Hell?

M

mybreathyourlung

Registered Senior Member
I really enjoyed one_raven's post on Adam and Eve and thought it was really interesting. I love different takes on Biblical fact/fiction. Its funny how growing up you're taught things like the Adam and Eve story, the first sin, etc...and that's just the way it is.

On that same note, I've been reading lately on the topic of Hell.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Jewish faith does not believe in 'Hell', i.e. a place of eternal suffering after death because the Old Testament doesn't teach such a place. They believe that when you die, you enter into the ground and wait until the Messiah returns. It was only recently that the idea of Hell entered into the Christian faith (presumably by way of Catholicism, as a way of saying "you better behave, or..."). Hence, a Jewish Jesus did not teach of Hell. So what gives?

When Jesus died, he conquered death to give us eternal life, not Hell. Not only this, but the character of God does not lend to the thought that he would design such a place. God is supposed to be a loving, considerate, fair and just God. Punishing finite sins with infinite torture is not justice. Not even close to being fair. There is a passage in the Bible (can't remember where, but feel free to Google) where (for some reason) the Jews killed some number of their own children and God commented to them how that was an unspeakable act and he could not imagine doing that to HIS own children. That being so, how could he turn around and punish his children to an eternity in Hell?

Something is definitely wrong. I'd like to hear other thoughts/insight into this topic as I find it very interesting how on such a HUGE scale, this false idea of Hell was taught so flippantly when, to me at least, it's obvious it's just not true.
 
I incline myself more of an idea on reencarnations and karma. It is far more likely than an eternal hell. We suffer in this life, and if we don´t achieve the path to the cessation of suffering, then we will reencarnate again and suffer all over again until we get it right (=.
Like Jesus or Gautama did themselves; they broke their karmic cycle. They will or had came back 1 more time, when they choose to, but this time, without karma and full consciousness of past lifes...
 
Well that makes more sense than "get it right or you go to hell"(no matter the circumstance).

It could also be a huge crapshoot and no matter how good or how evil you are, we all die and decompose pretty much the same way. From my own empirical experience, this is the most likely scenario, nothing in this life has led me to believe there is any "fairness" in the universe.

Let us find a way to make THIS LIFE as good and productive as possible. It might be the only shot we get.
 
That's all good and sound, but, as I understand, the topic for this discussion is jewish aftterlife vs the christian one (in relation to hell). Please stick to it.
 
As I understand it, hell is less eternal torture (at least in the view of christian academics, and even some jews) than a deliberate separation from God perpetrated by the individual himself. God doesn't put you in hell; you choose to reject God during your own life and end up in hell.

Also, I have had it explained to me by Catholic theology majors that you don't go to hell after death, but that your actions during life isolate you from divinity and that hell really is the state of isolation of the soul upon the moment of death. Hell isn't a place, since being in a place that bad people go to would imply that you are with other. Hell is isolation and eternal separation from the divine essence.

Also, most of the jews I have met have claimed that judaism is actually agnostic in regards to what happens to the soul after death.
 
The state of separation from God could be viewed as a stage of personal growth. A church that is obsessed with social control would of course want its members to be helplessly dependent and immature.
 
MetaKron said:
The state of separation from God could be viewed as a stage of personal growth. A church that is obsessed with social control would of course want its members to be helplessly dependent and immature.
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That depends on what is your concept of "God".

If you believe that the divine is the only source of inner peace, satisfaction, and ultimate moral justification, then the state of separation from God would be the worst possible condition in which to find oneself.
 
Please do not discuss personal religious beliefs here. For that is the Religion forum
 
There is nothing in the rules of this subforum that forbids discussing personal religious beliefs. I had thought that it was appropriate to discuss whether "separation from God" is actually a problem, then I received that response. Such a response to my words tells me that there is no room in the Comparative Religion for me to discuss anything.
 
