Faith for Today, Not Just Eternity by iyree Jarrett

A few years ago, I found myself wrestling with a question: How could a God who is love be more concerned with where people go after they die than with the oppression, suffering, and injustice they experience while they are alive? At times, an overemphasis on the afterlife seemed to minimize the urgency of pursuing justice here and now.

In fact, I was wrestling with this question while writing a research paper on the ministries of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham during the Civil Rights Movement. While King fought for voting rights, equal protection under the law, economic justice, and the dignity of Black Americans, Graham consistently emphasized personal salvation and the eternal destiny of souls, often arguing that humanity’s deepest need was reconciliation with God and that true perfection would not come until Christ’s return. This contrast raised important questions for me about the relationship between faith, justice, and the hope of the life to come.

One of the most meaningful takeaways from Sunday’s discussion was how often Jesus connects warnings about “hell” to the ways people treat one another and the systems they create. His teachings consistently call people toward mercy, justice, compassion, and care for the vulnerable. The focus is often less on having the correct beliefs about the afterlife and more on how we live in the present. Jesus’ concern seems deeply rooted in confronting the realities of suffering, exclusion, oppression, and injustice here on earth.

I also appreciated the reminder that Jesus does not appear to speak about “hell” primarily as a future, eternal place of punishment. Instead, many of the terms translated as “hell”—such as Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and especially Gehenna—carried meanings that the original audience would have understood differently than many modern Christians do today. It was helpful to remember that when we read Scripture, we should ask what the original audience would have heard and understood rather than immediately filtering everything through our own cultural assumptions.

Bryce and Jeff, who I’ve had the joy of interacting with through our book club group, shared their personal stories and experiences with the concept of hell, along with key insights from the book, Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love by Brian Recker. They both described hell as something that was often presented through fear—or, in some cases, rarely discussed directly but always lingering in the background of their faith.

I left this discussion with a renewed sense of freedom. I felt free to question the tension between the idea of eternal conscious torment and my belief that God is loving and good. I felt free to wrestle honestly with Scripture and explore difficult questions without fear. I also felt free to recognize that Christianity can become distorted when concern for the afterlife overshadows concern for justice, compassion, and human flourishing in the present world.

Perhaps one of the most important questions is not simply whether hell exists, but whether our understanding of hell moves us toward greater love of God and neighbor. If Jesus consistently connected his warnings to justice, mercy, and compassion, then perhaps the purpose of those teachings was not merely to inform us about the afterlife, but to transform how we live today.