In response to an argument about hell

[feotakahari]

contemplate_everything: Me, having my constantly regenerating nerves consumed by capsaicin-spitting locusts for all of eternity: “Yeah this is about as bad as the panopticon.”

Me: Unironically THIS. My nightmares are pretty bad. I’ve been dismembered, burned alive, skewered on innumerable tiny spikes, and felt the pain as real as life. None of that is as terrifying as the thought of spending eternity trying to restrain my own thoughts to avoid the risk of those tortures. When I have a dream where I’m digging dead, rotting insects out of my flesh, there’s no mistake I can make or trap I could fall into that would make the situation any worse, and that in itself is freeing.

Sometimes I want to write a story about the Good Samaritan. For his actions, he went to heaven, and all the other Samaritans he knew and loved went to hell. He can’t miss them or want to change their fate, because that would be defying God’s will, and then he’d go to hell. So he restrains his thoughts and restrains his thoughts until he breaks, and as he falls, he realizes that God knew he would fall all along. Letting him see heaven was just part of the punishment for having loved people God decreed he should hate.

Comments

[entanglingbriars]

Have you read Ted Chiang's short story "Hell Is the Absence of God"? It's about the trap of trying to love God to get into Heaven when truly loving God needs to be something you do without hope of reward.

[feotakahari]

Picked up the anthology from the library once, but never made it to the title story.

[lb_lee]

Very tangential, but I'm really glad I'm not the only one who can feel horrible pain in dreams.

[raspberryrain]

As someone raised Christian, your interpretation of the Good Samaritan is horrifying. I don't think that was at all Yeshua's intention with the parable.

But it is strikingly like what a lot of Christians teach about the afterlife.