Alexander Tkachenko
Table of contents
- “I will be equal with eternity. Those who enter, leave your hope..."
- Spiritual cesspool of paganism
- Enraged Rottweiler
- Tainted Gift
- Fire, worse than fire
- Lies of hell
- The saving power of “little things”
If God is Love, why does He punish sinners so cruelly? What is fiery Gehenna? Where did hell come from and what is the nature of hellish torment? The Holy Fathers answered such questions one and a half millennia ago, but do we know these answers today?
“I will be equal with eternity. Those who enter, leave your hope..."
“I will be equal with eternity. Those who enter, abandon your hope...” In Dante’s Divine Comedy, these words are written above the entrance to hell. And the very description of hell that the Italian Renaissance author gave in his poem became a textbook for the entire European culture for several centuries. According to Dante, hell is a vast space specially equipped for the torment of sinners who end up there. And the more serious the sins of a deceased person, the more terrible suffering his soul is exposed to in hell after death.
In general, the idea of posthumous retribution for evil committed exists among almost all nations. Despite the many and varied religious beliefs in our world, it is hardly possible to find one among them that would deny the idea of punishing sinners in the afterlife. And the Christian religion is no exception to the general rule; it also claims that people who commit sin will suffer in hell.
But this is where the problem arises. The fact is that Christianity is the only religion in world history that claims that God exists - Love. Moreover – Love is sacrificial! The God of Christians became a Man, lived among people, suffered all sorts of hardships, voluntarily accepted a painful death on the cross... God, who came to suffer for the sins of people, God, who knows what suffering is - there is nothing like this in any religion in the world.
And suddenly this good God promises unrepentant sinners such afterlife torments, which were not even imagined in the Jewish religious consciousness before Christ. In the Old Testament understanding, the souls of dead people went to Sheol, a place of unconscious residence, a land of eternal sleep. But Christ says quite definitely: the souls of the righteous go to the Kingdom of God, the souls of sinners go to fiery Gehenna, where their worm does not die and the fire does not go out. The image of hell as a fiery punishment for sins, a place of eternal torment, Gehenna, appears precisely in Christian doctrine.
What does it mean? It turns out that Christ, Who cried out of compassion for the grief of others, Who even on the cross prayed for the forgiveness of His tormentors; Christ, who did not condemn a single sinner (with a huge number of whom He communicated in His earthly life), suddenly suddenly changes his attitude towards them after their death? Does Christ really love people only while they are alive, and when they die, He turns from a loving and caring God for them into a merciless and inexorable judge, moreover, into an executioner and punisher? Of course, we can say that we are talking about sinners who themselves deserved their punishment. But Christ taught his disciples not to repay evil for evil. It turns out that this was said only for people, and God himself rewards sinners for the evil they have done with such terrible suffering that it’s scary to even think about it? For several decades of a sinful life - eternal torment... But why then do Christians claim that God exists - Love?
Many people have such questions. But it is easier for believers to resolve their confusion. Anyone who has turned to Christ in prayer and at least once in his life has felt the reciprocal touch of the Hand of God no longer needs any explanation. A believer knows that God is Love already from his experience of communicating with this God. But for an unchurched person, the question of eternal punishment for sins that have an end often becomes a serious obstacle in understanding Christianity.
Christ really spoke about fiery Gehenna. But what is Gehenna and why is it fiery? Where did this word come from and what does it mean? Without understanding this, it is simply impossible to correctly understand the words of Christ about the posthumous fate of unrepentant sinners.
Spiritual cesspool of paganism
Reading the Gospel, it is not difficult to verify that Christ did not use theological and philosophical terms in his sermon. Speaking about the Kingdom of Heaven with fishermen and winegrowers, He used images that were understandable and close to the simple people who then inhabited Judea. The language of the Gospel is an allegory, a parable, behind which stands spiritual reality. And to treat the Gospel metaphors as a direct description of this reality would be, to say the least, naive. Reading the parable in which the Lord likens the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed from which a tree grows, it is unlikely that anyone will seriously puzzle themselves with the problem - how many branches were there on this tree, and what breed of birds did Christ have in mind? But in discussions about Gehenna, the modern reader of the Gospel is for some reason inclined to understand the words of Christ literally. Meanwhile, in Gospel times, any Jew knew what Gehenna was and where it was located.
