Abuse with an Excuse

Hi, welcome to Hell. First time?

Well, this is Hell, and I’m Jeff, I’m the demon assigned to remind you constantly that it’s nobody’s fault but yours that you’re here. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth; this is Hell and no-one is happy, not you, not us, not even management.

I mean, logically. This is the afterlife. I know, I know, you thought this was life. So did I for a minute there but hear me out. You’ll see how that couldn’t possibly be the case.

First, I don’t know that you believe in all that, the premise, I didn’t really believe it either, but that was when I thought this was life. From here, I need to re-evaluate, it’s not quite the same leap of faith from here! From here, it’s not such a hard case to make. If you are a Christian sort, if you do approach life from this premise, judgment, Heaven and Hell, then perhaps I am not altogether wittingly making a serious argument and if so, I apologize in advance for failing at that level. If like me, you are more of just a north American and a cultural Christian, call it metaphor if you must, but it’s more than that too.

Hell is where you go if you’ve been bad, right?

And weren’t you born bad, didn’t the judgment happen before, as part of the same premise? You know what I’m talking about, Christian Original Sin, or the generic nasty Human Nature.

I understand that for the Christians, Jesus solves this riddle, this isn’t Hell, it’s more like Purgatory, you were created and judged as bad, you can’t perhaps just choose good yourself and override your Maker, but you can choose Jesus, who forgives. For the cultural Christians – and Christian believers are cultural Christians also, they can perhaps see the picture I’m trying to paint for the purely cultural ones too – that for the unsaved, there isn’t an escape, you’re bad and either forgiven or not, and if we accept the judgment and decide that we were created as bad, no choice – then by this cultural Christian premise and context, this is not our life, where there is free will and we get to choose from good and evil, this is the logical afterlife, where our choices have already been made.

And we do, mostly, almost universally, accept the judgment. While the modern, smart-assed materialists consider the escape, salvation to be ridiculous religious fantasy, that they have moved beyond sacrifice and spirits, they almost to a person accept and endorse the rest of the premise, up to the point where we all fail judgment except that some escape, this is not where we are alive and free and making meaningful moral choices.

 And it’s not Heaven, is it?

I see more prisons than I would expect in Heaven, for starters.

I imagine much less violence in Heaven, but rather than seeing people with the hate removed and love and peace in their hearts, the reward for having done the impossible and been good, rather, I see an elaborate system of moral gaslighting that absolutely insures violence forever repeating, an insanely complicated system of “morals” and laws in which violence is a sacred cure and not one of the crimes at all. When there is a fire, our world and Hell look identical, an all encompassing system of punishment and pain – plus fire.

I imagine we don’t have to be strong in Heaven, that Heaven doesn’t have all the awful things we have to be strong for, I like to think it’s a good life in Heaven even if you do weaken. I assume nothing tries to kill you and so makes you stronger in the sweet by and by. This is not that, is it?

Not even close. Just make the fires of Hell the obvious metaphor for violence and it’s all true, even the forever part, because there is no end to the foolishness of fighting violence with violence, fire with fire and the effort is the very definition of Hell and gives no hope of an ending ever. In this premise, born bad, all the judgment and punishment, all the hate and strife is for naught and none of it makes anyone better, in the end, you are still human, still born to be bad, and endless violence for nothing, that too is a definition of a mythical place, also not Paradise.

Whups, almost ten minutes, I haven’t said it – and this is all on you, you did this to yourself.

I mean, it’s your premise, isn’t it?

Have a nice eternity, fool. I’ll be right here.

Jeff

Feb. 12^th., 2022