Does God send people to hell, or do people choose it?

Christian theology generally holds both together rather than treating them as opposites: God's judgment is real and active, but it's typically described as confirming and formalizing a separation people have already chosen through persistent rejection, not as an arbitrary sentence imposed on someone who genuinely wanted reconciliation.

C.S. Lewis captured this memorably, writing that he believed "the doors of hell are locked on the inside"—meaning the deepest barrier isn't God's unwillingness to welcome someone back, but a settled, ongoing refusal on the person's own part to accept that welcome.

This framing doesn't erase every hard question—it doesn't, by itself, fully resolve why a loving God permits any person's rejection to become truly final and permanent, a related but distinct question addressed elsewhere. What it does clarify is that within Christian theology, hell isn't pictured as God eagerly excluding people who wanted in; it's pictured as the confirmed, ongoing shape of a rejection God never wanted in the first place.