I'm speaking of two variations: the one everlasting flames, the other a metaphorical "outer darkness" (where perhaps the sinners get their own sin for eternity, some pertinent to Lewis' statement that the doors to hell are locked from the inside).
Let's speak about the eternal fire one first. I see three reasons as to how a person could believe something so unutterably terrible and unjust as an everlasting punishment in fire. (It's bad enough dying in a fire once.)
1) The person is just a theological jerk, and probably the type who is impatiently waiting for the judgment day to reveal all the people he disagrees with and doesn't like get their fair reward. That is, his hatred for others he sees as outside his group blinds him to the reality of how terrible this type of suffering would inflict upon others.
2) The person just doesn't really think about what eternity or everlasting means. When I say "a long time," this has a much softer emotional weight than "forever," if I were able to fully grasp what this "forever" means. But not many people really put thought into words like "endless," "forever," "everlasting," "eternal". In a sense, no mind can, and instead substitutes the impression that any of these words are really just "a long time".
3) And most importantly, IMO, a person doesn't really know what suffering is. To really, truly suffer to a physical and psychological degree that an Auschwitzian experience can capture, where you're in so incredibly much pain and are doubtful that the pain would end -- this is a fraction of the stuff that an everlasting literal hell is made of. No single person, unless he's a theological jerk (see 1), can experience his own deepest suffering and then look and find an everlasting fire Hell as anything remotely close to justice or love.
Regarding the metaphorical perspective of Hell, it's no doubt a lot better and even logically sealed with God's goodness and human freedom. These folks aren't getting physically attacked in any type of way. But there is a lot of the psychological negativity of the type we know when we say, e.g., "that relationship was hell." In this hell, people are free to continue in their sin, and their sin becomes their own punishment. But you might be easily able to see so far in this description that it nowhere fits in exegetical terms what the New Testament says about Hell. All we have are phrases that don't sound pleasant, like "outer darkness," "fire", "gnashing of teeth," etc. These phrases don't offer enough detail to support this view of hell as a place where sinners do their thing, and Hell is Hell only from the perspective of Heaven.
Let's speak about the eternal fire one first. I see three reasons as to how a person could believe something so unutterably terrible and unjust as an everlasting punishment in fire. (It's bad enough dying in a fire once.)
1) The person is just a theological jerk, and probably the type who is impatiently waiting for the judgment day to reveal all the people he disagrees with and doesn't like get their fair reward. That is, his hatred for others he sees as outside his group blinds him to the reality of how terrible this type of suffering would inflict upon others.
2) The person just doesn't really think about what eternity or everlasting means. When I say "a long time," this has a much softer emotional weight than "forever," if I were able to fully grasp what this "forever" means. But not many people really put thought into words like "endless," "forever," "everlasting," "eternal". In a sense, no mind can, and instead substitutes the impression that any of these words are really just "a long time".
3) And most importantly, IMO, a person doesn't really know what suffering is. To really, truly suffer to a physical and psychological degree that an Auschwitzian experience can capture, where you're in so incredibly much pain and are doubtful that the pain would end -- this is a fraction of the stuff that an everlasting literal hell is made of. No single person, unless he's a theological jerk (see 1), can experience his own deepest suffering and then look and find an everlasting fire Hell as anything remotely close to justice or love.
Regarding the metaphorical perspective of Hell, it's no doubt a lot better and even logically sealed with God's goodness and human freedom. These folks aren't getting physically attacked in any type of way. But there is a lot of the psychological negativity of the type we know when we say, e.g., "that relationship was hell." In this hell, people are free to continue in their sin, and their sin becomes their own punishment. But you might be easily able to see so far in this description that it nowhere fits in exegetical terms what the New Testament says about Hell. All we have are phrases that don't sound pleasant, like "outer darkness," "fire", "gnashing of teeth," etc. These phrases don't offer enough detail to support this view of hell as a place where sinners do their thing, and Hell is Hell only from the perspective of Heaven.
