Hell is God's greatest compliment to the reality of human freedom.

- G.K. Chesterton

Our school recently asked the faculty to provide the librarian with their favorite books, for the purpose of getting the students to see that all of us teachers love to read. They took photographs of some to make posters of us smiling while holding our books, and then they put them up around the school.

I was curious to see what books the other teachers chose, and one of them had Crazy Love by Francis Chan as his fave. It is one of those "God is crazy about you, He really is!" kind of tomes, and while I don't object to the idea, I kind of chafe at the thought that so many Christians must be so often reminded with such pukifyingly smooshy language.

While I was peeking around on the web to know more about Francis Chan (from what I gather a popular, with-it, postmodernish pastor with whom young believers are quite enthralled), I came across a piece from The Huffington Post that was a good loud rant against Chan's declaration that hell is real and bad and should be regarded seriously.

I'd otherwise not give much attention to such a screed; The Huffington Post itself pretty much just splats up there whatever anyone anywhere writes and which remotely agrees with their philosophical bent. The guy who wrote it is John Shore, an über-blogger who apparently fancies himself quite the curmudgeonly muckraker on Christian things.

The reason I've brought it up here is (1) many people hang their intellectual constitution on such an argument, (2) it is plainly written out making it easy to take apart, and (3) I love apologetics. Since I'm mostly Irish (a class of people who stereotypically always seem to have a healthy preoccupation with hell anyway) I am addicted to contending in just about any endeavor, especially for the faith. I thought this time out I'd sink my teeth into a juicy argument, and perhaps even share how much the World System perpetuates such nonsense for the purpose of keeping as many as they can from the life-saving grace of Christ.

This one goes something like this. Everyone really hates hearing about hell, so why in the world would a Christian speak of it to a non-Christian? The Christian is not going to hell, so why should he piss off those he thinks are going there by spewing it at them, which ironically sabotages his own efforts to save him? Let's just get along and we can do that simply by avoiding any of this hell talk.

Shore even breaks it down into a simple syllogism he feels is ironclad... except his ineptitude with logic and his incapacity to understand what he is saying is stunningly evident. Here it is exactly as written:

If rejecting the Christian God condemns people to hell; and

If a Christian who is wrong about hell goes to heaven anyway; and

If preaching about hell significantly contributes to people rejecting Christianity;

Then evangelicals should shut-up about hell.

Now here's the argument with the necessary logical corrections and clarified understandings.

His first premise: Rejecting the Christian God condemns people to hell.

Right out of the gate he presumes there is a plural number of gods, intimated by his identification of the "Christian God" as opposed to all the others. Yes, it is true, there are other "gods," but they are either demons, powerful individuals in a society, or figments of the imagination. Often those figments are held in the minds of many people in very large nations!

There is only one God who can actually be The God, however. This God, "maker of all things, stretching out the heavens and spreading out the earth by [Him]self," so intimately cares about His creation, the centerpiece of which is man, that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." He did this because of "how long and wide and high and deep... [is His] love."

The most important truth here for these purposes is something completely foreign to his argument. It isn't just this group or that group who are the "chosen" ones...

Everyone goes to hell.

Everyone. You, me, that guy over there. There is no greased slide or down elevator — oh that we'd have that. No, each and every one of us is in free-fall, a mere millisecond away from landing real hard. While falling, however, each of us has a kind of "virtual reality" headset on through which we only see the diversions of life that keep us from the truth of our predicament.

With that in mind, there is indeed only one way out, and that is The One Way Out. To elaborate on the metaphor if you'll allow me, this One known as "God Saves" (ahem, in Hebrew Y'shua or translated into the Greek, Jesus) reaches His nail-scarred hands out to grab every single person falling.

Where is gets dicey is what the issue here is: Whether or not you allow Him to snatch you up. Whether or not you really want to be rescued.

And so yeah, I guess Shore is right. You do choose to reject God's grace. But it isn't the rejection of God that is dropping us into hell. He's just there ready to display His overwhelming mercy.

It is us that is the problem, and our rank, putrid wickedness. That is what keeps us from Him, and in hell. Every one of us.

His second premise: A Christian who is wrong about hell goes to heaven anyway.

Ahh, I get it. Here Shore gives away what the real issue is in his mind. He assumes that hell is not real after all. So that's it...

That hell is just a fairy tale anyway.

He observes a whole planet-full of Christians out there convinced they're going to heaven no matter how wrong they are about everything, so he wonders why they're telling us a bunch of wrong things. That's really what this is about then, isn't it?

