Aug
16
Why Would a Good God Make a Bad Place Like Hell?
Last month, I shared a vignette from Part 1 of the “Rapid Fire” series published in Stand to Reason’s (STR) newsletter. (It was a follow-up to earlier posts in which I shared vignettes from Parts 4 & 5 in the series.) In this post, Greg Koukl clearly addresses another question (from Part 1) often posed by atheists and skeptics of various sorts, correcting faulty understanding and laying out proper rationale, but without going off on any of the typical tangents.
Even if this isn’t a particular question you have asked or that has been asked of you, I think you will benefit from Koukl’s response…
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“Why would a good God make a bad place like Hell?”
The simple answer to the question of why a good God would make a bad place like Hell is that it’s precisely because God is good that he made Hell. Further, Hell isn’t a bad place. It’s a good place.
I realize that sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true.
No good government allows guilty criminals to roam free. It locks them up in prison. Incarceration doesn’t just isolate felons, though, preventing them from harming law-abiding citizens. It also punishes them for the wrongs they’ve committed. Any government that didn’t sentence outlaws wouldn’t be good because it wouldn’t be just.
In the same way, God would not be good if he simply let evil people go free. When people are punished in God’s court, they get exactly what they deserve. The books of death are opened for all to see.[4] Every wrong anyone has ever committed is recorded there.
At that great white throne judgment, God dispenses perfect justice — punishment for everything a person has ever done wrong, and God misses nothing. Those whose names are written in the book of life, though, do not get punished since Jesus has taken their punishment for them. They receive perfect mercy — forgiveness for everything they’ve ever done wrong, and God misses nothing. Either Jesus pays, or we pay. That’s the calculus.
Hell, then, is a good place in the same way that prisons are good. It may not be subjectively good — it’s no fun going there — but it is objectively good because a good purpose is accomplished there: justice.
[4] See Revelation 20:12–13. I call them “the books of death” because they’re contrasted with the book of life, a record of all the redeemed.
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Obviously, much more could be explored regarding Christian theology of sin, Hell, eschatology, etc. And there is a measure of disagreement on certain specifics among some Christians that are “within the pale of orthodoxy.” But, I think Koukl did an excellent job here of getting to the heart of the issue raised and explaining it in a helpful and winsome way.
