Do I Have to Stay in Hell Forever or do I Get Out


The imagination of the religious person has so much material it must be packed to the brim. There are the invisible gods and spirits. Then, the imaginary history of where they all came from and what the did to get to wherever they are now. On top of all this is the life after death where imaginations run wild again.

Even though it's quite obvious there is no "life" after we're dead (that's why we're called dead), it is so pleasant to imagine we're never dead billions of people let their minds play a trick of believing life goes we no longer exist. Since this actual "life" lives only in the mind it allows many minds to come up with many versions of this myth.

Since the beginning of the faith there have been many opinions on what this "life" is like. One of the disagreements is about whether people Christians don't like, those who don't believe this stuff, suffer only temporarily in the fire of hell, or, suffer fire for eternity.

Bart Ehrman has been plotting what is found in the versions of writing that survived in the first 400 years CE. There were the well known philosophers but also dictator "gods" and other more practical people writing their views. The general drift was for finite periods of time in hell for dead sinners and then they got out.

I suppose over the centuries as people began to consider all this they could see the punishment for sin needed to be heavier or sinners would just blow it off. So a view began the Bible instructs us hell is for eternity. We hear the phrase today, "Eternity in hell."

I'm sure it was more satisfying to claim hell is eternity than hell is just a while. If those in the pews wanted the hell-is-eternity version preachers no doubt started preaching it.

For those who are interested in knowing which it is, temporary or permanent, I have the answer. It is neither. There is no life after death, hell or heaven.

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