involved. Even Hitler, at his "best," could only exterminate 6 million people. If God sends all non-believers to hell, that number would be easily in the BILLIONS. Entire nations--Japan, for example, or China, or more than half of Europe, certainly--would be decimated.
Second, there's the fact that the punishment involves suffering, not death or the termination of existence. At least Stalin only killed people and in the process, we hope, put them out of their misery. But the God which some worship gets his kicks out of making people continue to suffer, literally in lord-knows-what ways. You just don't "die again."
Third and finally--and probably most important--the jail term in hell appears to be ETERNITY. Do you have any idea of how long eternity is? It's now 2011--think BEYOND the year 200,556,994,228,001,669, because that's only the START of eternity. Anyone who would punish anybody for eternity is so patently un-loving that I hardly know how to discuss this matter with a "fire and brimstone" person.
Bottom line: no God is an "awesome" God who would willingly make billions of people suffer for eternity. I simply cannot and will not entertain that thoroughly ridiculous notion. And anyone who does (sorry, I can't resist this closing) can go to hell!
