Ep. 169 - Derek Kubilus ”Holy Hell: A Case Against Eternal Damnation” pt. 1

[00:00:00] Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet in the new novel American Prophet. I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened, oh and the pandemic, and that crazy election. And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging. It's not like I asked

[00:00:18] for the job. Actually, no one would ask for this job. At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy. Getting a date is next to impossible.

[00:00:32] I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me. But the job isn't all that bad. I've gotten to

[00:00:45] see the country and meet some really interesting people and hopefully do some good along the way. You can find my story on Amazon, Audible or iTunes. Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer. That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.

[00:01:51] If you really believed that it was possible for people and even likely that most people would burn for all eternity, you would have a really tough time defending the rest of your life. That is, your ability to do anything other than

[00:02:27] engage in some kind of ministry, some kind of attempt to save those people from that fate. And I'm not even talking about full-time professional ministry. I'm talking about 120 hours a week eating and sleeping only when you have to.

[00:02:53] Because compared to the infinity of eternal torment, your 90 years here on this world ought to be spent entirely in this mission to quote-unquote save people from that fate. You would never go on vacation. You would never go to the movies. People would say

[00:03:23] that Billy Graham was a lazy, terrible evangelist because he spent so much time hanging out with his family. And you would never ever have children. It would be totally immoral to procreate if you thought there was even a possibility that your

[00:03:47] children could spend eternity in damnation. You would never do it. Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast. I'm your host, John Williamson, and we're back this week with a brand new guest. Before we get to that though, I want to talk about where you can

[00:04:24] find all things Deconstructionist. So if you go to www.thedeconstructionist.com, just recently updated the website, but you can go there and read all of our former blog posts, link to us

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[00:04:52] us on TikTok and we'll be posting photos and updates on episodes and all sorts of stuff on there. But you can also listen to our entire back catalog of episodes. We're almost up to, I think,

[00:05:02] 170 now, almost 100. I think we're in the high 160s at this point. So you can listen to the entire back catalog and stream them directly from the website. You can link to our Patreon if you

[00:05:13] want to support us there. You can buy t-shirts and things with our all sorts of fun logos that our friends have made for us over the years. So lots of stuff there, so check it out. This week

[00:05:24] though, in light of the fact that it is Halloween or almost Halloween, I want to do a topical episode. We've done this in the past around October where we've had sort of Halloween themed

[00:05:38] sort of episodes. And so we haven't covered this one in a while, but there's a brand new book out by a fellow Ohioan named Derek Kubalus and I screwed up his name at the beginning of the intro

[00:05:54] and I'm getting it right now. So Derek, I finally got it. I practiced it. I got it. So Derek is awesome. Super nice guy. And again, pastor here in Ohio and just released a new book on the topic

[00:06:09] of hell and it is called Holy Hell, A Case Against Eternal Damnation and a fantastic book. Highly recommend. But Derek also has done some podcast work of his own over the years. He had a podcast

[00:06:22] called Crossover Q and a really cool podcast that he created to combat some of the misinformation out there over the last couple of years. And so definitely worth checking out. We'll have the

[00:06:39] links in the show notes, of course. So go check it out. But again, always an interesting topic to kind of cover. I think a lot of what we've covered over the years in relation and regards to hell

[00:06:51] specifically is there's a lot of things that we have come to understand about the topic of hell that just simply aren't things that come from the Bible, believe it or not. And a lot of it

[00:07:03] really stems from influences outside of scripture, outside of the Bible that took place over a long period of time. But a lot of that influence comes from sort of the medieval period and we talk a

[00:07:15] lot about the influence of outside factors, medieval art and literature at the time. Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, things like that. So we dig into that and sort of what that means and

[00:07:33] the ways in which that we view God and specifically hell and the idea of what hell could be like really informs the ways in which we view God and the ways in which we treat our fellow humans. So

[00:07:48] very interesting conversation. This will be the first of two parts. So hopefully you enjoy. And without further ado, I give you Derek freaking Kubelius. **Music Playing** All right, welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast. Excited to have my guest on this week, Derek Kubelius. Did I get that right?

[00:08:27] Kubelius. We just worked on it. I know. It's my ADHD memory. No, that's cool. Well, I'm super excited to have you on and I had to laugh a little bit. I was like,

[00:08:43] wait, this is Derek's first book. Like way to come out of the gate swinging, my friend. Let's go with a light topic, right? Like to start off with. Well, actually, a friend of mine and I wrote a book back in 2007 when we were in our early 20s on

[00:09:00] nonviolence. But that one's a little harder to find. Oh, okay. Well, your publicist didn't do you justice then. They were like, Oh, that's okay. His debut book. I'm like, well, not really though. My debut solo book. Let's put it that way.

