UU Society of Cleveland

November 4, 2007

There is No Hell

by Rev. Colin Bossen

My message this morning is simple, there is no Hell. To some of you this may seem like a startling statement. Hell is deeply embedded into the religious language of our culture. It makes an appearance in the theologies of many faith communities and can be found throughout the magazines, music and movies of pop culture. Horror films have titles like Hellraiser or Escape from Hell. Even some classic literature such as Dante's Inferno, from which we took this morning's reading, is set in Hell.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all of this, Hell is a myth. It is does not exist. Hell is used to frighten and control people. It is the ultimate boogeyman, the terror that awaits if you step out of line. For centuries orthodox Christianity has sentenced people to everlasting torment in Hell if they did not believe that Jesus was their savior or that the God of the Christians was the one and true God.

The topic for this sermon came about because of an experience that my family and I had. As many of you know we are new to Cleveland Heights. My daughter Emma really enjoys ice-skating and one of the things that our community offers is a municipal ice skating rink. The city also offers ice skating classes two days a week for homeschoolers. Emma is enrolled in them.

The very first ice skating class that Emma attended she met another girl about her own age. They really hit it off. Sara described them as acting like two peas in pod. For the rest of the class Emma and her friend were virtually inseparable. After the class Sara and the girl's mother exchanged phone numbers.

Not much later, Sara arranged for a play-date between Emma and her new friend. We talked about this play-date before it happened. Emma's friend's family are evangelical Christians. We hoped that our theological differences would not affect Emma's ability to make a friend.

The day of the play-date arrived and Emma was excited. She and her new friend got along great. They played inside and they played outside. While they were playing Sara overheard Emma's friend tell Emma, "I wish you would get baptized and become a Christian." A little later Emma's friend asked her, "You don't like bugs do you? If you are not a Christian when you die there will be nothing but you and bugs forever. The bugs will eat you." At that point Sara walked into the room and asked the kids if they talking about religion. They shyly admitted that they were and then changed the subject.

After Emma's friend had gone home Sara and Emma had a talk about what Emma's friend had said to her. The part of the conversation that Sara had not overheard was fairly predictable. Emma's friend had asked her if she was a Christian. When Emma said no her friend told her that only Christians go to Heaven. Since she was not Christian she would not be able to go to Heaven. Emma's friend said she was sad about this and concerned for Emma.

In response Sara told Emma that God is love. God does not punish us with everlasting torment when we die. When we die we are united with God in love. She told Emma that some people did not believe this but that she thought that they were wrong. Sara wanted to respond to Emma's concerns in concrete language that a nine year-old could understand. Sara's response reflects the old Universalist understanding of the afterlife. Our Universalist ancestors believed that God was love and in the end everyone who died, no matter what they did while alive, would be reunited with the divine.

I imagine that a number of you have found yourselves in a similar situation. You meet someone, you get along well and then at some point, arch-apostate that you are, they tell you that you are going to Hell. Usually this declaration is accompanied by some sort of statement of concern about your general well-being and an earnest desire to ensure that your experience in the after-life is a positive one. How do you respond?

There are four basic strategies that I think can be employed. Which you take depends on your theology. Each strategy affirms that there is no Hell. First, you can take Sara's tact and simply reject the idea that God would not condemn his or her creations to everlasting torment. Second, you can entirely reject the religious framework of the person you talking with. Third, you can try to argue with them Biblically. And finally, you can point out that their belief in Hell is irrational and does not conform to the scientific description of the universe. These strategies are not mutually exclusive.

I have already laid out the first strategy, replace a vengeful God with a God of love. Now I would like to move onto the other three.

In our religious tradition we understand that personal experience is the starting point for theological reflection. This means that our personal experiences of the divine, or lack thereof, lie at the root of how we understand being religious people. We also understand that what we accept as having religious authority is largely a matter of the culture and the faith community in which we are embedded.

To make this a little concrete, I have had experiences of the transcendent awe and wonder that I believe are at the heart of the universe. These experiences have made me believe that there is something more to life than the strict material reality that can be explained by the cool mathematics of physics. Nothing that has occurred in my life, however, has left me with any belief that the Bible and the stories in it are anything more than human stories. I do not believe that the theologies contained within that holy book are anything more than the stories of human communities wrestling with what it means to be born, what it means to die and what it means to be stuck between those two very concrete finitudes. I may find the Bible to be a source of inspiration but I do not grant it great religious authority. It is a human book, nothing more, and therefore whatever is written within it ultimately has the same authority as the Koran, the Tao Te Ching or the Bhagavad-gita.

If I am confronted with someone who tells me that I am going to Hell for not believing as they do, I understand that what we ultimately have is conflict of religious authority. I do not grant the Bible, the text on which they are condemning me, as having ultimate authority. Given this we are at an impasse. The best we can do is agree to disagree. I can affirm my conviction that there is no Hell and my fundamentalist friend can continue to promote fire-and-brimstone.

