It's In the Code Ep. 205: What the Hell? (Part I)

0:00What are you really? I mean, I thought you were something, but I couldn't tell. Oh, okay, I see it now. Yeah, I mean, you look white, but I thought maybe something was going on. These are comments I've got in my entire life. As a mixed race person, every time I've walked into a room, I've wondered how people would interpret me, what expectations they would have based on my appearance, and what they might miss when talking to me and thinking of a stereotype. Growing up, we weren't just mixed race. Our dad was a Buddhist whose grandparents helped to found one of the first Buddhist temples on Maui. My mom was a white woman from the south, a Christian who grew up in charismatic churches in Missouri and Tennessee. This is why I am so excited to bring you mixed.

1:03A new series from the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement and Apari, created by my friend and colleague, Dr. Kiyati Joshi. Kiyati is a Hindu woman of Indian heritage, and she unexpectedly fell in love with a white Christian man in Jerusalem of all places. That's where the story begins, and it takes us through her journey of convincing her parents that marrying this guy was worth it, having a son who was mixed race and mixed faith, raising him to be both Hindu and Christian. She's somebody who's been studying identity for two decades, and this series is her chance to share her personal journey and the incredible wisdom she's gained along the way. Join us for a mixed, a new series that drops September 14th, 2026, on AxisMundi Media and wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to It's in the Code.

2:15A series that is part of the podcast, Straight White American Jesus. My name is Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Co-host of Straight White American Jesus, please to be with you. As always, as always, I want to point out and remind you that this is a series that works because of you. All the ideas come from you. They come from your ideas, your feedback, your suggestions. We're in a series called questions I wasn't supposed to ask in church, and I am still looking for more of those questions. A lot of you have said great stuff, and we're going to just keep plugging along on these. Great feedback on this and great insights. Let me know what you think. Daniel Miller swadged, Daniel Miller SWHAGmail.com. If you have a suggestion or a response to one of the episodes in this series, put questions I wasn't supposed to ask or something up in the header, then we'll let me search for that. But always looking ahead as well to whatever comes after this series, to other topics, to other things you would like to hear about. As well as disagreements, right? I get some interesting responses from folks who think I've left things out or maybe misrepresented

3:18things. Always happy to hear it. Try to engage with those as best I can. I don't get to respond to as many as I want, but I do my best. So please keep them coming. Today, I want to dive into a topic that a lot of people have reached out about in different ways, like a lot, a lot. And that is the topic of hell, right? It's kind of a big one. When I think of this series, it's like you know, I've got questions I wasn't supposed to ask in church. You got them, some that are relatively minor, some that are sort of interesting, or some that are quirky. And they got something that are really big, like you know, arguably sort of core things. I think that the question of hell is one of them. And it's a big question or a big topic. It raises a lot of questions. And I have a lot of thoughts. And there's no way a single episode is going to get out of my, I started putting together my notes. And I was like, how, there's too much to say here. So I'm going to give it a couple episodes. So this will be a part one episode of two. I promise I'm not going to turn into like 12 episodes on hell. That's a little heavy even for me.

4:21But we're going to hit part of it today. And I think what we're going to look at is some of those, the reasons why those of us who grew up in high control traditions, right? And again, this is limited to those of us who grew up in those traditions. Maybe you're not a part of one of those traditions. Maybe you've never really been part of that, but you're like, what is going on with hell? They talk about hell all the time. What is it? And why do they think that and so forth? If you're familiar with those traditions, the reason why conservative high control Christians will tell you that they talk about hell all the time that it plays a central role it does is that it's what the Bible teaches, right? And that's their broader claim. I've talked about this lots and lots of times in different places. The claim within those conservative high control religious context is that everything they teach, they teach because it's in the Bible. They are, they are quote unquote biblical. That's their claim. The Bibles are highest authority and everything they say is coming from the Bible. So what I want to really look at today is, you know, those of us who grew up in that tradition being told that the teachings on hell, the preaching on hell, all of that

