WHAT IS HELL? Welcome to Hell One: "The Folklore Hell"

By F. Ellsworth Lockwood
November 3, 2007

Welcome to "The Folklore Hell" ("Hell Part One," in which a liberal amateur proposes to poke around to see what is inside the literalistic hell)

Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. (Isaiah 5:14)


Allow me to start off this series of biblical studies with the present popular (Protestant) version of Hell which is something like the following: When one dies he goes to either one of two places, Heaven or Hell. Hell is a place of torment where people are tortured forever and forever, usually without respect for the nature of their sins. One sin is as bad as every other sin, because God's standard is perfection. All have sinned, and so those who do not avail themselves of the Name of Jesus Christ, have no excuse. They deserve this punishment. It is the just reward of the unjust. The original sin of the first human being, Adam, is all it takes to send you to this place, which is ruled by Satan and populated with his minions. People cry out day and night in their torments, seething in literal flames and writhing in pain, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth throughout eternity, underworld without end, Amen and Amen.

I suspect that most Christians have no idea of how the notion of Hell has grown over the centuries. Most religious folks probably realize that the devil does not wear a red suit, however, few are aware that the prevailing, current "Christian" view of Hell described above is no more scriptural than any Halloween-costume version. Because of the general confusion concerning the biblical Hell of Christianity, I propose to write a five part synopsis of what I have learned from the Bible, over last 40-some years, concerning Hell.

As a child I knew about Hell before I ever leaned about Heaven. My father was not a cussing man, certainly not a blasphemer, but Hell was in his vocabulary. Frequently, long before I heard of heaven. In fact, if my mother spoke of heaven, it was in the form of, “Heavens to Betsy!” exclaimed in the face of some absurd bit of information that came her way. “The goat is out of the pasture? Heavens to Betsy don’t just stand there, go catch her!” That kind of thing.

Hell was a man’s word. It was something Dad said right in front of God and everybody, or so it seemed to me. Except for my mother. Dad seldom used profanity in her presence. If he did, you knew he was really mad or upset about something.

I remember one morning my dad and I got up at 3 a.m., left along with Dad’s friend Stanley Antonelli while it was still dark; we had planned to catch the early morning tide, as you had to have a really low tide to “fish” for abalone near the little town of Davenport, California. It was pitch dark and my dad and his friend Stanley brought along thermoses of hot coffee. They gave me coffee to drink, which made me feel like a real man. But then one of them used the word “Hell” and after a bit the other one used that word too, and I was feeling kind of giddy then, not so comfortable, because we were driving and going out in the ocean where anything could happen, and I was afraid that God would strike us dead. I wished they would not mention Hell under those circumstances. I was afraid.

I was not alone. Millions of people around the world, including here in the United States, fear hell. Fear the threats of an angry God who has a special place all heated up for them in case they misbehave. I could easily imagine God frying us all real good too. My dad loved me, and yet there were times when I thought he might kill me if I did something naughty. His spankings were frequent and they were hard, and sometimes, once he started spanking, his eyes would glaze over and he seemed like a crazed animal. I did not think he was in his right mind -- it was as if he had turned into a different man, a stranger with malice of intent.

My dad did not seem to know his own strength. He was so strong that he would have us kids pile on his back and then he would do push ups, just for fun. He never counted them, like a lot of people do. I once asked him how many push ups he could do and he looked puzzled. “I don’t know, “he said. “I suppose I could do them all day. It’s just kind of like walking, you know.”
He was strong. As a teenager he was in Conservation Corps. To build the stone bridges for which they became famous, the boys in the CC had to roll rocks up the front of their bodies and put them in the beds of pickup trucks. Every Sunday, and most nights before falling asleep, we began prayers with “Our father which art in heaven,.” That was not necessarily a comforting phrase, however. Given my father’s rage, what harm might be done by a crazed, omnipotent God who was a “Heavenly Father“? I fretted about life, death, and the afterlife.

One Halloween evening, as we were putting on our costumes, I asked my dad, “Do you believe in a real Devil?” Yes, he did, he said. “I believe in the Devil, I think he wears a red suit, and I think that the fire is hot!”

And with that introduction, I dedicate this paper to the memory of my dad.

For more on the topic of "hell,: see the post on Sheol: http://peddlersack-religion.blogspot.com/2007/11/hell-enlarged-word-study-of-hot-place_05.html