Who Created Hell?

Every once in a while Stephen Colbert will have a guest on his show, and they will discuss religious issues. Last week was one such occasion. The guest was Philip Zimbard, and the title of his book is The Lucifer Effect. The basic premise appears to be a discussion of how good people can sometimes become evil if the circumstances are right. The case in point for Zimbard was the biblical story of Satan's fall from heaven. According to Zimbard, Satan was likely jealous of the new authority that God had given man in the Garden of Eden. It appeared to Satan that he was losing ground obviously to a creature much more inferior than he. The result, therefore, was the booting out of Satan from heaven into hell. Zimbard said that God created hell in order to have an eternal place of punishment for Satan's disobedience. Stephen Colbert, however, disagreed strongly.

According to Colbert, who knows a lot about Catholic theology, Zimbard's argument was not valid. Instead, Colbert reminded the audience that God gave free will to man (and woman also we presume). The definition of hell within the church often focuses on the idea of separation from the love of God, not necessarily a place of fire and brimstone. Colbert's position was that Satan, not God, created hell because of his voluntary separation from God. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Colbert ruined a perfectly formed argument by ending the conversation and calling his guest an obscenity.

I tend to agree with Colbert's point of view regarding the creation of hell and the person responsible. I disagree, however, with the methods we Christians use to confront any type of secular or religious argument we do not agree with. I always remember a line from the Broadway play The Miracle Worker by the mother of Helen Keller, "We catch more flies with honey than vinegar." When we show our intellectual superiority in an argument, we are simply giving God what He hates most--pride--which was the essential problem in both of the falls. It appears that Zimbard won his argument after all as expressed in his book's subtitle: How Good People Turn Evil.