HEAVEN AND HELL
Is everybody finally going to be all right? Are all people ultimately going to be free
from misery and all their needs fulfilled?
Yes and no!
Yes, because God wants to bring us home into God's Kingdom. No, because nothing happens without our
choosing it. The realization of the Kingdom of God is God's work, but for God to make God's love fully
visible in us, we must respond to God's love with our own love.
There are two kinds of death: a death leading us into God's Kingdom, and a death leading us into hell. . . .
We must choose for God if we want to be with God.
THE GOOD NEWS OF HELL
Is there a hell?
The concepts of heaven and hell are as intimately connected as those of good and evil. When we are
free to do good, we are also free to do evil; when we can say yes to God's love, the possibility of
saying no also exists. Consequently, when there is heaven there must also be hell.
All these distinctions are made to safeguard the mystery that God wants to be loved by us
in freedom. In this sense, strange as it may sound, the idea of hell is good news. Human beings are not
robots or automatons who have no choices and who, whatever they do in life, end up in God's Kingdom.
No, God loves us so much that God wants to be loved by us in return. And love cannot be forced;
it has to be freely given. Hell is the bitter fruit of a final no to God.
THE FREEDOM TO REFUSE LOVE
Often hell is portrayed as a place of punishment and heaven as a place of reward. But this concept
easily leads us to think about God as either a policeman, who tries to catch us when we make a mistake
and send us to prison when our mistakes become too big, or a Santa Claus, who counts up all our good
deeds and puts rewards in our stockings at the end of the year. God, however, is neither a policeman nor
a Santa Claus.
God does not send us to heaven or hell depending on how often we obey or disobey. God is love and
only love. In God there is no hatred, desire for revenge, or pleasure in seeing us punished. God wants
to forgive, heal, restore, show us endless mercy, and see us come home.
But just as the father of the prodigal son let his son make his own decision, God gives us the
freedom to refuse God's love, even at the risk of destroying ourselves. Hell is not God's choice. It is ours.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Bread for the Journey
