Hell’s doors: locked on the inside

I’ve noticed that a lot of dis­cus­sions tend to talk about “the damned” (for lack of a bet­ter phrase) with­out actu­ally talk­ing about them. That is to say that on the one hand, we argue over the exis­tence of Hell, and if it does exist, what kind of God would pos­si­bly cre­ate such a place. On the other hand, when we talk about the souls of those who will pop­u­late Hell we make a par­tic­u­lar assump­tion: they don’t want to be there.  I think the rea­son­ing is some­thing like this: “Every knee will bow and con­fess Jesus as Lord. There­fore, all will want to be with Jesus, espe­cially those going to Hell, who will be filled with regret”. I’m not entirely sure I believe this. In fact, I’m fairly cer­tain I don’t. I’m not even sure why the alter­na­tive has been long ignored. That upon see­ing Jesus, those who rejected Him will only be filled with more bit­ter­ness at the thought of their eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. A bit­ter­ness which will grow over time. Per­haps until it is all that is left of them. It’s a thought I share with C.S. Lewis, “I will­ingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, suc­cess­ful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (Com­plete C.S. Lewis Sig­na­ture Clas­sics, 626). And, in fact, it’s prob­a­bly one I’m going to have to insist on the next time I enter into a con­ver­sa­tion with respect to Hell.

Related posts:

1. Do Good Peo­ple go to Hell?
2. Hell: Why don’t Chris­tians do more?
3. Book Review: Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft
4. What is Hell?
5. Book Review: Beyond the Shad­ow­lands by Wayne Martindale