It has become a commonplace notion — indeed a vast improvement over the barbarous images and vengeful imaginations of the past — that those who go to hell choose it. The infamous quotation from Milton via Star Trek — “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” – is often adduced in support of this idea. Satan chose hell because he refused to go where God reigned — heaven.
In reality, though, I think nobody chooses hell. Instead, they choose themselves. They choose their own way. They desire to be master of all they survey.
I had taken to calling this impulse by Nietzsche’s phrase: “will to power.” However, I think it not so much a will to power as a will to self. And as such it is imbued with irony.
For example, if we consider the reality of Satan’s statement above, we see that if we take that route we do not reign at all. The Bible tells us that sin and death will reign over us; on the contrary it is those who receive grace and the gift of righteousness who “reign in life” through Jesus.
In another irony, Satan offers Eve the possibility of “be[ing] like God, knowing good and evil.” The irony lies in the fact that Adam and Eve were made “in the image and likeness of God”. In other words, Satan tempted Eve by offering her something she already had.
In fact, our biggest problem is not that we want too much from God, but that we do not recognize and receive what he has already given us. Paul says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Dare we put limits on that? Are we not destined to become the Bride of Christ and the fullness of Him who fills all in all?
The real problem is not that we want too much. It is that we want only one thing: ourselves. Augustine coined the phrase incurvatus in se to describe a soul that has turned inward on itself. Here I find myself gripped by the image of a collapsing star which becomes a “black hole.” A star that has too much mass, when it stops producing energy, will collapse under the force of gravity to what is called a “singularity.” While it is not really possible to say what is going on here, a singularity in theory is a point-sized (i.e. zero-sized) place where the entire mass of the star is concentrated. Because there was no force that could stop it from collapsing, it essentially collapsed to nothing.
Of course this is not a perfect analogy. There are subtleties like Hawking radiation and the like that counter the image of a star collapsing into nothingness. But on the other hand, if a soul has no mass, why should it not be, from the outside, completely indistinguishable from nothingness? Perhaps in this state nothing can get out—because the soul is completely focused on itself—and nothing can get in because nothing can find the soul. Note that we often describe such souls as “lost.” Perhaps this is literally true—nobody can find the soul because it has no actual place any more. By focusing on itself, the soul has collapsed into nothingness.
I believe that the experience of hell is on a continuum with the experiences of the soul in this life. By this I mean that no experience of hell will be really foreign to someone who suffers the tragedy of finally getting there. While there will probably be no physical pain, the worst, most inescapable pains are those we carry inside us—relational pain. Feelings of rejection and abandonment, with nothing to mitigate them, will (possibly) become the entirety of the experience of the lost soul. Weeping (grief) and gnashing of teeth (rage) are the terms the Bible uses to express this state.
All this implies that the cure for hell is to look outside yourself. This is why the two commandments on which everything else depends are “love God” and “love your neighbor.” Love, the offer of yourself to another for their sake, is the cure for incurvatus in se.
To choose yourself, and ultimately collapse in on yourself, or to look outward at the infinity of God and others: these are the alternatives. Please do the latter. I’d like to be able to look you up some day.