Anonymous Asks (320)

“Is hell a literal lake of fire?”

For the average reader with limited Bible exposure, it’s probably useful to distinguish between hades, which is a holding place for the human dead prior to the final judgment, and hell [γέεννα, sometimes pronounced gehenna], also called the lake of fire, the final destination of the wicked dead, the place of permanent separation from God. Hell was not created for mankind at all, but for the devil and his angels. After man’s final judgment, death and hades will be thrown into the lake of fire for all eternity. This is called the “second death”.

So what should we picture when we speak of this second death. Is it a literal lake of fire? Some people think so, and perhaps they are correct. I believe it’s a metaphor. As with so many other spiritual realities, our minds, vocabularies, experiences and senses are not adequate to process them, so the Lord speaks to us about them with imagery we can understand.

The image of a lake of fire is full of contradictions. A lake is wet. Fire is the furthest thing from wet. The eternal destiny of the wicked is also called a “furnace”. A furnace is not a lake. Fire is bright, and one of its appealing qualities in this world is that it allows us to see. And yet, three times in the parables of Matthew, hell is depicted as the “outer darkness”. Darkness is when you can’t see at all. Fire consumes. Eternal fire does not. The torments of the wicked dead never end.

To say that something is metaphorical rather than literal is not in any way to reduce its intensity or horror. It’s simply acknowledging that things are said about hell in the scriptures that are mutually contradictory … unless we understand each of them to be pictures of different aspects of eternal torment and separation from God rather than literal descriptions of a location.

What can we understand from the various images of hell with which we are presented? Hell is like a lake in that there is no part of a swimmer with which the lake is not in contact, and therefore no part of the human consciousness that remains untouched by its torments. Hell is like fire in that it is agonizing and produces thirst that can never be quenched. Hell is like outer darkness in that there is no hope, no understanding, no enlightenment, no joy. It is a place of distance, separation and exclusion from everything good and everything that matters. Hell is like a furnace in that it is a place you throw things for which you have no other use. Hell is like death in that it is final. It is the ending that never ends.

In a lake of fire, there are no rulers and no ruled. All alike are frantically, relentlessly, miserably alone.