Hell is…
…whatever we have personally
decided it will be. So here’s your
multiple choice question. Pick as many
answers as you wish…
Hell is:
1. Fire, brimstone and eternal damnation
2. The devil’s home base
3. Somewhere “down there”
4. Having to exist apart
from God
5. Non-existent
6. Earth
7. Your mother-in-law
8. The sounds of “It’s a
Small World” echoing in your brain
9. Having to go to work
10. Somewhere south of
(Aw, c’mon – I lived in
I could just as well add to
the choices “The probable destination for everyone who does not subscribe to
the precepts of the (insert your choice here) religion. But that would be tacky, wouldn’t it? I think I’ll just let that go.
So just what is hell? NOBODY knows.
Huh? You heard me – NOBODY
knows. In fact, no one is in a position
to even begin to think they might have a definition, description or location
for hell. Just for the hell of it
(sorry, couldn’t resist…), I took a quick look at the NIV Bible to check for
references to Hell and Hades. The score
is Hell – 15, Hades – 8 (Hell wins by a touchdown and a point after). Three verses of the 15 referenced the “fires
of hell” but that’s it. No further
descriptions were available. The concept
of Hades of course, is directly out of Greek mythology – Hades being the god of
Death (the capitalization tends to make it more spooky, doesn’t it?).
My guess is that the concept
of hell is widely promoted mainly to scare folks into believing a certain
doctrine – or to scare us into being good doobies. Some of the time this works – and a lot of
the time it doesn’t. If I were asked to
give my opinion of hell, I would imagine that if it did exist “somewhere”, it
would be an existence devoid of love. That
would be about the suckiest situation I could ever picture. Is there a possibility that there really is a
hell? Of course – anything is possible,
although I think it’s highly unlikely.
So? So from my personal vantage point (just above
the level of a flea’s butt), it would seem that the concept of hell is just
about as distantly removed as you can get from a “system” based on love
and forgiveness. It’s one of those “Do
like you’re directed or your buns are toast – and by the way I love you” kinds
of things. It may work occasionally for
us as parents but we’re talking eternity stuff here. Nah, that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
So? So maybe this is one of those lessons we’re
here to learn. Maybe just thinking about
this is to help us realize that love really is the foundation of this super
creation and that no matter how bad we screw up here on earth, we’re still
totally loved by the supreme power of all existences. A really good thing to know I’d say.
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