A third strategy is to argue against damnation Biblically. I do not recommend this unless you really know your Bible. The art and logic of Biblical argument can be dizzying for the uninitiated. However, if you do wish to take this path you should know that the Christian New Testament does contain a number of texts which uphold both that salvation is universal and that all of humanity will eventually be united with God in love.

I am sure most of you are at least vaguely familiar with the Biblical argument that claims that unless you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior you are going to Hell. Essentially, this line of argument begins with the claim that by disobeying God in the Garden of Eden and eating from the Tree of Knowledge Adam and Eve condemned themselves and their descendents to God's wrath. The only way to escape God's wrath is to accept Christ as lord and savior. In doing so, through the rite of baptism, one will be washed of Adam and Eve's original sin.

That is one reading of the text. Another reading suggests that ultimately everyone will be saved, whether or not they believe in Christ. This set of hermeneutics--strategies for reading--is the gift of our Universalist ancestors. While they generally accepted the idea of original sin they argued that Jesus's death was for all humanity, whether people accept him as savior or not. There are ample texts within the New Testament to affirm this theology.

The Biblical argument for universal salvation usually begins by citing a text like 1 John 4:16 that affirms God's loving nature. That passage reads, in part:

"God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them."

Next a Universalist might go on to a passage like Luke 6:27 to 31 to affirm that just as God loves his or her creations, God wants his or her creations to love each other.

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you."

Finally, a Universalist would cite a passage like John 12:32 which reads: "And I," this is Jesus speaking, "when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." This is done to demonstrate that Jesus came for everyone and that the salvation he offered was universal. As the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:22, "for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."

Somewhere in the discourse a Universalist might also throw in a reference to Genesis 1:26-27 to affirm that humankind was created in the image of God. The Universalist might do this to remind people that God would not condemn the image of the divine to everlasting torment.

I imagine that most of you would probably not choose to argue with someone on that level. I certainly do not. I usual reject the authority of the Bible or turn to modern science and rationalism.

This is our final strategy for affirming that there is no Hell. This is the favorite argument of my atheist and humanist friends. There is no physical, material or empirical evidence for the existence of Hell. There was a joke that I learned in my freshman physics class that I think drive this point home.

It seems that there once was a professor of physics who liked to pose difficult, even absurd, questions on her final exams. One year her final exam contained the question: "Is Hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."

For those that do not remember their physics, an exothermic system is one that is giving off heat. An endothermic system is cooling down and requires energy to pumped into it in order to keep a constant temperature.

On the final, most students wrote proofs that upheld their religious beliefs. Many referenced Boyle's Law. The only student who got an A, however, wrote the following:

First, we must postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into Hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it does not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering Hell, a quick look at the different religions of the world is informative. A number of religions say that if you are not a member of their religion you are destined to go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and most people do not belong to more than one religion, it is safe to assume that all people and all souls go to Hell. Birth and death rates are increasing exponentially which means that the number of souls in Hell is also increasing exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume of Hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of the souls and volume needs to stay constant.

If Hell is exothermic then it will expand at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell. The temperature in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

If Hell is endothermic it is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell. This will cause the temperature and pressure of Hell to drop until Hell freezes over.

Which is it? If we accept Susie Smith’s postulate that “it’ll be a cold day in Hell before I go out with you” and then note that I still have not had a date with her then we must conclude that Hell cannot be endothermic. Therefore, Hell is exothermic.

Now, I tell this story partially because it is funny and partially because I think it illustrates my final argument nicely. Hell is a religious myth. It does not exist within the material universe and there is scant proof of a non-material realm in which it might exist. Hell was the creation of the human imagination at a time when science was very primitive. Hell is a flight of poetic fancy dreamed up by artists like Dante and used to terrorize those who did not embrace the dominant religion. There is no Hell.

This is brings me to my final point. If confronted with someone who believes in Hell I might take a slightly different approach to any of the ones I have outlined previously. I might admit that Hell exists but, I would add, it does not exist on some other plane of existence. Hell, I would say, is in the here and now. It can be found wherever there is war and violence, inside of the government's secret torture chambers, on the city streets when people use force to solve their problems, anywhere someone faces discrimination because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs... Hell can be found amid those who lack food to feed their children, in those places where people lack adequate shelter, in communities in danger of environmental collapse.

But, I would add, just as Hell can be found on earth so too can Heaven. Heaven is a baby's smile, a lover's embrace, a meal shared with friends. Heaven is working together to build a better world, dancing, the joy that music brings.

And, I would end, we can work together to bring a little more of Heaven to earth. Let us, friend, I would say, then join our hearts with our hands and seek to turn our earth into Heaven for all of its inhabitants. This is something we can do together, whatever our beliefs.

Blessed Be and Amen.