Granny
Gold Member
I guess I just have another way of thinking about things Biblical. Unlike one end of the spectrum, I do not take EVERY SINGLE WORD as literal. Unlike the other end of the spectrum, I don't pass it off as total nonsense.
Who's to say that Hell is not what we are living in for the entirety of our lives on this earth? I mean, look at the world in which we live. Maybe this "being thrown down into Ghehenna fire" (or whatever the wording is) means that once we are born we've come into a hellish world where we have the free will to choose whether we do right or wrong. No matter what we do, none of us will ever be absolutely perfect. There is no "perfect" where man himself is concerned.
Maybe doing the right things in life, albeit imperfectly, brings us a measure of pleasure and/or blessings while we are here - a sense of spiritual security from life's storms. Doing the wrong things in life generally brings more misery on top of whatever misery we already have that led us to do those wrong things.
Do bad things happen to good people? Yes. We don't know why. Perhaps we may find out the purpose at some point in time after the bad thing has occurred.
Fact is, once we are dead there is no more suffering, pain, or any other worry - but we continue to "live" in the memory of those who are still living.
I think some of man's beliefs are greatly influenced by early artists and their depictions of winged angels and cherubs, men in robes, scenes of the artists' ideas or interpretations of various Biblical stories.
Is Hell in the center of the earth? Is Heaven a place somewhere up in the sky with streets of gold behind the Pearly Gates? No one has ever come back to verify it to us, but I'm not going to spit at the idea that Hell and Heaven do exist.
Who's to say that Hell is not what we are living in for the entirety of our lives on this earth? I mean, look at the world in which we live. Maybe this "being thrown down into Ghehenna fire" (or whatever the wording is) means that once we are born we've come into a hellish world where we have the free will to choose whether we do right or wrong. No matter what we do, none of us will ever be absolutely perfect. There is no "perfect" where man himself is concerned.
Maybe doing the right things in life, albeit imperfectly, brings us a measure of pleasure and/or blessings while we are here - a sense of spiritual security from life's storms. Doing the wrong things in life generally brings more misery on top of whatever misery we already have that led us to do those wrong things.
Do bad things happen to good people? Yes. We don't know why. Perhaps we may find out the purpose at some point in time after the bad thing has occurred.
Fact is, once we are dead there is no more suffering, pain, or any other worry - but we continue to "live" in the memory of those who are still living.
I think some of man's beliefs are greatly influenced by early artists and their depictions of winged angels and cherubs, men in robes, scenes of the artists' ideas or interpretations of various Biblical stories.
Is Hell in the center of the earth? Is Heaven a place somewhere up in the sky with streets of gold behind the Pearly Gates? No one has ever come back to verify it to us, but I'm not going to spit at the idea that Hell and Heaven do exist.