The Nature of Hell

I was a very young boy growing up on my grandparent’s farm when I had my first thoughts about “Hell”

My grandmother, a very religious woman’ used to take me every Sunday morning to church, to the Greek Orthodox church to be more specific.

I hated everything about that experience. Starting with the Sunday clothes and shoes that were stiff and uncomfortable to my young body use to run almost naked all summer long.

The nauseating smell of burning candles and incents would be the second on my list – I still have a bad reaction to burning candles and I had to explain my aversion several times, which will kill any romantic mood)

And last but not list the depictions of hell that orthodox churches are famous for – If you are not familiar with the paintings you may want to Google it.

Anyway, the whole setup was designed to put the fear of God in my young heart and make me an obedient church follower.

But the whole thing backfired because instead of becoming a zealot I became a rebel and choose not to have anything to do with the orthodox church.

The second time I seriously thought about hell was sometimes in 2012 when I had the fortuitous encounter with chronic depression and when I call it fortuitous I.m not being sarcastic, let’s just say for now that, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

It was one night right before going to bed, I put on my PJs brush my teeth and was ready to go to bed. I was by the door where I turned off the light and suddenly from one dark corner of the room a shadow pilled off and although it was dark in the room this shadow was so dark, darker than dark so I could distinctively see its humanoid silhouette.

That shadow attacked me and although there were no words exchanged I knew instinctively that it wanted to kill me. It grabbed my heart and I felt this sharp pain in my chest. 

My breathing stopped and I don’t know how I managed to flip the lights back on and the shadow dissolved in the light and when I say dissolve I mean like smoke blown by the wind, not like a sudden disappearance.

After that, I only went to bed with a nightstand light on although my friends give me a bible a crucifix and holy water nothing helped but that light. Maybe because I don’t have much faith in the church, so if you have a similar problem I wouldn’t say don’t try it if it works for you, do it.

That close encounter of the evil kind made me think seriously about Hell. What is Hell and where would be Hell located?

According to the Bible and pretty much all other religious texts Heave is located in the sky ad Hell is somewhere below us.

If you think about it, it makes complete sense.

The Heaven is an ideal ethereal place were old age, disease or physical pain do not exist.

On the other end, Hell has to be located in the material world otherwise how are you going to experience physical pain?

Earth is the only place where you can burn, bleed, drawn, be tortured, raped, abused, starved and generally speaking experience all imaginable pain and suffering?

I mean if you don’t have a physical body how are you going to experience physical pain?

So, the only unresolved mystery about Hell remains the location. Good news I figured that out.

Hell is in Australia that is if you live in North America if you live in Australia it will be the opposite.

Tadah!

I know hard to believe but I figured that out too.

We don’t believe in Hell on Earth because we don’t fully accept or understand the nature of Hell.

The nature of Hell is punishment, not retribution.

In other words, we believe that we should be punished for the crimes we have done not for being a sinner.

For example, you stole a car then a car should be stolen from you.

You beat up somebody. somebody should beat you up

You cheated on your spouse your spouse should cheat on you.

But that is not punishment that is retribution

If you stole a car and the same thing happens to you and you knew why it wouldn’t be much of a punishment. You would simply accept it as a fair punishment, but when you get lung cancer and you have never smoked in your life then it is very painful. 

Then you ask yourself why is this happening to me? You demand an answer and because you don’t get an answer you get mad at God, not at yourself.

If this doesn’t make it clear let me explain the nature of Hell in another way.

You come home and your wife or girlfriend has that mad look on her face.

You know that you have done something wrong but you don’t know what.

So, you go through your memory banks. Is today her birthday or an anniversary and you have forgotten?

Did she find out you used her toothbrush or did she find out you slept with her best friend?

You don’t know what your sin is and you don’t want to give any unwarranted information.

Now just replace spouse or girlfriend with God.

God doesn’t want an admission of a specific sin. God wants atonement, your admission of being a sinner or in the spouse/girlfriend scenario the admission that you are a jerk.

That is the nature of Hell.

Retribution is not going to save you only atonement, total and absolute acceptance of your punishment will save you

In other words, you should accept your pain and suffering without any mental reservations.

You should accept that whatever it is, you deserve the punishment.