[00:09:14] Okay, fair enough. Well, before we dive into it, because, you know, as I mentioned before the recording, obviously you've been a listener to the podcast and years ago we did do when Adam

[00:09:25] was still joining me on these things. We did do a series on how I think it may have been the very first year. So we're talking like 2016, something like that. But we haven't really touched on it in

[00:09:38] a while. And I always think it's an interesting topic to talk about. But before we do that, tell people a little bit about yourself and your background and what you do for a living.

[00:09:48] Oh, well, I am a Methodist preacher here in the East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church. They move us around all the time if you know anything about the Methodist world. Oh, yeah. So right now I'm serving the First United Methodist Church of Ashland, Ohio,

[00:10:10] where I've been since July of 2022. Very cool. Yeah, I have a special kinship with the Methodists. As a kid growing up ELCA Lutheran, you know, we would occasionally go and join our friends in the Methodist Church and a lot of similarities just in...

[00:10:28] Oh, yeah. Yeah. We actually have a shared communion relationship so we can preach and preside at other churches. There are Methodists who serve ELCA churches and the other way around. So that's really close. Man, that's the way it ought to be, right? Yeah.

[00:10:48] We're working on more of that, hopefully. Good. No, that's great to hear. I love that. So again, like I said, this is a pretty heavy topic to launch into right out of the gate. So what was the inspiration to jump into this topic in particular?

[00:11:06] Well, I was teaching a class at my previous church in Uniontown, Ohio. And I teach these like eight-week long seminars and it's an opportunity for me to do a lot of research and just really give folks some good information and dive deep into some things with people.

[00:11:34] And they wanted the class to be about heaven and hell. Interesting. And I sat there and I'm like, man, I don't really talk about heaven and hell that much, which is probably why they want me to preach about or to teach about it. So I took six months

[00:11:55] and studied the heck out of it and then taught the class. And I was reminded, but also kind of shocked at how people are traumatized by the idea of hell. Everyone has someone that has died

[00:12:22] in their life. And most people have folks who have died outside of the Christian faith or adjacent to the Christian faith, or they've had questions about their quote unquote, eternal destiny. And that has led to so much anxiety for people. Yeah.

[00:12:43] And some of these stories are really heartbreaking. There was one person who lost a daughter in either very young infancy, I think it was very, very young infancy. And she was a Catholic before. And her priest, quite wrongly by the way, told her that her child

[00:13:08] would be in some place called limbo, which is kind of like a gray nothingness where this guy thinks unbaptized babies go. And that's not even Catholic doctrine. That's just weird folk religion. And she was haunted by that. That image of this baby just floating in nothingness forever.

[00:13:34] Or a woman who was convinced her father was burning in hell. And she would pray for him every single day and still believe that God wasn't going to answer her prayers. But she still felt motivated to pray because it was her dad.

[00:13:58] And it's like, wow, what must that be like? Yeah. To live in such a way that you think the people you love most are being tortured forever and ever with no hope. How does that shape how you think about yourself? And how does that shape how you

[00:14:21] think about God? Yeah, I've compared it to from a historical perspective. It kind of turns God into a dictator who rules by fear and force. And we all know through history that it's not the change of

[00:14:38] heart that you need to really like. It's more like, and of course, as soon as they have the chance, they rise up and overthrow the government. So, it's not the change of heart that you need

[00:14:50] to really like. It's more like, as soon as they have the chance, they rise up and overthrow the government. Well, I think it's actually worse than that. I mean, so this is the best example I can think

[00:15:00] of. Imagine living your life as a child with your parents who are very loving. They take you to all the things. They go to your baseball practice. They tuck you in at night, tell you nice stories.

[00:15:15] And then maybe you leave the house, go off to college or whatever. And you find out that that whole time while they were caring for and loving you, they were also torturing your brothers and sisters that you didn't even know you had in the basement somewhere.

[00:15:41] That's a great example. The whole time you were receiving all of this love and affection, there was also this other place where they were meting out this terrible punishment. How would that affect your relationship with your parents? Would you still come over for Thanksgiving? Would you still

[00:16:07] want to hang out? That doesn't even make sense to a certain extent. And yet Jesus reminds us over and over again that God is as a father to us. That is the metaphor that comes through more clearly than any other in all the four gospels.

