Problem with Hell

I have really been struggling with the concept of hell and eternal damnation. This seemed to me in my youth to be the most important aspect of Christianity, if the amount of time spent harping on it was an indication. The default condition of mankind was eternal, limitless suffering in hell, and you could avoid this fate only by being “saved” through accepting the redeeming gift of salvation offered by Jesus Christ. And you had to keep on “accepting” salvation by being more and more righteous. Every time you sinned anew, and what wasn’t a sin would be hard to say, you would be damned again until you had made a withdrawal at the bank of forgiveness. Also, you could “backslide” and find yourself condemned just as much as if you had never been saved in the first place. This doctrine was good for the institution of the church, as I see it, since the church had a lock on keeping you out of hell; however, it was not very good for the soul. It’s hard to find that “peace that passeth understanding” when you are worried about being righteous enough to stay out of hell. Moreover, it is an anxiety provoking prospect to imagine that your failure to convert a friend or loved one (and to keep them converted) might result in their eternal damnation.

Now I have come to believe in salvation by grace alone, and this is a huge load off my figurative back. But the concept of eternal damnation in hell does not jive with the vision of the gracious Savior whom I endeavor to follow. It is gratifying on some level to imagine that some particularly evil people will get theirs in the end, but an eternity of torture? Might not some folks warrant just a little punishment, or an intermediate non-eternal term in hell? What would be the point of tormenting someone in hell forever if there is no possibility of their learning anything and becoming redeemable? That seems like pure spite. Also, it may be hard to enjoy heaven knowing that your loved ones are burning in hell.

When Jesus talked about hell, he usually referred to “Gehenna”, a sort of unclean cesspool outside Jerusalem, and one can read the references to hell as referring to the condition of death rather than to a place of torture. Perhaps the truly evil just get discarded on Judgment Day. I am beginning to think that hell for evil people is that they have to be themselves forever knowing that they were evil and contemplating the suffering they caused. Imagine GW Bush in eternity endowed with the knowledge of his own incompetence and total awareness of all the suffering he has wrought.