Ge-Ennon in Hebrew means the valley of Hinnom. It began right outside the city wall of Jerusalem. It was a gloomy place, associated for Jews with the most terrible and disgusting memories. The fact is that after concluding a Covenant with God, the people of Israel repeatedly violated this Covenant, deviating into paganism. And the Valley of Hinnom was a place of worship of Moloch and Ashtoreth, whose cults were accompanied by unnatural depraved orgies with temple prostitution, castrati priests and human sacrifices. Tophetes were built there (literally from Phoenician: places where people were burned) and the most disgusting and cruel rituals that only existed in ancient paganism were performed. Babies were thrown onto the hot hands of the idol Moloch, and they rolled into the fiery interior of the idol. And in the temples of Astarte, the virgins sacrificed their innocence to her. From the Valley of Hinnom this horror spread throughout Judah. Even in the Jerusalem Temple, King Manasseh installed an idol of Astarte. Such lawlessness could not continue indefinitely, and the prophet Jeremiah, having gathered the Jewish elders around him, predicted the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem to the people of Israel precisely in Ge-Hennon for their apostasy from the True God.
In the 6th century BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea, destroyed Jerusalem, plundered and burned the Temple. At the same time, the greatest shrine of the Jewish people, the Ark of the Covenant, was lost forever. Thousands of Jewish families were driven to Babylon. Thus, spiritual depravity, the center of which was the Valley of Hinnom, ended for the Jews with the era of the Babylonian captivity.
When the Jews returned from captivity to their native land, He-Henna became for them a place that evoked horror and disgust. Garbage and sewage from all over Jerusalem began to be brought here, and a fire was constantly maintained here to prevent infection. Ge-Ennon turned into a city dump, where the corpses of executed criminals were also thrown out.
The Valley of Hinnom became among the Jews a symbol of the death of paganism and debauchery. The stench and fire that never went out in the landfill reigned where the spiritual infection that destroyed Israel during the time of Nebuchadnezzar once spilled out.
Gehenna was a part of their life for the Jews, as understandable as burning the chaff after threshing the grain. Christ used these images so that the people listening to Him would be imbued as deeply as possible with the thought of the destruction of sin. The words about the unquenchable fire and the undying worm are a literal quote from the last verse of the book of the prophet Isaiah, also very familiar to the Jews. And there these words refer not to the souls of dead sinners, but to the corpses of God’s enemies.
Behind all these terrible symbols, of course, there is an equally terrible spiritual reality. Fortunately, it is impossible for us to fully comprehend it, since this reality is fully revealed only to unrepentant sinners after death. But you can at least partially understand the causes of hellish suffering by familiarizing yourself with the doctrine of the passions, which was compiled by the Holy Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
How do Christians know how the world works?
First of all, from the Revelation of God Himself, which is contained in the Holy Scriptures. The very first commandment that Moses received from God reads: “I am the Lord your God... thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20: 2,3). From the prophet Isaiah we read: “I am God, and there is no other God, and there is none like Me” (Isaiah 46:9). The Epistle of the Apostle James says: “There is one Lawgiver and Judge, able to save and to destroy” (James 4:12). All biblical books are permeated with the idea that the universe was created by One God and is governed by the laws established by Him. Both physical and moral.
Enraged Rottweiler
What are passions? Imagine that you have been given a puppy of a fighting or service breed, say, a Rottweiler. A wonderful gift! If you raise a dog properly, train it, teach it to obey commands, then it will become a loyal friend and reliable protector for you. But if such a puppy is not given proper upbringing, then in a few months you will find a powerful, fanged monster in your house, which will begin to dictate the terms of your life together. Such a dog turns into an evil, uncontrollable beast, capable of biting, maiming and even killing its careless owner.
Passion works in a similar way - a certain property of the human soul, which was initially useful and necessary. But, misused by man, this property has changed, becoming a dangerous and evil enemy for him.
The Church teaches that man is an amazing creature, the only creation that God created in His Image and Likeness, investing in him reason and creativity. But man was not created for blissful idleness. The meaning of his existence should have been joyful co-creation with his Creator. Having received power over the material world from God, he had to preserve and cultivate the Garden of Eden, and subsequently, by multiplying and filling the face of the Earth, turn the entire Universe into Paradise. For this lofty goal, God endowed human nature with colossal creative potential, a huge number of different forces, properties and abilities, using which to fulfill God’s will for himself, man would become a real king of the created world. But God did not create him like an automaton, rigidly programmed to carry out this plan. Such co-creation could only be realized in a free union of mutual love and trust of two personalities - God and man. And where there is no freedom, there can be no love. In other words, man was free to choose - to follow the will of the God who loves him, or to violate it. And man could not resist this freedom...
About Shammai, Hillel and comments
A. Ivanov, “Two heads of old men (one - in the turn of the head of a Pharisee in a turban, the other - in profile)”, 1830-40.
Photo from the site cultobzor.ru There is a well-known story about Shammai and Hillel, teachers of the Torah, senior contemporaries of Jesus. A man comes to Shammai and asks him to explain the essence of faith to him while he stands on one leg. Shammai was indignant at this request and drove the man away with a stick.
A man came to Hillel with the same question, and he answered: “Yes, everything is very simple. Don’t do to others what you don’t want to do to yourself, and the rest is comments. Go and learn."
