Every time I hear someone use the expression, "a special place in hell", I cringe a little inside.
We use it in reference to someone who we believe is particularly deplorable; someone who has done something that we can't possible imagine. Surely, this person is worse than we are. Surely, out of all the bad people, this one deserves more punishment than the rest. Surely, if God is going to subject anyone to an eternity of torture, this one here deserves it more than the rest. So much, in fact, that they must be given a special place. Like a back room. Where extra torture happens.
Unfortunately, I think the statement says more about us than it does about the person that we're referencing. At very least, it reveals a lot about what we believe. For one, it reveals that we believe, in some sense, that there are universal standards of right and wrong. We don't exact this type of judgment on just anyone; we reserve it for those people who have done something that we fairly assume will universally be condemned. Of course, there is also the self-righteousness of the whole thing. Clearly we believe that we have a higher moral or ethical standing than the person we have condemned to the back room. Finally, it reveals our complete misunderstanding of who God is, what he's up to these days, and what hell actually is.
Out of the three, it is only the first one that is at least mildly constructive. We live in a day and age when we are increasingly embracing the idea that there are no universal absolutes; indeed, all morality or ethics are relative to the culture that we live in. In other words, something we consider deplorable might be perfectly acceptable in another culture; and thus, a person practicing those acts cannot be considered "evil" or "wrong" so long as they are operating according to the morality or ethics subscribed to by their culture. Most people don't live with this philosophy for very long before they realize the major pitfalls and ethical dilemmas that it raises. (For example: bombing innocent people. Maybe we are the only ones who think they are innocent. Maybe someone else thinks they are guilty. It's all relative, isn't it?) The failures of cultural relativism become clear in light of particularly deplorable acts, and we acknowledge it with statements like "a special place in hell". To that end, it is constructive. But it is only the beginning of the unraveling.
The second problem immediately arises when we consider that somehow we are morally or ethically superior to someone else. By what standard? If it cannot be a cultural standard, and there are absolutes that we inherently acknowledge, then what is the basis for those absolutes? Who gets to create those absolutes? Who enforces the absolutes? And how do we know what they are?
This is the great question that will come home to bear on our culture. As Christians, I believe we must be prepared with an answer. So often we have resorted to simplistic responses–"just believe in Jesus", "Just invite Jesus into your heart"–and have failed to address the very real and deep questions faced by humanity. But Christianity is nothing if it cannot address the deep, spiritual questions that each of us, as spiritual creatures, carry within us like a constant reminder of a life once lived.
When my philosophies have proved to be a failure; when my resources have not provided me what I am looking for; when my success has not made me feel any more important; when my pursuits have not provided me love; when, in the end, I am still unhappy, where do I turn? We can mute the questions for a time, but we cannot ultimately ignore them. At some point, even if for a moment, they return to the surface and beg to be answered.
Christianity provides an answer. There is an absolute, and it was created and established by the God of the Universe. But this God is not a dictator who creates the absolute for his own enjoyment; he is a Father who creates the world a certain way for his children's enjoyment. And the absolute are not rules, per se. Not as we think about rules. They are simply the way things are. God is perfect and good and holy and beautiful, and anything that is not perfectly in harmony with goodness or holiness or beauty simply cannot exist. It cannot be one with the Father. So long as we are in perfect harmony with all that God is by his very nature, we exist in perfect joy. This is the description of how things were upposed to be.
It is that very union that was broken. Broken, as the Bible says, by representatives of the human race. Instead of living in the perfect unity that we had with the Father, we instead opted out; we chose our own way. Something else looked to be more beautiful and more good; but when we experienced it, we realized that we had been deceived. The promise of a greater beauty or a greater good was a lie; it could never exist; it could never deliver what it promised.
The result of this broken unity is disunity. It's disordered living. It's a disruption in the way that things were intended to be. Rather than harmony, we have chaos. Rather than goodness and beauty, we see evil and ugliness. Everything that was, the way things were really intended to be, was broken. And worse, imperfection can never achieve perfection again. Even if it could to some extent, it would carry around the memory of it's brokenness. Perfection will require outside intervention.
All of this explains how things are. Yes, there is disruption in the universe. Yes, there are absolutes. Yes, there is evil. Yes, there is brokenness. We see it, experience it, and all to often, know it in an intimate way either as the perpetrator or the victim. Most of the time, we are a combination of both. Our feet are firmly planted in how things are; firmly rooted in rebellion against how things were supposed to be.
So there is no morally superior ground. Imperfect is imperfect. One flaw or many. In broad categories, the label reads the same: damaged goods. And we have been experiencing the penalty ever since: separation from our Father. In short, we have been experiencing the precursor to hell.
Whatever else Hell is, it begins with this: complete and utter separation from God. The natural outcome of the divorce from his perfection, goodness, and holiness. Complete brokenness. There are no "special places" in hell. Everyone suffers the same fate. There is no worse thing imaginable than complete separation from our source of life. It couldn't get worse even if we wanted it to.
But the good news is that there is a way home; there is another representative who did for us what we were always supposed to do, but couldn't. Another representative who bore the penalty of our rebellion, and suffered Hell on our behalf. Another representative who chose not to opt-out of God's goodness, but rather, chose to endure extreme pain and ultimately separation so that you and I could opt back in. That representative, of course, is Jesus. And because of his sacrifice, as your representative, God judges you based on him. So when God sees you, he sees perfection. You are united with him again. The way things were supposed to be has come again, and you can have it.
Imagine that the memory of the life once lived was a memory of pure joy; you know you had it once, and you have been struggling to find it again ever since. Jesus is the pathway home.
So back to the original impetus for this thought: a special place in hell.
There is no special place in hell. None of us are superior to anyone else and in fact, what we deserve is, across the board, exactly the same: we deserve total and complete separation from God because this is what we chose, it's what we choose, and it's what we will continue to choose for as long as we have breath. We will choose our own way. The path where we get to decide what's best. There's only a back room in hell reserved for the worst of us if it's big enough to hold all of us.
But there is a special place in heaven reserved for Jesus. And the good news is that it actually is big enough to hold all of us. But we only get in with Him. When we go to Jesus house with him, his Father adopts us as his kids and gives us a room.
Jesus is not interested in condemning people to hell; he is supremely interested in inviting them to heaven. The great and beautiful message of the Gospel is that he has already secured the pathway and ensured a safe passage for all who put their confidence in Him.