Cade Bau-Madsen

Hell, The Eternal Timeout

Punishment is among the first things we encounter as people. Whether it was taking a time out and sitting on a step or deprivation of dessert, we quickly learn that what we do can put us in uncomfortable places. It is clear then why children seem to adopt the idea of hell so easily. What’s so complicated about a long term time out? This idea of hell however, is too simplistic and prompts some questions. For one thing, nobody enjoys timeouts, so nobody enjoys hell, right? Also if hell is one big time out, once you’ve served your time and stopped loving evil, shouldn’t you be able to leave? It will become clear that these questions are formed of misconceptions and that the reality and residence of hell is eternal. If we wish to understand the permanence of hell, we must first understand the process of getting there.

When a spirit has spent their time in the world of spirits and is now ready to move on to either Heaven or hell, they must go through one of two processes, vastation or devastation. If they will become a hellish spirit in hell they will go through devastation. Devastation is described in AC 7947 as the privation of everything good and true. This means that whatever truth they still clung to in life, and whatever good remained in their heart is ripped out of them like a band-aid off of a scraped knee. Devastation is necessary because if that good and truth remained in one in hell it would cause immense discomfort and something like suffocation in the atmosphere of hell. At first glance this may seem almost like a violation of free will, that one's affections are torn away from them against their will. However the writings make it very clear that this is not the case because they devastate themselves. As is explained in The Arcana: “also that the evil devastate themselves, and cast themselves into damnation and hell by endeavoring to destroy what is good and true.” (AC 8875) It is their own tendencies toward evil that cause them to devastate themselves. It only appears to them that they are devastated by the Divine, but this is only an appearance, as is clear from AC 8282;

“They are not called ‘enemies,’ ‘foes,’ and ‘haters,’ because the Lord is an enemy, or bears hatred to them, but because they are haters and enemies against the Divine; yet when they devastate themselves, and cast themselves into damnation and into hell, it appears as if this comes from the Divine.” (AC 8282) To enter hell one must be stripped of all remaining good and truth. From this, the eternity of hell is partially revealed in that everyone in hell is barren of good and truth, and therefore has no agency or, more importantly desire to leave hell. To even have a desire to leave hell one would require a love of heavenly things which are composed entirely of good and truth.

The Writings state time and time again that love is the essence of life, and that what a person loves decides their placement in Heaven or hell. That is to say one is placed in the spiritual world with those who have similar loves to oneself. In hell this means, for example, that every person that delights in corrupting innocence and has made this their ruling love is placed in a single community. As is explained in the LJC 21; the Lord is divine love itself, so He arranges the communities according to the love that they receive from him. In those communities in hell those loves are hellish and evil. Because they are arranged this way every person after death goes to join the community answering to their love, and he cannot go anywhere else because of the opposing force of their love. From this we learn that evil spirits are restrained from leaving their communities because of the forces of their love, but in truth there are a myriad of reasons why evil spirits cannot leave their communities. For instance the nature of evil is to attack good, and in fact the hells are in constant attack of the Heavens. If evil spirits were not confined to their communities they would descend on the Heavens and attempt to make it hell. From the Arcana; “Unless wickedness was removed from wicked people by punishment, they would have to be kept in some hell forever. Otherwise they would infest communities of good people and inflict violence on the system of order established by the Lord, which ensures the welfare of the universe.” (AC 967) Therefore the laws of the spiritual world make it so that they are unable to leave their communities and even that the presence of those with different loves is suffocating; “that one can live only with people who possess a similar love, and that if someone enters the company of others than those, he cannot breathe the breath of his own life.” DP 338 therefore in order for anyone to avoid the eternal nature of hell they would need to change their ruling love. This is not possible as is explained in NJHD 239; “A man's life cannot be changed after death... and an infernal love can never be transformed into a heavenly love, because they are opposites.” Here we see the eternity of hell begin to come together. A person is placed in hell according to their loves and their loves cannot be changed once they are placed in hell. Furthermore delight is linked to ones love, and therefore the hellish community an evil spirit is placed in is that which he delights in most and would never choose to leave. The Writings make this clear in Heaven and Hell; “Delight is the all of life with everyone in Heaven, and the all of life with everyone in hell… with those that are in hell, it is the delight of what is evil and false. For all delight is of love, and love is the esse of man's life.” (HH 461) From all this we establish that the eternity of hell is primarily supported by the fact that no spirit would ever choose to leave and secondarily by the fact that they would suffer and suffocate if they did choose to leave.

