Abandoning All Hope

In Dante's Inferno, the sign that hangs over the gates of Hell reads "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." It's not so much that one gives up all hope as a consequence of entering into Hell, but rather, one enters Hell as a consequence of abandoning all hope. When Alma describes his experience of being in the gall of bitterness, or in other words, being in Hell, he talks about how we wished for nothing more than to cease to exist rather than to appear before God with all his sins. He had abandoned hope. He believed he was irredeemable, his sins beyond the scope of the Atonement. But he was able to escape that Hell simply by choosing to hope again. I say simply, not easily. It may be a simple thing to look at a bronze serpent to be healed, but it is not always easy to let go of our pride and our sense that perhaps we deserve to be punished and poisoned and die. Maybe we do deserve this and more, but God's mercy is greater than we can understand and the Atonement has never been about what we deserve, just as it was never about what Christ deserved when He chose to take upon Him the sins of the world. Hell is only for those who have abandoned all hope. It cannot hold onto anyone with hope. Hope is an anchor to the soul. It will draw us inexorably from the deepest pits of Hell as long as we hold fast to it. If we're stuck in hell, we simply have to embrace hope once more. Again, I say simply, not easily. Christ has been called the Hope of Israel. If we have abandoned Hope, Hope has not, nor will He ever abandon us, and is waiting, longing, hoping to snatch us from the jaws of Hell the moment we turn to embrace Him.