We Need the Doctrine of Hell

I accidentally read three books on hell last month. I hadn’t planned to read any of them. What I discovered from the novel, the biography, and the piece of literary criticism is that we still need the Christian doctrine of hell.

We need it for our own good and for the good of our neighbors—because it reveals the horror of sin, the ways in which we are deceived into thinking hell is smaller than it is, and the truth of what happens when it is left unchecked by divine grace. In a culture that treats sin flippantly at best and enthusiastically at worst, we need a scriptural vision of the self-absorbed, self-justifying, self-pitying, and self-destructive trajectory it sends us down and the terrifying destination it ultimately reaches. Undercooked doctrines of hell generate undercooked doctrines of sin, and vice versa.