At The Movies: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hell
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie are the ones we all know and remember from the 90s—Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Rafael—but this movie takes a bit of a darker look at the turtles in a half shell than we might remember. These turtles in the the Mutant Mayhem movie exist in the shadows, barely surviving, and avoiding the humans they've been taught to fear. But the turtles aren’t the only mutants in New York City. Superfly is the leader of another group of mutants. Just like the turtles, Superfly and his mutants have experienced some of the ugliness of the world and it has led them to turn their pain into hatred. What we start to see is that both groups, the turtles and Superfly’s mutants, can see a world beyond this one. One is a world filled with a lot of pizza and even more love. The other is a world of suffering where the bad people finally get the hell they deserve.
For a lot of us, this dichotomy isn't far off from what we've been taught or accepted about faith. But last week, I invited our church to ask our biggest questions about faith, questions maybe we’ve been afraid to ask. Now, church should be the safest place to ask those kinds of questions. Rather than avoid them, we should lean into them even when they lead us to further questions. So, I’m proud of you all for asking those questions. They even prompted our sermon today, because two of the submitted questions, out of just a few received, aimed directly at this dichotomy, metaphorically found in this movie, and something we've all wondered about. What comes next? And is there really a place called hell?
It's interesting because I think our hope of heaven leads us to be comfortable with that reality. I've never met anyone who didn't want to go there. But hell is different. Nobody wants to go to hell. And most of us struggle that God might send people there (particularly if it’s because of what they may or may not believe).
The tension for us is that the picture we have of Hell is pretty awful. There's usually a lot of fire, people in chains, and a guy with horns and a red pitchfork smirking in satisfaction at the whole situation of the poor souls he gets to torment for eternity. But is that even accurate?
This is the first opportunity that I have to say something that I might say a lot. I don't know. I haven't died yet. Even after I eventually die, I'd still prefer to not be able to report about the accuracy of hell to the rest of you. What I can say is that this picture we might have in our heads is not what we find in the Bible. This popularized picture of hell is fiction. Most of that image comes from the 1400s from the work of an Italian writer named Dante and his fictionalized journey through hell. So, if this isn't real, what does the Bible tell us about Hell?
Hell is a fascinating topic because, just like almost any topic that we want to explore in scripture, we can't simply go to the index and find an answer because that is just not how the Bible works. The Bible is an ancient library of people who breathed the ancient air shared by their neighbors. Their stories intertwined with those as they sought, like we do, to understand faith in their present day. Because of this, eternal destiny was somewhat of a developing concept, a conversation, not quite theoretical like we think about things, but influenced by prevailing thoughts of the cultures of the ancient world. This brings us to the second reason we can't find a simple answer about Hell. The word Hell isn’t in the Bible.
Hel was a Scandinavian guard of the underworld. From there, through etymological twists and turns, the Hel of mythology transformed into an Old English word meaning to cover or conceal. Eventually, Hell was used by translators who spoke Old English to translate several words ancient people used to describe what, and sometimes where, that occurred after death. Some of these ancient people used the word Sheol to describe that reality. Others, influenced by their Greek neighbors, used the word Hades. Both of these words described the final destiny of all who died. But, a critical component for us is that this language, just like how we use some language today, was poetic. One place we see this is in Psalm 139.
1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
The word depths that we find here is translated in other translations of the Hebrew with the words: death, Sheol, hades, or Hell. The poet in this passage was speaking in hyperbole because that’s what poets do. The poet says that if they went off into the heavens, the word for the upper atmosphere, God would be there. That’s a crazy idea. How would they get there? Even crazier would be if they died, somehow God would be present there. This poem is a song with hope-filled lyrics that God’s love will always be present, even in the finality of death. The poet continues this hyperbole with themes found throughout scripture.
Psalm 139:9-12
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139 is just one of many places where the word Hell was used to translate what ancient people knew happened to everyone. Everyone dies. The writers of the scriptures wanted to emphasize that God’s love surpassed even that reality. The idea of an afterlife of eternal conscious torment, the fictionalized images created by Dante, are not found in their words or anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. But didn’t Jesus say something about Hell? He did. Well, at least it is often translated that way.
Matthew 23:15
15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Remember we said that some translators of the Bible used the word Hell in place of a variety of words in the Old Testament. That happened in the New Testament too. Translation isn’t easy. Neither is interpretation. That's why we have to dig deeper. If we do, we find that the word Jesus used here was the word Gehenna. Gehenna was not the hell of fiction, it was an actual place not that far from where he was talking. It's still there today. It's actually a park, and it even hosts concerts, but not so in the time of Jesus. In the time of Jesus this place called Gehenna was a place nobody wanted to go.
