Long Knives & Buried Alive

I warned y'all that I was going to write something controversial in the next few days... well, this isn't it.

Now, you may or may not be one of those people who believe in hell... I'm not going to fight with you about it today. (Interestingly enough, a Barna survey from 2003 says that roughly 76% of Americans believe in a heaven & 71% believe in a hell - that is, of course, separate of trying to define those terms.) But I do want to give you a couple of things to think about - courtesy of a hippie guy who teaches people how to play...

You know the Jewish story about the difference between heaven and hell? The Rabbi goes down to Hell, and what does he see? The damned, standing in front of a great banquet table, each standing with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other and their arms tied to a long stick so they can't bend them enough to get the food to their mouths. "This is a helluva place" thinks the Rabbi. So he goes to heaven. And what does he see? The saved, standing in front of a great banquet table, each standing with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other and their arms tied to a long stick so they can't bend them enough to get the food to their mouths, feeding each other. (deepfun.com)

...and another from the prolific pen of a scholar of medieval literature.

About Hell. All I have ever said is that the New Testament plainly implies the possibility of some being finally left in "the outer darkness." Whether this means (horror of horror) being left to a purely mental existence, left with nothing at all but one's evny, prurience, resentment, loneliness & self conceit, or whether there is still some sort of environment, something you could call a world or a reality, I would never pretend to know. But I wouldn't put the question in the form "do I believe in an actual Hell." One's own mind is actual enough. If it doesn't seem fully actual now that is because you can always escape from it a bit into the physical world - look out of the window, smoke a cigarette, go to sleep. But when there is nothing for you but your own mind (no body to go to sleep, no books or landscape, nor sounds, no drugs) it will be as actual as - as - well, as a coffin is actual to a man buried alive. (The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves)

Heck, I like Clive Staples so much (did any of the rest of my blog readers spot the Lost character named for him this season?!), I'll give him the last word.

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. (The Problem of Pain)