Hell Offends and Heaven Bores

Christendom’s clergy, offering parishioners the “heaven or hell” alternatives, sometimes are not very enthusiastic about their own spiritual servings. In fact, one cleric in England not only is disgusted with the traditional concept of hell but is also unattracted by the traditional concept of heaven. Speaking to the Conference of Modern Churchmen in Oxford, England, Canon J. S. Bezzant, dean of Saint John’s College in Cambridge, said that the traditional imagery description of heaven no longer seemed desirable. As to hell, he said that the hideous pictures of it must have issued from morbidly diseased minds. Declared the cleric:

“Purgatory and hell have now in effect been banished by the reformers, and we are left with little more than a sentimental notion that all who die are forthwith in paradise or heaven. This involves a conception of God so generally tolerant as to be morally indifferent and perverts the immortal hope from a moral and spiritual stimulant into a narcotic. . . . There is no reason to suppose we know more about life after death than a caterpillar on a leaf knows what it is like to fly in the air. . . . If hell offends, heaven bores.”—New York Post, July 29, 1955.