[00:16:29] And if we take him seriously about that, then I think that calls into question some of the other things we've come to believe about the afterlife. Yeah. You almost have to question it because the joke sort of is like, on one hand,

[00:16:48] God loves you unconditionally. But on the other hand, if you don't have this exact set of beliefs right, then he will also throw you into a fiery pit for eternity. It doesn't really... The two don't jive.

[00:17:00] It's like that meme I see on Facebook all the time. I still see it from time to time with that old painting of Jesus knocking on the door. And Jesus says, you know, let me in so I can save you. And a voice calls out from inside,

[00:17:18] save me from what? And Jesus says, of what I'm going to do to you if you don't let me in. Oh, that's awesome. Like, that's what we're talking about here. You know what I'm saying? We're talking about

[00:17:37] turning God into this capricious punisher that chooses to lash out at some with unimaginable fury while showing tender affection to others. And you really need to take some time with that and interrogate sort of how you came to that belief and how those ideas evolved

[00:18:06] historically and culturally and personally. Because there's just too much on the line. These people, there are a lot of people walking around completely and totally traumatized by the idea of hell. One of the things I talk about in the book is that... Oh,

[00:18:30] there's my dog. I don't know if you can hear him. One of the things I talk about in the book is that in every church I've ever served, actually not this present one yet,

[00:18:41] but in every other church I've ever served, I had at least one person who would come relatively regularly, yet still be convinced that they were somehow damned forever. And they would still come to church. That was something that they still wanted to do,

[00:19:08] even though they believed that their sins were so great that they couldn't possibly be forgiven. And so that makes me ask the question, are you here to try to punish yourself? Are you just trying to get that process started already? What is the psychological thing that

[00:19:36] causes one to do that? I have no idea. Yeah, and one of the things you talk about in your book also that I think is important to talk about is the fact that it really

[00:19:49] kind of depends on which sort of stream of Christianity that you were born and raised in. As you pointed out, and I'm assuming you grew up Methodist. Yeah. I grew up ELCA Lutheran, like I said, and for me, that was never... The whole concept of hell is

[00:20:06] sort of a thing in the background, but it was never something that was thrown in our faces every day. That was not the basis of what we were taught at all. It was more...

[00:20:15] No, I consider it to be sort of like the moon. It doesn't shine nearly as brightly as the sun in my tradition, the sun being, of course, Jesus and the love of God and salvation and all of that. But nevertheless, its gravity still affects everything. Right.

[00:20:38] Right? It still pulls on the waves of our lives all the time. And every once in a while, some of those waves come crashing over the banks. And even in the Methodist Church, even in the ELCA or the

[00:20:55] Episcopal Church or whatever progressive denomination you want to talk about, there are still people who have been traumatized by hell. Absolutely. And the idea of eternal torment. I mean, how can it not really? And I think to your point, I think it really comes down to what

[00:21:15] degree has it traumatized you based on how much of a focal point that topic was in your whatever church you attended. And I think, as you mentioned, you had someone who grew up Catholic and the way

[00:21:32] which they view it is a little bit different. And then, of course, the Evangelical Church, especially the ones who are on the more fundamentalist side, that is really sometimes at the focal point. You know, it's kind of brimstone week in and week out. And that has got

[00:21:48] to have a massive psychological impact just sort of being simmered in this sort of guilt and shame version of Christianity for years on end. And it's no wonder these people are having panic attacks, you know?

[00:22:03] Yeah. And if at the same time you were taught that, as the first letter of John tells us, that God is love. And then you talk about that same God as tormenting people for all eternity.

[00:22:24] What lesson does that teach you about love? What does that tell you about how to love people with whom you are in a relationship? That is an unhealthy way to imagine anything. And as I

[00:22:48] talk about in the book, yes, we're traumatized by it. Yes, it hurts people. It creates, I believe, probably psychological damage with people. But also, the flip side of it is none of us

[00:23:07] really and truly believe it. And so, here's how I talk about that. If you really believed that it was possible for people, and even likely that most people would burn for all eternity,

[00:23:37] you would have a really tough time defending the rest of your life. That is, your ability to do anything other than engage in some kind of ministry, some kind of attempt to save those people from that fate. And I'm not even talking about full-time professional ministry.

