The concept of Hell isn’t popular these days, and yet we see its seeds all around us. C.S Lewis said perceptively that the essence of hell is separation – separation from God and from others. To be totally separated from other creatures, to be wholly and increasingly self-absorbed, makes that self smaller and smaller, and ultimately will result in the person ceasing to be a self. The torture of separation and the terror of ceasing to exist are better seen not as punishments imposed by God, but as the natural and inevitable outcome of choices humans themselves make and attitudes they themselves develop. ‘Ultimately there are only two types of people’ he says; ‘those who say to God “Your will be done”, and those to whom God says, “Have it your own way.” ‘