Bible Question:
Hi Jeff, Your response,trying to be helpful is appreciated.Though Tim's past post is eleborate but it does not quite provide direct answears to my question.I had to be content with it because I now know that there is no specific scriptural answear. As stated by Tim:"There is no specfic mention in scripture of when and why hell was created." To my knowledge, no one has asked a similar compound question so far. Once again, your response is appreciated. FytRobert |
Bible Answer: Dear Robert, Although scriptures do not explicitly say when, by whom and why is hell created, I believe the below citation from C.S. Lewis’ and Tim Keller’s (his echo with the thought of Lewis’) should worth us ponder. “Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse – so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be. And immortality makes this other difference, which, by the by, has a connection with the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is ever-lasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.” --- C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) ******* C. S. Lewis's depictions of hell are important for postmodern people. In The Great Divorce, Lewis describes a busload of people from hell who come to the outskirts of heaven. There they are urged to leave behind the sins that have trapped them in hell. The descriptions Lewis makes of people in hell are so striking because we recognize the denial and self-delusion of substance addictions. When addicted to alcohol, we are miserable, but we blame others and pity ourselves; we do not take responsibility for our behavior nor see the roots of our problem. Lewis writes, "Hell … begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps even criticizing it…. You can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine." --- Tim Keller (Preaching Hell in a Tolerant Age - Brimstone for the broad-minded) Source: http://www.dbu.edu/jeanhumphreys/DeathDying/preachinghell.htm ***** Shalom Azure |