Eurovision, the Book of Mormon, and a theology of hell on earth

For the past few years, my family has been getting into the annual Eurovision Song Contest, which is a lot of fun. In the three years that we’ve watched it, at least one of us has always been cheering for Switzerland. This is perhaps because of my own personal bias toward Switzerland, having spent some time there, but it’s also that the songs stand out to (at least one of) us. I was bummed in 2021 when Tout l’univers narrowly lost out (though Måneskin’s winning song has grown on me), and my kid was a big fan of 2023’s Swiss entry, Watergun, even if the rest of us (including the Eurovision judges and audience) weren’t huge fans.

Given this history, kiddo was ecstatic when this year’s Swiss entry, Nemo’s The Code, won Eurovision 2024. Months after, we are still singing Eurovision songs, and she still belts out the words to The Code whenever we’re listening to that. I love how much she gets into it, but it always startles me a bit when she sings one of the lines from the chorus: “I went to hell and back.” I grew up a swearing-averse person in a swearing-averse family in a swearing-averse religious culture, and hearing a kid her age say the word “hell” while singing a song feels off to me.

Of course, this is ridiculous, because the word “hell” isn’t a swear word in that line of the song. The Code is a song about Nemo’s being non-binary and realizing that over time. Going “to hell and back” is contrasted with the moment when they “found paradise” or even “their kingdom come.” In that context, the word choice makes perfect sense: “Hell” isn’t just a swear word, and it’s not even a particular theological conception of the afterlife. Rather, it’s also something that people (including a disproportionate number of queer people) go through here and now.

In keeping with a general pattern of moving toward a less literal Christianity, I’m increasingly keen on the idea of heaven and hell not as future realms of judgment but as states that exist here on earth as a result of our actions toward our fellow humans. I know I’m not the only person to think of heaven and hell this way, and while there’s some reason to think of this as a modern phenomenon (perhaps post Sartre’s “hell is other people”), I think there are hints of this idea in scripture as well. For example, one of the words in the New Testament manuscripts often translated as “hell” is “Gehenna,” a geographical reference to a valley associated with child sacrifice centuries earlier. As Jewish conceptions of the afterlife evolved (in the centuries predating the New Testament), people drew from a cultural memory of people doing terrible things to each other as they tried to describe a realm of punishment for the wicked.

One other interesting example comes from the Book of Mormon (though I hasten to note that the Book of Mormon was composed well after common Christian conceptions of hell were established). Two missionaries, Alma and Amulek, are doing what missionaries often do: Showing up in a town (Alma, at least; Amulek is a local), criticizing the locals’ beliefs, and warning about “torments [that] shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames ascend up for ever and ever” (Alma 9:30; LDS Alma 12:17).

Unsurprisingly, the locals don’t take kindly to this, though they go further than might be justified in responding to judgmental missionaries. They start a big fire, they round up Alma and Amulek’s converts, and they toss them all into the fire. After letting them watch for a bit, one of the high-ranking locals comes by and asks the missionaries “After what you have seen, will you preach again to this people that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?” (Alma 10:56; LDS Alma 14:14)

I’m indebted to Kylie Nielson Turley for introducing me to this observation, and I love how she frames the local’s question in Alma 1-29: A Brief Theological Introduction:

This is not a random question. It is targeted directly at Alma and aimed to damage him as much as possible. The chief judge probably does not care what metaphor Alma used to preach repentance, except that this metaphor was useful in escalating Alma’s pain. The judge’s question seems targeted to remind Alma of his [earlier comments] …. The judge and the people of Ammonihah guarantee that Alma sees friends die. They guarantee that Amulek, the man an angel promised would be blessed by Alma’s presence, is beside Alma. Bound with strong cords and brought to the fire while the flames are blazing, Alma and Amulek are forced to witness women and children—most likely including Amulek’s family—be burned to death, an agonizing way to die. Still not content, the chief judge ensures that Alma understands the brutal irony at the heart of this horror: Alma’s unfortunate gospel metaphor about a lake of fire and brimstone prompts the literal lake of fire and brimstone that burns before his eyes.

Turley notes that the phrase “the lake of fire and brimstone” is never used again in the Book of Mormon, although it had been used repeatedly earlier in the text. While you can nitpick at this observation (“fire” continues to be used as a metaphor for hell, and some of the earlier parts of the text were actually dictated later, somewhat muddying the waters), I love Turley’s suggestion that Alma’s horror at the realization that human beings don’t need to wait for the next life to bring about hells of fire and brimstone leads generations of Nephite prophets to think more carefully about how they understand the punishment of the wicked after this life.

I am far more concerned about the lakes of fire and brimstone that we create for each other than I am about any lake of fire and brimstone after this life. Even though the Mormon swear-aversion that has seeped deep in my brain is startled whenever my kid sings “I went to hell and back,” I’m glad that she’s learning the message that human beings here and now are putting queer folks and other people through hell—so that we can work as a family to see that that doesn’t happen as often.

• macro
• Communities
• hell
• Eurovision
• Eurovision 2024
• Book of Mormon
• LGBTQ
• faith transition
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Kylie Nielson Turley
• Brief Theological Introductions (series)