Logically there are only two possibilities, either hell exists or it doesn't. It is either/or. Sure there may be things we don't know about a thing or not-thing, but that fact doesn't obviate the truth that we can know some things about it, and the logical principles still remain to be either used or abused. Shore relies heavily on them by claiming to know a thing about hell whatever that is.

I think what's going on is that Shore fears that he's wrong. I mean, he really doesn't look like he wants to discuss the matter. Some of it might be the conception now very common in a postmodern world that if you just say you believe or don't believe in something then that in and of itself lends credibility to your case.

There are two kinds of belief, however. He employs the first, the one most people think of when asked, "Do you believe in...?" This involves intellectual assent to a supposed truth. "Two plus two is four." "Butter pecan is yummy." "No one can know about hell." Sure these can be further distinguished between normative and positive statements, but these are still facets of the first kind of belief, considered the only kind by those steeped in the erroneous idea that there is only a rational thought or an irrational thought.

Way fewer people comprehend the second equally important definition because they habitually devour a nutritionally empty diet of humanism. This condition of belief refers to the trust one puts in someone to effectuate a thing. "Do you believe in those who built that bridge to make it sustain the weight of your automobile?" "Do you believe in your boss and his immanent decision to give you a promotion?"

"Do you believe that Jesus Christ can and will grip your soul after your body dies?"

This has to do with trusting in someone to follow. Everyone must do it with someone, and many simply don't choose Jesus ultimately to be that individual. There are hundreds of good reasons to trust Christ in this belief situation: factual, evidential, truthful reasons that make Him worthy of our trust. I can't get into all of them here, but hell is an imperative part of the gospel.

Someone always chowing down the slop the World feeds them is bound to dive right into one of two default non-hell positions: universalism, which has absolutely no place for Jesus, or materialism, which has no better prognosis for what happens after death than hell.

His third premise: Preaching about hell significantly contributes to people rejecting Christianity.

Again Shore speaks from the presumption that you've got your religion and I've got mine and ne'er the twain shall meet but let's just get along anyway. He can't see that it isn't about competing religions but about the sin that hopelessly infects every single human being. His real contention is that sin, hell, Jesus, salvation, the devil — all that is hokum, a position that has the flimsiest of support. Lots to get into there, yes, but we must save much of it for another time.

Let's assume, however, that he is believing all this to be true, and he still says, "Don't preach at me because it'll just drive me away from you and whatever it is you're selling."

Really? If I "preached" at you that I know about the tumor that is the cause of your stomach aches, one that I can easily remove on the operating table, is it true that you'd be so offended that you'd refuse to consider what I'm telling you, even insisting I shut-up about it?

I hear people submerged in humanism say this all the time. Someone makes a lucid moral argument against pretty typical rotten behavior, and it spills right on out like a mantra: "I just don't want to be preached at."

I happen to notice the healthiest and wisest individuals are those who consider everything someone says, especially if it is the most penetrating and painful moral assessment. Sure the speaker could be full of it, but I want to hear the breadth of the entire claim and be able to cogently challenge falsehood. Otherwise, if it is truthful, let me have it! Preach it to me, baby!

And then let's look deeply at what is truthful about a thing.

His conclusion: Evangelicals should shut-up about hell.

I really think Shore is afraid of hell, actually. Come on, if hell meant nothing to him, why is he going all out writing about it, posting it at The Huffington Post? Thing is I'm sure there are millions out there who feel exactly the same way.

It's simply because they've spent their entire lives intently listening to what the World Operatives have told them.

The words of John Lennon's song have been tamped down firmly in the soul of the entrenched World inhabitant and it just festers there. "Imagine there's no heaven... no hell below us, above us only sky."

Just before Christmas this year my daughter was watching some old Looney Tunes, and one of them featured a Jacob Marley Bugs Bunny doing the whole censure bit with an Ebenezer Scrooge Yosemite Sam. He said if he didn't shape up he'd take him to see the guy with the red suit. Sam became frightened that Santa would see his naughtiness and act accordingly, but Bugs told him he was speaking of the other guy in the red suit.

"No no no!" exclaimed Sam with even greater dread. "You mean the guy down there?!" "Yhee-epp! replied Bugs.

I thought, ya know? You would never see that in any cartoon today. The World System machinators have done a fantastic job of eviscerating the concept of hell from the vernacular. I then considered that even if "the other guy in the red suit" was mentioned anywhere in any popular culture dissemination channel, very few in today's young generation would even know what that would mean.

Speaking of old Christmas tradition — which in the history of mankind was surprisingly not all that long ago — when the Santa Claus legend started catching on throughout Europe in the mid-1800's, the jolly old elf was frequently accompanied by a gruesomely monstrous fellow, yes, one with horns, a tail, and a long imposing tongue.

