It really bothers me when people say that the doctrine of “you send yourself to hell” makes any sense, as if actions that go against a moral code have automatic consequences.

I mean, in the real, everyday world, actions don’t have automatic consequences. People don’t automatically get punished for stealing, killing, and lying. Sometimes people steal, kill, lie…and that’s it. That’s all that happens. There’s no automatic natural horrific consequences for it. Which is precisely why WE have to intervene to make the consequences for various reasons — to deter behavior, to satisfy a need for revenge, to reform the offender.

Again, in the real world, the discipline we engage in to punish crimes are our doing, not the natural product of some “just so” natural reaction of what they did that we have nothing to do with. We can’t just do cruel things like electrocute someone nearly to death and say, “well, that was the natural consequence of them stealing my pencil.” No. You’re responsible for the punishment you choose to fit the crime. They didn’t do it themselves; you chose to electrocute them. How the hell does God get off the hook?

I mean…breaking it down a bit more…suppose someone steals five sticks of gum from a vending machine. Under the Christian concept of sin, they’ve sinned. The natural consequence for sin — any sin — is eternity in hell, right (which, regardless of what the Ray Comforts of the world say, is outrageous)? And you’re saying they are doing it to themselves? So what is, say, six months in jail and a $250 fine? It’s still less than they actually deserved. And besides, it’s not your fault you sentenced them to six months in jail. They brought it on themselves. It’s a good thing you stepped in and gave them less than they deserved.

You see? There’s really no punishment that would be too extreme, because the punisher never comes under any scrutiny; they just get admired for the fact that they didn’t do worse. Even life imprisonment for the slightest offenses would be mercy. It would have to be. When you do something wrong in the Christian scheme of things, you automatically deserve the worst possible punishment (times infinity, as hell would be forever) onto yourself according to the “you send yourself to hell” mindset. So the punisher is always able to say that the natural consequence you brought on yourself for the bad thing is far worse than anything they could ever do, and then they can call the gap between that unimaginable torture and what they actually decide to do, “grace.”

And through it all, the punisher is never responsible for the punishing they do — they are only glorified because of how much they stop short of doing infinitely worse. The punishment isn’t their fault, only the “grace.” The punished are the ones bringing the punishment on themselves.

This thinking can lead to worse and worse punishments for even the smallest infraction. And the greater the punishment, the more the wrongdoer feels guilty…because they did it to themselves.

As a result, there’s a high incarceration rates in the United States, child abuse based on verses saying to “punish the child with the rod and save his soul from death,” horrific punishments for infidels and heretics (past and present), persecution of the lgbtq company in many countries, and dangerous attitudes towards “evil” foreign powers. If you think someone deserves eternity in torment for something they have done, you can do anything to them and think it’s grace because you’re giving them less than the even worse fate they actually deserve. And you never have to think about whether the punishment actually makes sense, because you’re not responsible enough for the punishment to answer for it; the person brought it on themselves.

Here’s the logic that needs to happen to break it up in this imaginary theology: People don’t send themselves to hell. God sends people to hell because he doesn’t like some of the things they do.

You don’t like it? Yeah, I didn’t either. That’s one of a zillion reasons I think the whole thing is a load of bull.

Now, the punisher (be it God or another human being) is responsible for the punishment. Which actually makes a lot more sense. The punishment doesn’t just “happen” on its own — it is a subjectively conceived consequence.

In other words, now the punished person does not automatically deserve any “natural moral consequences,” and we can think about why the punisher is punishing and whether we approve of that reason. We can demand to know what the punisher (be it God or a human being) hopes to accomplish by punishing someone. Do they want revenge? Do they want to reform the person? Do they want the person to become a contributing member of society? See — now instead of blindly handing out what’s “naturally” deserved, we can start thinking about why we’re actually doing the punishing in the first place.

When we open up a space to ask these questions, we are able to demand to know (or otherwise investigate) what others hope to accomplish with a punishment, and then gauge their answers. So when someone sentences a person for life in prison for marijuana possession, for example, they now have to answer to onlookers; “they put themselves in prison” isn’t good enough — no, the punisher decided to put them in prison, so his judgment is under scrutiny, too.

Evaluating sentencing based on what it’s supposedly trying to accomplish can uncover unsavory motives, like funding for-profit prisons, that would otherwise be camouflaged or invisible altogether due to, “they did this to themselves” logic. We can analyze the people who have an interest in having someone behind bars, you can see if putting someone behind bars accomplishes worthwhile goals (yes, in some cases it may be worthwhile for the family to have a sense of vengeance in the case of murder, for example), and you can make punishment actually…well, make logical, rational sense.