[00:24:05] I'm talking about 120 hours a week eating and sleeping only when you have to. Because compared to the infinity of eternal torment, your 90 years here on this world ought to be spent entirely. And when I say entirely, I mean entirely in this mission

[00:24:34] to quote unquote save people from that fate. You would never go on vacation. You would never go to the movies. People would say that Billy Graham was a lazy, terrible evangelist because he spent so much time hanging out with his family. And you would never ever have children.

[00:25:01] It would be totally immoral to procreate if you thought there was even a possibility that your children could spend eternity in damnation. You would never do it. I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me,

[00:25:53] a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me. But the job isn't all that bad. I've gotten to see the country and meet some really interesting people and hopefully do some good along the way. You can find my story on Amazon,

[00:26:11] Audible or iTunes. Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer. That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.

[00:27:05] That's the best argument I've ever heard. I mean, it's true though. Why would you even expose yourself to that level of risk that one of your own children could possibly not have this thing nailed down to the extent

[00:27:30] where they would get thrown into a fiery pit for eternity? You wouldn't. It would be ridiculous. And then that begs the question of, okay, let's say then, let's follow that out a little further. Let's say you do have a child

[00:27:50] and they fall away from the faith or reject the gospel, however it is your tradition puts that, and they end up going to hell for all eternity. While you go to heaven and experience this thing we call everlasting bliss.

[00:28:09] How does that work exactly? How can you as a human being possibly enjoy whatever this heaven thing is, whatever this bliss is, knowing that some of the people you loved most on earth are crying out in eternal torment? How can that even be heaven for you?

[00:28:45] Now there are folks, and actually the guy who talks best about this is David Bentley Hart when he points to folks like Thomas Aquinas. Or even I think John Calvin who describes a situation where people in heaven can see people burning in hell and somehow take enjoyment

[00:29:06] out of it and glorify God for God's sovereignty. Somehow in heaven will all be given eyes to see why that is actually a really great and wonderful thing. But now you're essentially saying that

[00:29:25] we die and we go to heaven and we become less moral. We care less about our brothers and sisters. We have less compassion, less empathy. I don't want that. Or God somehow just shuts off that

[00:29:48] part of our brain that doesn't sound good. So when you actually break hell down to its most basic fundamental components and apply them to lived life as you understand it, it really begs some difficult questions.

[00:30:11] Yeah, and it makes me think of a quote by Richard Rohr where he talks about the idea that it presents a scenario in which you are more loving and more forgiving than God, which is impossible. That's ridiculous. That is fundamentally ridiculous.

[00:30:28] Yeah, if I can sit here and tell myself I wouldn't, despite that person's shortcomings and despite what the awful things this person has done on earth, I wouldn't throw them into hell. Yeah. Then surely God wouldn't either.

[00:30:44] Exactly. Exactly. So I don't know why exactly most Christians don't think about things this way. I'm trying to understand why it took me until a number of years ago for me to think about

[00:31:04] things this way. I think it's probably because hell is such a fearful place that we don't even want, most of us don't even want to let our minds rest in it. But when we do, it's kind of like

[00:31:24] turning on the lights in the middle of a haunted house and you see that everything is just made of plywood and cardboard. Yeah, that's a good transition because it's one thing for us to sort of talk philosophically about

[00:31:37] why it just doesn't make logical sense, which I agree it doesn't. But we don't want fundamentalists to tune in and accuse us of not taking the Bible seriously. So I don't want that, you don't want

[00:31:50] that. So let's talk about from, because I do think there is outstanding support for the argument that we're making here. And again, David Bentley Hart makes an outstanding argument in the book that he wrote some years ago that we talked about during the pandemic. But

[00:32:10] let's talk about just like what does the Bible say about hell? 28 Well, the first thing that you have to realize that most people don't understand is that hell is not in the Bible. What?

[00:32:26] And I know, you know, you might be tempted to pull out your King James version of the Bible and show me all the places where hell is listed there. But hell is actually just a really vague,

[00:32:42] crappy translation of really a substitution more than a translation of some really interesting enigmatic words in Hebrew and Greek, right? The first word that's usually translated as hell in the King James Bible, at least is the Hebrew word Sheol, which is a very, very odd word.

