Jesus warned that we should fear Him who is able to destroy body and soul in hell, and spoke of the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. I don't think it wise to contradict Him. If your wisdom has led you to the conclusion that hell is either symbolic or a warning that will never be implemented, then at least remember that Jesus has His own good reasons for expressing the warning--are you sure you are wiser than He?
What kind of punishment is hell? Jesus describes it as a place of destruction, and also of fire, and in Revelation it is depicted as a lake of fire and a second death--and at least the beast and false prophet are tormented forever. I don't know what time is like when there is no longer a body, and I've no notion of how times relate to each other hereafter. It isn't impossible that forever and a blink of an eye are the same event from different perspectives. (Hint: what does the photon travel time from a distant galaxy look like to us, and look like to the photon?)
Early on there were visions of hell that showed people getting different punishments. Dante didn't invent the idea. There's quite a bit of literature describing Jewish and Christian tours of hell, some dated back to the first century AD. I've read a little bit; I think Dante did a much better job of matching the sin to the punishment.
"Pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul." Elsewhere Lewis notes that our sense of justice demands that the guilty one understand the gravity of his crime. Maybe it's presumptuous, but that seems right to me too.
I like Inferno by Niven and Pournelle. Its thesis (if you haven't read it already, do) is that those who appreciate the gravity of their sin can repent even from hell. They had some fun slotting in modern sinners and new categories of sinners (e.g. advertisers, who of course are in the circle of liars), but in that book and in its sequel they had trouble figuring out how to deal with solipsism, and the hunger and thirst to be lied to.
For solipsists the most appropriate punishment would seem to be to make it absolutely clear that there is reality and that they are contingent. It sounds like the kind of change that would break your mind--which is probably why God doesn't force that kind of revelation on us on a regular basis.
Maybe the judgment is punishment by itself, and the lake of fire is destruction.
Whichever--it isn't the way to go. "That's where all the interesting people are!" uses the same meaning of "interesting" as "May you live in interesting times".
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I don't like to even contemplate it, but Lewis is quite persuasive on the probability that it is true. It's in the Creeds as well, suggesting that even after people had time to evade the idea and draw its fangs, they still had to keep it in. I don't think I'm smarter than they are, either.
That said, there are many conceptions of it, not all of them particularly biblical, and I don't advocate which one is true.
St Ignatius devotes his fifth exercise to meditating on hell. I suspect that while we can devote too much time to thinking about it, a little can be beneficial. Not that I do.
I wonder if there's a "protestant-ized" version of his exercises. The Marian devotion is pretty over-the-top--unless, of course, it's true.
The more I putter around in the backyard garden, prepping for a SHTF event someday, the more I come to believe a theological eschaton implies a drastic winnowing. Bad seed that can't be distinguished from good until the grains go to head... Good seed choked out in ill-prepared soil. The annoying behaviors of those who promise to help and know what needs to be done, then fail to show up when expected -- and trying to salvage SOMETHING with the good-natured help of the fumble-fingered ignorant who have the one and only virtue of BEING ON SITE! A peach tree that will kill itself by over-fruiting, so that even many potentially good fruit must be ruthlessly culled and cast aside. The mature trees, of good form, that have for season after season been browsed by deer and so have high, strong branches -- while ugly brush of the same breed has been over-protected inside a fence and throws tangled thin branches and suckers in all directions ... Then the weeds. Weeds! ANYthing out of place and plan. The sunflower taking root in the melon patch; the milkweed in corn ...
A gardener moves thru the landscape with knife and bucket, and every day hauls away waste to the fire. In due time at the appropriate season, there will be good results. There will be sunflower seeds from those that blossomed where expected. There will be tomatoes day by day all summer, and timber from the old trees now, and from the new-planted trees timber will still come on in decades ahead. The work of the garden is MOSTLY choosing what goes into the fire, and the compost heap, and the litter at the bottom of a chicken coop.
Even fire's ash (and the muck and the chicken crap) has value after a while. But not as it was, not before it was consumed.
Gardening is an experience that can turn a Wesleyian into a Calvinist.
I expect to wake up in hell. Roll over and look for my shotgun. I may have spent a bit too much time playing Doom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72S2aAxtZOs&t=310s
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