Why I Adore My Catholic Friends' Worldview

And What I Now Suspect About How Hell Operates

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Today’s thoughtful reply by Alec Ott to my autobiographical essay “Why I hate Indiana So Much” is very much worth reading:

Who Goes to Hell?

I’ve worked with many Catholic writers over the year and now we have several wonderful ones contributing to God of the Desert Books. I’ve really come to appreciate their approaches to spirituality, despite my distinctly Protestant Christian sensibilities.

Alec’s piece really exemplifies why I’ve so often sympathized with Catholic ways of looking at the world. Most Catholics I’ve gotten to know well and talked faith with are simply much, much more comfortable than many Protestants, especially Evangelicals, in accepting the inherent mysteries in spirituality. They know that we can’t really know who goes to heaven or hell. Just as we can’t really know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. And they’re at peace with that. This is very different than “Bible-based” Evangelicals who think there’s an easy answer to everything if they can just pinpoint the right verse to take literally and yank out of context.

There are other aspects of Catholic spirituality where I find myself agreeing.

First, I do agree with what Alec writes in his post: I do think that hell exists. And I do have some speculations at this point about how and where it operates exactly. In my view all “hell” means is simply “separation from God.” And by that definition all of us on the earth are in “hell” right now. Hell is the earth - which is why there’s so much suffering and misery to be found all around us.

The more commonly understood after-death aspect of hell also seems to exist. What does it mean to be in “hell” after death? One’s soul is simply still trapped here on earth, not unlike a ghost. Is this a place of punishment by demons? Well, in a sense yes. Because there’s something else where I agree with my Catholic friends:

I very much do agree with the Catholic Church’s position on exorcisms. I do think that “demonic spirits” wander the earth tormenting and sometimes literally possessing human beings, and that in seeking to imitate Christ we should cast them out too.

Why do I have such seemingly strange beliefs? Two reasons, one protestant Christian, and another hippie mystical.

First, I think it’s entirely Biblical to believe in demons. Take the Book of Job seriously - it’s not just pretty poetry, it’s a foundational understanding of how and why God allows demons to walk the earth, testing us. Also don’t ignore the plenty of verses in the New Testament in which Jesus casts out demons. A few examples:

Mark 1:34:

And He healed many who were ill with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and He was not permitting the demons to speak, because they knew who He was.

Luke 4:45:

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst of the people, he came out of him without doing him any harm.

I also believe evil spirits exist because I have literally encountered them in my mystical practices. There have been times in which I have put myself into a mystical trance one way or another only for demons to start speaking through me or for ghosts to make themselves known too. It’s sometimes been very scary and it’s not a practice I care to repeat.

Also, as I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation over the last 20 years - especially the last year as my PTSD has turbo-charged it - often this feeling has resembled a kind of demonic possession. It’s as though evil spirits of some sort are trying to provoke me to do it. Most of the time I just regard this as a metaphor and try to maintain some Robert Anton Wilson-style skepticism, but other times it seems much more literal.

These mystical experiences have further enforced my suspicious about hell that I’ve developed as a “liberal Christian.” While I do think some souls “go to hell,” I dispute the popular idea that hell is an eternal state some people fall into permanently. I suppose one could say I sympathize with the Catholic idea of purgatory. Some souls may die and wander the earth for awhile in pain and confusion. They may be tormented by the hungry demonic spirits. (One of the demons I channeled explained that he and his brethren have to eat or “chew on” souls to survive.) But I do think lost souls are capable of rejoining God and “going to heaven” at any time. I think the door to heaven is open and welcoming to them. It just may take them some time to realize it.

Photo by Florian Lidin on Unsplash

In my mystical experiences there have been more times “channeling” “ghosts” than I really feel comfortable accepting yet. (The ghosts seems to be much more common than the demons, which have only showed up twice.) I still often would rather just dismiss the experiences as “one part of my brain talking to another part” and using symbol systems which make sense to me. But many of these experiences are just too difficult, weird, and vivid to file away like that. Especially on the occasions when the ghosts speaking through me have been children. The really sad part of it is that most of the time they don’t know that they’re dead. They have to be told and then guided to go toward the light. Sometimes they do, sometimes they’re not ready yet. I was never that big of a fan of The Sixth Sense but now I’m a bit more sympathetic to it since it seems to reflect a reality I’ve experienced.

What do you think? Am I nuts? Is my theology way off base? What do you believe about heaven and hell? Have any speculations about ghosts and demons? Please leave your thoughts in the comments or send me an email if you’d like to write something longer for potential publication.