Hell: Perspective and Eternity

Well, I'm a bit late getting to this topic, but it is one I have spent some time thinking about and it was discussed a bit over last Easter Weekend, so I thought I'd spend a little time opining. On the episode that aired Friday before Easter, Chris Matthew's Hardball apparently convened a roundtable to discuss whether or not "Hell" exists. As Digby pointed out over at her blog, this is an extremely silly topic for a "news program" to spend time debating, but there you are.

Then, on Easter Sunday, The New York Times ran a column by Ross Douthat arguing - as I understood it -- not only that Hell exists, but that Hell must exist because if there were no possibility of error, no potential for humans to be punished for making the wrong choices, then human endeavor would have less meaning: "If there's no possibility of saying no to Paradise then none of our no's have any real meaning either. They're like home runs or strikeouts in a children's game where nobody's keeping score."

This type of reasoning underscores how difficult it is for us humans to tell ourselves narratives that are not inherently solipsistic. We have virtually no capacity to view Life, the Universe, or Anything other than on our limited scale, and that leads to some pretty skewed thinking.