There are three visions of Hell that stand out for me in film. All of them I saw with no intention of catching on to a vision of Hell, but it just seemed to occur.
300 — This isn’t caught by most people, but I refer to the scene that takes place in Xerxes’ Throne Tent when the hunchback comes to him with news about how to defeat the Spartans. In the Throne Tent, every temptation is offered to the hunchback. He is offered pleasures, money, and power. None of this was offered by Leonides, the king of the Spartans. Leonides only required that he serve in a way that best fit the entire army. Due to his hunch, he could not stand on the front line, so he refused to join them. One thing that struck me was that even though everyone in the tent was engaged in seeking pleasure, they could not really achieve a permanent happiness and they became uglier and uglier the deeper into the tent you went. It seems to me that sin offers eternal happiness but instead only gives temporary pleasure, but in the end we live in fear, disfigured and scarred.
Event Horizon — I saw this movie by accident one night on HBO. I do not recommend it to anyone. It is disturbingly graphic beyond imagination. I have watched some gross movies in my day, but the images in this film were terrible. They were even edited to avoid the NC-17 rating. The idea of people being so deranged that they sought pleasure in any way possible — but that pleasure only brought about the pain of the people around them — was probably the most graphic depiction of what I can only describe as disturbing beyond belief. There is a quote from the movie that makes Hell sear itself on my brain in a way I will never forget. The doctor in the movie says, “Hell is just a word. The reality is much, much worse.” If this film is any indication, then he is completely right.
Pinocchio — Yes, you read that right. The Disney movie, too. Not the guy from “Life is Beautiful.” In the movie, all the boys get kidnapped and go to “Pleasure Island” where they can do anything that they want with no real consequences. On Pleasure Island they turn into jackasses and are sold into bondage forever. Just when we think we have attained Heaven, we realize that we are really making ourselves into slaves and all the pleasure we think that we have grasped is completely false.
When I was in Orlando recently, I took the family to Downtown Disney, which the type of place where you go when you don’t want to spend money on an admission ticket, but you want to walk around a Disney area and see the shops.
There is one segment of the area known as “Pleasure Island” which is full of nightclubs and dance houses. I found it interesting that the tag line for this area was “It’s all about you. Unless it’s all about me.”
So essentially we have an area of Orlando, Florida where people can go and make jack-asses of themselves.
A place where it can be all about what you want except when it is all about what the other person wants — which is all the time. Talk about frustrating! It is never really about you, but it is really about you. Here we have the greatest lie that Satan tries to thrust onto us. A lie that we cannot run away from.
Any time we try to create a Heaven on Earth we end up creating a Hell for ourselves that we find harder and harder to escape. A Hell that turns us into slaves. Slaves to addiction, fear, and slaves to a false reality.
You see, Heaven is completely about a sense of gift. Giving of yourself even when it hurts. That is never popular. However the idea of getting, taking, and receiving pleasure is always popular.
Herein lies the problem. How do you receive when everyone is taking? When all are making jackasses out of themselves, it is impossible to have love, to receive love, for there is no love being given.
When love is defined merely as getting pleasure, we find ourselves slaves to an ideal we will never grasp. When we choose to give, we find that there is more than enough to live on. We no longer have to grab, we no longer have to take.
It is through the gift that we find freedom. It is through the gift that we find Heaven. It is through the gift that we find true happiness and true love. And escape hell.
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