5:24was there because it was in the Bible and that we as good Christians were supposed to read the Bible, right? The church I grew up in, that was always part of it. It's a good Christian. You should be reading the Bible and what happened. And I know a lot of you've had this experience. That's where a lot of your questions come from. It's where all of mine, almost, I think, looking back on my own sort of, it's called spiritual trajectory or pilgrimage or evolution or whatever, almost all, if not all of the questions that I had that I wasn't supposed to ask in church, they came from reading the Bible. They came because I was in this tradition that claimed that everything came from the Bible and we should all be reading the Bible and then I would go and read the Bible and it would raise all kinds of questions and they would get me in trouble. And I know a lot of you have had the same experience and hell is one of the topics that can get you in trouble. If you go and look and say, well, okay, what does the Bible actually say about it? That's kind of what we're going to look at today is why it doesn't line up with what the conservative Christians say that it says and why it is that hell continues to hold

6:25the role that it still does for them. So I want to start by kind of presenting what I'll call the sort of popular paradigm of hell, right? If somebody's listening and they're like, what the hell is hell or why do Christians talk about hell all the time? I don't know. My grandma used to talk about this and I never was exactly sure with that man. Like sort of hears the general sort of sketch of what this is and how it works. Hell is the reason we talk about it at all. This kind of popular paradigm. And the basic line is the human beings are sinful, fallen creatures. What does that mean? Well, what it means the long and short of it is we don't live up to God's commands, God's requirements. And so we stand condemned before God. This is the sort of the human situation we are condemned before God. And if we die in this condemned, unredeemed state in which we are guilty before God, we will go to hell, which is a place where we will suffer eternal torment, usually in fire.

7:27And it's you could elaborate on that. The idea is that there will be eternal conscious torment like you don't cease to exist after you die. You have an eternal soul and your soul will go and hell will be tortured. On the other hand, if people accept the offer of salvation by having faith in Jesus, they will instead spend eternity in heaven. So it's a pretty stark choice. Without faith in Jesus without being a Christian, you go to hell for eternity. And if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you accept the offer of faith, you get to go to heaven for eternity. Much better option. There are some other dimensions of that. I think that figuring most popular conceptions Satan is often pictured as the kind of the ruler of hell. There are Bible pages about Satan being chained up and the enemy of God and so forth. So Satan's figure is this kind of enemy of God whose proper abode is hell. He sort of gets out and commits mischief and so forth. He sort of rules hell as I, the Prince of hell, where he was consigned by God. Hell is also where Satan's minions, the demons live and so forth.

8:31And again, when I call this, it's, I say the popular paradigm. I mean within church context and others, the church that I grew up in when I was younger, every Sunday before the sermon, the pastor would pray to God to bind up any demonic forces and cast them back to the pit of hell from whence they came. Literally cast them back to the pit of hell from whence they came. This notion that the demons proper abode was hell and again, they would sort of get out and cause mischief, but you know, you could, God could reconcind them there and so forth. Anyway, we could expand on all of that, but I think it gives us the picture that we need. And it is such a widespread conception that even if you're not or have never been religious, even if you've never heard a sermon about this, even if you had no idea that it was supposed to come from the Bible, you knew nothing about it. You would already have a lot of this vision of hell. It's in popular culture. It's in TVs and movies of TVs, TV and movies and animated series and literature and graphic novels

9:36and all different kinds of things. Often, you know, pictures of somebody being consigned to hell, I mean, confronted with Satan or Satan coming up and making a deal with them and their flames all over. Like all that kind of stuff is based on this sort of popular paradigm of hell. So the first question about hell that you can get, that can get you in trouble in churches this, right? Such a widespread conception. Again, even non-Christians, non-religious people know it and if you are a Christian who grows up in one of these churches that teaches this, the first question that can get you in trouble is this, where in the Bible does it teach all of this? Where's it coming from? And again, this is within a context in which the kind of church we're talking about, the Christians we're talking about say that everything they teach is coming from the Bible. That's the measure of their preaching and teaching as it's supposed to be biblical. So the first really obvious question to say, if you're a parishioner, if you're a kid growing up in this church, maybe you're, I don't know, some poor teenage who are growing

10:38up in the youth group who's afraid to go into hell all the time and you're like, where do I go to read this? Like what's this like, like point me to the verses, point me to the Bible verses, where in the Bible does it teach this? Okay? So here's the problem about that. Here's why that question can become problematic is if you go back to the Bible to find it, you're going to find that the Bible doesn't actually flesh out the idea of hell that evolved into that popular conception in any detail. It's one of those that like, I mean, you know, got these fantastical images and stories and again, films and TV shows and books and all these things about hell, like, wow, that's pretty wild stuff. Like, I'm going to go to the source material and we'll look at the Bible and you read it, it doesn't actually save very much. And what it does say is really sort of enigmatic and fragmented and absolutely does not develop any kind of coherent or systematic vision of hell, let alone Satan and demons and all

