I have a few thoughts on this, especially since you probably used to be able to classify me as one…
What is hell? If God is gentle love and is ultimately not willing to see anyone hurt or destroyed (even if it’s necessary at times), then is hell really just a matter of wrath, or something even deeper?
And since corruption can’t be the fault of an omnibenevolent God, then it must spring from somewhere within us (at least partially, if not originally).
Thus what hell is, is perhaps a revelation of the true suffering of evil already within us, for we are enslaved to it.
Now, most people cannot avoid the suffering, at least not to a complete degree. Oh, we try to drown it out with money and possessions and forcing our suffering onto others… but at the end of the day we are slain. And the weakest of us perhaps notice that not only do we have faults, but there is something wrong with us… we’re sick and in need of a doctor. While others, (and most, to a partial degree) desperately avoid this inward revelation by constantly placing the blame upon others.
Now, it’s all well and good for some of us who can avoid consciousness of suffering if we’re rich in various ways… (think of the rich man and Lazarus) but there’s an avoidance of a certain type of suffering which doesn’t require any material goods or even emotional well-being… and that’s pride and accusation. Even the poorest and most destitute may sometimes find this sort of superficial relief through blaming their oppressors and never finding fault with themselves (not that their situation is any more just, necessarily).
Anyway, my point is this: if people find superficial relief through propping up frail, temporary supports then they are suffering just as much as the rest of us, only they have naturally clung to whatever method they could find to avoid it. And is this not perhaps the answer for why cruel tyrants and oppressors exist? They are trying to impose their own deep, dark suffering onto the lives of others… the abused and tormented Hitler being a great example of this (it’s insightful that his personality type was that of a Healer gone wrong).
In this sense, wickedness is literally twistedness, twisting one’s own pain into a tool to be used against others.
Thus, should not our task be to allow such oppressors to feel the wrath of their own subconscious suffering, their only pathway to empathy with their victims and the rest of humanity in general?
Toward this end it may be necessary at times to oppose them strongly and back them down until there is no more escape. On a more concrete level this may be removing tyrants from power or taking away government entitlements to the rich. But on a more subtle spiritual level it may look like removing the frail theological supports from those who use their teachings to harbor pride and accusation in an attempt to escape the fiery pit of their own subconscious hell and despair and fear of disapproval.
It may also look like giving them disapproval so that they are no longer enabled by their own sickly sense of self-worth which divides people up into groups and thinks to conquer (but will never really be able to).
While at the same time clearly showing concern and grievance over their state, such as I imagine how Jesus may have tearfully cried out to the Pharisees, “How will you escape going to Gehenna!?” and was in anguish over not being able to protect Jerusalem like a mother hen.
And to be sure there must be some words which would only exacerbate, irritate and ultimately strengthen the oppressors if this mindset is not kept in clear focus. What kind of words would these be? Admittedly even I need help differentiating, for who knows how I may even yet be attempting to escape the flames?
Maybe we can pray and think over this? What we want is no some annihilated or in pain at the end but everything restored and everyone equal.
