Relevant Magazine brought an unexpected article to my attention. In Why We Need Hell, TooNewsweek journalist Kenneth Woodward argues for the importance of Hell as an inducement for moral living.
This is a sidebar article to the main Why We Need Heaven, which is a discussion of the rival Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives on the afterlife and the way they impact the news.
I found quote particularly amusing: (Speaking of the Koran’s promise of heavenly orgies) Georgetown’s Voll doesn’t think that the virgins carry much weight with the Palestinian martyrs; unlike the Iranians in the 1980s, teenagers on the West Bank do have access to sex. More seductive is that you would have “a house, regular food, prosperity,” he says. “You would have flowing water; someone wouldn’t be bombing your well. If you had lived without all that stuff for the first 15 or 20 years of your life, heaven would sound pretty good with or without 72 virgins.” Hmmm… I’m guessing Voll doesn’t know any teenage boys.
And of course, Ernest Hemingway wrote that he thought of heaven as “two lovely houses in town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.” Hmm… logical consistency wasn’t one of Hemingway’s dominant concerns.
The author buys some unfortunate interpretations of the development of the afterlife in Jewish theology, and enjoys playing with the notion that both the suicide bombers and their victims think they’re going to heaven (and that their enemies are going to hell). Overall, it’s a pretty interesting read (if not a good course in theology).