You don’t know what Hell is till...

(Updated from Dec. 2012)

The very secular Economist magazine ran a four-page article on Hell in its Christmas-New Year double-issue. The editors probably wanted to contrast the holidays’ spiritual renewal with its frightful opposite: damnation. Renewal brings redemption – salvation from the eternal fires, most religions preach.

My thoughts wandered to the mural of the Last Judgment inside the St. James Catholic Church in Paete, Laguna. Beneath the Christ reviewing the deeds and misdeeds of the Dead is the artist’s depiction of Hell. It is a gigantic smoldering pit, with little humans crying from frying. A closer look shows something intriguing: the criers and fryers are all women. “Inspired, I’m sure, by that saying, ‘Hell hath no fury like a ‘you know what’,” I kidded a female companion the last time I viewed the artwork on a Visita Iglesia. To which she snapped back, “The painter got it all wrong; women don’t go to Hell, women own Hell.”

Religious leaders do not trivialize Hell like we sinners do. We casually use the term as a woof, as in “What the hell’s going on?” Or as a description, like “You won’t know what hell is till you get married.” But religionists regard Hell as the most dreadful of all things to imagine. The concept of an underworld is common to diverse ancient cultures. The early Jews had Sheol, the Egyptians Amenti, and the Greeks Hades. A realm of the departed is present too in the major religions: the Hindu Yuma Putra, the Zoroastrian and Muslim Sell, the Buddhist Naraka.

All are infernal places where are suffered the most dreadful punishments. The vilest of unrepentant malefactors are condemned to the most terrible of fates in Hell. They squirm in intolerable pain of incineration, lashing, impalement, mutilation, and disembowelment – with no one caring to save them anymore. In some religions Hell has many mansions, The Economist researched. Hinduism has 21 main Hells and a lakh of smaller ones, suited to the gravity of the transgressions. Singhalese Buddhism has 136; Burmese Buddhism 40,040, one for each particular sin, “including nosiness, chicken-selling, and eating sweets with rice.”

Perhaps borrowing from older cultures, early Christians too thought of Hell as a place. For better understanding, it was described in sensual terms: feel the fire, hear the lamentations, smell the brimstone, taste the tears. Literally believed was that Jesus descended to Hell in order to save the faithful who came before him, among others Adam and Eve, Abraham, Noah, Lot and Job. Dante and Milton avidly narrated the frightening consequences of sinfulness. Hell is eternal suffering. For, alongside God’s infinite love burns God’s infinite justice, which is just as unconditional, The Economist summed up. Atheists may scoff at the concept, but the online Catholic Encyclopedia says they, along with hedonists, will be the first to taste Hell. For it takes faith and good works for Man to be saved. (Loosely defined, hedonists include plunderers and power trippers, who have a special congress in Hell.)

There is a rethinking of Hell among modern-day Christians. The notion of God punishing a creature with the most cruel and unusual Hell clashes with His being all-just and all-loving. R.C. Sproul, in Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, acknowledges that, “Almost all the biblical teachings about Hell comes from the lips of Jesus.” These include “a place of outer darkness, a lake of fire, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a prison, a place of torment where the worm doesn’t turn and die.” But Sproul is quick to add that all these may be mere symbols.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the Scriptures as well. It describes Hell as a place to where a person who dies with mortal sin immediately descends and stays for eternity. But Sproul and the Vatican refer to Hell not just as a place but a state of being. Both quote the Bible in stating that Hell is “eternal separation from the blessings of God.”

Materialists will say that religions thrive on fear, and nothing can be more fearful than everlasting punishment. Scoffers will say too that clerics magnify the concept of Hell in order to make themselves more respectable and acceptable, as in granters of Penance. But religions also preach and live on hope. Believe in Hell as a place or a state, if one may, but the underlying concept is that it has an antithesis: eternal life. God predestines no one to Hell; He gives sinners a chance for Redemption. That is so they would in the afterlife enjoy His loving presence forever and ever.

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Rodrigo Duterte has called the Eucharist “shit” and God “stupid.” This Christmas he mocked as “silly” the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. He does that because, as he says, Catholic bishops criticize his brutal war on drugs. The scorn, however, is against all Christians, supposedly 80 percent of Filipinos.

Yet only three of the 125-man Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines were vocal against Duterte from the start. Four others joined as the President’s verbal abuse worsened. The rest have yet to speak out. (Only three other Christian prelates – two Evangelicals and one mainstream Protestant – have stood up against the blasphemy.)

Public satisfaction with Duterte rose to 74 percent this fourth quarter of 2018, from 70 percent in the previous one. Presumably the bulk of those respondents are Christians. Is Duterte’s high standing the reason for or the result of the bishops’ silence? On the other hand they complain loudly that millennials are becoming church-shunning materialists. Is that not partly due to a perceived irrelevance of bishops?

The bishops perhaps owe the faithful an explanation for their silence.

Is theirs an imitation of Christ’s silence when arrested and questioned by the Sanhedrin? He did not answer them (Matthew 26:62-63), aware of their bias, hostility, and previous twisting of His words.

Or is the bishops’ silence cowardice? It reminds of Dante’s “Inferno”, that “the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain neutrality in times of great moral crisis.”

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Peace and prosperity to us all in the New Year.

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