Hell, hellfire, Gehenna, other people - what's all that about?

Interest has been stirred by the move by Bishop Odd Bondevik of Norway who wants to remove the word 'hell' from the new translation of the Bible, not because he doesn't believe in it (as some don't) but because the word has been made banal by overuse (as in 'My hairdo hell, by celebrity weathergirl').  He wants to call it Gehenna. Only that's the name of a local  death metal band.  As you'd expect. So let us offer another couple of interesting and non-banal interpretations of hell.  CS Lewis in The Great Divorce  gives an idea of heaven as infinitely large, solid, real, and colourful, and hell as a dreary city of endless grey suburban streets, but which in reality is infinitesimally small - 'All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world, or one atom of this Real World'.  The notion of hell as ultimate restriction, blindness, refusal to engage with the beautiful 'reality' of goodness and God, is curiously and ironically echoed in Sartre's miserabilist play 'Huis Clos', with the famous 'L'enfer, c'est les autres'.  Confinement, boredom... nice essay here comparing it to Dante's more flamboyant torments. 'Hell is just an extension of the human condition...no need for supernatural demons or punishments'.

Comments

[Alistair]

As for "interesting and non-banal interpretations of Hell", in 1889 the Rev. Joseph Furniss published "The Sight of Hell", (A Catholic book for children), in which he said it was a place with several dungeons, each of which sponsored a different torture – a burning place, a red-hot floor, a boiling kettle, a red-hot coffin and a red-hot oven. It says:

"Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever without stopping. The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered, from head to foot, with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the
body of Job. The third stroke will make your body three times as bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body four times as bad as the body of
Job. How, then, will your body be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping? Perhaps at this moment, seven o'clock in he evening, a child is just going into hell. To-morrow
evening, at seven o'clock, go and knock at the gates of hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and look. They will come back again and say, the
child is burning. Go in week and ask what the child is doing; you will get the same answer, it is burning; Go in a year and asks the same answer comes - it is burning. Go in a million of years and ask the same question, the answer is just the same - it is burning. So, if you go for ever and ever, you will always get the same answer - it is burning in the fire."

At another point:

“The little child is in the red-hot oven. See how it screams to get out, how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor."

Bishop Odd could rename Hell as "Furniss" - I bet there is no heavy metal band called that (yet?)

[Jess H]

I doubt the authenticity of a great deal of the Bible, so why not change "Hell" as well?

It could perhaps be that there are different levels of existence awaiting each person. However, there are only two usually mentioned, heaven and hell. So many of us might think that they are not actual states, whereas people who do not reach a certain moral standard might find themselves missing out. There have always been in the religions, warnings of the danger of complacency and it seems that it is by negation that most of us might fail to reach the required standard, ie, what we have not done, in regard to doing more for example, to relieve suffering and dire poverty and starvation in the world, when we could have done our part, in other words, getting our priorities completely wrong, and perhaps thinking that we are not to blame, in so doing, whereas in fact, we all have a responsibility which subconsciously we might ignore. Moreover, we might presume that although we have failed in this respect, by negation, nevertheless, we are good people whereas the truth may be otherwise, when seen from a heavenly perspective, and those of us who have not attained the level of moral perfection required, might ultimately find ourselves cast into the pit, whatever that might mean. So perhaps we should all start to think about what is expected, the standards that have been set for us, and think that they are not to be regarded as arbitrary. Then in practical terms the reality might be too hard for us to accept and that we are in fact damned selfish.
There is the idea that heavenly love and mercy is such that no one would be consigned to any place other than heaven, yet just as this creation is imperfect, there could follow also, various levels of existence, as mentioned. Moreover, thinking along these lines might bring to mind the theory of re-incarnation, which, while rejected, neverthless, emphasizes the notion of successive life being in accordance with a level of morality, goodness, achieved beforehand.