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We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell. Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use...

President Obama delivered brief comments today on the capture of a man suspected to be involved in the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate. The president said the capture sends a clear message to the world that whenever an American is attacked, “no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice.” Yesterday U.S. special forces captured Ahmed Abu Khattala in a surprise raid. Khattala had previously denied in a number of interviews he gave that he had any direct involvement in the Benghazi attack. In his comments today, Obama praised the...

In certain schools of Christian thought, hell is not everlasting, but a more painful form of purgatory. M any Christians presume that hell is a place where brutally painful punishments are inflicted on evildoers for an indefinite, and perhaps infinite, amount of time in the afterlife. Think of a medieval torture chamber with no exit — or fire extinguishers. But this, as I argued in a recent column, makes no theological sense. If morality is good, then doing the right thing must be its own reward and doing the wrong thing must be its own punishment. To think that a...

*Poster with burning flames put up at Attleborough Baptist Church, Norfolk *The sign read: 'If you think there is no God you'd better be right!!' *Robert Gladwin, 20, accused the sign of going against Christian traditions *Pastor forced to remove sign after police investigated it as a 'hate incident'A baptist church was at the centre of a police probe after a sign which suggested non-Christians would 'burn in hell' was investigated as a 'hate incident'. The offending sign at Attleborough Baptist Church in Norfolk, pictured burning flames below words which read: 'If you think there is no God you better...

In the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, in the Office of Readings, we are getting close to the great culmination of the Book of Revelation where the victorious Christ is united with his bride forevermore. Penultimate to this great victory, is the casting down of Satan into fiery hell the sealing over the great abyss.Central to the imagery of the Hell, is fire, along with some other unpleasant things such as worms that never die etc. We do well to ponder these images, but also to be careful about them. For while many take them literally, they are probably meant...

One of the most interesting cases of resuscitation that ever came to my knowledge was that of George Lennox, a notorious horse thief of Jefferson County. He was serving his second term. Sedgwick County sent him to the prison the first time for a similar offense - stealing horses. During the winter of 1887 and 1888 he worked in the coal mines. The place where he was laboring seemed dangerous to him. He reported the fact to the officer in charge, who made an examination, and deciding that the room was safe, ordered Lennox back to his work. The...

In Robert Speaight’s The Unbroken Heart, a novel sadly neglected in the long years following its publication in 1939, a character named Arnaldo has just been told of his beloved wife’s untimely death. His reaction, by today’s standards, seems very strange indeed. “It does not really interest me,” he confesses, “to know by what accident Rhoda died. All our lives are an accident and we must all die somehow.”So what does interest him? The answer, to his interlocutor at least, sounds almost incomprehensible. “I want to know how she died, what was in her mind, what her soul said...

...The experience of Ronald Reagan - (not associated with ex-President Reagan)He had his little boy with him while going to a 7-11 store. He got into an argument, and there was a bottle broken, and he was stabbed multiple times by his assailant..."In 1972 my life was broken. I was a drug addict. I was a criminal. My family was broken..."'You need Jesus!'"As he was talking to me, it happened that the ambulance literally blew up in flames..."

I n a recent column, I explored some obstacles to the embrace of religious faith among young people today, paying special attention to the gulf between the often simplistic way that traditional churches talk about God and the pluralistic complexity of modern life. Here's another obstacle: The overly literalistic character of so much of American piety. My favorite example is the way that many American Christians think and talk about hell. Jumping off from a handful of Gospel passages in which Jesus Christ speaks about "eternal punishment" for sinners in the afterlife, these believers conjure visions of a cosmic torture...

It has become fashionable in some Catholic quarters these days to question where there are now or will ever be any souls populating hell. Hell, it is taught, is a "real possibility," but whether there are any souls actually there, or whether there will ever be any souls there, is unknown to us.It is, of course, true that hell is a "real possibility" for each of us. And that is a sobering thought. But it is also true that souls are actually in hell now, and will be for all eternity. This is a teaching of our Catholic Faith.

The second reading from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday is taken from an ancient homily on Christ’s descent into hell. It begins: “Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.” The King fell asleep when His soul was separated from His body on Good Friday afternoon. He remained asleep until His soul reanimated His body on Easter morning. But during the silence and stillness of the King’s sleep, He harrowed hell.Our Lord’s descent into hell is well attested to...

We live in a time and place that's very prosperous and where our "human rights" are respected and the importance of having our basic needs met is regarded. Does all this actually work against people, though, however, in that God Himself promises that unless one repents and trusts in His Son for salvation, life in the next world will be spent in Hell, where such rights and needs aren't respected?

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:7-8)I believe that the first two and possibly three of the seven seals are already opened. I could be wrong I admit, but I definitely believe that...

Last week, Pope Francis warned Italy's Mafia leaders that if they continue their evil ways, they will go to hell. Hooray for the pope. More power to him for threatening evil people with hell. I had begun to despair that in my lifetime I would hear such talk from mainstream Christian or Jewish leaders. For the past two generations, God has rarely been depicted as judging and punishing. Instead all we have heard is the phrase, "God Is Love," which, when offered as the one description of God, is morally meaningless -- and even morally dangerous. If your aim...

...the ungodly are not so, But are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall perish.(Psalm 1:4-6)Psalm One is a wisdom psalm. The Spirit shows us by contrast the difference between the truly happy man, and his antithesis, the ungodly. In the sparest of language, two ways of life are shown side by side, the essence of the truly happy and of the miserable. The ungodly are...

Would a loving Jesus really teach about hell? Yes, and so does every New Testament author. Let’s consider what they teach.Hell in MatthewIn the Sermon on the Mount, often known for its emphasis on love and the kingdom, Jesus teaches the reality and nature of hell (5:20–30; 7:13–27). In Matthew 5:20–30, Jesus contrasts hell with the kingdom of heaven and warns that hell is a real danger to unrepentant sinners. The fire of hell, the justice of hell, and the extreme suffering in hell are particularly stressed. The unrepentant are warned to use extreme measures to avoid being cast into it by God.As...

Fire, brimstone, eternal suffering — hell is not a pleasant concept. But research has pointed to the societal benefits of a belief in supernatural punishment, including higher economic growth in developing countries and less crime. But there are also drawbacks, even in this life. A new study links believing in hell, and perhaps even thinking about it, with lower levels of happiness and satisfaction in life. "It seems there is this trade-off," said Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. In research published in January in PLOS ONE, Shariff and a colleague looked at international...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), the Scottish physician and author best known for his creation of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, once wrote, “Hell, I may say … has long dropped out of the thoughts of every reasonable man.” He would get a lot of support for that statement today, and not only from those outside of the Christian church. The idea that untold billions of human beings, including many who would have seemed decent, law-abiding citizens, will spend eternity exposed to God’s unrelenting anger, is simply unacceptable to many people. Even some holding high ecclesiastical office have rejected the...

Â…Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.(2 Thessalonians 2:6-10)Evil thrives on lies. The fall of man came about by the acceptance of a lie. Satan himself is the father of lies. Lying and...

According to recent polls, some 81 percent of adult Americans believe in heaven, and fully 80 percent expect to go there when they die. By comparison, about 61 percent believe in hell, but less than 1 percent think it’s likely they will go there. In other words, a slight majority of Americans still believe hell exists, but genuine fear of hell is almost nonexistent. Even the most conservative evangelicals don’t seem to take hell very seriously anymore. For decades, many evangelicals have downplayed inconvenient biblical truths, neglecting any theme that seems to require somber reflection. Doctrines such as human depravity,...