"I don't care if I go to hell, just as long as they'll have good tunes playing."
[upon walking past a barbecue restaurant] "Hell won't be so bad--think of all that slow-roasted meat!"
"I know I'm going to hell, but I won't mind as long as on Monday evenings I can kick back with a cold Fat Tire and watch the game."
These are the kinds of stupid things people say about the Christian doctrine of hell. The third one I made up as a joke, and the second one is obviously a joke as well, but it indicates the flippancy with which unbelievers talk about the subject. Let's be clear: hell is the reason that we can never truly say "It can't get any worse." It can. Hell hath more fury than a woman scorned. We've never been anywhere that is hotter than hell. I'm not sure I mean either of these things literally; I simply want to gain back some of the gravity with which we Christians used to treat the subject. Obviously I don't want to get back all the gravity. We used to burn people over this kind of thing. More specifically, if someone was leading people astray, and risking their damnation, then, it was believed, they needed to be made into an example, a warning for others that eternity is not to be trifled with.
I don't know what to make of the doctrine, really. I'm still deeply disturbed by the fact/idea/fact/idea that God may torture people forever, or let them be tortured forever, to his own glory. I just want to say that there are those who believe this. There are those who believe this. Do not make light of the idea unless you do not believe this.
Perhaps there's no reason to say it.
1 comment:
I can't stop chuckling at the title of this blog. But really, I think it's not stupidity so much as powerful psychological reasons that make people pretend Hell is not a scary idea at all. It's like the three little pigs in that Disney cartoon, dancing around and singing "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" They just won't know until they die whether in their case the wolf will eventually show up to eat them or not.
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