Holy Writ is a collection of irreverent and thought-provoking short stories (this one’s one or the other), reimagining the world of the Bible. Email subscribers get each new story delivered free. If you haven’t already, please subscribe below!

Kevin the Little Angel did not believe in hell. As it turns out, hell was not an acceptable thing not to believe in—even for little angels.

“Look, Kevin, how can you not believe in hell? It’s right over there, for crying out loud.”

That was the first thing the other angels would say to him whenever they found out. They would drag him along to the gates of the underworld, and point to the great fiery depths, churning with molten fury between the pillars of the earth.

“Thanks very much,” Kevin would say, rubbing the smoke from his eyes. “But I don’t believe it.”

Of course, none of the heavenly angels could actually pass beyond the precipice of the abyss, which made it difficult to prove beyond doubt to Kevin—with his stupid puerile eyes and his drifting, dreamy affectation—that the lake of fire was in fact writhing with human souls in the throes of never-ending torment.

“Don’t be an idiot,” they would say next, opening up the Holy Writ. “It’s right here in the Book. There’s lots in here about hell. From cover to cover, almost.”

“Well,” Kevin would say carefully, “not really cover to cover. I think it shows up kind of later on.”

This was unfortunately and technically true. The entire first half of the book was strangely silent on the topic, almost as if the idea of differentiated outcomes in a conscious post-mortem existence had not yet occurred to anyone throughout all those venerable ages. In some places, these writers even said that when you died, nothing happened at all, or nothing very interesting, anyway. The angels hoped that Kevin never found those passages. God, they thought, Kevin could be so infuriating.

“What about Christ?” they asked Kevin. “He talked about hell all the time.” This was the linchpin, the trump card. All those times Christ brought up judgment—it just felt good, knowing there was some backbone to the universe.

“Yes,” said Kevin. “I’m wondering about that. I suppose I’ll have to ask, whenever I get the chance. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for something.”

Angels do not scoff, or snort, or make any laughter noise that does not sound like the tinkling of a windchime. It was a real deficit at a time like this.

“You have to have hell,” the angels would say with false patience. “Otherwise sinners get away with it. Otherwise there’s no justice. Morality crumbles.” They explained to Kevin that all sin is an offense against an infinite God, which makes it an infinite offense. “Which is why,” they continued, “sin has to have an infinite punishment. God has to keep them alive to kill them forever; he has no other choice. It’s only logical.”

It didn’t seem very logical to Kevin. He was only a little angel, after all, but it seemed to him that the punishment should fit the crime, and not some other, separate consideration. He had been watching human parents, and noticed that the ones with small children—all of the good ones, anyway—didn’t correct their children for breaking a pot, say, or telling a lie, by calculating the value of difference between themselves and their child. Mostly they measured it in accordance with the value of the pot, or the damage of the lie. There was also a conspicuous lack of torture. Kevin liked that.

He wondered whether he should bring this up to the other angels. He decided against it. Perhaps they would think that comparing God to a good human parent would be sacrilegious. He didn’t want to appear sacrilegious.

“What about Hitler?” they asked him. Angels farther down the Corridor of Time had told them about Hitler. He was a real person, and also a kind of metaphor. Hitler was just about as bad as a human could be.

“I don’t know about Hitler,” said Kevin. Kevin liked the idea of a hell for Hitler. It seemed appropriate. Still, he wondered why they couldn’t appeal to the infinity of God to figure out what to do about Hitler, instead of only for those other places. And he wondered why it was that when the furnace fires belonged to Hitler, you called it a holocaust, but when they belonged to God, you called it theology, simply because it was a million times worse. 

That was definitely sacrilegious. Probably, anyway. He better not mention it.

Instead, he said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t get my mind around it. You can believe in hell if you want to. It just doesn’t work for me.”

“But it’s there. We showed you.”

“Yes,” said Kevin. “Yes, I suppose it is there. But who knows what it’s there for?”

“You can’t just pick and choose, Kevin.”

But however much they told him he was being a stupid little angel, or however often they dragged him off to see the black, turgid fumes that rose from the cracks of the earth like columns above a smoking ruin, he could not bring himself to believe that anyone was actually in there.

“All I mean,” he said, peering bravely over the edge into the wretched inferno, “is that it’s there, and it’s empty. It’s an empty metaphor.”

“You’re not that smart, are you, Kevin?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kevin. He knew he didn’t understand it, not really—but he was sure somehow that not understanding it shouldn’t confuse a person—or an angel, for that matter—into forgetting the difference between right and wrong. He hoped that someday, someone would explain it to him. He didn’t expect it would be anytime soon. He was only a little angel, after all.

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