Can Hell be redeemed? Judgment (ultimate evaluation) is not a privilege or obligation for mankind. We haven’t the necessary omniscience (knowledge), omnipotence (power), virtue (holiness), objectivity (truth), and whatever else is necessary to make even just determinations in the confines of nature. How would we have any claim to be able to determine the meaning of hell, of God’s evaluations (judgments) for what is meaning outside of time and physical substance that we lump together as nature? Scripture informs the reader that there is a place called hell, that it is a place that God has reserved for conscious beings he will not accept in his kingdom. The place of hell is noted as lasting in the eternal perception, as heaven is also extended in the same terms. Further, the judgment related to evaluation for heaven or hell is described as an evaluation that is fair, just and does not appear to have challenge. The bar of God is obvious to all, saints or sinners, and we have nothing to say in the end of the matter. The confidence of Christians is that representation is made for them by Jesus Christ whose advocacy is taken as effective for approval to God’s kingdom and status. It is a redemptive advocacy, effective for purpose in the acceptance of God. What happens after this great denouement is even more sketchy in human terminology. The context of God is so far beyond anything we can imagine, or explain if we could know it by some miracle, simplified for mankind in the call to faith. A secondary benefit of faith is the management of ignorance.
The call to faith is dependent upon what the person of faith believes about God, not what is believed about events, context, institutions, or anything other than the personhood of God. The God person is in total being, the personification of love, justice, holiness, peace, energy, power – of all that was necessary to create universes and life forms. The image of God exudes life in its perfection. The effectiveness of faith is in the substance of believing God for who he is and for what he has done related to the long-term benefit of his creation – and what he will do. The faith then, for the skeptic, must also be understood as a cover for the ignorance of persons of faith. It appears that we must accept that, even if the ignorance has nothing to do with the person of faith. I do not have to know what God will do about anything, but I do need to know some things so to find genuine faith, and not only live that faith but communicate it with some degree of effectiveness. This last is commanded of Christians with the assurance that God will assist in the communication of what we may call the basic Gospel of Christ. That Gospel communicates the love of God to the point of redemption for those accepting the offer of it. It deals with the nature of the believer.
The question rises in human beings: Isn’t there a better way to get from earth to paradise? The implication is usually related to good works. In our minds God is looking for the decent (honest, law-abiding, sharing, responsible, and the like) people, and dividing them off from the indecent (thieves, murderers, adulterers, liars, evaders and the like). The observation sounds good to most men and women of the world, and is used by many atheists in their response to the claims of theists. One of the mottoes used is: Be good for goodness sake. The implication is that if there is a God, and the human being has been good, even if doubting God, the bases have been covered for the hereafter home run. What illusion is this that the meaning of normalcy for mankind, to do good as the creation of God, is taken as paying the price for whatever benefit may occur at death? The implication is that bad is normal, and good is sacrificial.
The second problem is that sin changed the nature of creation. Human nature (made unsatisfactory by depravity offered by our first parents) must receive regeneration (repair) so to be accepted to the original purpose, the translation of a good (perfect) human being to the advances of God’s societies in creation. (The angels are a part of a created society that we know little about except for a glimpse in Scripture, and the testimonies of a few people in history.) The story of Adam/Eve, Patriarchs, Israel and the conflicts of good/evil, to the arrival of the expected Messiah, Jesus Christ, and billions of Christians, appearing over two millennia seems substantive enough to demand a hearing about the meaning of Jesus Christ. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020