Have you ever read Dante’s Inferno? I picked it up a couple of years ago, always hearing it referenced yet never taking the time to read it. Written in the 14th century, it describes Dante’s journey through the nine layers of hell. If you thought that tedious, nit-picking zoom meeting felt like hell, you should pick up Dante.

In writing to the Thessalonians Paul spoke of a hellish afterlife: He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might.

Dante didn’t just make up all this stuff about hell. Although we ignore distasteful theological notions today, like a drunk uncle at the holidays this idea of rejecting the Lord and reaping eternal destruction raises its voice all through scripture.

Paul’s description feels especially chilling—shut out from the presence of the Lord. To me this smacks of suspended animation, floating in never-ending, pitch-black nothingness. No taste or smell or sound or touch. Nothing solid and no companions. Totally alone.

The reward of rejecting God and choosing yourself? An eternity with only yourself.

Even those who hate the Lord experience his goodness in some form every day. The sun shines, relationships present themselves, they dip their hand and bring food to their mouths. They live in the glory of creation. Imagine every whisper of that gone, forever. I cannot imagine that, which is why it appears so terrible.

Paul felt that the presence of the Lord was so amazing that to be forever out of his presence was hell itself. And it very will may be.

Better to turn to the Lord as Paul implores and for eternity marvel among those who believe.

2 Thessalonians 1 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Illustration of the Fifth Circle of Hell (representing wrath), by Stradanus from 1587