545. The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone into Hell: Spirits Cast Themselves In

Some people cherish the notion that God turns his face away from people, spurns them, and casts them into hell, and is angry against them because of their evil. Some people even go so far as to think that God punishes people and does them harm. They support this notion from the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said, not realizing that the spiritual meaning of the Word, which makes sense of the letter, is wholly different. So the real doctrine of the church, which is from the spiritual meaning of the Word, teaches something else. It teaches that the Lord never turns his face away from anyone or spurns anyone, never casts anyone into hell or is angry. ¹

Anyone whose mind is enlightened perceives this while reading the Word simply from the fact that the Lord is goodness itself, love itself, and mercy itself. Good itself cannot do harm to anyone. Love itself and mercy itself cannot spurn anyone, because this is contrary to mercy and love and is therefore contrary to the divine nature itself. So people who are thinking with an enlightened mind when they read the Word perceive clearly that God never turns away from us, and that because he does not turn away from us, he behaves toward us out of goodness and love and mercy. That is, he wills well toward us, loves us, and has compassion on us.

Enlightened minds also see from this that the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said has a spiritual meaning concealed within it, a meaning needed to explain expressions that in the letter are adapted to human comprehension, things said in accord with our primary and general conceptions.

Footnotes:

29. No one can deny that God possesses in Him love and wisdom together in their very essence. For He loves all people out of the love in Him, and He guides all out of the wisdom in Him.

The created universe, too, regarded in terms of its design, is so full of wisdom springing from love that you may declare all its facets in their entirety to be wisdom itself. For it contains incalculable elements so organized sequentially and concurrently that taken together they constitute a single unit. It is for this reason and no other that they can be held together and unceasingly maintained.

8282. 'With Your right hand, O Jehovah, You break the enemy in pieces' means the effect almighty power has on evils and resulting falsities, whose power is eliminated. This is clear from the meaning of 'Jehovah's right hand' as the Lord's almighty power, dealt with immediately above in 8281; from the meaning of 'breaking in pieces' as eliminating; and from the meaning of 'the enemy' as evils and falsities, since nothing else is meant in the spiritual sense of the Word by those who are enemies, foes, and haters. The reason why the terms enemies, foes, and haters are used, is not that the Lord is an enemy to them or hates them, but because they hate and are hostile towards the Divine. When however they undergo vastation which they themselves bring about, and cast themselves into damnation and into hell, it appears as though the Divine is responsible for what is happening to them. This appearance or illusion is as when someone sees the sun making a circuit each day around our planet and from this supposes that the sun is moving, when in fact the planet is doing so. Or it is as when someone receives a sentence from the king or judge and is punished because he has broken the law, and then supposes that the king or judge is responsible for what he suffers, when in fact he who has broken the law is himself responsible. Or that appearance is as when someone hurls himself into water or fire, or onto an outstretched sword, or an enemy troop, and then supposes that these are responsible for his destruction, when in fact he himself is. The same is so when those immersed in evil raise themselves up against the Divine, and cast themselves into the midst of His presence.