I’ll admit, though I accept Church teaching on Hell, I am troubled by the idea that God deliberately enacts punishment on the damned, beyond allowing them to suffer the consequences of their choices. Purgatory I fully understand as a process initiated by God to make us ready for Heaven, but the punishment of Hell has no end or goal and does not seem to be justice in any form understandable to us. That is why I like the Eastern notion that Heaven and Hell (and the cleansing we in the West call Purgatory) are the same, inevitable experience of God’s unveiled presence, differing based of the willingness of each soul to receive it rather than on anything God is deliberately doing. Of Western views of Hell, I prefer the metaphor of the gates being “locked from the inside” – that God would save all the damned and even the demons if they would permit it, but their wills remain fixed against Him. The Jack Chick image of a soul realizing all its mistakes and wanting another chance, only to be met with a “Too late” from God and a quick trip into the flames, does not sit right with me … yet obviously Scripture and Tradition do not allow me to reject the existence of Hell or the real possibility of human damnation.
It is what the Church calls a consequence of the gift free will (well, technically, mortal sin is).
Hell is first and foremost, the eternal separation from God. No more, no less. In our fallen state, hell is our “default” destination.
Now the things about fire, worms, torment, etc. are all imagery to help drive home the reality of hell, but because hell is an eternal state, these cannot necessarily be taken as literal fire, worms, etc. But they are there to drive home the reality of the pain and torment of hell.
The pain of hell is real because man is not meant to live apart from God. Therefore, deprived of this final eternal destiny, the damned will endure a pain like nothing he has ever experienced, a never-ending despair in the knowledge that he will never, ever be fulfilled. This is called the pain of loss, and is a definitive teaching. It will be worse than any pain, physical or emotional you have ever experienced on earth. It is not something you should wish or pray for on your worst enemy.
Also included is the pain of sense. This is taught to be the “fire” of which we speak, but hell not being a physical place, this fire is not the same fire of the natural world. It is a necessary component of divine justice, as sin must be punished. Therefore, the degree of the pain of sense varies with the seriousness of the guilt on the soul.
Chick’s depiction is a joke, a caricature of what the Bible and the Church really teaches. But it cannot be denied. In his goodness, God made man immortal and with free will so that man can choose God and share in his divine life. He could not have it any other way, because sanctifying grace is love, and one cannot love without free will. This free will therefore allows man to choose the opposite, and as such, hell has to necessarily exist.
I would not state this as Church teaching or anything, but I could probably put it this way: Hell was created the moment God created free will.