Again, please notice: what I’m talking about here is the fundamental, exact opposite of “you send yourself to hell” thinking. Here, the punisher — be it God or another human being — is seen as having a rationale for the punishment they give to an offender, and we onlookers can have a vested interest in looking for and evaluating that rationale instead of stopping at “the offender did it to themselves” thinking.

And you may find that the more you look for justification from punishers (both in the theological world and…the real one), the more you begin to see that “God”…really…doesn’t…have a good one.

I mean, what is the justification for sending someone to hell for eternity? There’s no opportunity there for reform. As far as revenge — Is God really that revengeful? If so, do you really want to serve such a vengeful God? And if it’s for the safety of his own holiness and perfection…how well does it sit with you that he so “perfect” that he can’t stand to have these people in His presence? What is so unbearable about these people for him? Do you really want to follow a God who is so stuck up? And as these questions start swirling in your mind, God may often make less and less sense (and the American legal system too, for that matter).

The thing about this is that as God makes less sense, people start coming to life. They develop more complexity and depth, because they don’t just naturally deserve eternity in hell. I mean, there’s something really positive and beautiful that happens here when we look for the justification in a punisher’s actions. And then, if we don’t like that justification or the justification is based on a cause-effect principle that simply does not work, we can actually create more effective punishments (relative to our goals) and thereby improve our sense of justice, based on reason and evidence and empathy (for both offender and victim) instead of “just so” thinking.

If we go based off, “You brought it on yourself” thinking there is really nowhere to go in improving things — because you can’t improve a punishment that you are not responsible for; it simply is there, as a natural consequence. To improve punishment, you would have break down what improvement would look like by introducing goals for justice reform that focus on what a punishment is meant to do or accomplish — which means you and your intentions would be an admitted part of the punishment. You can’t do this if ignore the fact you’re punishing an offender and instead claim that you’re giving grace for anything short of sentencing the offender to the “natural consequence” of eternity in hellfire.

To put it another way: if it is possible to improve — if it is possible to use the justice system to accomplish goals we hold in common as a society — then the just-so “you brought it on yourself” thinking, by insulating the punisher from criticism, actually makes it much harder to accomplish these goals. In order to accomplish our goals as a society we need to take responsibility for those goals and for the punishments and steps we implement in order to approach the goals, and we can’t do it if we hide those in charge of punishing offenders from criticism and say that punishments are solely the offender’s fault.

I realize this stance may be controversial from several sides of the debate. But my sincere interest here is to ensure, as much as possible, that as many people as possible get to live fulfilled lives. What I see is that millions of people live behind bars (especially here in the US, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world) in a wasteful system due to punishments for crimes (like the aforementioned life sentence for marijuana possession) that drain society of resources (as the average inmate costs $30,000 a year) and ruin the only lives that individuals have gotten. When I ask people to justify this wasteful system, the rationales seem directly connected to what the prisoners actually “deserve” — a clear consequence of “they brought it on themselves” thinking — instead of what is actually rational and what meets our goals as a society. Those latter questions seem completely obscured, and that is the direct result of the “you send yourself to torment” reasoning.

Meanwhile, the for-profit prisons, as well as homophobia, racism, and other factors influence our decisionmaking regarding crime. We might see this — and we do see this — when we are focusing on how to accomplish certain goals. For example — if your goal is for everyone to go the speed limit on a highway, you have a vested interest in making sure you pull over people who speed. Racism can get in the way of this — pull over people according to race instead of driving habits, and you have more people speeding faster. So the goal — ending speeding — can give people a vested interest in making sure racism isn’t getting in the way. But if the focus is on what speeders deserve, or if you think that speeders “bring tickets on themselves,” the person handing out tickets doesn’t have to answer near as much for the “punishment” of the ticket, which allows him to be racist in ways that may actually make speeding worse and then say that the driver “brought it on themselves.”

This reasoning, I think, starts with God. When people say “people send themselves to hell” they initiate a way of thinking that impacts their view of justice in general by hiding the punisher from criticism. No, God is the one who, in this fictional theology, is sending people to hell, and this fictional being needs to be scrutinized, just as the authorities in our everyday lives do. We need to focus on the goals that a punishment is seeking to accomplish, and then ask ourselves whether those goals are worthwhile, and whether the punishment is accomplishing them. If the answer to either of those questions is “no,” there’s a problem with the punishment (and perhaps the punisher — like its nonexistence) that needs to be remedied.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Thanks for reading.

[Image via PSParrot under CCL 2.0]