Quote:
Originally Posted by Neblasian  We are paying for our sins and are rewarded for our deeds here in this lifetime. Hell is just the absence of Joy in your life |
I've always liked this idea.
Typical society thinks of Hell/Heaven in the materialist sense, but if you think of it as states of being then Heaven is just a metaphor for being joyous all the time and rejoicing at the every moment, whereas Hell is the state of being where you allow yourself to suffer.
In my mind the purpose of "negative" entities in the grand scheme of things is to notify us of our weaknesses. They have no inroad without us having some kind of weakness we need to fix, and we might not discover our weaknesses without the catalyst of negative entities pushing the buttons we've made available to them.
So in that sense "Hell" is the state of being where you have manifested lots of issues that "Satan" (the negative entities) can use as triggers to make you feel less than joyous and push you into lower states of awareness.
I think a lot of these old religious concepts that we generally consider antiquated can be useful if you change your perspective on the metaphor they are describing.
When it comes down to it, people like Jesus need some language to express highly abstract concepts that are hard to communicate, so they adopt this language, but then over 2000 years the interpretation of the metaphor is changed. I find a lot of utility in re-interpreting everything the Bible says in a more compassionate, less judgemental way.