How I became a Universalist
Red triangle - political prisoners
Green triangle - convicts
Blue triangle - emigrants
Purple triangle - Jehovah's Witnesses
Pink triangle - homosexual men
Black triangle - The mentally ill, Alcoholics. Vagrants, Pacifists, Conscription resisters, Prostitutes, anarchists, Drug addicts
Brown triangle - Gypsies
As I stood in Dachau concentration camp staring at the badge coding system poster the Nazi's used to identify prisoners my mind thought about Hell.
How could my mind not wonder into the topic of Hell? Here I was in a place that is never ending torture. It's purpose, its reason for being is torture and capture. I stood there staring at the reasons people were placed in this camp and I thought about the reasons people are sent to Hell.
I thought about my grandpa who died this past fall. I thought about how at his funeral I learned how he had liberated a concentration camp but never spoke much about it. I imagined through the photos, the film, and my surroundings what it must have been like for my dad's dad to find a place like this. The smell, the sights, the survivors, what did my grandpa feel? What did my grandpa do?
Walking outside from barracks to other buildings I could see the sun shining, trees growing, birds singing. How strange a place like this with such evil cannot hold back the beauty of resurrection.
Then I thought about Jesus.
A concentration camp is a place people are taken simply because who they are. It is a place without hope. It is a place without end. It is Hell.
The people inside of the camps are there because of the "sins" they committed in the eyes of those who control the camps.
Hell is a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.
Hell is a place the wicked are punished after death.
Concentration camp is a place the "wicked" are punished on earth.
As I stood in the so called "shower room" and I thought about how 150 humans could be in there at a time. I stood there, in that room, I was there thinking. Where was Jesus? Where was hope? Where was love?
Days later I found myself standing in a very different room, The Sistine Chapel. The official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City. I cannot describe the feelings I felt while in that building but I can simply say I was overwhelmed. Looking up at the Michelangelo frescoes thinking about him standing on that scaffolding painting over 5,000 square feet. And there in the middle of the ceiling his master piece "The Creation of Adam" I couldn't believe I was actually looking at the original. I was standing in the same room as Michelangelo once had himself, along with centuries of popes.
The ceiling wasn't the only part of the chapel he had painted. 23 years after he had completed the ceiling a different pope called him back to paint the wall behind the altar. It took Michelangelo 6 years to complete the wall and what we have today is known as "The Last Judgement" I found myself again thinking as I looked at this enormous painting and I thought about Hell. Jesus is in the middle of the painting with his right hand raised calling the saints into Heaven and with his left hand lowered casting the sinners into Hell. Again I felt uneasy.
If Hell is a place for the wicked then it must be operated and created by the One who judges who is wicked and who isn't.
Concentration camps are operated and created by evil. They are a place of forced imprisonment and torture because of judgement. In reality it wasn't the imprisoned who were the wicked but rather the Nazis.
If that's the case then Hell cannot exist, or at least in the traditional sense. If Hell exists then it is run by the judge and the judge must be evil.
God is love, God is righteous God cannot run Hell. But God is the judge, so what does this mean?
I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-Romans 8
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to Sheol, you are there.
-Psalm 139
Jesus frees
Jesus loves
Jesus forgives
Jesus redeems
Standing in that "shower room" and standing in the Sistine Chapel I realized that Hell cannot exist in the tradition sense. Jesus does not see our sins. We are not defined by a patch or a colored badge on our prison uniform. We are set free. We cannot be separated from the love of God. God is not absent from concentration camps. God is not absent from Hell but rather God is with us.
If there is a Hell it isn't out of God's creating but rather our own. As C.S. Lewis says:
"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."
Thrice - Beggars