11:39the other stuff that come with it. So it would take more time to delve into this than it really does. I mean, I don't want to turn this into a Bible study. I'm not going to go too deep. But the long and short of it is that the Bible does have scattered references to the domain of the dead or the realm of judgment. And I'm going to call it that because the word hell doesn't really show up. You get words that we might translate like like from the Greek Hades into, you know, what emerges in English as hell. But most translations will now recognize that there is no equivalent to the English word hell and they'll avoid that word partly because it's loaded. It's kind of front loaded with all of this, this accumulation of cultural baggage. And so most translators, I don't want to translate anything in the Bible with that term because they don't refer to the same thing. I don't know about you, but every day I feel like I'm juggling five things at once. I'm a writer. I'm a podcaster. I'm a small business owner. I'm somebody who has two young children.

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13:41But I'm looking at them on ground news, which provides me with a way to compare bias in different news sources coming from liberal, conservative or centrist outlets. Ground news is a solution for getting down to the facts of important stories and understanding how different outlets are framing what's happening in our country. I use this in order to get a picture of the entire news cycle surrounding important stories in religion and politics. Go to groundnews.com slash swadge to get 40% off their unlimited access, vantage subscription. That's groundnews.com slash swadge. Use the link to get the discount and so they know I sent you. So there's a number of words that really reflect different cultural and religious contexts. And they aren't developed in a systematic way, like I said. So for example, in the Hebrew Bible, you have Sheel, which is a Hebrew term, which was this kind of shadowy realm of the dead.

14:44But a shadowy realm of all of the dead, the righteous and the unrighteous. It wasn't necessarily a place of judgment per se, meaning that people weren't sent there because they'd been judged to be evil. It was just a realm of the dead. From Greek, you get the term Hades in the Christian New Testament, which was essentially the Greek translation of Sheel. And you shouldn't frontload that either with all of the Greek mythological conceptions of Hades, right? Of course, that version of Greek culture had its own conceptions of the afterlife and what that was. That word is used, but all of that's not sort of imported into the biblical text. So that's the way it's supposed to be. That word is used, but all of that's not sort of imported into the biblical text. We have, especially in the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus, references to Gehenna, which was a reference to a valley that was literally outside of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, where it sent like, like, refuse was put and garbage was burnt. So it was this kind of awful place and smelly and smoky and there were fires all over and so forth.

15:45And that was a metaphor that Jesus and Nazareth liked to reference when discussing judgment. And there's one reference to a term Tardarus, which is, again, pictured as a kind of underground abyss or dungeon, in which the disobedient angels are put for a while. This is maybe where the idea of demons and hell comes from. This is kind of shadowy underground dungeon realm. Again, one reference in the New Testament. And Jesus of Nazareth in his teachings, right? So the first four books of the New Testament, the Gospels, have sort of these stories of Jesus and his teachings. He talks more about judgment than probably anyone else in the New Testament. Those who like the vision of a kinder gentler Jesus all the time, like that's there, but also he, I think, talks more about judgment than kind of anybody figured in the New Testament. And he does like to use images of fire and torment, sometimes darkness, right? Probably drawing again on this Jewish tradition of she old, this sort of dark place of the dead,

16:47a realm that he describes as being marked by the weeping and gnashing of teeth, banishment from the presence of God. So he uses this kind of language to describe judgment, right? Not always as a place, but as a kind of event. So that's all pretty awful stuff, pretty wild stuff. You can Google it, you can go look it up, you can find the references, you can go dig around in the Bible, you can find all those places. But here's the point. All of that language in those descriptions, it is very evocative and very visceral. But you don't get anything like the kind of detail and systematically constructed conception of hell that is so central to conservative high control religion. You can go and look for example, all those things that Jesus says. And I think it's visceral for a reason, I think it's a way of trying to drive home his teachings or kind of create this sense of, yeah, the fear of God. But it doesn't articulate anything like the clear laid out conception that that popular understanding of hell has.