MetaKron said:
There is nothing in the rules of this subforum that forbids discussing personal religious beliefs. I had thought that it was appropriate to discuss whether "separation from God" is actually a problem, then I received that response. Such a response to my words tells me that there is no room in the Comparative Religion for me to discuss anything.
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I think that the topic was more about discussing what the concept of Hell is within different religious traditions, not whether you believed in it, or thought that it was worth considering.
 
The Devil Inside said:
this is absolutely true.
the general idea is "why would i presume to know something that i have no way of comprehending?"
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There's an awful lot in our world and beyond that we have no true way of comprehending, but we hypothosize on it all anyway. What I was getting at was to figure whether the idea of Hell is true or not, based on what the Bible and the character of God says about it, plus the contributions of other religions and faiths that deal with the idea of an afterlife.
 
mybreathyourlung said:
There's an awful lot in our world and beyond that we have no true way of comprehending, but we hypothosize on it all anyway. What I was getting at was to figure whether the idea of Hell is true or not, based on what the Bible and the character of God says about it, plus the contributions of other religions and faiths that deal with the idea of an afterlife.
Click to expand...

the point is that most jews dont pretend to know, whereas christianity has a dogma regarding it. :)
 
The Devil Inside said:
the point is that most jews dont pretend to know, whereas christianity has a dogma regarding it. :)
Click to expand...
As I said before, at least to Catholics, Hell isn't really a place that one can go to after death, but rather the condition of the soul during life and at the moment of death. I.e., one who lives an immoral life is already in Hell during their life.
 
Jaster Mereel said:
As I said before, at least to Catholics, Hell isn't really a place that one can go to after death, but rather the condition of the soul during life and at the moment of death. I.e., one who lives an immoral life is already in Hell during their life.
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I agree with that as well. I guess you could look at it as Heaven is complete closeness with God and Hell would be complete separation. And agreed that Hell is not endless torture. I think "Hell" is simply death. That is the complete separation from God. No endless torture as that just doesn't make sense. You just cease to exist.
 
Hell seems to be overwhelmingly a Christian created concept but its meaning varies with different sects and cults within that religion. The concept doesn’t exist in the OT. For most of the history of Christianity the concept that hell is a place of punishment fitted well with the harsh authoritarian regimes that have ruled the world these past 2000 years and where Christianity and state were closely allied, and the idea of fire and brimstone was widely promoted. The concept of a loving god/savior, whilst it has always been part of the mythology, has only been stressed more in this past approx 100 years, and correlates well with the development of the democracy paradigm, where we rule ourselves and we prefer love not punishment.

From some of the better informed biblical scholars and contributors here I have come to see hell as not a physical place but essentially the death of the soul. Much of that comes from Revelations but even there there are conflicting statements. At one point we have that “hell is the grave” (the end of existence) and in another we have “eternal torment”. I resolve that by looking at the original idea of the Christian savior – someone that enables everlasting life. See John 3:16 – that God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that man could have everlasting life. This is the essential message and reward for following Christianity. One must then consider the alternative to everlasting life; clearly it can only mean that life must end at some point, i.e. non existence.

Remember also that Revelations talks about two deaths. The first is the physical death, the grave, i.e. hell, where hell simply means a holding area where everyone waits until judgment. In this respect everyone enters hell initially upon physical death. The second death comes at judgment time where the rejects are thrown into the lake of fire. Some interpret that as hell, either as eternal torment (the punishment message that has dominated Christianity for the past 2000 years), or as a permanent end to existence.

The other muddy issue is the difference between physical life on Earth and an afterlife. Most think of an afterlife as an ethereal spirit form of life but Revelations implies that an afterlife is a physical life where the chosen few inherit a perfect Earth and are appropriately resurrected in physical form – e.g. the result of Judgment day. Those that are judged as failures are permanently destroyed in the lake of fire.

I would agree that the concept of a loving god is at odds with the existence of a hell and eternal punishment, hence my perception of the various hell discussions that I have seen here, if we are to make some sense of the contradictions within Christianity.
 
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