Why does the Gospel say nothing about the details of hell? It tells us about life here, about the wisdom and love of God. So this should be enough for us.
Tainted Gift
After the Fall, he did not lose the qualities and properties received from God. It’s just that these qualities suddenly turned into a set of time bombs for him. Only by fulfilling God's plan for himself could a person use his abilities for good. In any other case, they became a source of misfortune and destruction. A simple analogy: an ax was invented and made for carpentry. But if you use it for other purposes, you can cut down a fruit-bearing garden, chop off your own leg, or kill an old pawnbroker.
So sin has distorted all the properties of the human soul. Instead of recognizing himself as the image of God, man acquired narcissism, pride and vanity, love turned into lust, the ability to admire the beauty and greatness of creation - into envy and hatred... All the abilities that the Lord so generously endowed man with, he began to use contrary to their purpose. This is how evil entered the world, this is how suffering and disease appeared. After all, a disease is a disruption of the normal functioning of an organ. And as a result of the Fall, all human nature turned out to be upset and began to suffer severely from this disorder.
By committing any sin, a person violates the will of God and forces his nature to work differently from how it was intended by God. If this sin becomes a source of pleasure for a person and he commits it again and again, the degeneration of natural properties used for sinful joys occurs in him. These properties go beyond the control of the human will, become uncontrollable and require more and more portions of sin from the unfortunate person. And even if later, seeing that this is the path to death, he wants to stop, it will be very difficult to do so. Passion, like an enraged Rottweiler, will drag him from sin to sin, and when he tries to stop, he will show his fangs and begin to mercilessly torment his victim. This action of passions can easily be traced in the tragic fate of drug addicts and alcoholics. But it would be naive to think that hatred, fornication, envy, anger, despondency, etc. - less destructive for a person than an irresistible craving for vodka or heroin. All passions are equally terrible, since they have a common source - human nature crippled by sin.
Fire, worse than fire
The suffering that unsatisfied passion causes to a person is very reminiscent of the effect of fire on the human body. It is no coincidence that the Holy Fathers, speaking about the passions, constantly used images of flame, burning, burning coals, etc. And in non-church, secular culture there was no better definition for passions. Here we have “inflamed with passion”, and “burned by passions”, and the famous Lermontov: “... one, but fiery passion”, and the popular advertising slogan: “Light the fire of passion...”. It’s easy to light it, but putting it out later is incredibly difficult. But for some reason people treat this fire very lightly, although we all know its effects from our own experience. In some it smolders, in others it burns, and in others it burned to the ground before our eyes. To be convinced of this, just look at the chronicle of criminal incidents in any newspaper.
…Man. Teetotal. With higher education. During a family scandal, he hit his wife and accidentally killed him. Then he strangled his young daughter so that she would not betray him. Then he realized what he had done and hanged himself.
…Woman. Teacher. Out of jealousy, she doused her rival with sulfuric acid.
…Another woman. Deciding to commit suicide, she drank a bottle of vinegar essence. Her life was saved, but she remained disabled for the rest of her life.
...Father of two children. Director of the institution. A very conscientious worker. In just a few months, he squandered a huge amount of government money on slot machines. At the trial he said: “When I played, I did not control myself...”.
People don't control themselves. The fire of passion burns them unbearably, demanding them to commit sin again and again. And in the end, he drives them into prison, into a hospital bed, into a grave... This is very similar to madness, but our lives are literally overflowing with such stories. And if death would end this suffering, it would be the greatest benefit for man. But the Church directly says the opposite. Here are the words of the Monk Abba Dorotheos about the passions operating in the human soul after the death of the body: “... The soul, being in this body, although it struggles from passions, has some consolation because a person eats, drinks, sleeps, talks, walks with my dear friends. When she leaves the body, she is left alone with her passions and therefore is always tormented by them; busy with them, she is scorched by their rebellion and tormented by them, so that she cannot even remember God; for the very remembrance of God comforts the soul, as the psalm says: “I remembered God and rejoiced,” but even this passions do not allow it.”
“Do you want me to explain to you with an example what I am telling you? Let one of you come, and I will shut him up in a dark cell, and let him, even though only for three days, not eat, drink, sleep, talk to anyone, sing psalms, pray, and not remember at all. about God - and then he will know what the passions will do in him. However, he is still here; How much more, after the soul leaves the body, when it surrenders to passions and remains alone with them, will the unfortunate one endure?”
Passions are compared to fire, but this is not entirely correct. Because passions are much worse than fire. Fire can torment a person only for a short time, then the body’s defensive reaction is triggered and the person loses consciousness. Then he dies from painful shock.
But when the fire of passion torments a person all his life, and after death only intensifies many times over...
