The Fires of Hell

by Mary Luti | published on Feb 6, 2025

Jesus said, “So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire.” – Matthew 13:49-50 (NRSV) 

There’s a reason Hell is traditionally depicted as an inferno. The horror of fire is meant to deter us from sinning. To burn, and burn forever, who’s not afraid of that?  

Not that many of us, apparently. Sinners are not an endangered species, but Hell is in trouble. Many Christians don’t buy it. We can’t believe that Jesus really intended us to live moral lives based on terror. Besides, a loving God would not be so cruel, even to the worst of us. Hell may exist, we quip, but that doesn’t mean that anyone’s there. 

Meanwhile, vast swathes of our planet burn. Toxic night descends long before sundown. Intense heat siphons life-assuring oxygen from the air. Wind-whipped flames annihilate lives, homes, wildlife, ecosystems. A hellish afterlife may be the invention of religious imagination, but Hell on earth is real. 

And we can’t blame it all on Nature. Human-caused climate change has made natural fires unnaturally explosive. We can deny it—too many of us do—but neither Nature nor Nature’s God consigned us to this furnace. We got here ourselves. It’s damning.  

But we don’t believe in Hell. It seems we don’t believe much in God, either. At least not the Holy One who made heaven and earth. How else could we blaspheme so blithely, treat real flames the disbelieving way we dismiss metaphysical ones, resign ourselves to a burning future because there’s still a lot of profit to be made?  

Hell we don’t believe in. Nor even God. At least not the Just One who demands an accounting. Not the fearsome Holy, calling from the conflagration while we whistle in the wind. 

Prayer
Deliver us from the fires of Hell, our self-destroying disbelief.

Mary Luti About the Author
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.