what do you personally think hell is/looks like. even if you are a non believer do you believe in the literal depiction or a metaphor. i have always thought it probably wouldnt be as bad as its cracked up to be and the devils probably a pretty cool guy. . Discuss x
As a non-believer, I'm sure that it's just a metaphor; I can think of far worse things than to be burned alive and tempted for all eternity. If you remove all desires from the self, you no longer need to care about getting water when you're thirsty and so-forth. Torture becomes impossible.
Easier said than done Mr. Spock. I'll bet if you caught fire some how you would find it rather unplesant. Seriously though, Jesus said almost nothing about hell at all, and absolutely nothing concrete. Basically he said a few things about "weeping and gnashing of teeth" being cast out from God's presence, and being withered in the fire of God's wrath. And the fire bit was a parable, Jesus says as much himself. All that hell garbage comes from the Pauline epistles, the cannonical letters, Revelation, and various early churchmen. Later churchmen elaborated on it and solidified hell as being a hot place "down below" filled with fire and poking and daemons. The way Jesus describes it though makes it seem more like floating all alone and blind though space for all eternity. As to the Devil, he's probably like a Jim Jones or Kim Jong Il type character.
"I told my partner a story about the Buddha I had heard one night at Burning Man. In the version told to me, one of the Buddha's disciples went to him and asked to be shown Heaven. The Buddha said, "If you want to see Heaven, you will have to see Hell first." The disciple agreed. The Buddha took them to Hell, where an enormous banquet table was set up, piled high with fabulously delicious food. UNfortunately, all of the diners had, instead of hands, enormously long forks on the end of their wrists, and they kept triyng to get the food into their mouths, but could not reach them. They wailed and gnashed their teeth in misery. The Buddha then took his disciple to Heaven. Heaven was exactly the same situation - diners at a sumptuous banquet table with long forks on their wrists instead of hands. The only difference was that, in Heaven, everybody was feeding each other." Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012
i believe we make our own hell " and the way the world is at the moment " we wont have to wait till we pass over to experience it .
My version of hell is like Sisyphus: being forced to continue to aim higher and higher without ever achieving your goal. That's why consumerism is kind of hellish to me: you can keep gathering more and more goods, but ultimately they never satisfy you...well, they never satisfy me. Yea...to me, hell is desire that is never answered.
Some big words, there, buddy. Being on fire would certainly suck, haha. But I agree in part, physical suffering is horrible, but mental, emotional, and spiritual torture is worse. I imagine absolute depression is worse than any physical pain, the emptiness you feel at that point is worse than any real pain I've ever known. and as far as emptying yourself of desires... well, if you have no desire, what do you have left? What pushes you to do anything? Isn't that despondancy? I never really got that. If you have no desire, you're a shell of a human. I mean, without passion, what is the point of life? Hell is the lack of passion, the lack of feeling for anything. At that point, even pain, sorrow, or anger is better than nothingness. That, I believe, is what they mean by "hell is seperation from god."
I'm positive "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani will be in it. Not the video. Just the song. Over and over.
hell is when everybody gets drunk and live their simple , slamm lives and weed and LSD disapears forever.
On a more serious side, hell, as described in most places in The Bible, is just another word for the grave. Our souls are not imortal, but, they don't die with the flesh. " all souls are mine" sayith The Lord. Ecclesiastes 12:7 (King James Version)Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. No souls will die till the white throne judgement. At that time they will be gone forever, not to be remembered anymore. What happens when you set something on fire? Does it remain ? No, it's gone. How could you live a glorious life in Heaven while your unvle "so and so " was over there screaming in torture. Besides, if we had such a meciless God as that I definitely wouldn't be serving Him.