At this point it is important to understand more about what life in hell is like. Seeing as the hells are sorted according to loves each community is characterized by the hellish love of the people there. Therefore in each community the spirits there attempt to delight in those loves by doing whatever their love dictates. This leads to a free for all of committing acts against one another. The place of these communities also reflects their loves. For instance in The Arcana 2755 it explains that in hell those who love committing adultery more than anything else have a love for anything filthy. The hells that they live in are filled with filth and excrement because that is what they delight in most. The Writings describe their love for such excrement as like that of the warmth of the sun. By casting off all that is good and true those in hell subjugate themselves into exteriors and cast off all that was spiritual in them, and because of this, those in hell are spiritually dead. This means that they have lost their real self and furthermore any chance of becoming a spiritual person and an angel and have made themselves less real. This is clear from The Arcana 680; “Goods and truths are the genuine foods of man… for he who is destitute of them has no life, but is dead. When a man is spiritually dead the foods with which his soul is fed are delights from evils and pleasantnesses from falsities-which are foods of death-and are also those which come from bodily, worldly, and natural things, which also have nothing of life in them.”

When studying hell a pattern emerges. Those in hell place themselves there according to the loves they developed in life, they then devastate themselves and choose themselves to stay in their communities and indulge their evil loves. The pattern is that these operations are carried out by the evil spirits themselves, the punishment of those in hell is no different. That the punishment of those in hell is carried out by the evil spirits there is clear from The Arcana 7643; “for in the other life evils and their penalties are joined together.” Hell is little else than dwelling in the evils that the spirits there love, however dwelling in them does not necessarily mean that they can delight in these evils, this is because they are unable to violate good spirits and angels which is what so many in hell take delight in. They are kept from the delights of their loves and this constitutes the punishment of hell. The deprivation of their delights is described in the writings as an interior pain. On top of this pain they are constantly being bombarded by evils from every person around them. Spirits in hell can avoid these awful experiences in only one way: repentance. The Arcana describes what the process of repentance in hell is like; “But those who are being cast into hell suffer bad experiences, both then and afterwards - experiences which become repeatedly grimmer, till they reach the point at which they do not dare to inflict harm on another. And after they have been cast into hell they remain there forever. They cannot be released from there because no desire for someone else's good can be imparted to them, only a refusal to do harm to someone, from fear of punishment; for the desire to do it will never forsake them.” (AC 7541) Of all the passages from the writings that have been included in this essay, none describe the experience of hell more completely than this. While the spirits in hell have love for the evils they commit they are none-the-less affected by the evils committed against them. This is paired with the torment they inflict upon themselves committing their evil, and the lack of ability to receive happiness from The Lord, culminates in a truly hellish experience that wears down a spirit there until they fear punishment so much that they stop acting on their loves and suffer the true torment of hell.

Now the eternity of hell has been laid out. Hellish spirits on their way to hell devastate themselves by wishing to destroy all that is good and true in themselves. This leaves them completely devoid of any heavenly love that might bring them out of hell. They are likewise incapable of experiencing a desire for another’s heavenly love. This leaves them spiritually dead and incapable of experiencing spiritual life, such as the spiritual life of Heaven. The Lord also maintains the hells so that they cannot escape and torment the Heavens. From all this the eternity of hell is maintained and its punishment enacts itself. Now we can revisit the question asked at the opening of this essay. Should you be able to leave hell once you have served your time and stopped loving evil? Yes, you probably should, but you won’t. So then does anybody enjoy hell? Well no, but they sure do love it.