This is why sin is terrible because it gives birth to passions in a person’s soul, which after death will become an unquenchable hellish flame for him.
Lies of hell
“My Architect was inspired by truth: I am the highest power, the fullness of omniscience And created by first love... ...Enter, leave your hopes.”
Thus, in Dante's poem, hell declares that the Lord created it. But this is a blatant lie. According to Orthodox doctrine, God did not create hell, just as he did not create sin, passions, illness, death and torture. Evil, in the Orthodox understanding, has no essence and is only a way of being for free individuals, a certain way of action that parasitizes God’s creation. Here is how one of the most authoritative Holy Fathers, the Venerable Isaac the Syrian, writes about this: “Sin, Gehenna and death do not exist at all with God, for they are actions and not essences.” And the proud words above the entrance to hell, described by Dante, could only have been scrawled by the devil himself, for whom slandering God is a common pastime. God is perfect Love, and to attribute to Him the creation of a torture complex to punish sinners is nothing less than blasphemy. The Church explains the cause of hellish suffering in a completely different way.
St. John of Damascus: “God always provides benefits to the devil, but he does not want to accept. And in the next century, God gives good to everyone - for He is the source of good, pouring out goodness on everyone, and everyone partakes of good, as much as he has prepared himself for those who receive it. Therefore, here, having an attraction to other things and achieving them, we at least somehow enjoy, but there, when God will be all and in all (1 Cor. 15:28), and there will be no food, no drink, no carnal pleasure, nor injustice, those who no longer have ordinary pleasures, but are no longer receptive to those from God, suffer inescapably, not because God created punishment, but because we ourselves have created punishment for ourselves, so just as God did not create death, but we ourselves brought it upon ourselves.”
St. Anthony the Great: “...God neither rejoices nor is angry, for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Divine would be good or bad because of human affairs. God is good and does only good things, but does not harm anyone, being always the same; and when we are good, we enter into communication with God, out of similarity with Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God, out of dissimilarity with Him. Living virtuously, we become God's; by becoming evil, we become rejected from Him; and this does not mean that He has anger against us, but that our sins do not allow God to shine in us, but unite us with demons tormentors. If then through prayers and acts of kindness we gain permission from our sins, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil that exists in us, we again become capable of tasting God’s goodness; so to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying: the sun is hidden from those deprived of sight.”
St. Isaac the Syrian: “It is inappropriate for anyone to think that sinners are deprived of God’s love in Gehenna. Love is given to everyone in general. But love with its power acts in two ways: it torments sinners and brings joy to those who have fulfilled their duty. And here, in my opinion, is the torment of Gehenna: it is repentance.”
“I say that those tormented in Gehenna are struck by the scourge of love! And how bitter and cruel is this torment of love! For those who feel that they have sinned against love endure torment greater than any torment that leads to fear; The sadness that strikes the heart for sin against love is more terrible than any possible punishment.”
Vasily Shukshin perfectly showed how love can torment in his famous film “Kalina Krasnaya”. When a “tied up” thief under a false name, hiding his eyes behind sunglasses, came to his mother, who had not seen him for more than twenty years. With his way of life, he simply betrayed her, doomed her to a miserable existence, to a hungry, lonely old age. And so, this son-thief, nicknamed “Grief,” suddenly saw that his mother still loved him no matter what, and that she would be immensely glad to meet and accept him even as he had become over decades of life as a thief and in the camps... And he couldn’t find the strength to open up. Shukshin's hero, sobbing loudly and gnawing the earth on a hillock under birch trees, is one of the most powerful scenes in our cinema. Here it is - crying and gnashing of teeth!
What will it be like for a sinner who has betrayed Christ with his sins all his life, after death to see and experience the all-forgiving love of the Savior, who endured so much suffering for him...
But, if sinners are together with the devil in hell, why don’t they support each other there?
It is no coincidence that the Apostle Paul calls Satan and the angels he seduced spirits of wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). Malice is the defining characteristic of these creatures. Christ calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). Over the thousands or millions of years that have passed since the moment he fell away from God, Satan has completely destroyed in himself all the grains of good that were in him before, and since then he has been all hatred and malice in their pure, unclouded form. He, of course, is not able to harm God Himself, and therefore he is gnawing at a passionate desire - to destroy God's creation and his crown - man.
It is very difficult to destroy what God has created, especially man created in the image of God. But Satan is inhumanly smart and cunning, so he does not act directly, but by deception. No wonder Christ calls him a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). The devil slanderes God to a person (this is precisely what the Greek word διάβολος means) and offers various tempting thoughts that at first glance may seem reasonable, kind, and fair. But the devil has only one goal - to bring a person to death, to force him to finally renounce God, to push him to the edge, beyond which there is an abyss, where there is no longer any way to escape.
To expect any support from the murderer Satan means to be cruelly and fatally deceived.
