Who’s Going to Hell?
Newsweek reports on an interesting online survey conducted by Beliefnet about beliefs in hell:
Conservatives are more confident than liberals that they’ll avoid hell—and that they know someone who won’t. Liberals are less confident about their own chances of escaping hell and less sure they can identify the damned. These are a few results from an unusual online survey Beliefnet conducted this month among 10,000 of its members….
Do you know the doomed? 61% of men said they knew some hellbound folks, compared with 54% of women. (It’s unclear whether the results show that men are more judgmental, better judges of character or hang out with more evil people.) Most people said the doomed are “acquaintances,” but almost 25% said the hellbound are members of their own families. Women were more likely to consign family members to hell, quite possibly because they spend more time with the family. And why are these people going to fry? The answers reflect one of the oldest theological debates: which matters more, faith or good works? For instance, 60% of born-again Christians (almost all of them Protestants) said the unfortunates didn’t have the “right beliefs,” compared with just 19% of Catholics who said that. 80% of Catholics said it was because of the person’s immoral actions, compared with 40% of born-agains. The same split persisted politically: liberals said damnation was determined by bad behavior; conservatives, by a smaller majority, thought beliefs mattered most.
Most interesting finding? That those who believed that their family members were headed to hell were more likely to see hell as a place of fiery torment….
I make it a preactice never to respond to surveys of opinion. If everyone did we would not have speculate about what the answers mean.
When I get there–hell, that is–I hope it isn’t too crowded in the liberal, Catholic, male wrong-beliefs wing. I know for sure, though, that I’ll have plenty of family members to talk to.
I believe that there will be justice especially for the terribly cruel people now and throughout history.
On the other hand, I believe in a merciful God for whom mercy is more important than sacrifice or anything else.
Hey, I’m double-damned!
My Baptist sister-in-law says I’m a good person but I’m going to “fry in hell” because a) I’m a Catholic and Catholics don’t have the personal relationship with Jesus Christ necessary for salvation and b) I made my husband and son “turn Catholic,” so now their damnation is on my head.
I’m told to go to hell almost daily by somebody in or outside my family, but that’s a whole other deal.
Here’s a link to the place where John Paul II spoke of hell, upsetting a good number of people (Protestants included) by saying that hell is not a place.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_28071999_en.html
I wonder if the poll-takers had his notion of hell in mind.
I note this sentence: “Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it.” Notice that “whether”: we do not know whether human beings are effectively involved in it.” This resembles the position of Hans Urs von Balthasar who wrote a book arguing that we are permitted to hope that there is no one in hell.
I told my students that they shouldn’t on this grounds become presumptuous: one wouldn’t want to be the first person to go to hell!
Great line!
At the end of John Paul’s talk when it came for his ‘special words to English speaking people in the audience—he might have said “there might be hell for you guys.’
I was starting to praise Karol W and out of nowhere, he quotes the Fourth Lateran Council.
At any rate, it does show that many things in Rome are arbitrary.
There seems to be something about the idea of Hell that impels many of us to get nervously jokey. I notice that in some degree or other most respondents here have taken this tack. Could it be that some of those polled by Beliefnet might have replied in a similar vein? Might explain at least some of those relations condemned to the fiery pit. . . .
Random thoughts on hell:
A friend of mine in the Orthodox tradition said hell is walking around heaven for all eternity in the knowledge that you don’t deserve to be there. It’s an interesting image–being in the place of ultimate joy and feeling nothing but despair. But it goes along with the Catholic notion expressed by Pope John Paul II, that the individual ultimately chooses hell.
I thought it was interesting that Pope John Paul II talked about “improper” interpretation of the descriptions of hell from Scripture. My sister-in-law would take that as more evidence that Catholics don’t believe in the literal truth of the Bible and are, ergo, doomed to fry.
How come Dante’s book is called the “Inferno,” when the last, worst ring of hell is a frozen lake?
And to what extent have Dante’s “Inferno” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” influenced (and distorted) our notions of hell?
Ah, one I think I can answer — Dante speaks of “Inferno” because the root meaning is positional — at the bottom, down below. The heat came later, as pictures of hell developed.
And does anyone know when the heat was added? It’s not there in the classical images that Dante, etc., built on. (I hope!)
In the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), the rich man is described as “in agony in this fire.” And there are other places where Jesus speaks of “hellfire,” and the Book of Revelation speaks of the “fiery lake,” or lake of fire.