Pursuing Christianity

What is hell, really?

by

carlr90s

7/1/2024 Word Count – 392 Reading Time – 1.75 minutes

Ecclesiastes 12:7 – “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

In view of that, the question for me becomes, what happens to the soul? As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe the body, spirit and soul are 3 separate entities within each of us. The body lasts only a short while, but the spirit and soul are eternal.

 If we have rejected God then the soul cannot return to God with the spirit. It cannot remain with the body because the body is decaying. Is there some wasteland filled with individuals who rejected God to their death and whose souls are now void of the goodness and joy that was given by God through His spirit? A spirit which has now departed the soul and returned to God.

And what must it be like in this wasteland? A place inhabited by individuals who rejected God and whose spirit of goodness and all that is a part of goodness has left them with only the evil that was once restrained by the goodness in their spirit. Imagine an environment created by all the angst, hatred, and violent intentions that remain in a soul after the God given goodness has gone.

Think of who’s souls would populate such a place. Hitler, and his generals, the Marquis de Sade, Torquemada, Jack the Ripper, and all the other monstrously evil souls who ever lived. Imagine a place where the intent and energy from these tormented and furious souls fills the atmosphere with an intensity and volume of pure, raw evil and malice. Seething hatred, unrelenting violence, with no good there to restrain it.

And cast into this bitter, malignant landscape of rancor, hostility and violence are souls who were thought of as good people. Souls who, for whatever reason, rejected God. Souls who chose not to believe. Souls who once enjoyed and relied upon the benefits of the opposing force to evil that the goodness of the spirit of God provided to the world in which they lived, that is, while they still lived.

Now their bodies have died, their spirit returned to God, and their soul suddenly thrust into the midst of this abusive, horrific, repugnant existence in a world where evil rules and no good exists. Sounds like hell to me.

3 responses to “What is hell, really?”

  1. hangdog921 Avatar
    hangdog921

    Ok Boss, Hum. I’m a little confused by the 3 part entity your presenting here. Maybe working off the Father/Son/Holy Ghost? Spirit, Soul, carcass. Your following conclusions sound like your describing a description of Hell. Stripping the spirit from the soul, and, or all, the good from the intent, leaves this portion condemned to this hell I’m perceiving from the words. But then deniers of the God are condemned to the everlasting fires, eh? This again is a area of contest for those of us who question. An all forgiving God, unless you don’t profess faith (yup that word again) to it before death. That with no physical evidence of without belief and (again based on Faith). Ah, read it to the end and you also reference Hell as the repository. Why I would ask, would any portion be regaled back to the God? Spirit gets a pass, but Souls condemned? They were one in the conscious mind of the earthly entity, but got different treatment once the body passed. That doesn’t quite parse out with me. If my denial excludes me from the heavenly bliss, why would any portion get a pass, and the other part experience the description of hell as we know it? I need your address. I have a set of 3 books, a heavenly trilogy as it were. Not to be taken seriously, but they also present some interesting ideas in a good read format. I’ve been meaning to replace the books for a new copy and would like to send you the ones I have. I think you’ll enjoy the humor, expect you to overlook the parts created to carry the story, and see some of the interesting viewpoints on the whole thing.

    Insanity Rampages on, but unfortunately decadence reigns.

    Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

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    1. carlr90s Avatar
      carlr90s

      3 parts of the human being, body (material / physical being), spirit (animates the body, infuses morality and other metaphysical stuff), soul (interface between body and spirit, stores memory of combined actions). God is all forgiving in the sense that He won’t deny forgiveness to those who ask but does not give blanket forgiveness. A person has to want to be forgiven. God is willing, but the choice is ours. I really want to give you props for your comments. I accept that for those who don’t buy into the concept of a spiritual self that has a lifespan apart from the physical body, making sense of this perspective has got to be a stretch. And I’ll be the first to admit that nobody has proven this concept empirically. But neither have they proven it’s antithesis. My faith is that God exists and yours is that He doesn’t. nobody has proof either way, so its all faith. Lack of evidence doesn’t prove anything so we’re both believers. Just in different concepts. Back to your question about 3 separate parts / 3 separate fates: The material world decays and deteriorates. That’s what matter does. In my way of thinking the material body is primarily a learning tool for the soul and spirit. Its like the launch rocket that gets the space ship into motion then is jettisoned. I think how we live during the material phase of our existence determines the trajectory of the soul. There is nothing that anyone has discovered within the constraints of matter that is able to give or even initiate life. The proponents of the primordial soup theory have been trying to come up with proof of their theory for 70 years and are further from success than when they started. Everything science learns about cells moves them backwards. And nobody else has any idea of how to animate inanimate cells. So we all are left with the 2 most obvious choices. The idea of an intelligent designer who has the power to create life is actually a more plausible theory than anything else that has been proposed given there is no more proof for some form of animation arising from a chemical reaction or any other purely physical process than there is for God doing it. Nobody is placing a solid bet. We’re all rolling the dice if its scientific proof that you’re needing. Well, I intended to keep this short and its clear that was a fail.

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      1. hangdog921 Avatar
        hangdog921

        This life being a learning tool has always been my belief. Far to many waste the learning oppertunity. To expound off it goes beyond is the unanswered question. Life, the what why how. The fact of life and it’s great diversity, intricate creation of internal systems, etc, etc. Does make it hard to chalk up to accidental. Yet? The one time combination is as easy to buy as designed creation. Because what created the creator? Was it a one time creation fluke? And if so now our creation is just as fallible. Right?

        Insanity Rampages on, but unfortunately decadence reigns.

        Sent from Proton Mail Android

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