Hell No

Revisiting the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we are drawn once more into the simplicity and endless mystery of this story which Jesus chose to tell (and to whom). May the blessed actions of the outsider lead us to lament and rethink more than simply our conditional definitions of belonging on earth, but the ways that we allow fear, self-interest, and need for retribution to extend that distorted view even into the afterlife.

Scripture & Quotations

• Luke 10:25-37

• “There are… those Christians, who are earnestly attached to the idea of an eternal hell not just because they feel they must be, but also because it is what they want to believe. For some of them, in fact, it is practically the best part of the story. It gives them a sense of belonging to a very small and select company, a very special club, and they positively relish the prospect of a whole eternity in which to enjoy the impotent envy of all those writhing, resentful souls that have been permanently consigned to an inferior neighborhood outside the gates.”

• “…the bizarre idea that this fee was a price paid to the Father — the coin of some sublimely circular transaction wherein God buys off God in order to spare us God’s displeasure (rather like a bank issuing itself credit to pay off a debt it owes itself, using a currency it has minted for the occasion and certified in its value wholly on the basis of the very credit it is issuing to itself.”"

• “Love my neighbor all I may, if I believe hell is real and also eternal I cannot love him as myself. My conviction that one of us might go to such a hell while the other enters into the Kingdom of God means that I must be willing to abandon him — abandon everyone, in fact — to a fate of total misery while yet continuing to assume that, having done so, I shall be able to enjoy perfect eternal bliss… without the least hesitation or regret, to have surrendered him to endless pain.”

  - David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation