You would have a lot of company if you decide to scrap the idea. I don’t think that would put you outside the spectrum of Christianity. But I cannot agree with the idea that hell and eternal conscious torment are not in the Bible. It is not only in the Bible but is particularly found in the teachings of Jesus.
As for me… I believe in hell because I see it in the world… but that has some pretty solid implications for the kind of hell I believe in.
- I do not believe in hell as something which God created or does to people, but only as something which people create and do to themselves. The former makes the gospel into something like the protection rackets of organized crime.
- I do not believe in heaven and hell as reward for our good deeds and punishment for our evil actions. I believe heaven and hell is entirely about how we deal with our sin… whether we repent and go through he painful process of removing them or we cling to our sins and thus allow them to destroy us. The rewards for our actions is another issue entirely which I don’t believe there is any escape from regardless of whether we are in heaven or hell.
- I find the vision of a fiery torture chamber somewhat lame – more cause for hilarity than fear. The hell I believe in is where we are consumed by our own sins, dragged into greater depravity and evil as our bad habits consume and destroy our freedom of will and everything of value within us.
- I believe that hell is our heart’s desire. If that sounds good to you, then I doubt you comprehend the depravity of the human heart. Heaven by contrast is God’s desire for us.
- Thus instead of bins where people are tossed, heaven and hell are a choice of two paths. Hell is the comfortable and easy path and it is heaven which is the painful and difficult one. I do not believe in purgatory because there are no people without sin. The place where we go through the painful process of removing the destructive habits of sin is the only heaven with human beings in it.
So what about ECT (eternal conscious torment)? That is what the teachings of Jesus imply and I see no reason to discount this. The choices we make are important choices not ones which have no ultimate impact on us, and which we can simply dodge later on. I think this is in the very nature of sin itself and the difference between good habits and bad habits. Good habits expand our awareness and choices while bad habits narrow our awareness and choices. The former open up an infinite universe of possibilities while latter only makes it more and more difficult to do anything else. Thus while I see no reason to discount the eternal torment Jesus described, I do think it is possible that our consciousness of this state/experience may be one which diminishes over time.