How often have we been scared of
the fact that the sins that we have committed will lead us to hell? How far has
our assumption gone to imagine a burning fiery furnace in which we get burnt
all day long with demons around us and we would just end up in pain and suffer
eternally. I too have been of the same understanding from the time I have
attended Sunday school. It have been a very frightening experience throughout.
I have had this notion that God will come to judge us one day, and on that day
the "good people" will go to heaven and the "bad people"
will go to hell. At this point I had this broad division of the bilateral understanding
or the existence of the two realms. But the question of "how a loving God,
could destroy life, and advocate the fullness of life at the same time?",
bothered me a lot.
Days went by and many years have
passed. Today after my theological studies and after reading the scripture with
open eyes, I have a different understanding of what the scripture has meant to
tell us. This hell that we have in mind is never the understanding spoken of in
the bible, nor existant in the Jewish tradition. This is purely over
exxaggeration and influence of the traditions of different faiths around us
that has moulded us with such an explantation about hell.
The Old Testament or the Hebrew
Scriptures it is found that the primary meaning of hell means "the place
or state of the dead". This clearly show that the notion of hell being
below (the ground) and heaven being above (the ground). comes from this understanding that heaven is
above and hell is below. This is the way in which the Israel community
reflected towards hell and heaven. It is also clear that the life can be existent
on land and thus creating a notion of heaven (above the ground). But we often
related to the Heaven above and the Hell below as the realms which human mind
cannot comprehend or reason. We do pray in the prayer that the Lord Jesus
taught us, "Let your kingdom come", how then do we still say that our
souls go to heaven after we die? if good souls go to heaven and bad souls go to
hell, then the idea of physical torment falls out of place, as the soul will
not be in the physical state. Does this trigger the mind?
The following are examples:
"Ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." Gen.
17:38. "I will go down to the grave to my son mourning." 38: 35.
"O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave!" Job xiV 13. "My life
draweth nigh to the grave." Ps. 88:3. "In the grave who shall give
thee thanks?" 86:5. "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor
wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." Ecc. 9:10. "If I ascend up
into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there."
Ps 139:8. "Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee, at thy coming. It
stirreth up the dead for thee," &c. Isaiah 14:9-15. These passages
show the Hebrew usage of the word sheol, which is the original of the word
"grave" and "hell" in all the examples cited. It is plain
that it has here no reference to a place of endless torment after death. The
patriarch would scarcely say, "I will go down to an endless hell to my son
mourning." He did not believe his son was in any such place. Job would not
very likely pray to God to hide him in a place of endless torment, in order to
be delivered from his troubles.
"And thou, Capernaum, which
art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell" (hades). Matt. 11:23.
The parallel passage is in Luke, 10:15. No one supposes that the city of
Capernaum went down to a place of endless woe. The parable of the rich man and
Lazarus furnishes another example. "And in hell (hades) he lifted up his
eyes, being in torment." It will be remembered that the Jews had borrowed
their ideas of torment in a future state from the heathen, and of course they
were obliged to borrow their terms to express this. Accordingly, after the
manner of the Greeks, Hades, or the place of departed spirits, is represented
as receiving all, as Sheol did, good and bad; but we have also the additional
idea of separate apartments or districts, divided by a great gulf or river; on
one side of which the blessed are located, and on the other side the damned,
near enough to see each other, and converse together, as in the case of Abraham
and the rich man. It must also be remembered that this is only a parable, and
not a real history; for, the story was not new, then, not original with Christ,
but known among the Jews before He repeated it. He borrowed the parable from
them, and employed it to show the judgment which awaited them. He represented
the spiritual favors and privileges of the Jews by the wealth and luxury of the
rich man, and the spiritual poverty of the Gentiles by the beggary and
infirmity of Lazarus; and while the former would be deprived of their
privileges and punished for their wickedness, the latter would enjoy the
blessings of truth and faith.
Gehenna seems to be employed as a
figure or symbol of moral corruption. James says of the tongue, "It
defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is
set on fire of hell" (Gehenna). Here Gehenna, that place of filth and
corruption and perpetual fires, is made a fitting emblem of the foul passions
and corrupt appetites, set on fire by a foul and seductive tongue, which
inflames in turn, to the defilement of the whole body. So, in Matt. xxiiI 15,
27, Gehenna or hell, and the whited sepulcher, "full of dead men's bones,
and all uncleanness," are fearful symbols of the moral foulness of the
"Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites," whom the Savior was addressing.
"Two-fold more the child of hell," signifying that they made their
converts two-fold more corrupt than themselves.
The word Gehenna, or hell, then,
in the New Testament is used as a symbol of anything that was foul and
repulsive; but especially as a figure of dreadful and destructive judgments. And,
now, let us consider some of the facts connected with this word Gehenna. They
are the more important because this word is specially relied upon as teaching
the doctrine of endless torments, the doctrine of hell, as popularly believed.
Whatever other forms of speech may be employed to express the thought, this is
surely one of the terms clearly declarative of future endless punishment. Let
us just be known that the fact that the hell exist not in the meaning that we
have understood from the age old stories of torment but as the grave where the
dead are buried. Let us celebrate life, and life in all its fullness. But let
this not urge us to sin against God or against God's creation.
