What They Believe Part 2: Hell

Dear Internet Diary,

Danny Young
I believe that hell is the place of eternal torment for all who reject Christ as the Savior (Revelation 20:10,15).

Butch
I believe that Hell is eternal separation from God by choice. ( I do not believe that it is a place of eternal torment and torture.)

The Christian Library--J.H.Loux
Hell, then, would be a condition of permanent separation from God. The condition where that void is never filled. Our whole life, then, is one pilgrimage either toward God or toward hell. It is in this sense that Lewis can say of the damned that there was never a time when they were not in hell and that the pleasures of their lives were actually cheats, void of value. Of the redeemed he says that there was never a time when they were not in heaven and that the trials of their lives were actually purgatory, perfecting their faith.

So, either I am going to be thrown in a fire and burned forever, I am going to simply die, or just lie there ignored by god forever (which could be said to be a kind of torture anyway), or I am already in hell and right now I am in a state of shallowness and emptiness.

I'm going to throw out the supposed CS Lewis definition right now. Besides, we talked about this only a few days ago. I am getting fed up with the lies I read from Mr. Lewis. Don't go see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at the movies this Christmas. It's written by a liar.

I don't really see much difference between the "seperation from god" people and the fire and brimstone people. They both have to do with eternal torment. One is just a little bit more like The Twilight Zone than the other. However they want it to happen, they want me, and most likely you, to suffer. Some people are nice enough to believe that if you are "good," you go to heaven, although that betrays the entire meaning of heaven and hell in the first place.

The core belief here is final justice. The scriptures say, and people believe that in the end, they will get what is coming to them. Everyone will. They just aren't very creative about it. Most chritsians probably deviate from the scriptural cartoon, where an angel opens The Book of Life. If you're in it, you go to Heaven, if not, you go straight into the lake of fire. The judgement that just happened, where every action and choice you made was assessed was apparently just for show.

But what makes someone think that eternal torture--or eternal light torture--is a good thing? They evidently do, they evidently believe that God's judgement is the only judgement, and if God decides someone should be tortured forever, that makes eternal torture good. Sure, some people agree with the idea of torture for political reasons. That would make them psychotic. But even they would agree that it can't go on forever. People have wives and families to go home to. Hobbies. They don't want to miss an episode of Law And Order. (I don't.) But for some reason, they figure that if someone has the means and desire to torture me forever, they should by all means do it.

Thanks Christians. Not only for having the ability to change the meaning of evil to good, slavery to freedom, and torture to love, but for applying it to me, and everyone I love.

And you tell me I "have to respect beliefs."

Thanks for listening, diary.