If you’re ever going to read an article that I link to, read this one - An Everlasting Life. I can’t even summarize it well enough to do it justice so I’ll give you just a taste :

Some people have known hell. Dachau. Buchanwald. Treblinka. Kampuchea. The Armenian Genocide. The Gulag. Sometimes I get a flat tire, get a tooth filled, have a check that bounces, or get a sinus infection. I suppose that’s a kind of suffering. And I do sit through academic committee meetings—that’s a kind of hell. Ever the pessimist, I sometimes feel as if society is falling apart, that hell is about to break out around us. What’s holding it back? God. His Spirit. His Church. “And the gates of Hell shall not prevail. . .” It was hard having a baby who was going to die. But when Mary was born it wasn’t hell, in fact, it was more like a taste of the Cross, of heaven and hell mixed together—to be drunk down, bitter and sweet at the same time. Can you drink from the same cup as I drink? Yes, we can, Lord. How, I don’t know. For it was he who descended into hell, not us; and it was he who bore our sins; and it was he who bore the brokenness of all the broken babies.