[00:33:19] And it's funny, I kind of did a study of just the King with the King James version. And when Sheol is described as being a terrible place, or if it's in relation to any kind of fire

[00:33:40] or destruction or anything like that, the King James version translates it as hell. If it's ever translated as kind of an in between place, or if it's described as being almost a positive place, the King James Bible renders it grave or pit. So, for instance, like

[00:34:07] in 1 Samuel, you have this scene where Saul enlists the help of the Witch of Endor, which sounds like we're in Lord of the Rings now, consults the Witch of Endor to summon Samuel from Sheol. And Samuel's actually upset that he has been disturbed. Like he's pissed,

[00:34:39] because he was relaxing in hell, apparently, according to these people. Well, if hell were really all that bad, or if Sheol were really all that bad, then I can assume that perhaps Samuel

[00:34:55] wouldn't want, wouldn't mind being granted a few moments of relief. Or if you think of Job, at one point during his trials, Job asked God to hide him in Sheol. And we would never ask God to

[00:35:14] hide us in hell. Or the psalmist says, you know, he's describing how omnipresent God is, how God is just everywhere. And the beginning of Psalm 139, and he says, Oh, if I make my bed in Sheol,

[00:35:36] thou art there, right? Which screws up, you know, the kind of evangelical look of things anyway, because their common refrain is that hell is somehow in absence of the presence of God, right? That's the one place in the whole universe, where we can actually be separated from God's

[00:35:59] presence, which doesn't even make sense. When you read Paul, you know, for whom, you know, if God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, then our very existence is dependent

[00:36:16] on God is what Tillich called the ground of being. So, you can't, so now you're saying, Oh, God is actually there in hell. Or, you know, when you get to, well, actually staying with the

[00:36:33] Old Testament, a better way I think to look at it afterlife in the way the Hebrew scriptures understood the afterlife. Sheol is a mystical place. It's a place that I don't think the Hebrew authors claim to understand. It was almost a poetic place.

[00:36:57] When they want to talk about the afterlife, the best scene of that I can think of in the Hebrew scriptures is in, what is it, Genesis maybe 24, where Abraham and Lot swear oaths to one another. And it says that they put their hands under one another's thigh.

[00:37:25] And when I was growing up as a kid, I heard a lot of sermons about like, what that meant exactly. It wasn't until much later that I found out what they were actually doing was they were cupping

[00:37:37] one another's testicles. And they were swearing an oath on one another's testicles, because that was the closest thing to eternal life that they understood. Right? Your progeny, your seed, the future generations of your name and who you are, that's what's going to live on.

[00:38:03] And that's, I think, as good of an afterlife as you're going to get until Daniel's written in 164. So, hell is definitely not in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, you know, your listeners have heard people explain what Gehenna is. I've been there.

[00:38:28] Gehenna is the word that's most commonly translated as hell. In the New Testament, it is a valley outside of Jerusalem, where you can go, there's a park, there are joggers and small fluffy white dogs. And what it was, was a place where the Canaanites sacrificed children.

[00:38:58] And so they turned it into a great big garbage dump, where not only they would dump their trash, but they would dump the dead bodies of poor people and paupers. And there would be dogs there.

[00:39:15] And they would be fighting over scraps of food and probably even human flesh. And there would be women mourning. And that's, of course, where you get this idea of weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's not people who are being tortured and tormented. It's dogs fighting over trash,

[00:39:41] and women mourning over their dead loved ones. And then, of course, you have Hades. Hades shows up several times in the Bible, which is the Greek conception of the afterlife. And I, do people expect that, you know, if you go down to hell, you'll be greeted by Cerberus,

[00:40:04] the three-headed dog? Or you'll have to cross the river Styx or even in Hades. There are really great parts of Hades. If you read Greek literature, the Elysian fields, there are places that aren't so bad. And even those who are being tortured,

[00:40:25] like Sisyphus, who has to roll his rock up and down the hill or the Danites, who have to lug their water jug, so on and so forth. That's not the searing, painful torture that we Christians tend to talk about. It's not fire. No, it's just CrossFit. Yeah.

[00:40:47] That's all that is. So yeah, and hell is just, even the Lake of Fire in Revelation 21, it's not a lake. It's not a lake. It's a pool. It's a pool. It's a smelting pool.

[00:41:08] It is a lake of molten metal fire and brimstone. Brimstone is sulfur that you use to refine silver. It is a place of refinement. It's a place where purity is achieved, not where torture happens. But you can see there's a lot of baggage. And over 2000 years,

[00:41:35] we've really learned how to twist things and contort them to create the scariest imaginable image. When I don't think that was the intent of the authors of the New Testament.

[00:42:23] Taking me to try to help the world to recover.

[00:44:38] I won't do it anymore. It's taking me too long to recover. I'll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover. I won't do it anymore. It's taking me too long to recover.

[00:45:27] I'll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover. It'll take a while to wade through the fear and the hurt. I think there's a way for us to love and heal.