17:52And there's just no way to draw a straight line from the fragmented things we find in the Bible to the more fully developed conception of hell that we grew up with hearing about in our churches. If you're like me and you grew up in those those contexts. And here's what I mean by that is those who have that conception of hell, they'll be like, well look, Jesus is talking about fire and Gahean is this fiery place. And that's what he means as hell, it's whatever. Okay, but like you're starting with that idea. If you went to build it from the ground up, if you said let's take everything that the Bible says about the abode of the dead and judgment and so forth. And try to put it all together. You just don't get a straight line to the concept of hell that's so central within high control religious teaching and breaching. Okay. Where do they come from? Those fuller conceptions owe a lot more to later developments, right? So you have like, like Homer, who obviously was not a Christian, but you get Homer who like Virgil later in the in the it is sort of developing his ideas and you people like Dante, Dante's in Fernow, right?

18:53You get these like literary works that really develop these ideas and then you know, other kind of lesser known authors and so forth. These are the places where so many of these ideas take on life of their own and are fleshed out in ways that far exceeds anything that the Bible says or anything frankly that church teaching would have had if it were quote unquote biblical. And they develop this and like they a long history of evolution and development and the kind of the reinforcement through popular culture and storytelling, right? And so here the stories enough it becomes common knowledge that this is what hell is like this is what judgment is this is the role of Satan and so forth so much so that if you talk to most people including most quote unquote Bible believing Christians and they you ask them about hell to tell you all these things if you ask them where those ideas come from they'll say from the Bible. This is the question that gets you in trouble in church is okay cool like show me where and they'll side of passage where Jesus talks about how you like well that's cool but like a hand is a garbage dump outside Jerusalem is kind of pointing on you like this sucks you don't want that do you but like I don't know that isn't sound all that well developed or do a little research like I can get it the conception of shield that's where like everybody goes when they die there's not even a conception of judgment there.

20:11That's when the question will start getting you in trouble because you're showing the what the Bible says and teaches is not what the people who claim to be biblical are also teaching okay. So if you're a committed member of one of those brands of Christianity that preaches this popular conception of hell and if you read your Bible carefully and closely as you're taught to do you're going to ask a lot of questions why do we teach all these things are actually in the Bible. Hey Pastor Bob I've gone and I've looked and like I don't I don't I should don't see it what am I missing tell me what I'm missing. If hell is such a central part of a Christian message why doesn't the Bible actually develop the idea in any detail right I mean the apostle Paul I said Jesus talks about judgment the most Paul though is the kind of the foundation of most probably arguably Christian doctrine he has a lot to say about judgment and and salvation and so forth but he doesn't have any extended treatment. On hell if it's such a central part of the Christian message like where is it why doesn't it get more ink right does what the Bible actually says even fit very well with what we preach and teach again you these fragmented visceral kind of scary images but they're they're very for lack of a better way of saying at the very impressionistic they're not systematic or well developed they're not a theology of hell.

21:32So you start asking those questions you can get into a lot of trouble and this is why what all of those questions suggest if not like sort of directly making you say is that this idea is it excuse me is that this idea plays such a central part within so much Christian teaching and preaching. Even though it's actually very amorphous and fluid and underdeveloped in the Bible in other words if you ask those questions you are implicitly at least oftentimes explicitly challenging a central part of that conservative high control religious teaching about religion it's the whole core of salvation the reason you need salvation is hell. So if you start questioning what the Bible teaches about hell that becomes a problem. So here's the next question that follows from that if the Bible doesn't talk about hell in the clear developed way the conservative Christians do and if those conservative Christians will tell us that the theology is supposed to be drawn from what the Bible has to say about various things and the Bible doesn't say those things why do they not only teach it place it at the core of their theology.

22:44Well the answer is pretty straightforward right by way of reminder there is no conservative Christian message without hell. The Christian message is they understand it ceases to exist without that conception of hell. And that is why it figures so prominently despite the fact that it really isn't a straightforwardly quote unquote biblical concept the entire motivation for this brand of Christianity is the fear of hell. I'm going to say that high control religion generally high control American Christianity absolutely is is primarily driven by fear fear is the primary mechanism to draw people in and to keep people in line. So the language of high control religion is fairly new but anyone who's acquainted with this group within this brand of Christian you'll immediately get why the term applies it's a kind of religion that operates by imposing fear on its adherence and that fear is the mechanism of control.

