Sachi felt that as bad as the suffering she had endured was, what Kayaba had done to the others was even worse.
She started to feel angry inside. She muttered, “If anyone deserves to go to Hell, he does...”
Kikuoka chuckled, “Actually, we all do.”
“We do?”
He started to loosen his tie and sat back. “Yes. None of us belong in Heaven. Not even a sweet girl like you.”
“Oh. But why not?”
Kikuoka finished removing his tie, then he put his hands behind his head and looked up.
“Because we don’t rate, none of us. We all screw up and fall short. Even Moses messed up near the end of his life, which is why he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land.”
“But sir, I can understand why bad people like Hitler might go to Hell, but why would everyone..”
He interrupted her. “Oh, Hitler is not there.”
“He’s not?”
“No. Nobody is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s because it hasn’t happened yet.”
“What hasn’t?”
“The event that drops us all in there, in Hell. Well, the ones left behind anyway.”
“What event?”
He smiled again. “Ah, now that’s a good question. The Bible is kind of vague about how it is going to happen.”
Sachi leaned forward. “Please sir, I want to know.”
Kikuoka relaxed and put his feet on his desk. “Well, it requires knowledge of Greek and gets technical, so for now let’s just step back a moment. The first thing to understand is that Jesus liked to use very strong language when talking about God, very vivid imagery. He’d say things like “Why do you pay no attention to the plank in your eye?”* and “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel!”** He did the same thing when talking about Hell: “If your eye makes you stumble, pluck it out” or else be “thrown into Hell [Gehenna], the unquenchable fire.”*** That’s strong stuff.
“But He also chose his words very carefully. You see, back then everybody in Jerusalem knew what that Gehenna (Hebrew: Gehinnom) meant. It was a real place, a garbage dump that was right outside of town. It was a large depression just outside the city walls where where the people tossed their out their trash, and it fell and accumulated in the valley below. For hundreds of years all that garbage accumulated in thick layers of decaying organic matter that decomposed into methane gas. From the wall of Jerusalem you could look down and literally see all these little fires burning all over that valley, and those fires really were unquenchable. You can still see those fires today at big municipal garbage dumps, where pipes are stuck into the ground to burn off the methane gas.
“So, you are saying that Hell is like a garbage dump?”
“That’s His metaphor, not mine. You see, it’s the default place where everything ends up. God’s junk pile. It’s separation, isolation. I think that Jesus is using really strong language to literally put the fear of God in you. He is warning you that you really, really, really do not want to end up in that garbage pile.”
“But where is it? And why aren’t we there yet?”
“Oh, we’re there all right. Right now. You and me. Everybody.”
“Now I am really confused...”
“Sorry. You see, I think we’re standing on it. The Bible says that Jesus comes back, and a bunch of bad things happen, then finally the Earth gets destroyed.*4 We don’t know how exactly, but in my opinion the easiest way is with an asteroid - and not a particularly big one - a rock only 120 miles wide is enough to boil the seas*5 and melt the Earth’s crust entirely away*6.”
“And then we all fall in? Plop, just like that?”
“That’s just my hunch, based on the original text - you would have to dig into the Greek translation of ‘cast’ versus ‘drop’ among other things - but the point is that it’s inevitable. All we need to do is to simply sit on our collective butts and do nothing. Sooner or later, whether you are alive or in your grave, eventually all that exists in this sad world, you, me, and everything else that remains on Earth will fall in to that burning cauldron of unquenchable magma.”
“It sounds so depressing..”
He made a small smile. “Well, I could go on to explain thermodynamic entropy and how it will eventually make the whole universe run down, and really depress you, but I won’t. Look, just don’t get hung up about it. The key thing to remember is that God loves us and wants a relationship with us.”
She looked down. “If He does, I don’t feel it.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s hard for you. I understand.”
* Mt 7:3, Lk 6:41
** Mt 23:24
*** Mk 9:47-48
*4 Mt 24:35, Mk 13:31, Lk 21:33
*5 Rev 21:1