Legend says, in the time of Jesus, dead animals, bodies of criminals, and the garbage of the city was brought to Gehenna and burned. But even more important than what it was is what it had been. Gehenna had a horrific history as a place where people had sacrificed children to pagan gods. This burning, stinking, forsaken place called Gehenna wasn’t somewhere the people of Jerusalem had to imagine in the future tense. It was literally right around the corner, and was horrific in the present tense. So, Jesus used Gehenna as a warning about this life. Now, what’s so interesting, and so easy to miss, is that in doing this, Jesus entered a debate. A 1st century sect of Judaism called Pharisaism had begun to teach eternal punishment (a foreign idea likely imported from Persian Zoroastrianism). Jesus seems to have taken a very different position as he faced off with the leaders of this sect.
Matthew 23:15
15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Jesus was saying to these Pharisees, whom he called hypocrites, that they had created a faith that most closely resembled a forsaken valley best suited for bonfire and rot. Not only that, but those they converted were even worse. When Jesus spoke about Gehenna, he was not warning about hell in the next life, but a hellish existence in this life. And Jesus actually said that it was the most religious people of his day who were causing this reality with their impossible standards, their self-righteous judgment, and their pompous lack of mercy.
This is why it is so important to talk about heaven and hell as realities that we cause every day with our choices right here and right now. Because that’s how Jesus talked about them. When heaven and hell only become realities that we think of somewhere or sometime else we fail to realize what our choices, even those nestled in religious beliefs, can leave behind. Our choices make us much closer to heaven or hell than we might have realized. It’s here.
Just like those in Jerusalem, we don't have to strain our eyes to find hell. The hell we should most worry about is around the corner with the children who enter school with empty stomachs, practice lockdown drills, and walk off the bus into abusive homes. Hell is heard in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza in the sounds of bullets and bombs threatening to be the last sound innocent people hear. Hell is experienced by immigrants fleeing one hell into another as they're too often maligned by racist accusations while they're struggling to find work, housing, and acceptance. Hell is present among our elderly, unhoused, and mentally ill as we selfishly pull society's hands back from helping those most in need. Hell is not a word we find in scripture, but it might be the word we use to help us see the hellish suffering right outside our doors—the kind of suffering we’re called to respond to as followers of Jesus.
A good theology of hell begins not by postulating on who is going to a hell more influenced by fictional depictions from books or movies, but by taking seriously the actual hellish suffering experienced by our neighbors today. Our response is by repenting of the part we’ve willingly played through acts of omission or commission and responding with a kind of love that can only come from heaven. It’s this reality, that Jesus seems to take most seriously in another passage of scripture where we find the words of Jesus.
Matthew 25:31-46
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him,‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 “They also will answer,‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. This whole thing about eternal punishment sounds a lot like Hell. We have to once again realize how much we’re influenced by assumptions and the translation of certain words. This passage is just as easily, and more literally, interpreted as Jesus inviting some into a time of life and others into a time of correction.
Again, what we don’t find here, like we didn’t find before, is the eternal conscious torment: the chains, devil, and pitchforks of the Hell of fiction. What we do find is Jesus is warning His listeners, like the Pharisees before, that there is a suffering world right outside your door waiting for you to respond to. What will you choose when it comes to who you love? You’d love Jesus…will you love others too? That love is what connects us to God.
This brings us to our final thought about Hell. The last way we sometimes speak of Hell is as separation from God. This theory of the afterlife is more palatable for many of us than eternal conscious torment. But unlike eternal conscious torment which we’d have to strain to even come close to finding in scripture, the hell of a separation from God is not hard to find at all. We do find it in scripture, but most importantly, we find it in our lives today.
1 John 4:7-9
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
It’s in this final verse we are given a theology of heaven as well. It’s in this world, as we love, where we can see the goodness of heaven, revealed through Jesus, and experienced as love. It’s in this world, as we love, where we can see the glimpses of heaven, the restoration of all things when there is no more death, mourning, crying, or pain—no more hell. It is in this world, as we love, that we can begin to see the life after life after death that we call resurrection. It’s in this world, and by the love that comes from him, that we can see, through Jesus, death, evil, maybe call that Hell, was defeated—now and forever.
The follower of Jesus named Paul, writing to a church in Rome, said it to them this way:
Romans 8:35, 37-39
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
