One of the “bad guys” in the novel I’m reading, Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier, begins to have qualms about his part in the smuggling ring that is central to the book’s plot. He says:

“I’ve risked swinging before, and I’m not afraid of my neck. No, I’m thinking of my conscience and of Almighty God, and though I’ll face any man in a fair fight, and take punishment if need be, when it comes to the killing of innocent folk, and maybe women and children amongst them, that’s going straight to hell, Joss Merlyn, and you know it as well as I do.”

I began to wonder as I read this rather remarkable statement if anyone nowadays is deterred from doing anything by the fear of hell. I hear preachers quote polls that indicate that maybe about half of all Americans believe in a literal hell, and a small minority of those believe that they have any chance of going there. So does anyone in modern America stop in mid-sin in order to avoid the fires of hell? Did any of the guards at that prison in Iraq stop to think that what they were doing could send them to hell? Do Muslims have a well-developed doctrine of hell? Is it only we infidels who are destined for hell in the the Islamic worldview? Does Saddam Hussein ever fear hell? What would it have been like to live in a culture where most people were in agreement that bad guys were headed for hell? Wouldn’t it be good, not a step backwards, if we evil people had at least some fear of the wrath of a holy God? Yes, we need to preach the grace and mercy of God, but how do we do that to a people who feel no need of grace or mercy?