It might come as a shock to you that I was a melancholy child.

Maybe it stemmed from my mom listening to Black Sabbath and 70s rock when I was in the womb. Maybe it was being raised Catholic. Maybe it was experiencing loss at an early age. Maybe I was just born this way. There is something within me that loves autumn. I find cemeteries immensely interesting and strangely calming. Sad songs make me happier. There is a certain feeling I get when I look at ruins… a longing, a state of mind… This trait has also made me obsessed with the afterlife. I first read through the Bible in 7^th grade. It took a long time, but I was searching for passages that describe the afterlife.

I was raised with the layer-cake model of the afterlife. I was lead to believe through my church and family, that there were the 7 layers of angel cake, the heavenly realms. God was at the top. You then had the nine orders of angels, the triumph of Christ, the contemplatives, the righteous rules, the martyrs and crusaders, the theologians, the lovers, the lovers of glory, and then the earth.

There was purgatory below all that. It’s a state of meh. It’s not heaven, but it’s also not hell. It’s the in between. Purgatory means that there is still something in the soul that is needed to be purged… to be made clean. To be purified. This is the marshmallow center of the afterlife.

Then you have the realms of the inferno. The 9 layers of hell. The first layer is home to the unbaptized and good pagans. Then you have lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, murder, fraud, and then on the 9^th and final level… Satan himself. The level of treachery.

I read the Bible looking for this. Starting in 7^th grade and then many times after… I never found it. It’s not in the Bible at all. This comes from Dante’s The Divine Comedy where the author imagines himself touring the three realms of the dead: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Dante drew from the Bible, Roman Catholic tradition, mythology, and medieval tradition. He also drew on Islamic tradition. I set to work reading the Divine Comedy in high school. I only read the Inferno section though. Paradiso is boring with all the nice and pleasant things of heaven. The Inferno is super fun! All the macabre tortures and punishments. My seminary prof told me that far more people have read the Inferno vs. Paradiso. I wonder what that says about us.

I did all of this research only to find that this version of the afterlife is not in the Bible. It influenced my tradition and upbringing, but it’s just not in there.

The afterlife is not mentioned too often in the Bible. The Bible is deeply concerned about this life. When Jesus talks about the afterlife, he’s using it as a metaphor or consequence for behavior in this life. With the Rich Man and Lazarus[1] or the Final Judgement of the Sheep and the Goats[2], these parables are not descriptions of what happens after this life is over… they’re about having compassion for the poor in this life now. For what we do to the least of these, we do unto Jesus himself.

Each time the afterlife is mentioned in the Bible, the afterlife isn’t the point. Here is the point. For God so loved the world… The entire Gospel of John is how to live here in this world. It’s not about waiting to die and then having some fun. God so loved the world that the divine sent Jesus to you and me. This life is a gift. Right now is a gift, it’s why we call it the present.

In John 14, right in the farewell discourses, Jesus is telling his disciples about how to live after he’s gone. He gives them comfort. “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you.” That’s great comfort. I think Dante is a great comfort.

I don’t think Dante got it all right though. Dante understood the afterlife based on his values. In his world, as in ours, people are ranked. We ranked people back then. We rank people now. We rank all sorts of people. Who are your top 5 bands? Who is the best quarterback of all time? Who is the best basketball player: Wilt Chamberlin, LeBron, Michael Jordan, Kobe? We’re ranking people all the time. In high school, we ranked the prettiest girls. Incredibly inappropriate. Yet we’re still doing that. There are people worthy of having houses, and there are people who aren’t. We have lists and most of our lists are incredibly inappropriate.

God doesn’t rank people. God makes out the check for unlimited and infinite grace to THE WORLD. Not to The Jews. Not to Americans or Ford owners or Browns fans. The World, no stipulations. God so loved the world, that whoever cashes this check will have eternal life. God doesn’t rank people, we do.

Dante writes a poem about the afterlife. It wasn’t meant to be scripture but many of us take it to be scripture. We can learn from it. Here are two things I want to bring out from Dante that I think are God approved.

In the lowest reaches of hell, there is Satan. Dante describes this level as just being Satan alone, frozen in a lake. It was a cold day in hell when Dante visited. Satan is alone and powerless, trying to get out of the lake, and he’s flapping his wings trying to break free but the wind from his wings is freezing the water further trapping him in. If you find yourself in hell, maybe it’s a good thing to stop. It’s a good thing to ask for help. The deepest, lowest part of hell is cold isolation.

So many folks are feeling frozen and isolated. There’s no community. They are alone. No one understands. They are looking for a way out, but they’ll do it all alone. Satan is alone. Yet God in Christ is in community. Always with the 12, followed by crowds. Sure, he takes time alone to pray, but when he’s doing that he’s with God. Community is often the way out. Other people can speak into our lives and literally get us out of the hell we’ve been in.

The second thing I think we can learn from Dante comes from when he’s in heaven. Dante finds that he can withstand brief glances at the blazing sun. The lights of Heaven represent God, which comes from our John passage. These lights are so bright that Dante must resort to gazing at the eyes of his beloved wife, Beatrice. She reflects those lights to him.

Isn’t that true? How often we experience divine love in the loving gaze of our partner or family member or friend. We experience God’s love in community. God’s love is so powerful, it would be like staring into the sun. We couldn’t handle it. We often can’t handle a loving gaze. We look away. But we love its warmth.

Satan and those who love the darkness prefer isolation. They don’t want people to see what they’re really doing. Yet there are those who love the light. They’re not braggy or boastful, they are warm, caring people. They notice others and they thank others for noticing them. They do not fear being exposed.

I have come to think that our vision of the afterlife influences how we live this life. If you think that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell… then you’re on guard constantly sorting who is worthy of your time and who can be written off. We of course are going to heaven, so we can judge who is in and who is out. I’ve not met anyone who thought this way who believed they were going to hell.

If you believe that Jesus descended into hell and wrecked the place and brought people out like how the Apostles Creed[3] says, then I believe you are probably more likely to go on mission trips and try to make the world better. You want to wreck the hells people are living in and bring them out.

That’s the church I want to be. We’re welcoming, loving, and serving because that’s how we see God. God so loved the world that he sent his only son. That whosoever believes in him will not perish. We will not perish.

We will live! And the gates of hell can’t prevail against us because we’ll walk right in and take people out of hell. Out of isolation. Into a loving community that is warm and bright and kind and can handle all of humanity. For God so loved, we love. For Christ so served, we serve. For the Spirit welcomes all, we welcome all. We stamp out hunger and the shame of being food insecure. We so love because God so loved. We house people and build homes through Habitat and Mercy Homes in Costa Rica because God so loved. We talk about mental health and accessibility and neurodivergence because God so loved. We welcome LGBTQ+ and celebrate their stories and bless their marriages and welcome them to all aspects of leadership and involvement because God is love. And God so loved.

God so loved the world, God sent his only son Jesus. Who was with us, on the night he was given up… spoke words of love and comfort to his disciples. He took the bread….

Further Reading
Alan Jones, The Soul’s Journey: Exploring the Three Passages of the Spiritual Life with Dante as a Guide.

Alan Segal, Life After Death: A history of the afterlife in western religion.

Bart Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A history of the afterlife. And Journeys to Heaven and Hell, tours of the afterlife in the early Christian tradition.

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

What Dreams May Come, a 1998 movie starring Robin Williams is a great artistic depiction of Dante’s inferno/Paradiso

Works Cited

[1] Luke 16:19-31

[2] Matthew 25:31-46

[3] I preached a whole sermon on this in our Faces of Jesus series: https://www.uccmedina.org/sermons/the-harrowing-of-hell/