There’s a famous scene in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Huck has run away, with the slave Jim.  They are on a raft, floating down the Mississippi River in order to reach a free state where Jim can be freed.  The book was written less than 20 years after the Civil War, so the memory of that terrible time in American History is still fresh.

Jim and Huck have many adventures and Huck begins to have a moral crisis.  He has found out that there is a reward for the return of Jim to his owner.  Also, it was against the law not to return runaway slaves.  Huck can go to jail, and worse than that, he thinks he can go to hell.  In his mind, he has done a terrible thing by protecting Jim.

So, he decides to turn Jim in.  And he writes that he felt good about it and, in his words, “all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now.”

But then he has doubts.  Jim has become a friend and has protected Huck all through their adventures.  Huck has come to love Jim.

Huck doesn’t know what to do.  Finally, he decides not to turn in Jim and risk being arrested and damned.  He finally says, “All right then, I’ll go to hell”; and tore up the paper.

It is a peculiar part of theology about hell and everlasting torment.  It’s the subject of countless theories and much superstition.

A fear based religion is an unhealthy religion.  It is certainly true that the Church teaches there is a hell.  But it never really describes it; nor have we said anyone is there.

People say, “What about Hitler?” It’s a good question and I personally think someone like Hitler is simply extinguished, as if he never existed.

Way too casually, we may say to someone “Go to hell”, without thinking what we are saying.

In today’s gospel form Luke, Jesus says do not be afraid of those who kill the body but can do no more.  I shall show you whom to fear.  Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna… Gehenna was actually the constantly burning garbage dump of Jerusalem—a symbol of hell. This passage does not refer to Jesus in judgment or to Satan.  Only God the Father has the power to send anyone to hell.

So, it comes down to one’s theology of God.  Is God all merciful, all loving, all forgiving?  Or is God a vengeful, cruel, unforgiving, unloving person who casts people—no matter how bad they might have been—into eternal damnation?

We might just give it some thought, as Huck Finn did.

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