Sep/Oct 2004

COMMENTARY

An Open Letter to Dante

I hope you’ll be gracious enough to indulge a few constructive comments and suggestions about your imaginary pilgrimage through hell as described in The Divine Comedy. Reading your work almost 700 years after you wrote it, it seems to me that your intentions included 1) scaring the hell out of people by giving them a vulture’s eye-view of eternal punishment, and 2) handing down scorching everlasting assignments to some richly deserving (in your judgment) personalities.

Did you know that ever since you first wrote The Divine Comedy, many Christians have taken their cues about the realities of hell from your play book? Some today, in their zeal to attract people to Christianity, continue to base their horrific depictions of an afterlife in hell on your work. It would seem that they use you as a role model because they even book advance reservations in hell for others. On several occasions I have been personally assured that reservations have been made in my name.

Let’s cut to the chase. You have contributed to an unnecessary, raging theological brush fire of condemnation with sadistic rhetoric that exceeds biblical specifics about hell. Not only do your graphic descriptions eclipse biblical revelations, but it seems to me that these horrific, hyperbolic scare tactics are manipulative— completely unlike the Jesus I know—and are concerned more with controlling people than guiding them to God’s grace.

I occasionally talk with a good friend who is a charter member of his local chapter of the hellfire and brimstone brigade. We both agree that there is a hell, but my hell is not hot enough for my friend. My biblically- based beliefs about the afterlife are of a heaven defined as eternity spent in the presence of God and a hell that is an eternity of separation from God.

But my friend doesn’t think my hell goes far enough to stop people from sinning (I have to tell you that this is a concern that occupies a lot of my friend’s time). To be frank, I think his rigid religious ideas about hell are overly influenced by your contributions. The good news is my friend and I do accept each other as Christians because we both know that believing any particulars about hell have never been, and still aren’t, a core belief of Christianity.

In a recent conversation we came to a rare agreement about hell—we both believe The Divine Comedy needs to be updated. He is deadly serious about this undertaking (is that the right word?), but I must be honest, my contributions provide a lighthearted way to demonstrate how illogical and unbiblical your ideas are. So, just as the Authorized King James Version of the Bible has competition from modern translations, we think you should consult your publishers and let them know that The Divine Comedy needs updated language and fresh, contemporary examples. You could call it The New Divine Comedy, or The Revised Divine Comedy. Here are my tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek suggestions to beef it up:

A. First, there’s the word comedy in the title. Your use of the word comedy as a story depicting the triumph of God’s love is lost on the 21st century reader. Comedy today means funny ha-ha. If people today want meaningless endless fictional humor, they watch interminable, virtually imperishable re-runs of Friends or Seinfeld. If your revised Divine Comedy is going to make an impact, then you will need to replace comedy in the title with a word like blazing, blistering or roasting. Promote the blood and guts in the title! Remember, if it bleeds, it not only leads, it sells like hotcakes (pun intended).

B. Since there is much disagreement about your ideas on hell, you should consider republishing the updated version of The Divine Comedy as fiction rather than theology. One advantage of admitting your creation to be fiction would be that your new version could be displayed in the same bookstore aisles as Tim LaHaye’s fictional Left Behind series.

C. While dogmatic detail about hell is speculation at best, I would at least commend your courage in attempting to assign some religious leaders to particular regions of your hell, because, in your estimation, instead of feeding their flock, they fleeced them. But can you see your blind spot? You have no assignments for religious leaders who try to scare people out of hell into heaven.

D. Your poetic license offers this inscription on the gate of hell, “All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” Then you describe hell like a huge inverted cone that pierces to the very heart of this earth. You are going to need to revise this hypothesis. At the very least you need to place hell somewhere other than earth, because no evidence exists to prove that hell is where you say it is. Ditto for Mars and the moon.

While we’re talking logic and reason, you really need to consider the fact that it’s not theoretically possible for physical torture to cause pain to disembodied souls who inhabit your hell. Even though you write using allegory and metaphor, your work is understood to be literal, and claims like this cause a massive credibility gap for modern readers.

E. You suggest that torment intensifies in what you describe as rings or circles of hell. I have to tell you that I predict you will have no problem finding people to underwrite your new version (I think you called them patrons back in your day) because it’s an established fact that fear motivates people into allowing religion to control them. Control is where the rubber hits the road for much of religion.

It is my prayer, therefore, that my comments about your rings/circles will help you have a change of heart and see that God’s grace is not at all about control, but rather all about freedom in Christ. Here are my thoughts:

1) Limbo, where in your hell, virtuous pagans who just didn’t cut the mustard and barely failed to qualify for heaven are assigned. Your Limbo is inhabited eternally by unbaptized children and non-Christians of every demographic group. You describe them as being generally depressed, and that they often suffer from insect bites and stings.

If you want your new version to frighten people into “doing the right thing,” you’re going to have to turn up the temperature in Limbo. After all, we now have insecticides and anti depressants that can neutralize your slap-on-the-wrist-like Limbo punishments.

My suggestions. Turn up the heat on Limbo! Your Limbo sounds far better than the hell on earth some people are living in right now. Maybe you could tell people that no insecticides or anti-depressants are (or will be) available in Limbo— also, tell them that Limbo television has only one channel that plays everlasting re-runs of I Love Lucy. That should motivate them!

2) The Lustful. This is your place for those who willingly participated in the sins of the flesh. They are in pitch blackness, blown by fierce winds of unquenchable desire. Maybe one of the reasons we are having so much trouble with lust in the 21st century is because you seem to be soft on this sin compared with others. Fierce winds of unquenchable desire sounds like San Francisco. Capiche?

