, Richard Beck"]But at the end of the day we are all wrestling with the same thing. We are all struggling with a vision of eternal torture and the confession that God is love. And the two don’t fit. And if you don’t get this, aren’t at least sympathetic to the impulse behind a book like Love Wins, then I don’t know what to say. There isn’t much to say. Our sensibilities are too different…When I think of hell, in all its glory, I have an experience of such overwhelming grief, horror and sadness that theological conversation is just halted. Words fail me. And if you keep talking I can’t go on with you. I’ve stopped. I can’t continue. And if you ask what’s wrong, all I can do is walk you back to edge of the abyss. To have you look again. To look harder. To look again at all that pain. To hear those screams. And to know, with icy dread, that it will never, never, never end…At the edge of that abyss I fail. My heart stops. And I have nothing else to say.Lots of interesting comments on it too 
Lots of interesting comments on it too
Brilliant post.
Before I had heard of universalism, I regret to say, that I had very little compassion for the damned, like Beck obviously does. I never struggled with “a vision of eternal torture”. I never saw the pain, I never heard the screams, nor did I ever smell the stench of burning flesh. And if my works had any consequence for “saving” people (and they did in my theology), then my efforts at evangelism were certainly shameful. My complete lack of urgency – my annual couple of hours door-knocking – was really just a mockery of the truth I knew. It took universalists to show me the profound and eternal despair found in an eternal Hell. I’m not perfectly convinced of universalism today (though I am largely convinced), but I now mourn over this eternal Hell – and I mean really mourn – more than I ever have. And I now hope for universal salvation with the deepest of longings.
Thanks Alex for posting this. If the thought of “ECT for anyone” does NOT lead us into a state of agonizing mental despair, then we really need to re-examine the stuff we are made of and ask: “Are we comfortable living with who we are? Do we want our babies to grow up and be like us?”
I agree … Beck expressed that so very well. If a person is indifferent to Hell, what more can you say to them? They don’t know there’s a problem, and there’s nothing to discuss until they realize it.
WAAB, what was it that got you to see the horror of hell? I felt it deeply since I was very young – was I just a particularly imaginative child? – first in terror for myself, but then for my unsaved mom and other family, then for others as well.
Sonia
I’m not sure whether you were imaginative or just truly human. My older sister had similar concerns when she was a child. I’m really sorry I wasn’t like you both when I was a child! You have no idea how cold I feel right now! I don’t exactly know what first showed me the horror of hell. I think an eternal hell was so horrifying that it had became completely meaningless. So I think placing eternity in the context of personal and finite time helped me really understand the depths of its horrors. To say that a thousand years of torture is not even a mere drop in the ocean of eternity is fathomable. Eternity by itself is not. I cannot understand or relate to eternity. But I can understand a thousand years, a droplet of water and an ocean. I’m not sure who said this (or something like it) but it I think it’s helpful. I first became aware of it while I was in prayer over universalism. Does that make sense? More broadly speaking though, it took a rather traumatic period in my life, ten months ago, for Yahweh to bring me where I am now. Though it’s obvious now that it’s been in the works for much, much longer.
Thanks, WAAB. Your former attitude seems pretty common actually, which is why I ask – trying to figure out how to get through to people who don’t seem all that concerned. But it is God who is working in people and we can’t rush that process. I think we “see” when He’s ready for us to see, and until then we just don’t.
Sonia
What is the definition of eternity anyways?
If it means without beginning or end, that would only apply to God, right?
Maybe a better translation of eternal life or eternal torment, would be life from God, or torment from God?
Just thinking out loud here (TOL?) 
Thanks for sharing this, Alex. It’s powerful 
i dealt with the horror of hell by pushing it back…i’d think of individuals and think “surely not them” and i’d comfort myself with the idea that God would have his way with them at least.
also, the idea of strange people making it to heaven, like Hitler, was one i often played with as a triumph of God’s grace, and how happy we’d be.
i guess i was always borderline universalist deep down, but i didn’t know how to deal with the hell-texts at the time, and so even though i technically couldn’t believe anyone would REALLY be damned, i still had the doctrine in place because of how i’d been taught.
really though, the doctrine of hell made me lazy, because i couldn’t really tell people about this awful place to warn them as i didn’t really believe it, and so somehow that ended up with me keeping a lid on things.
though i must admit that even know i’d feel as if i was “selling something” if i was to throw God into every conversation…