Hell is a tricky subject. It conjures up so many images, and most of these are unpleasant. It offends people. For example, Nobel prize-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell said that he was not a Christian precisely because of this doctrine:
“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching—an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.”
“You will find that in the Gospels Christ said, ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell.’ That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about Hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: ‘Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this World nor in the world to come.’ That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world.” (Why I Am Not A Christian)
Even the orthodox Christian C. S. Lewis once wrote:
“There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power.” (The Problem of Pain, Chapter 8)
This is a deep question. After all, isn’t God all-loving, all-powerful, and concerned about our wellbeing? Why would He send people to hell if He was so concerned for us?
And doesn’t the Bible say:
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” (Ezekiel 33:11)
And
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17)
So it seems that we have a theological conundrum. We have this doctrine of punishment in the afterlife that both atheists and believers have a hard time accepting. And if we are reading the scriptures correctly, it seems like God also has a hard time with it, so to speak.
So what do we do with it?
I appreciate the insight Joseph Smith brings to this discussion. Members of the Mormon Church believe him to be a prophet. And as such he was entitled to inspiration from God to clear up the things that confuse us. And this idea of hell is one of these very confusing areas.
To begin, Joseph Smith disputed the premise of the idea. We are not talking about hell, but about divine judgment. In the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ, there is a record of Christ’s teaching to the ancient inhabitants of America. He taught His gospel to these peoples, and explained the nature of divine judgment and the resurrection:
“If they be good, to the resurrection of everlasting life; and if they be evil, to the resurrection of damnation; being on a parallel, the one on the one hand and the other on the other hand, according to the mercy, and the justice, and the holiness which is in Christ, who was before the world began.” (3 Nephi 26:5)
There is an opposition in all things: every discussion on hell must be understood in the context of a discussion of heaven. The ideas are twins—even conjoined twins.
(By the way, have you noticed that no one is uncomfortable with the idea of heaven? Even though the ideas are related, we like the one but hate “the other side of the coin.” We are thus being logically inconsistent.)
Joseph Smith also taught that hell did not involve literal flames, but mental torment:
“The great misery of departed spirits in the world of spirits, where they go after death, is to know that they come short of the glory that others enjoy and that they might have enjoyed themselves, and they are their own accusers.”
“A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone [see Revelation 21:8]. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man.” (“Chapter 18: Beyond the Veil: Life in the Eternities,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, [2007], 217–26.)
“I have no fear of hellfire that doesn’t exist.” (Words of Joseph Smith, 347. Standardized.)
So hell is not a place of perpetual thumb-screws and flaming pitchforks, but that sense of guilt we have when we violate our conscious, or when we willfully and knowingly disobey God.
Also, the Lord gave Joseph Smith a revelation explaining that heaven was something better than we imagined. This revelation is found in the book of Doctrine and Covenants (a collection of revelations given to Joseph Smith) and is known as the Vision of the Degrees of Glory.
In a nutshell, this revelation teaches us that the afterlife is not bifurcated, but graded. There are three main divisions in the afterlife, with smaller subdivisions within these larger grades.
Here are the characteristics of people who go to each area:
The Celestial Kingdom: “These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood.” (D&C 76:69)
The Terrestrial Kingdom: “These are they who are honorable men of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men. These are they who receive of his glory, but not of his fulness.” (D&C 76:75-76)
The Telestial Kingdom: “These are they who are liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie.” (D&C 76:103)
Since the revelation is long and detailed, I can only scratch the surface. But the key point is that in God’s house there are many mansions. Heaven is big enough for everyone, and is ordered in such a way that all people will have a place. This placement depends upon the type of person they chose to be, in the context of their circumstances, and in accordance with divine justice and divine mercy.
I just wish that both C. S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell had the opportunity to read this revelation and to have been taught all of this. It makes their objections dissolve. In fact this revelation turns traditional Christianity on its head, and shows that God is both more merciful and just than we can imagine Him to be.
After recording this revelation in his official history, Joseph Smith wrote this observation about the ideas contained in this revelation:
“Nothing could be more pleasing to the Saints upon the order of the kingdom of the Lord, than the light which burst upon the world through the foregoing vision. Every law, every commandment, every promise, every truth, and every point touching the destiny of man, from Genesis to Revelation, where the purity of the scriptures remains unsullied by the folly of men, … witnesses the fact that that document is a transcript from the records of the eternal world. The sublimity of the ideas; the purity of the language; the scope for action; the continued duration for completion, in order that the heirs of salvation may confess the Lord and bow the knee; the rewards for faithfulness, and the punishments for sins, are so much beyond the narrow-mindedness of men, that every honest man is constrained to exclaim: ‘It came from God.’” (“Chapter 18: Beyond the Veil: Life in the Eternities,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, [2007], 217–26.)
And I agree!
Twitter •