He even had a name, Krampus, originating from an old German word for claw. This demon was always depicted behind the door, in the corner, always in step with Santa waiting for the bad boys and girls to be left for his clutches. It was all designed to keep those potentially wayward children on the straight and narrow.

How many times do you see this in today's representations of Santa? Right next to the North Pole get-up there at the mall is a fiery pit with a guy dressed as Satan — not that anyone would be waiting in line, it'd be just to have it there, to make the point.

Yeah, right.

No, there is no more hell. It is a vestigial blip in the scientistically dominated discourse of the day.

In that sense I really don't know what Shore is worried about. Who the hell knows what hell is today anyway? How many people out there actually care? How many are just living on the benighted idea that belief is just your own personal preference: "If you want to believe in a fantasy like hell you just go ahead and do that. I believe in me, that's what I believe in, yeah..."

Just how many people look at that statement right there and fail to see just how miserably narcissistic it is. That's a hell in and of itself.

The amazing thing in all of this is that hell is actually pretty good to have around. Huh? Come again — Hell is a good thing?

I'm sure the logical benefits of hell have escaped this guy. His error lies precisely in the answer to this question:

What about me?

Yeah, me, impenitent purveyor of the most abusive hell language? Doesn't John Shore have some hope that there is something to be done with me when I stalk him to the ends of the earth and mercilessly regale him with the bountiful vicissitudes of hell?

I ask this because it seems quite obvious that he doesn't particularly like people talking about hell. What if I hovered over him incessantly singing the praises of hell? Anyone who has heard me sing knows how unbearable it is. I imagine John Shore is perfectly fine with being kidnapped, tied up in some dark closet, and having headphones strapped over his ears with my song blaring at 150 decibels. And looping!

The point here is that there should be a place to put someone who'd do that. If there is no hell, which really, when you think about it, is the final repository for the full requisite execution of justice, then who gives a rip about John Shore and his melted eardrums?

What makes his plaint so hypocritical is that Shore knows that too. He'll just as readily bark about how bad Nazis are, as well as child molesters and suicide bombers and rich cheating bankers and those creeps who run that awful taco place that made him spend the night wrapped around the toilet.

Here on earth the place for people like that is prison.

For eternity that place is hell.

And don't get me wrong, as I've said before, I'm just as bad as the worst of them. It is only until we realize our wretched condition and the harrowing hopelessness that comes with it can we humbly and sincerely say to Christ, "I am nothing. I've done some terrible things for which I deserve whatever justice requires." This is the essence of repentance, merely rejecting the pretense that I am anything and honestly turning away from all the iniquity that comes with it. Only at this point can I have the wherewithal to allow Him to grab me at the ankle a millimeter from the yawning spewing blowhole entrance to hell.

The wonderful thing is that Christ presently speaks through His ambassadors, and while I do want to offer up a masterful apologetics response here, the most important thing I can do is pray Shore would meet someone who is Jesus with skin.

And that gets at the heart of what is the real problem with evangelical efforts today. It isn't that Christians talk too much about hell, it is that the things they try to say are so pathetically lacking in spiritually meaningful rigor. Much of that is because virtually every church considered "Christian" is really just a state-governed organization with a stunted message of platitudes that may tickle quite a few jaded World inhabitants, but accomplish little more.

Essentially, there are simply so few of those ambassadors out there who effectively share the truth. As it is, pastors slough off their message on hell as a once-a-year occurrence, endured as a chore in order to avoid offending too many dutiful tithers. How many times have you heard a pastor work his audience to keep the till brimming by spouting about the passage in the third chapter of Malachi that speaks of misuse of the tithes? A million? I'd say that's about right. Maybe two million.

How many times have you heard a pastor preach on the second chapter of Malachi, about failing to provide meaningfully truthful instruction? No? You never have? That's because if the state-church pastor did, he'd be fully indicting himself.

Now if he weren't contractually obligated to the World with his 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit status — if any follower of Christ weren't tied to the System through all its rigid entanglements with the law, then he'd probably be able to speak powerfully and graciously about truthful things, even hell. This is why it is understandable Shore is so fiercely antagonistic. He only knows of mean unpleasant Catholicists working gallantly but failing horrendously to share truthful and gracious things.

Shore needs someone living in the Kingdom, whose sole devotion is to Truth and Grace.

Once more, it's not just John Shore who needs that person.

There are so many who do.

Oh that there would be those who would actually be Jesus with skin to meet with them, and do one of the most loving things they can do...

Tell them about hell.

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The home page essay above was written by David Beck and was posted on this site December 30, 2011

The website The Catholicist Nation at  yourownjesus.net was originally uploaded by David Beck on August 3, 2004