3) The Gluttonous. Did anyone ever tell you that you could get a job at Disney or Pixar? You have an incredible imagination! You envision the obese who spent their time on earth super-sizing their meals lying on the ground of Hades while being bombarded by rain and hail. Meanwhile, three-headed dogs rip them limb from limb. After reading your vivid description, I can only say that I am relieved that you didn’t know anything about fast food or pit bulls when you wrote. Pedophiles who are among The Lustful suffer less in eternity than fast food addicts? I can think of several hell-happy religious groups whose memberships tend to the chubby and portly who will instigate a boycott of your new version unless you call off the dogs on The Gluttonous.

4) The Avaricious and Prodigal. This is a perfect example demonstrating why you are going to need a modern translation. If you are going to strike fear into people’s hearts and keep them out of hell on the strength of what they do and don’t do (by the way, ever heard of grace?) then you are really going to need to dumb down this language.

After consulting my dictionary, it seems to me that The Avaricious and Prodigal would include wealthy people whose egos are over-inflated (to match certain portions of their bodies that are cosmetically enhanced and augmented), including filthy rich athletes who are puffed up with steroids—people who live lives of conspicuous consumption. Is that correct?

For some current examples to add to your new version all you need to do is read People magazine or The National Enquirer.

5) The Wrathful and Sullen. You can dumb down this description by explaining that The Wrathful are the kinds of people who either appeared on the Jerry Springer Show or who watched it faithfully every day. You assign The Wrathful to an eternity of attacking each other even as they are thrashing around in a swamp filled with black mud. You do not provide The Sullen with inner-tubes or any flotation devices so they are eternally submerged with their eternal “last gasps” of air eternally bubbling up to the surface of the swamp.

You may be on to something! For any parent of a sullen teenager, this threat of eternal submersion in a mud-filled swamp might work wonders. If you could offer even more grisly details about the eternal fate of The Sullen, your revised Divine Comedy could become the 21st century conservative answer to Benjamin Spock’s progressive The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946).

6) Heretics. According to your muse, Heretics are doomed to exist within burning tombs forever. Dante, you have a problem here. Ever heard of “I’m OK, you’re OK?” Today, no viewpoint is absolutely bad or wrong or evil—all beliefs are equally virtuous. The greatest wisdom today is accepting all philosophies and ideas and believing that they all lead to heaven. The New Age closed the road to hell for Heretics several decades ago, judging the condemnation of unbiblical beliefs to be as archaic as the burning of witches in Salem.

While I obviously don’t agree with your ruthless and barbarous idea of hell, since you or someone will update your specific ideas of hell, you might consider including a few modern teachers of Heresy. For examples of some who try to get in under the radar by flying the flag of Christianity just turn on your television.

7) The Violent. There is no Hollywood movie rating for the sickening bloodletting you forsee in this torture chamber. You claim that those who committed violence against others are eternally submerged in hot blood, those who committed suicide inhabit stunted trees producing poison fruit and those who were violent against God are showered with eternal fire. Your classification of people who were violent against God includes homosexuals (sodomite is your term) and lenders (usurers is your term). This group is sentenced to an eternity of running on hot sand, or even being stretched out on burning sand. You have your work cut out for you convincing 21st century North Americans about this region and its inhabitants.

8) Fraudulence and Malice. You have ten separate sub-categories of this region, each one descending further into the depths of hell, with panderers, pimps, seducers, thieves, politicians who abuse their office and hypocrites in general being placed in boiling pitch, trapped in snake pits, covered with filth, being whipped and tortured and jumping from one hot coal to another. In spite of this nightmare of anguish, these fearful deterrents might be a little more successful if you include some more contemporary well-known examples to spice up your new version.

9) Traitors and Murderers. Your last circle is a frozen marsh where Lucifer, Satan the devil, is immersed. You suggest that Satan will flap his wings in a vain attempt to free himself from this ice age, but his efforts merely produce more ice from the frigid wind, further trapping him in this frozen eternal wasteland. This is your most remote and least populated, and hence most exclusive in terms of torture, ring of hell.

Apart from updating the language and terminology, most people, apart from Satanists and witches, are going to agree with you about Satan’s fate.

Finally, a request. If you do pursue a new edition, I suggest a new chapter. You can call it “Hell on Earth.” You remember Sisyphus— in Greek mythology he was the clever and deceptive king of Corinth. Because of his trickery and lies, Sisyphus was assigned by Hades, the god of the underworld, to an eternity of forever pushing a boulder up a hill in Hades. But every time he got close to the top of the hill, the boulder slipped out of his grasp and rolled back to the bottom again, and Sisyphus had to start all over again.

The fate of Sisyphus is being experienced right now on the surface of this earth, in this physical life— and it has been for thousands of years. It is the sentence of those who work in the salt mines of God-less religion, where religious propaganda convinces them nothing they do will ever be good enough for God.

What we all need, Dante, you and me, and everyone who has or is now experiencing some version of Bad News Religion, (including the unspeakable eternal horrors of your hell) is more Jesus and less religion. More love and acceptance, less of The Divine Comedy. Adding “Hell on Earth” as your final chapter will help readers place the rest of your work in perspective, so that they understand it as the fiction and fantasy that it is.

We all need more grace, less hell. So does The Divine Comedy. Call me, Dante. I would love to share the unbelievably good news of the gospel with you—maybe over a Starbucks. I’m thinking you might not like hot coffee—they do have iced frappachino.

— Greg Albrecht

For more on hell, be sure and read “The Hotter The Better!” in the May/June 2003 Plain Truth. Go to http://www.ptm.org/HOTTER

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