23:48If you don't accept salvation as they define it you risk eternal torment I mean who's who's not going to take that deal. If you become convinced that like eternal torment or accepting their teaching you're going to accept their teaching talk about high stakes. So who's going to question the dictates especially if you grow up within this religious tradition right most people within these traditions are there because they were brought up in these traditions. If you grow up in this tradition and this way of thinking is completely normalized who's going to question the teachings of trusted religious authorities when questioning those teaches risks eternal torment it's the risk of your eternal soul. And so I recognize and lots of you who have reached out not only about this topic but about other things lots of you engage with me point out the fear of hell becomes a primary way of imposing a church's teachings on its members. To so much as question the teaching of one's religious leaders opens you up to the threat of eternal torment they are giving you the truth and if you start questioning that.

24:56You're walking the line you're walking a razor's edge and if you fall off of it in the wrong direction you go to hell. It might that that question means that you lack faith it means that you're not really a Christian after all essentially doubting and questioning become the greatest sins you can commit they are sins of unbelief. And if you commit those sins hell eternal torment is the cost. And of course with this understanding of hell the ultimate object of fear is God and I think we're going to get more into this in that the next episode right we're going to spin into this more about what is the concept of hell have to tell us about how God is understood within this framework and so forth we're getting that more detail. But for now here's the point why trust God why have faith why accept the so called free gift of salvation why love God is or commanded to well because he'll consign you to hell an eternal torment if you don't.

25:57So God is the ultimate object of fear but always always always always always within high control religion those religious leaders are the spokespeople for God. They are the ones whose authority is vested in them because they are the spokespeople for God so to question them is to question God and to question God is to go to hell that's the logic and folks they're not going to give up that kind of power and that kind of domination and that kind of motivation to believe and to participate in a religious tradition just because the Bible doesn't back them. They will twist the Bible anyway they need to to make it fit their preconceived notions. So God's threat of eternal torment becomes the ultimate like legitimizing weapon to protect their teaching and their theology and this is the standard mechanism of high control Christianity. You take this very very human institution run by humans you claim divine authority and that's what makes your control and your actions and your teachings legitimate.

27:05So there's more to say about this we're going to get into in the next episode I have other questions about what the concept of hell means for the supposedly loving God of the Christian tradition how do you reconcile hell and eternal torment with the claim that God's the most loving entity like a perfectly loving entity questions about the concept of justice is it relates to hell I realize our questions that are answered you may be listening and say when are we going to get to those we get to those in the next episode but for now we can see why questions about where exactly conservative high control Christians get their concept of hell in the first place it can get you into trouble because they're going to say well comes from the Bible. Except if you raise questions about the role that it does or doesn't play in the Bible the lack of clarity in the Bible lack of any systematic presentation the fact that you know the Bible is a really really really long book and despite that it doesn't spend it doesn't spend that much time talking about hell you ask all of those kinds of questions that's where you're going to get in trouble because those questions any question about hell and its concept cuts right to the heart right to the heart of conservative high control religion there is no Christian message for them without the concept of hell

28:18and they do not have authority to speak for God without this kind of threat hanging over everybody of hell and condemnation it's the ultimate Trump card that they have that can always play it you pose too many questions they're going to play it you you know I get it sometimes natural to have questions but ask too many that starts looking a lot like doubt and maybe you're not really a Christian maybe you're going to go to hell when you die. If you're on the outside that might not sound persuasive if you grow up within these traditions that that's terrifying and that's exactly what they want that is exactly why asking questions about hell can get you in trouble in church. As I say there's more to say on this we'll pick it up again in the next episode in the meantime I want to say again thank you for listening for watching for reading the notes and sub stack however you get this thank you for supporting us and what we do please keep the ideas coming Daniel Miller swadge Daniel Miller SW AJ at gmail.com value your insights and inputs so very very much cannot do without you as I always say please be well until we get a chance to talk again.

29:28All right y'all just a reminder to go to ground news.com slash swadge that is ground news.com slash swadge SW AJ to get 40% off their unlimited access vantage subscription make sure you use the link so they know I sent you.