Separation

We all want bad things to happen to bad people. It's that schadenfreude that drives our criminal justice system, our personal interactions, and a lot of our theology. We like punishments that fit crimes, which is why ,"an eye for an eye," sounds so appealing. And conversely, we tend to get quite annoyed when non-bad or even good things happen to bad people.  It doesn't seem fair.

We also like good things to happen to good people; despite impressions to the contrary, most of us are basically good people, if stupid and weak-willed, and we have fellow human feeling for others even if we can't make use of it much of the time. So we like it when the reward fits the goodness, although we seem less concerned about that than that the punishment fit the crime, possibly because Hammurabi never put in the part about, "a sweet chocolate candy for a friendly pat on the back."  And we really dislike when bad things happen to good people (although we're less willing to make up for the bad things by sharing some of our own good things) because we all like to think of ourselves as basically good and thus we don't want bad things to happen to ourselves.

And we like things to be clear-cut; actions should be good or bad, punishments should neatly fit crimes, rewards should only come to those who deserve them, and life should be fair. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that life is fair and what we want is a bias in the direction of us; that actions are seldom clear-cut, that philosophers will argue forever about morals, motivation, and action, and that most crimes don't present a clear-cut "eye" to take out as punishment, not to mention the fact that taking out the eye doesn't exactly give the victim anything, but rather leaves the state with two half-blind people rather than one.

So when a somewhat bad thing happens to a somewhat bad person, we don't pay much attention because that's complicated and difficult to figure out if the badness of the person deserved the badness of the outcome. And when bad things happen, we look for the evil that must have brought them about in the victims, hence victim-blaming. If we can find something in the victims that is bad, then they weren't like us and we're safe.

And this is why we like Hell.  Sometimes we get deeply into the minutiae of Hell and start ranking people. We like to imagine that it goes something like, "Okay, so on a scale from 1 to Hitler, you rank a 3.7, so you get to have your genitals continually gnawed off by fire ants. You, you're a 5. Big man. Anyway, you'll be heading to the lake of burning excrement." You have to hear the voice in your head; it doesn't work otherwise. But that's subjective, and whether you rank 2 or 7 or 100 (officially known as a milli-Hitler) you're going to wind up somewhere in Hell, writhing about in agony for eternity, with some unpleasant thing, possibly ironic (in a certain sense of the word), happening to your nether regions. It's comforting to think that, even if they don't get their just desserts in this life, bad people will get it good in the next.

We're really nasty assholes.  Essentially good, but also essentially nasty, vindictive assholes.  That's the human condition.

But if you start to really think about it, how can punishment for eternity work? And is it really just as bad to eat meat on Friday as it is to rape children? Wouldn't you get used to it after a while?

If I believed in Hell (I don't, really, but more on that later) I would scoff at these puny descriptions. Hell can't be anything imaginable because anything imaginable isn't bad enough. Putting a human frame of reference on Hell makes it not Hell.  Sure, it might sound bad to have the afore-mentioned fire ants gnawing away, but over the course of eternity, if pain still works the way it does on earth, you're going to get used to it. Over the course of eternity, you're going to get used to anything, and, in fact, everything. Eternity is infinity, and in infinity there's enough to have infinite amounts all of which are infinity. It's a crazy thing like that.

There have been plenty of excellent arguments about the non-existence of a Hell as some people believe, even taking into account a Hell beyond human perception which could be infinitely awful forever. My favorite is simply, "I don't want to believe in a God who would send someone to Hell." And that's true. If God is infinitely loving, how can God send souls to Hell eternally?

But while I don't believe in Dante's Inferno (surprisingly, not a book of the Bible, though you might be excused for thinking so) or even some form of eternal punishment, I do believe that something unpleasant can happen to you after you die, if anything at all happens to you after you die (about which I'm uncertain, and that doesn't necessarily mean I don't believe in God or Gods).  I don't believe in punishment or punishments fitting the crime, because punishments fitting the crime just leaves two people punished. If God was interested in "an eye for an eye," (surprisingly, also not in the Bible, although again you might be forgiven for thinking that Hammurabi was a disciple) then God would take the victomizer's eye and give it to the victim as a new eye. God doesn't seem to work that way, plus again, punishment of that kind doesn't really fit in with my idea of the divine.

There is a Hell, though. And it's why any conception of Hell would work; not because of the ants and the tender areas, but because of one thing; if you're in Hell, God isn't there. You don't have to call that lack of God Hell; you can call it whatever you'd like. You can even remove God from the equation and talk about the Ur-Being, the Oversoul, the Ideal, the Dao, whatever. You can believe that life is this state. You can believe that you keep being returned to life to try to make it out, or you can believe you get one shot. But there is a a state of being with God, and a state of not being with God, and my Hell is the latter.

God doesn't send us to Hell. We send ourselves there. God is waiting, wishing that we would just turn around, just look out from ourselves, feel that love, that oneness. But many of us don't. And nothing is going to stop us from an eternity of Gold Cities in the Sky where only our sort of people are allowed, where there's a big man with a long white beard and Magic Jesus and there's nothing dirty or ugly or unpleasant. And we spend so much time waiting for that, that maybe we get it, and we fly around on angel wings, and many of us are probably bad enough people that we don't care that God isn't there.

"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

If Jesus is right, being with God is going to involve a lot of hungry, thirsty, naked, sick strangers, probably tax collectors and lepers. You don't want to be there. Go ahead, stay in your Flying Golden Cloud City with the clean people, the right-thinking people. Stay comfortable. Get your solid gold Cadillac, your harem of beautiful houris, your endless bacchanal. Hang out with Magic Jesus and Old Man Jehovah and let them tell you over and over again just how right you were and are.

You think you know what God is and what God looks like. You've followed the Dao and you were sure it was the Dao, so it must have been the Dao because you made sure. You win at life!

And maybe, one day, we'll realize where we are, and what's missing. And we'll run around looking for "the least of these." And depending on how I'm feeling on any particular day, I may or may not believe that God will let us find each other, and find God. And we'll leave our empty golden cities behind.